Is Manjaro Any Good?

Is Manjaro Good? And if so, who is it good for?
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==== Time Stamps ====
0:00 Intro
0:47 Do We Still Need Manjaro?
2:00 Is Manjaro More Stable?
2:50 Too Far Behind?
4:35 Community and Support
6:53 Problems with The Devs
8:39 The Good Things About Manjaro
9:03 The Stability
9:21 Look and Feel
9:48 Community Editions
10:34 Kernel and Driver Management
12:32 Kinda Minimal
15:24 My Conclusions: Is Manjaro Good?
#manjaro #linux #thelinuxcast

[@TheLinuxCast]

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[@sknfer]

Manjaro is the distro that got me into Linux 5 months ago , still using it , I like it

[@thedeemon]

I've been on Manjaro for a year and it works nicely for me. Quite happy with it. Oblivious about its devs and support, I usually google for answers quickly, never ask questions myself.

[@brianschuetz2614]

Yeah, I use Google to find answers first when I run into a problem as well. Most of the time, with a little patience, I can find what I'm looking for. I haven't had to post in any forums yet. I also use KZbin sometimes.

[@DominikLuebben]

I'm using Manjaro for several years now, and I must say I'm a big fan of it. In between I changed to Arch and Fedora for a while but both of them didn't really feel the way I want it. So I think it's always a matter of taste, but I love Manjaro. For me perosnally it's the best distro out there. I cannot really work with Fedora to be honest. I tried, but I couldn't like it the way most of the other people do. As I hear everywhere, Fedora is an aweseome distro. That might be so, but I can't confirm. I can confirm that Manjaro is indeed an awesome distro. And I also can confirm, that It's not Arch, and thats fine, because I only had issues with Arch, so that I way so fed up with that distro that I changed back. And I'm using Linux for 21 years now on a regular basis, so I wouldn't consider myself a "Noob".

[@JessicaFEREM]

I've tried arch and manjaro and I've come to the realization that both of them just aren't for me. neither are stable and "just work" like fedora does. things for me just suddenly break. not only that but fedora tends to get things *more* up do date, especially for things like gnome projects, while also being more stable.

[@thingsiplay]

II used Ubuntu for 13 years and only switched the distribution once... to Manjaro. In a few months it will be the second year of using it. I am still on Manjaro, so it can't be that bad. But I lack experience in other distros.

[@yrjo5050]

I'm settled to Manjaro too, comfy like living room sofa.

[@yrjo5050]

@@rishirajsaikia1323 I’m using Plasma desktop.

[@hosler15]

the best thing about manjaro is how they allow you to enable different kernel flavors with just a click of a button. also i like how they use do device driver detection

[@HShango]

Yeah and then manjaro starts acting weird. No thanks, I prefer a stable distro, manjaro is not a stable distro.

[@jjuarez83]

It was nice, but I wised up and just went with Fedora.

[@sixdroid]

they say h264 and others hardware acceleration will not work anymore with fedora

[@AyaWetts]

@@sixdroid due to possible legal reasons, they will not work... by default, except by software... using more CPU and power. Same with OpenSUSE. I doubt many distros cares about US patent law though, so others may not follow this. Its very likely hardware acceleration will be easy to add in soon via 3rd parties.

[@jjuarez83]

@@sixdroid who is "they"? For Fedora you do need to add additional repos to install non free codexes and drivers, really not a big deal and done because Fedora wants everything in base to be free open source (though I may be wrong). Once I have Fedora setup and running it just works. Manjaro was nice and they have made changes, not a bad system but I have moved on. That does not mean it is not for other people or that I would not use it in the future. They do setup a lot out of the box which is nice. The next distro I would probably use before goint back to Manjaro is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

[@sid__art_6614]

I love fedora but it is shit now. Just test distro.

[@robonator2945]

if you want stability in arch, do two things, 1 : make AUR helpers like Yay warn the user about installing AUR packages/updates that havent been "signed off" by a reputable AUR user. So devs can take responsibility saying "yes, I have checked this package, it is safe" and if no-one has taken that responsibility for the package users get a "yes, I'm aware of the risks, I have read the pkgbuild, let me download it" warning 2 : FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET USERS SET A MINIMUM PACKAGE AGE FOR PACMAN PACKAGES. Even if I wait weeks between updates, someone could have broken GRUB 5 minutes ago. Let me, and other users, set a minimum age a package has to be out before we will download it. Let it be opt-in, let it be user configurable, I don't care, just bloody add it. It wouldn't break anything, it would just make your system perpetually X days out of date which, if you're being reasonable, wouldn't cause any issues. It wouldn't be complex, you just need to store a few backup versions of packages, and add a system to flag a package update as broken so that it will be skipped by people who update later and/or allow manual-intervention to be automated. (for instance, fixing the GRUB issue by letting pacman automatically do the required fixes for users once the issue was discovered) Is it work? Yes. But it's not that much, you need to maybe store a few extra versions of packages that get updated frequently, and add a way to flag a package as breaking so that pacman can skip it. That's it. Very little work and it would make Arch way more competitive. Think about it, you could set a server, to wait for packages to be out for 1-2 weeks before updating, and have it autoupdate. You could have, a stable, rolling release, server. Let the advanced users get true, day of release, bleeding edge packages, but not everyone needs packages THAT up to date. And, again, this is the exact same as just having a system perpetually X days out of date. Many arch users update every other WEEK, you're system won't break if it's 5 or 6 days out of date, this isn't holding back things for a month and causing all sorts of other issues, it's just being a touch out of date. I have heard countless people try to argue why this is a bad idea, and not one of them have actually given a reason that held up beyond 5 seconds of scrutiny. Arch doesn't have to be unstable, it doesn't have to be unsafe, you could have a perfectly seamless, decade long arch experience, with zero hiccups, just, let, people, have, the, right, tools. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[@zoltan1953]

Sounds like Manjaro is your distro then.

