Hey fellas friends. Sorry to create yet another post on this topic (maybe we should have a sticky for this?).
About 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to move on from Windows and installed Manjaro. I would consider myself a newbie-intermediate level linux user.
Though I’ve used Windows most my life, we use Linux servers (no GUI) at work, managing them is part of job description. I also own a late 2011 Macbook Pro with vanilla Arch Linux. I barely ever use it but boy, Arch really brought it back to life!
I’ve been reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive to use but the community has made me aware that Manjaro is maybe a questionable choice. Since I don´t plan on distro-hopping a lot I want to get it right sooner rather than later.
Here’s what I’m looking for:
- Rolling distribution, preferably. Though this machine is also used for work, our environment depends mostly on remote servers anyway. I’d rather have a distribution that provides the most recent packages for whatever I want
- I don´t mind running a distribution that forces me learn new things or do things in a different way, I kinda embrace it. I just don´t enjoy complexity for complexity’s sake.
- KDE is my preferred Desktop Environment so far, though I guess that’s not very relevant. I’d love to run Hyprland, but you know… Nvidia :(
- I play games on Steam but from my understanding this doesn´t matter either. Everything I tried worked great, I don´t think I want a ¨gaming focused" distro or anything like that
- No Ubuntu, please.
My hardware, in case you feel is relevant!
OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440
WM: KWin
Terminal: konsole
Terminal Font: MesloLGS NF 10
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K (20) @ 4.900GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate
Memory: 23313MiB / 64087MiB
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed gets recommended here a lot. Just be aware: It’s an expert distro masquerading as beginner-friendly.
Out of the box, it won’t recognize printers and scanners. Setting them up is a hassle without cups-airprint and sane-airscan which aren’t preinstalled, and the latter is only available through a user’s repo.Printer setup will also fail unless you add an exception to the built-in firewall. Nothing in the GUI tells you about this.
It also won’t play web videos before you install the codecs. These are available in the packman repo, which will require learning the concept of repo priorities and “vendor-change”, what it does and when to use it. (It can break your system)
The package manager is very sophisticated and complex, but some of its features shouldn’t be used in Tumbleweed. Updating Tumbleweed like you would the normal fixed release system is possible (in fact, if you use the GUI, it’s the default) but it will break your system.
And the system administration tool YAST offers a lot of functionality that is already present in the KDE options. What the differences are? Who knows.
I switched to fedora some months ago and I’ve been really enjoying it. Maybe worth a shot.
Have you looked into Solus at all? They are rolling and build with a focus on desktop usage.
I’m just like you, newbie-intermediate Linux user who recently jumped from Windows to (Ubuntu then) Manjaro. What’s wrong with Manjaro?
Pasting an old reply of mine from another thread answering this same question:
Manjaro is…tricky.
I’ve called it an Arch based distro that kinda sucks at being an Arch based distro before, and I stand by that. You can’t treat Manjaro like you would EndeavourOS or Vanilla Arch Linux because of how Manjaro decides to do things: essentially, updates are held back by a couple of weeks for better and worse instead of being released as they’re made avaliable. While that means it can catch disastrous things like the GRUB issue another user pointed out (Manjaro was unaffected by it IIRC), it also means the system is prone to breaking itself more often. And you can forget about using the AUR if you’re using Manjaro–or well, you can, but the AUR and Manjaro are nortorious for not playing nice with one another because of the latter’s tendencies to hold back packages, which, natrually, leads to even more breaking.
Personally, I wouldn’t recomend it. However, If you don’t mind being extra careful with what you install (really that’s standard practice for any distro, but hey, I’ve never found a WIP package that messed up my system anywhere other than when using Manjaro, so make of that what you will), are willing to tolerate constant mild to severe breakage, and just using Flatpaks and appimages over the AUR, then give Manjaro a try, but otherwise? Go with EndeavourOS, or Garuda, or literally anything else.
I’ve been using Manjaro for years with zero issues. Far fewer than using Arch for example.
I can only speak to my expierence with Manjaro, and it was…not good. It pretty much found a way to uniquely break itself every boot from me…just treating it like I would Arch (i didn’t find out how you’re maybe supposed to use it till later, when i moved on to another distro). And in every Manjaro post or comment, there’s several anecdotes that are similiar to mine: somehow, someway, Manjaro freaked out and died…and then there’s a couple that are like yours: “I’ve used it for several years with zero problems” and i gotta ask: how? Legit curious. Is “waiting 14 days to update + not using the AUR at all, if possible” sound advise or am I waaaay off the mark?
It sounds equally weird to me to hear about people breaking Manjaro and I feel like I should be the one asking “how?” 🙂
There’s no need to wait 14 days to update, I update whenever I feel like it. And there’s no need to hold back from using the AUR, I have 76 AUR packages installed right now.
The only rule about AUR is the same rule they recommend on Arch too: don’t use it for critical packages. So don’t install kernels from AUR, or graphical drivers, or replace system packages with AUR stuff. Because AUR stuff will break, it’s not a question of “if” it’s a question of “when”, and it will happen on Arch just as well as any Arch derivate.
Other than that I can’t think of any reason why a Manjaro install would spontaneously break. Perhaps if you install an experimental kernel as the only kernel on your machine and it breaks? I’ve always stuck to LTS kernels myself, and I keep two LTS installed, just in case.
I’m in the same boat; been using Manjaro on my desktop for years without anything really breaking. I’ve told myself that when it does break and I can’t fix it I’ll distro hop again, but it just hasn’t been the case yet.
