What is your unbiased opinion on Manjaro?
I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don't have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based on Ubuntu, so no Pop OS. Is Manjaro a possibly good distro for me to check out?
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Wouldn't let it touch my system. Try Endeavor if you want to hop to an arch based distro.
May I ask why?
EndeavorOS was my first desktop distro and it's a great beginner distro in my opinion. Most stuff is sanely pre-configured and dealing with stuff like Nvidia drivers and Steam is one click away.
From what I heard, Manjaro is very unpolished. The devs do weird stuff with the OS and their decisions are questionable if I'm not wrong. I think Manjaro isn't as easy and stable as they advertised.
Regarding Endeavor OS, they say it is Manjaro done right.
Manjaro is very “polished” which is why many people that try it ( myself included ) love it and come to recommend it. Unfortunately, it is also low quality and poorly managed which is why many ex-users ( myself included ) would never use it again.
EndevourOS is Manjaro that works. It has no graphical package manager. You can install the one Manjaro uses easy but, sadly, it is unreliable and poor quality ( like Manjaro itself ).
What you hear is probably different from what it actually is like. There's a lot of Manjaro hate from people who've never actually used it as their daily driver and are just parroting what other people online are saying.
I've used Manjaro for a year before eventually moving to Endeavour and then Arch. It's perfectly fine.
Maybe it depends on what packages you use? I used Manjaro for ~2 years before switching to Arch and definitely had more update-related stability problems with Manjaro.
I have a Pine phone convergence edition that came with Manjaro Plasma. I installed it on my PC so I could easily dev for it. Updates twice broke the phone complaining about a login screen lock. On my PC, 2 updates broke it as it wouldn't start up the DE.
I have used Mint and Kububtu without issue but I don't like Snaps. I now use OpenSuse as a simple rolling distro.
You may have used without issue, but that is not the experience of others. Devs have complained about them distributing non-master branch features that weren't sufficiently tested or released and got their issue tracker flooded.
They are a really questionable distro quality wise. One of the worst IMHO, and considering they are aimed at new users, it's absolutely cruel to use them.
You may love it and great for you, but people won't give you free reign to advise a bad distro that is going to ruin Linux for newbies when there are better alternatives available.
On my PC, 2 updates broke it as it wouldn’t start up the DE.
Well, did you figure out what caused the issue? There's many things besides the quality of a distro that could cause this, especially on an Arch or Arch derivative. Many Arch users have complained about their DE occasionally failing to boot up due to some random update that broke something for their specific config. Just saying that this doesn't prove much. It could have been Manjaro, it could have easily also been a bad upstream update or even PEBKAC.
A few days ago, my standard Arch system upgraded to a version of pipewire-pulse that created duplicate audio devices on every audio profile change. I could have easily just said, "Arch is a shitty distro, they can't even get audio devices working correctly", but that would be misleading. Anecdotal statements like yours are too vague to prove a point about any distro.
Devs have complained about them distributing non-master branch features that weren’t sufficiently tested or released and got their issue tracker flooded.
This isn't an issue specific to Manjaro. This also happens to any upstream project that are shipped by downstream. Many distros ship unofficial patches to upstream software, this is NOT new.
You may love it and great for you, but people won’t give you free reign to advise a bad distro
I don't use it anymore as I am on regular Arch now, but during my time using Manjaro for about a year, I genuinely didn't see much issue with it, at least no more than what I've been experiencing with Arch. I am just annoyed at how some people had one or two bad experiences and then are just jumping on the hate bandwagon with nothing much to back it up.
There’s a lot of Manjaro hate from people who’ve never actually used it as their daily driver and are just parroting what other people online are saying.
You first insinuate people who bash it, don't use it, I've made it clear I did with clear examples. Now it's on to blaming the user or expecting users to invest hours and hours to troubleshoot borked installs. Breaking software isn't, and shouldn't be the norm. I've never had it with Mint or Kubuntu, and before you throw a point about it being rolling distros are more up to date, I've been using OpenSuse Tumbleweed for over a year without issue. It hasn't borked once. Failure rate on Manjaro is higher and when you dig into how they operate, there are clear reasons why.
It seems you were very lucky in your Manjaro days, and now because you somehow avoided getting run over crossing the motorway blindfolded, you think everyone's experience is like yours.
There isn't a hate bandwagon, and you don't need to defend their honour. They are not a sports team you cheer on. They are a software project, and need to improve. You defending poor work just enables it.
The fact you raised points, they were disputed and you moved on to separate points to fit in with the theme of "Manjaro good", you're coming across as a Manjaro shill.
You do realize that you're basically saying your anecdotal experience is better than mine right? So you're basically doing the same thing you're accusing me of, thinking that everyone's experience is like yours. All I asked was whether you actually figured out what the root cause was. From your vague response, I can only surmise you didn't do the least amount of debugging and decided to blame Manjaro just because. All the other distros you tested on weren't even Arch-based, so you don't even have a solid understanding of whether it was actually Manjaro or an Arch issue.
you’re coming across as a Manjaro shill.
Seriously? I am not even using Manjaro anymore as per my post. Just because I am not blindly following the crowd and jumping on hate bandwagons whenever I see one doesn't make me a shill. Calm yourself.
You suggest it us a bandwagon because many don't like Manjaro and multiple people raised issues. You're guilty of using your anecdotal evidence to rule out the anecdotal evidence of many.
I don't know the exact cause of my issue, I want to use my PC to do actual work. I did some research, reverted through time machine andd tried again in a slightly different way to rule out graphics card driver. It still failed. I want reliability and don't want to become an expert sysadmin. I specifically don't use Arch, or Gentoo for this reason. I dont have to be a chef to enjoy food. Manjaro claims to do more testing. The issues I faced on PinePhone did not happen on the arch version, it was specific to Manjaro. Kubuntu just worked and never broke after. Mint had been working for years. Manjaro is the only distro I have faced issues with. Maybe it was Arch, maybe it was Manjaro. It is irrelevant. I don't use either. Manjaro's reputation is well earnt and non of your shilling us going to counteract the catalog of failures that are widely documented and hard to ignore.
I want reliability and don’t want to become an expert sysadmin. I specifically don’t use Arch, or Gentoo for this reason.
This is fine and your prerogative.
I don’t know the exact cause of my issue
And this is the problem I had with your original comment. You don't actually know what the root cause is and yet you're ready to apply blame to Manjaro with absolute certainty. This is why I say you're just jumping on the bandwagon. Many of the other "reports" that you mention are in a similar vein. It all boils down to "well something broke, I don't know what, and therefore I blame Manjaro".
Do you know how many people use Ubuntu and had something break for them? Their forums are littered with these posts as well. I personally have had Ubuntu absolutely shit the bed during system updates, but you don't see me going around declaring Ubuntu is shit and for good reason! I don't actually know what caused it! It could have been something specific in my setup. I know that Ubuntu works well for many other people. Likewise, there are many people, myself included, who've used Manjaro before and it worked fine for them.
All I am saying is don't be so quick to judge. All you have is 2 random breakages that you haven't properly root-caused and what you claim to be a bunch of random hearsay from others, and yet you're ready to throw your anecdotal experience into the ring as complete fact.