[@Deleteyourself83]

Been using Manjaro (KDE Plasma Desktop) for over 2 years after distro hopping for around a year when I was a new Linux user. Tried lots of Debian based Distro's, started with Ubuntu (which I hated), Mint (Liked), MX (Liked), Pop (didn't like, not a fan of the GNOME desktops generally), etc, tried Fedora. I've ran into one or two issues with Manjaro but I've managed to resolve them, the Arch wiki and Manjaro forums are amazing for finding technical documentation & information when your trying to configure something or troubleshoot. I heavily use the AUR for software and switch to the latest Kernel when available. I might change to Fedora Silverblue (Immutable file systems with Atomic updates, toolbox and all apps running as Flat packs/containers appears like it maybe the way forward) or do a base Arch install in the future, but as it is, I really don't have any need to switch right now as Manjaro works perfectly for my needs and I'm still really happy with it.

[@FAYZER0]

When I installed arch and started exploring the AUR, I fell in love and never looked back

[@pinchtwo654]

The kernel management software on Manjaro is really nice. Back when I ran Manjaro on an older laptop of mine, a kernel update half broke my system. It took me a little bit to figure out what the problem was but, once I diagnosed it, it was so simple to fix thanks to that tool.

[@MichaelCook-oo8lj]

I'm a Manjaro user and its very easy to enable the AUR. Manjaro is a very nice experience, I can use the AUR if I need something I can't otherwise find in the default repos but I have also never ended up with a bug or something broken which is great. Plus the WM/DE defaults that come with any Manjaro you download are pretty nice out of the box.

[@mc-not_escher]

I custom built my Manjaro system via Architect with btrfs + snapper, and KDE + Wayland and have had a great experience. Running on an old AMD A6-5200 APU for over three years and not much of a hiccup - a couple updates were missing bits and bobs but either a snapshot revert or a chroot update here or there was pretty painless thanks to the forums and wiki.

[@Zer0sVoid]

I had a good few months with Manjaro. I actually had no problems running it at all. I definitely found it odd that packages were held back. If I were wanting the closer to Arch experience, it was a bit odd. In that time I also learned about some of their missteps. I am still within the "easy to install" distro camp of Arch with EndeavourOS. Personally had a better experience getting support on EndeavourOS, but again that's personal anecdote.

[@ArniesTech]

I already read a quite similar experience from other users. 🙏

[@thingsiplay]

The holding back of the packages was actually one of the main reasons why I even considered and choose Manjaro over the other distros. But that in itself comes with a few problems too, like if you use the AUR. I had a few problems with the AUR so far, even reported a bug for the package manager that was fixed. Also the missteps of the Manjaro team makes it look a bit more dirty than it actually is. My almost 2 years experience so far is, that there "might" be a better solution to me, but I settled down and Manjaro does the job (most of the time). I am still evaluating if my next PC soon will have a different distro and if so, which one. I am aware of most common distros and do not ask for recommendations, because I will do my extensive research and look very close.

[@halmyrach]

​@Henry Knight I looked to move away from Manjaro a few weeks ago because I had some annoying issues. I tried the base Arch iso with the archinstall script but the PGP keys were outdated, after 1h trying to fix it by downloading up-to-date signatures the finalize steps of the installer still failed. A friend had the same issue earlier this year. In a last ditch effort before going back to Manjaro I gave EndeavourOS a shot and the online install was flawless, got my Plasma DE without any branding and setup my os as I wanted to. So far I'm pretty happy with it. All of that to say that if Arch wants to simplify the install process they really should work more on the archinstall script, in the meantime EndeavourOS looks like the easiest way to get a clean Arch ready to go for lazy users like myself ;)

[@jonbob9872]

I had a similar experience with Antergos (EndeavourOS precursor.) It was good as gold in contrast to Manjaro which experienced a few issues.

[@Zer0sVoid]

@@halmyrach Ironically, I'm sure you know the goal of Arch isn't to be easy to install haha.

[@Mage4636]

as someone starting to look hard at linux in general your content has been a blessing!

[@neffscape6353]

I was a skeptical Manjaro user, I installed it 18 months ago for fun while seeking for another home when I ditched PopOS and I said to me "well, I'll try that and and hop to something better when it breaks". Long story short, I'm still waiting for it to break on me, and I've really come to love this distro. I come from a long history of debian and ubuntu based distros and this is the first rolling release distro I ever tried. I think that Manjaro is the best linux distro for ubuntu refugees looking for a stable enough but rolling release distro: pamac is beautiful if you come from apt, because it works the same way. Manjaro isn't exactly *bleeding edge*, but it isn't stale: the distro still features more updated packages than ubuntu interim releases, and you don't have to worry about upgrading. For me, running on the stable branch, it always worked flawlessly. I sometimes install AURs and they usually work OK. I know they are not designed for Manjaro, so I try to avoid them if I can. I also love that Manjaro is absolutely agnostic and enabling snaps and flatpaks is super easy and ready out of the box, so there's absolutely no need for other software sources. You did well explaining the dark side of the distro: I don't like their approach when dealing with some proprietary software in some of their flavors (vivaldi as default browser in the cinnamon edition and FreeOffice was proposed as default office suite in some of their distros in the past) and I don't like the community which is non existant, or really weak when compared with Ubuntu or Mint. I basically never found a nice blog about the project or someone to interact with to talk about the project. It's just something I use and I really enjoy. I wish it had a better circle around it. In the end I still disagree that manjaro is a nice option for absolute beginners: you won't find great support with it if you have issues and... it can still easily break it if you never used a Linux distro before. It's a nice intermediate choice for seasoned ubuntu users or for people that want a rolling release distro that "just works".

[@grumpyken9151]

I was regifted an HP Stream 14 with 4gb RAM and 64gb of eMMC. with Windows 10. there was less than 10gb of storage available and it was a generally sluggish experience. I had not touched a Linux distro in probably 10 years and ran a few from a thumb drive to try them out. Manjaro was the first one that worked completely out of the box- all hardware, wifi, and even the hot keys without any input from me. I imaged the drive and installed it and never looked back. it is fast and slick and the only time I opened a terminal window was to find my network printer and setup CUPS. after installation it left me with 50gb of room on the flash storage. none of the negatives you mentioned have really affected me yet or are irrelevant to my use case. I am extremely impressed, blown away actually, at how far linux desktops have come. I am curious about Arch and would like to install it on another machine when I get some free time (and patience). anyway great info about Manjero I would not have known. thanks and subbed

[@Mikesco3]

I've been daily driving Manjaro for about 3+ years as of the end of 2022 and it's been a fairly good ride. Certainly bricked my system a lot less than Arch

[@BytebroUK]

This is interesting history to me. Once upon a time, up until maybe around 2010 or so, I had a University CD for Win7 with an unlimited install key, so of course I just used it at home (children - don't do this; you might be sued and all!). Then that stopped when I "got a real job", and moved first to Mandriva at home. Then after a little while I installed Mageia. Then they started having arguments about all kinds of stuff including the whole systemd thing, and I moved to Ubuntu. I think that was around v12.04 LTS and all the devices in whatever machine I happened to have at the time just worked out of the box - new experience for me back then. Took me a while to get my head around changing from basically KDE to Gnome with Tweaks, but I'm still there. Tried distro-hopping in VMs, but rarely had a good experience. I know everyone hates Ubuntu, but it bloody works, most of the time - I think by now I'm just a 'data-point' :) Still looking for an installer that will make it trivial to put /home on a separate partition from /. Yes, you can do it of course, but it should be in there in the installer as part of the 'default' install, IMO.

[@xdevnull]

Good video. I used Manjaro for a few years and kind of gave up on it for the reasons you state. I think there is a bit of a myth than they just hold back on things a few days/weeks until they are sure they're "stable." A lot of stuff just gets rebundled and not really tested. Some things get fiddled with and released. So it is not just Arch a few weeks late, and it is certainly not more stable than Arch. The thing that finally made me give up on it was the gradual slow down of releases to the stable branch and how far major parts of the desktop were delayed for no reason. When I realized Fedora was more up to date - and a better integrated, more stable release - that was it for me. Manjaro has reasons for their update philosophy, and that's fine but it seems to have become the Ubuntu of Arch adjacent distros. Now I'm on Fedora and Garuda and find it more stable, less quirky, and more up to date with releases.

[@xdevnull]

@@jatre5938 Not really. I think the term these days is semi-rolling. For instance the kernel is pretty up-to-date. Most apps are. Fedora is like Pop_Os in that way. It can be closer to Arch than Manjaro at times if you compare package version numbers. But it does depend. Brodie Robertson has a good video about this paradigm

[@ch5rus]

Manjaro got me into Arch, now daily driving Endeavour with XFCE

[@skelebro9999]

Manjaro is VERY good for beginners and people who don't have much knowledge about how Arch, AUR etc. works but if you are a power user with enough knowledge about Arch or, if you have used many Arch based distros it's much better to install the main Arch Linux or something like EndeavourOS or even ArcoLinux. Those distros give a much more closer to Arch experience than Manjaro.

[@UnhingedNW]

I have distro hopped a fair bit, and Manjaro has been the distro that has given me the most trouble. I think Pop! or Mint or even Arco are far better for beginners depending on their entry skill level. The Arco guy has thousands of videos about tips and tricks for using his distro.

[@zoltan1953]

@@UnhingedNW I never had any problems with Manjaro. My user experience with it was extremely comfortable and pleasant. The only reason I stopped using it was because I wanted to get closer to vanilla Arch. I was going to switch to the unstable branch for that very reason, at which point I asked myself “why not just install Arch then”. I’m now running Arch full time on my main machine, and Manjaro was the stepping stone that helped me get there. It got me accustomed to using pacman and the aur, which took some getting used to as I came from Debian and had never used anything other than Debian and Debian-based distros. For a user at my skill level, jumping from vanilla Debian to vanilla Arch is quite a leap of faith. Manjaro softened the landing for me. It was my gateway into Arch in a similar way that Ubuntu was my gateway into Linux in general. Speaking of which, I should visit my old friend, Ubuntu. We haven’t spoken in years.

[@007arek]

You haven't said why do you think that arch is superior. I don't buy argument about power users it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to waist your time on maintenance. You can be a power user even on Windows.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@007arek Sure, if you turn off as much telemetry as you can and install a bunch of third party apps. At some point, it's no longer Windows but more of a Windows-based distribution.

[@Bob-1802]

@@007arek Arch has AUR, it is its most special feature. Some softwares normally only available with AppImages / Flatpak / Snap on Debian-based distros are available on AUR. And these apps behave like native with faster startup time. You can even use a GUI like PAMAC software manager to get them easily. So you don't need to fetch them on their respective web sites like in Windows. And you have the latest version of these softwares if this is something you like.

[@user-hv9sg5pl8b]

I've been using Manjaro for the past 15 months as one of my daily drivers. I've had very few problems with any updates, and the one I did have early on was easily corrected by reverting back to a previous TimeShift. I then waited a couple of days and tried the Update again and everything was corrected. I've had zero interaction with the community as a simple Google search for any questions I've had has always provided an answer. I've had zero reason, so far, to not continue with Manjaro. All that said, I have recently started using CachyOS as a dual boot on my new desktop mini computer. Thus far, I am extremely impressed with the look and the function of CachyOS. This is a newer fork of Arch, with some very nice tweaks. My other installed Linux systems are MX Linux (also a 15 month run so far) on my other daily driver laptop, and Gecko Linux (Tumbleweed) as the other dual boot on the new desktop. A lot of great choices in Linux today. Thanks Matt. Fellow Michigander here. While I don't always agree with all of your opinions, I do enjoy hearing your perspective and respect your opinions. Keep up the good work.

[@NOPerative]

Last 3 times I've installed Manjaro it's been problematic for me; each install was to fix the previous over the course of 3-4 months. Prior, had used Manjaro for almost 5 years - the longest I've ever used any distro. Installed EndeavourOS (XFCE version and NVidia drivers) and have been using it for roughly a month now without issue and have noticed that after re-installing Windows MSWin has been behaving itself much more too. The issues with Manjaro spanned across the KDE and Gnome environments so I do not fault the DM/DE - hadn't run into the Grub issue due to troubleshooting Manjaro at that time already. Good vid.

[@derekday4832]

Been using Manjaro (KDE) for around 6 or 7 years. Fully understand and agree with the rationale for delaying packages. Never had any serious problems with it - just a few irritations for which I've always just worked through, or found a workaround.

[@willywantoknow2563]

Thanks for your videos. What distro would you recommend for someone wanting to explore arch, but is plug and play. Dont want to start from scratch, but would like to have a decent muusic player, office and be able to save as word or rtf pdf. Be able to play some old school microsoft games. And play with video editing and engineering.

[@TheLinuxCast]

EndeavorOS

[@code8986]

I don't know what Manjaro's devs are like, but I can't imagine them being worse than Garuda's maintainers, judging by how they act in their forums. I like the distro itself, but I've seen how they treat users like garbage, so if I ever have a question, I wouldn't go to the forums or anywhere else the Garuda admins would be.

[@name._..-.]

Never had problems with manjaro, it's more stable than arch and I like defaults. For my taste Arco is kinda sketchy and all the time I was getting some problems with outdated keys in repos or something. So if you don't mind 1-2 week old packages and don't want to spend a lot of time on initial configuration, manjaro seems as a really good option.

[@crownhouse2466]

Thanks for the review, that was really balanced. Great work!

[@Anonymous-sq6eo]

Manjaro is the only distro that broke itself on my machines, more than once.

[@CGA111]

I've been on Manjaro KDE for two years now, installed on three laptops of varying age, and I must say it's been an overall pleasant ride. This despite running AUR packages on all the laptops, I've tried to be somewhat restrictive about them though. I can safely say that if it wasn't for Manjaro, I'd still be stuck with Windows. It was the only distro that worked pretty much out of the box during my initial distro hopping period.

[@carolwolsieffer6441]

My husband uses "Cinnamon" on both Manjaro 21.3.7 and Mint 19.3 to test Everything. He was rotf when you said AUR. As for Mint being 19.x and not 21.x - he says that something about the newer version's "just doesn't work right." I still get called in as the back up Head Nurse when everyone gets burned out and Jeff says that clearing out all the Emails Monthly is no big deal - it is fun to watch him Keep From Laughing that Hospitals and Trauma Centers are still using DOS/Windows in this day and age yet, unlike the rest of us, I have never known anything but Windows. A few days ago one of the head administrator wanted to switch things over to Android or Chrome and Jeff was laughing Soo hard that he couldn't breath. I don't know what That was all about and that Administrator has Sense Left our area and We couldn't be happier.

[@natewesselink]

Used Manjaro for a while and still have it installed on my MacBook but swapped to using big Linux as my daily driver for some more ease of use and nice to haves out of the box.

[@RAN-os5gz]

I used Manjaro for the longest time but three separate times updating it caused something to break. I've distro hopped a bunch and something always went wrong, the only time that feeling of "maybe there's something better out there" went away is when I found Tumbleweed. I am never switching again.

[@Rastafaustian]

I recently switched to Garuda and couldn't be happier.

[@dits791]

I've moved to Big Linux KDE, a spin off Manjaro after years of using Linux Mint. Love it, easy to install and the looks are appealing, and it boots up in under 20 seconds on an older HDD.

[@joschafinger126]

I've been using Manjaro for a few years now, and I'm *very* happy with it. Now and then I've had a bit of AUR trouble, but, well, Manjaro isn't Arch. As for the community, I'e had no problems there. Then again, having migrated from Ubuntu, I started out fairly "Linux literate" already.

[@AyaWetts]

I'll always love Manjaro for being so easy to use and worked so well that it helped me stick with Linux for enough time I learned enough and was able to switch completely to Linux... even if I don't use Manjaro any more. Other distros always had me still using Windows primarily.

[@leemanwrong]

For me manjaro has been one of the best distros for use on new hardware. I recently got a 12th gen intel laptop and manjaro was one of only three distros that worked great out of the box.

[@LovecraftianGodsKiller]

Just out of curiosity, what are the other two?

[@leemanwrong]

@@LovecraftianGodsKiller The other two that seemed to work fine out of the box were Ubuntu and MX Linux.

[@sixdroid]

every distro works out of the box with Intel what are you talking about

[@leemanwrong]

@@sixdroid Maybe you can get them all to work with a bit of tinkering but i tried most of the top distros on distrowatch and only found 3 to work properly out of the box on my 12th gen HP Pavilion laptop.

[@fkstudio5901]

@@leemanwrong List them.

[@nemogamma578]

I always red that Manjaro is not Arch without any comment! Thanks Matt. I started well with Manjaro but couldn't live without AUR and Arco support. And by the way, I hate installation procedures where one cannot decide what to install : I prefer a large choice of a full functional Calamares to get a vanilla version and install my applications via personal script for a full automatized, parametrized, customized and functional installation in less than 10 minutes. So my final decision was clear.

[@arnonart]

i run manjaro on both my desktop and laptop. i started with linux mint four years ago and never looked back to windows. mint is a superb distro and i installed it for several friends and they are all happy with. the reason i switched from mint was that i'm not really a computer nerd. i'm far more into photography. my problems with mint was that the period i used it gimp and rawtherapee got frequent updates and i couldn't wait months for the updates. for a period of a few months i distro hopped till a friend of mine gave me an old laptop with manjaro xfce. prior to that i heard too many stories about instability and was paralyzed of the thought to switch to an arch based distro. i tried the manjaro and realized that it wasn't unstable at all. i pulled myself together and switched to manjaro on both my desktop and laptop. i do have a mini pc running on mint connected to my tv set. as a photography oriented individual i can state manjaro is the best solution out there. they hold back packages for a couple of weeks not for half a year. i did have some issues but nothing serious. i never broke the system. at the moment i have a small issue with the laptop. ceph- libs and python2 won't update. i leave it for days, maybe weeks and the problem will be solved. i tried endeavouros and it was painful. why do i need to go through all the hassle of setting the pamac up when manjaro offers it out of the box? in edition to this appimages didn't work. in manjaro everything works out of the box! is it bloated? yes it is but i can easily afford using it. my hardware is not that old. in compare to windows manjaro is anorexic. and what about my friends to whom i installed mint? they are happy too. one uses the computer for her studies, one is a freelance journalist another one is a photographer but lack computer skills. two others using it for general purposes and my wife is currently running pop_os. so that's the greatness of linux. everyone can find what's good for him.

[@m06een00]

I agree with a lot of your comments, especially the 'prickly' reactions of some forum members, who often come across as distinctly unhelpful, if not downright rude if you try to raise a query or run into difficulty. However despite that, I like the look and feel of Manjaro, and am careful when using the few AUR packages that I have. Having used Manjaro now for nearly 3 years, I'll probably stick with it now.

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Still on Manjaro XFCE atm, but I think about leaving/hopping. Aesthetically I loved Manjaro KDE, maybe Arch KDE or another lightweight. Even with quirks on 1 rig Manjaro USB keyboard issue- have to unplug keyboard to use it on one machine and a timeshift backup (borked KDE earlier this year updating Wine/something). Everything is more stable than Windows 10/11, so am able to game on Manjaro fine.

[@leopard3131]

Nice review

[@patw1687]

I'm using Manjaro on a Macbook Air whose OS went End-of-Life two years ago. For some reason, Ubuntu stopped working on the Mac, and I couldn't log in. Manjaro XFCE works great on older hardware, and the battery life is pretty good. I needed a stable OS for my Mac, and Manjaro is delivering.

[@FengLengshun]

Personally, as I'm currently testing Manjaro for the last two months, it is more or less the perfect Arch distro for me. Quite frankly, I don't care about updates, I don't want to know anything about it, I just want it to work with as little hassle possible. If it means that the window for when I could install and update AUR correctly is sometimes narrow for certain packages, that's a fair tradeoff for me. So long as they kept problematic updates like glibc 2.36 and grub as long as they can, then that's a good advantage for me. Other than that, matray should be a must for Linux distro - it makes it so much easier to know if there might be problematic update. And while I don't know about the distro heads, the update announcement threads has been very good with support and help for me. Overall, for me who doesn't actually want Arch as much as I just want direct access to AUR and chaotic-aur, it's just the right distro for me. BUT if at any point I have a problem that's more complicated than a quick command or restore, then I will just get off of Arch entirely because it's been an annoying few months on Arch and with distrobox I can just get what I want even on the kubuntu focus LTS I am also testing rn.

[@ThatChannel48]

So just as ancedote, but my 62 year old mother who labeled a DVD on the wrong side has been using manjaro for about 3 years, and while she doesn't do much it's given her a pretty much trouble free experience, so it is definitely easy to use

[@NameUserOf]

I've also installed it to mom's notebook and she has no problems or breakages. She doesn't use AUR(except for zoom). Very fresh software + stable experience.

[@gbknight432]

I used Manjaro for a time in the past (did not like the holding back of packages), jumped to pure Arch for about 3 or 4 years.But now I'm using Endeavour, because it's faster to deploy and has great theming, tools and sane defaults OOTB.

[@FrasSmith]

"a little bit prickly". That's an understatement. I'm way too polite and restrained to describe how I, as someone with over 20 years experience with Linux, feel about their attitudes to legitimate questions.

[@michaelcarnevale5620]

Def noticed the delayed packages recently when trying to update an app

[@wantgoodvibes6166]

Thank you, :)

[@anandmoon5701]

Manjaro is very good for embedded development like SBC gives you option to used latest binary and source packages unlike other distro fails to upgrade the packages and the kernel.

[@martinvandenbroek2532]

Another positive thing is that you can often follow along the instructions on the Arch wiki when you try to accomplish something on Manjaro.

[@Ryan-ct3rv]

Manjaro is not arch! This would be like following instructions for a debain install on ubuntu. It *might* work but it's not a good idea

[@thingsiplay]

@@Ryan-ct3rv Manjaro is not Archlinux, but most instructions for Archlinux works on Manjaro. You just need to understand the instructions and don't use them blindly and adapt those parts that are specific to Archlinux or the limitations of Manjaro. I use Manjaro almost 2 years now and the Archwiki is one, if not the best source and helped me a lot of times.

[@folksurvival]

@@Ryan-ct3rv "Manjaro is not arch!" That person never claimed Manjaro is Arch. The Arch wiki is very useful for any Linux distro.

[@PhayzinOut]

@@Ryan-ct3rv You can't read, can you?

[@012345678944107]

@@Ryan-ct3rv Its basically Arch.

[@fkstudio5901]

I really have no appetite left for Arch or Arch-based distros after moving to Tumbleweed.

[@TheLinuxCast]

I'm the same with Fedora

[@Bob-1802]

Manjaro being easier to install and more out-of-the-box experience than plain Arch, it can attract much more people especially new users to Linux. These new users may not know the intricacy of Arch system and how to handle them as well as more experienced users who would go straight to Arch, translating to a higher complains/users ratio. Just thinking!

[@Kneedragon1962]

Manjaro is sort of the first and primary Arch-Based distro. They have a very smooth polished easy to use installer, and they do kinda run their distro as a stable system - in the same way Ubuntu and Mint and Debian for example, do. That makes it a lot more stable and easy to use / live with, than pure Arch. If you are not quite a new arrival in Linux, and you are curious about Arch, but nervous about being that close to the cutting edge ~ or nervous about the intellectual elitism and bloody-mindedness of the I use Arch, Actually crowd ~ then Manjaro is a sort of half way step. It's not a beginner distro in the way Mint or Ubuntu are, but nor is it as deep-end experts-only as pure Arch is. How to put this? Suppose you have seen video of people swimming all your life but not done it. So maybe you want to go and have a paddle in the shallows and not get in over waist deep, and you wear a life-jacket. So you're in the surf, but you can always stand up and you can't sink, and you can't really swim properly either. (Ever tried to do a tumble-turn wearing a life jacket?) It's much closer to 'Going for a swim' than you've done before. That's kinda what Manjaro is to Arch Linux.

[@ArniesTech]

Well said!

[@walter_lesaulnier]

One of my machines has Manjaro/ Plasma. I avoid the AUR and use Flatpaks if something I need is not in their main repo.

[@abelayalewt]

i have been using manjaro for more than a year, and i think you made a fair point

[@bhutchin1996]

I'm currently testing Manjaro with XFCE in Virtualbox on top of MX Linux. So far I like it. Unfortunately, Debian-based distros hold packages back. For instance, Local by Flywheel gave me some dependency messages when installing it on MX, but no problems when installing it with PAMAC on Manjaro. Over the years I've used different distros of Linux from Red Hat to Mandrake to SuSE to Debian itself to Ubuntu to Mint to Sparky and now MX and Manjaro. Back in the day Mandrake was my favorite. That was based on Red Hat.

[@Codename1Alice8]

I like your channel. Good guy.

[@nevoyu]

I've broken manjaro going AUR free.

[@VRJacky]

personally, I main it and will continue to until something better comes along with the stability and support, i've tried other arch based distros, endeavour as a random Revolt member said its like manjaro but better, when that didn't support my specific hardware config to the same degree manjaro did, i tried something a little fresher in the form of crystal linux, this was good but ignored my GPU no matter what i tried (and before you reply, yes i tried it) following that i decided maybe i should use fedora, BIG NOPE, critical intel errors, critical nvidia errors, critical nouvea errors, then when i got that all under control i'd get critical AMD errors, without having a single AMD component in my laptop, boo hoo the kernel is a little old, what would someone using linux as a windows replacement for everyday web browsing, light video editing, and even lighter amounts of gaming notice? diddly squat

[@edivimo]

I use Manjaro because my desktop is mainly a gaming computer, the marketing of the distro is targeted in part toward gaming. I think it hits a good middle spot in updated enough software, like propietary drivers and Steam, and ease of use to avoid tinkering too much with the console and avoiding frustrations for the linux gaming user.

[@maybeanonymous6846]

I used Manjar for a very short period of time but I had problems(don't remember which issues) and changed distro

[@andremagalhaes664]

What you think about Manjaro based distros like Mabox or BigLinux?

[@bertnijhof5413]

I installed Manjaro in March 2020 and I never had a problem with Manjaro, so I don't care about their support. It is a very reliable distro, even more reliable than many fixed release distros. It you have created a very reliable rolling release, you have deserved the right to be blunt to users acting stupid.

[@Tzalim]

So, I use Garuda Lite (was barebones), it's based on Manjaro, and Manjaro *you said* it's not arch. So, is Garuda, Arch? Since it has the AUR enabled by default.

[@AyaWetts]

how is it based on Manjaro? When I used Garuda for a few weeks, it was all Arch kernels and zen options, not Manjaro, and it used Arch repos, and Manjaros... did they change something?

[@012345678944107]

Garuda Linux is an appealing Arch Linux based Distro, from their website.

[@DavidTangye]

Good review, but you missed one point. If you are running on a RISC machine, eg my Odroid NE2+ desktop dev host, then it was definitely the best distro I could find, when I looked a few months ago. If you are on a CISC-based machine you have more choice. I am using it every daily, and I am getting work done. I am very happy that after 15 odd years on Ubuntu, I am now off it and its Snap hell. That's all I care about.

[@xperience-evolution]

I am thinking of using Manjaro but no sure yet. Fedora let me down and now I have the choice of openSUSE, Solus, Manjaro (maybe NixOS if everything else fails) with Gnome. Any input?

[@xellaz]

I came from Manjaro. It's a good starting distro. Especially if you use the KDE Plasma edition since it resembles Windows layout. I'm on MX Linux now with KDE Plasma (Since I'm used to KDE) and its awesome! Other distros I might look into the future are AV Linux and Spiral Linux.

[@xperience-evolution]

@Hoxton I want some stability and not needing to update every day. And I don't like the out of the box look of Garuda. They are all great distros don't get me wrong but apart from Manjaro I don't want to run Arch (based) for stability reasons.

[@xperience-evolution]

@@xellaz I use Gnome. And don't want to be reminded of windows ;) Thanks for the input/suggestions anyway!

[@enzoreverdi2612]

Rocking a Manjaro Sway for straight two year now, heavy using it and im not having any problem so fat

[@robotron1236]

I've been using manjaro to play hack the box and I absolutely love it. It's the best all around linux distro and I can't see myself using anything else.

[@zackattack9228]

Fuq Manjaro, gave me haedaches just trying to use my Broadcom wifi driver.

[@jpwillm5252]

I don't use Manjaro anymore because of systemd; Since 2019 I have switched our PCs to Artix.

[@randomdude980]

Idk, I continue coming back to manjaro. A week ago I tried endeavourOS (KDE) because you keep reading people claiming that "there's no point to manjaro when endeavourOS exists" but I have to disagree. While the installer is nice and some of the stuff it lets you preinstall (print service etc) are useful, it's way too limited... random very basic features don't work out of the box. After half a day of fiddling with it (and being rather happy) I found out that bluetooth wasn't working. To me, bluetooth is such a basic feature that it instantly disqualifies endeavourOS being "a manjaro replacement". Because at least on manjaro I never had basic functionality that I had to install manually or enable via a systemd service. I want a rather up-to-date distro (gpu drivers and kernel mainly) with a great OOTB experience. I don't want to constantly fiddle with the system to get basic feature #231 running that has been the norm since 1925 (obviously exaggerating). And manjaro hits that sweetspot for me. I did run fedora for a while and was also rather happy, but discover was terribly slow on that and the necessity of having to setup and use rpmfusion to get basic stuff like hardware acceleration working on firefox (by installing ffmpeg) is also pretty bad.. not terrible, but imo unnecessarily user unfriendly... although hardware acceleration on AMD is kinda on the chopping block anyway so that might become an even worse experience. If someone knows an actual great alternative (that doesn't plan on removing hardware acceleration in the future), please let me know. Always happy to try new things. Not bound to manjaro.

[@jean-pierrelaroche3091]

I have been using Manjaro since its inception, I chose it because I didn't want to deal with housekeeping, I'm a developer, then I made my own bash for the update. of course I use AUR but for development for example wscodium (vscode) good when you get your hands dirty, there is AUR installed by Manjaro for example if you used a Radeon card it will look for amdgpu (aur) same for Nvidia card .... Personally, I use XFCE4, no need for complex stuff, just an operational system and excellent tools. so Linux sometimes we break our heads because we want a device that does not comply with hardware standards and is associated with windows or mac, but that is not Linux's fault.

[@christianemden7637]

I think saying you loose the advantage of arch by the curated way packages are released, is looking at it from the wrong way, coming from arch nobody is likely to switch to Manjaro. Manjaro is the first port of call of people coming from distributions with a firm release schedule, such as any debian derivate (not used negatively). Meaning you are experiencing a fairly close to current package state, and not being locked into a version for 6 months. That is an advantage. You further have a good bit more comfort when it comes to the arch base of the OS. I have dabbled with Linux for more than a decade, using it exclusively for the last 4 years. I’m simply not interested in diving that deep into my OS to really enjoy Arch. Manjaro makes things easy enough for my knowledge level to get all the benefits with barely any headaches.

[@nahianadnan9226]

Finally a prositive review.

[@baruchben-david4196]

I used Manjaro for maybe a couple of years. What got my attention was the rolling upgrades. I was tired of having to reinstall my whole system every couple of years. However, Manjaro just wasn't a good fit for e...

[@alimirolyaee7543]

very good

[@qzorn4440]

Would be Manjaro work well with OpenCV or is there a better choice to run on an Orange Pi? 😎 Thank you.

[@mattfromeurope]

Forgive my ignorance, but I just don't get why Arch should be unstable? I'm using Arch as a daily driver on my MacBook Air (Intel based), and NEVER had any stability problems. Not once did my install break and did I have to reinstall!

[@Bob-1802]

It is "technically" more unstable because you use the very latest softwares that may have uncatched bugs at the time of release. Bugs can show up after few days once a software is executed accross a large community. That does not mean it will break. Obviously your system uses softwares that never have any major or discernable problems. Just take the recent GRUB problem preventing from booting, it didn't affect everyone.🤞

[@xellaz]

Manjaro (KDE Plasma edition) is really good for those coming from Windows that did a little homework on Linux. A lot of the included apps are great and as you said, as long as you just use the official repository, it will run pretty stable. I'm currently now on MX Linux though and liking it even more! 😁

[@vitormelo22]

I agree.

[@HShango]

I'm a recently former windows user, tired manjaro and went through hell with manjaro. I'll not go through that again. Not touching that crap manjaro.

[@nunn676]

​@@HShango as an ex windows user, i can confirm manjaro is not a easy distro for beginners

[@shanewalsch]

​@@nunn676why?

[@redgt827]

so i decided to download manjaro for my laptop since vanilla arch has proven unreliable over the years from its repos to the iso it comes on. i downloaded the full and minimal kde spins just to see what the deal was with the extra software you were talking about. the minimal version ships almost nothing you wouldn't see on vanilla arch with kde installed, and also rightfully replaces kde discover with pamac, which is something the arch maintainers drag their heels on. the full version comes with only office, elisa (music), filelight (disk stats), hp device manager (printers), and vlc, and maybe a couple other things i couldn't find through a quick browse of the applications list in kde. personally. i wouldn't want any of that software installed on my machine since i use other software to do the same job. but if you're worried about extra software, manjaro has a minimal version you can install instead.

[@sixdroid]

what? manjaro is unreliable not vanilla arch. manjaro breaks after some time. arch doesn't

[@AyaWetts]

@@sixdroid Not sure about that... I ran Manjaro on my laptop for about 5 months and had zero issues... not one. It always ran perfect. I ran Arch for 2 months on the same laptop and had 2 updates that caused the machine to not boot and I had to dig in and fix, and a couple more that cause other various problems I had to fix... it was annoying and got me to stop using Arch at all.

[@atlestray2556]

Takk!

[@janingvar]

You can use Manjaro exactly like Arch. Use the unstable branch and get rid of the pamac stuff. There you go. I haven’t had any problems in 7 years. Not with the AUR or anything else. The only thing I have a problem with is all these people who say it was bad. It really isn’t. Plus the community is very friendly imo. Not as elitist as the Arch community.

[@chue98]

can`t connect network drives for file manager

[@Bob-1802]

Firewall off

[@JessicaFEREM]

Whenever I used manjaro it was the most buggy POS I've ever used, mostly because the AUR is supposed to be for Arch, not manjaro. Manjaro is to arch from what Ubuntu is to debian. it's like is the ubuntu devs just started shipping debian packages in ubuntu, or vice versa, it doesn't work.

[@dermond]

When I used Manjaro, everyone wished me bad, that it's total crap, they "warned" me that my pc will brick, that everything will go to hell because of (idk). At the end, nothing happened, and they had the grub issue. I kinda used to that treatment because I use Ubuntu as well, but i mention this because some people REALLY hates this distro as they hate Ubuntu, probably because they're companies and not communities.

[@HShango]

Manjaro made my laptop rebooted on a loop non-stop and the community support that i have exoerienced with the manjaro team is of low quality.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

They don't like talking about the particulars of their distribution (transparency), not a good attitude for positive relations between maintenance and userbase. Fatal mistakes in upstream that compromise security, such as SSL cert updates not rolling out. This is one of those things you can't get lazy about. Like with generations, communities will have their respective tribes. Retro computing enthusiasts can be just as acid-tongued as any Arch Elitist. It's nerd stuff, expect there to be people without conversational skills. On the positive end, Manjaro on the Pi isn't bad. It's very stable and consistently well performing. Xfce is what I'd recommend.

[@nymnicholas]

I have installed Manjaro i3/Mate/etc DE, for some staff's laptops. It's ok for a few yrs. But, there are some needs for AUR and yes, I prefer Pure Arch for those. But, its there for users to start liking Arch based distro. If I give users Pure Arch on day 1, they will quit. I am unpopular enough in the company, although, I really don't care. They will have to learn slowly to see the Light. Peace :-)

[@coolerking7427]

I am switching from Solus to Manjaro.

[@elmariachi5133]

Yeah, that's mosrly true. And a lot of reasons why I finally should leave Manjaro. I am using about 150 AUR packages, and the last year was a torture! Package cinflicts and disfunctional parts of the system all the time! And my AUR packages all are no system relevant things by concept, but a lot of little tools.. Also my XFCE is heavily modified, to resemble the Windows 2000 desktop authentically. So there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to stay with Manjaro - but I don't know which OS to switch to. And it gets even worse. Things like Manjaro's hardware installer, as you mentioned here, have never worked good for me, especially when it comes to the nividia drivers1 Trying to swicth to an older version, or going bac fro nvidia to noveau and whateever I ever tried - none of this worked at all and I had to go to the terminal instead every single time (mostly because the GUI did not understand how to switc between drivers or driver versions withotu uninstalling the whoel system because of dependencies..).. The choice if kernels is good, but the tool stil lis bigged, because it's askign me to install each new kernel all the time, despite me being on the LTS kernel .. I still like the idea of curated packages, and this is the reason I originally chose Manjaro. Arch withour checks on the packages seems to be to unsage to me.. but this issue also raises the biggest problems with Manjaro.. so what to chose instead?

[@sixdroid]

install arch. you even have the arch install thing.

[@vid3844]

@@sixdroid If there using 150 packages from the AUR alone I dont think using Arch will make a difference.

[@Chris-ip8uv]

I’m quite shallow when it comes to using distros whos names simply make me go, meh. So for me it’s been Debian and Arch. No variations of either, just the vanilla of each. And neither have let me down.

[@nemonada3501]

Manjaro used to be good but they've really been slipping in the last few years. I have to credit it for starting me on the Arch journey though. I'm now using Artix and loving it. I wouldn't have got there without Manjaro.

[@sixdroid]

used what? it usually breaks after some time

[@nemonada3501]

@@sixdroid Artix breaks? I've been using it for about 12 months so far and the only breakages I've had with it so far I've caused by myself with either lack of experience or carelessness, but I've found that a lot of distros can go downhill and just be broken depending on the amount of care put in by the crew maintaining it too. Arch based distros seem to require a little bit more attention from the user because they assume the user knows what they are doing. I kind of like this approach because it means I have to learn how it works from the inside out. Also, Artix doesn't use Systemd so it's a little different from a lot of the other main distros.

[@4cps777]

artix on top

[@Laland2k]

About the choice of software: they have Manjaro Architect.

[@Androdaninux]

bruh. look at the camera. also, i like your content. keep it up👍😁👍

[@BanduTheGreat]

For me, Manjaro is the only arch based Distro that has actually worked. The closest I got was vanilla arch, but gave up trying to get the wifi working. Antergos was hot garbage. Endeavor never installed properly and neither did Garuda. I haven't tries Arco, but based on the DT videos I've seen about it, it just doesn't seem appealing to me. I used Manjaro problem free for about a year. I just got bored. I've been with Fedora or Debian ever since without looking back.

[@SlideRSB]

Manjaro has more supported kernels than Arch does. That makes it a much better distro.

[@TheLinuxCast]

You can get any kernel you want from the AUR so not really a competition

[@petenikolic5244]

Grub gave up on that years ago PITA

[@wasabi333]

Manjaro is fucking amazing.