Distro news: Arch gets a new leader and Manjaro has a new release

How do I upgra... oh yeah, rolling release, boom! So nice.

I'm an old Ubuntu user, but I installed Manjaro Arm on my new PBP, and it has been a very pleasant experience. Can highly recommend it, and I might even try "regular" Manjaro on my desktop later on.

I was on Ubuntu XFCE because "i was told" it was the superior distro, more even if you are a gamer.

About 3-4 years ago i changed to Manjaro (XFCE again, i like simple and light), because i had some issues with Ubuntu, not sure what but i felt i wanted to change.

Since then, my gaming experience, and my overall experience actually, has improved.

Not sure if it’s really Manjaro, or simply a few years of evolution, but that’s it, and i don’t feel i want to change anytime soon.

What is that Manjaro brings to the table?

The fact that it's a point and click installation instead of CLI, plus the fact it handles GPU driver installation for you.

Not everyone wants to do things manually, even though we think it's easy ;)

What is that Manjaro brings to the table?

Somebody else has at least briefly tested the updates before you get them. Reduces the chance of breakage.

I was using SteamOS on my htpc for a while for is sheer simplicity of interface (it's just straight to BPM), which makes it really easy for even my little kids to load up a game they want, but Valve seriously hasn't updated it since June. Luckily, someone put the SteamOS compositor on AUR so now I get all the latest stable updates and the simple interface.

(BTW, I tried just using BPM within manjaro gnome and I always had window focus problems, so it just doesn't switch smoothly enough to work without a mouse handy.)

As an Arch user for more than 12 years, i don't understand why people need to use Manjaro these days. Installing Arch is very, very easy these days, and you get to use the real thing and cut off the intermediary. What is that Manjaro brings to the table?

There are also things that you probably set up many years ago that you may have forgotten about, like build hooks when you update Nvidia drivers or VirtualBox. There are things like that that are small enough that a lot of people just expect them to work because they never had to think about them before. Arch gives you the choice of doing it manually or using your choice of tools to accomplish the task instead of going with the flow and using the distro's choice of tooling. But you know, a lot of people don't want to deal with the hassle of those niggling choices.

I'm using the same installation from years ago and have even migrated it along multiple computer upgrades. I've taken care of all the little choices and it's all convenient enough for me now. But when I want to manage my kids' and wife's computers, or if I'm recommending a distro to someone that's not a computer hobbyist, it's not Arch. Manjaro is what I "throw on there." I don't have to do anything after installation! :)

Hopefully this didn't sound like shouting at your face. I think you had a fair question.

I love Arch linux, took me a few years before I had the confidence to build my own install, but it's been well worth it. You learn a lot more by doing stuff yourself and if things ever go wrong, you have a better idea of how to fix it.

I downloaded the iso yesterday and had a look around in a VM.

Today I'm verifying backups and then I'll give it a try. But please stop me once I start saying "Btw: I use Arch".

Somebody else has at least briefly tested the updates before you get them. Reduces the chance of breakage.

Arch has a testing repo and its packages are tested. It's not unusual to wait several weeks between major kernel versions, for example. And Mesa 20 has not yet hit the main repos because it's still in testing.

I had been using Arch on a daily basis for a long time, and I learned so many things along the way, but when I stopped having enough time to manage it I had to switch to Fedora which is a good intermediate solution for me.
Had Manjaro been a thing when I switched, I would definitely have had a look.


Last edited by omer666 on 26 February 2020 at 7:03 pm UTC

I've just been using a ARCH installer called EndeavourOS, primarily use KDE atm. I did dabble with XFCE but had issues with some wine applications having poor font quality which doesn't happen under Plasma.

As an Arch user for more than 12 years, i don't understand why people need to use Manjaro these days. Installing Arch is very, very easy these days, and you get to use the real thing and cut off the intermediary. What is that Manjaro brings to the table?

There are also things that you probably set up many years ago that you may have forgotten about, like build hooks when you update Nvidia drivers or VirtualBox. There are things like that that are small enough that a lot of people just expect them to work because they never had to think about them before. Arch gives you the choice of doing it manually or using your choice of tools to accomplish the task instead of going with the flow and using the distro's choice of tooling. But you know, a lot of people don't want to deal with the hassle of those niggling choices.

I'm using the same installation from years ago and have even migrated it along multiple computer upgrades. I've taken care of all the little choices and it's all convenient enough for me now. But when I want to manage my kids' and wife's computers, or if I'm recommending a distro to someone that's not a computer hobbyist, it's not Arch. Manjaro is what I "throw on there." I don't have to do anything after installation! :)

Hopefully this didn't sound like shouting at your face. I think you had a fair question.

Tons of FUD, i see. OK, i admit, i am not an Nvidia user, i hate them as a company and haven't bought Nvidia hardware since 2007, but what is so hard to setup about Nvidia on Arch? Nvidia is officially supported, no? Last i remember, they even include the binary driver officially.

As for build hooks, seriously, they are 2 minutes work, just read the wiki. Seriously that is the "big issue" you guys have for supporting an immitation of Arch over the real thing? I never thought people had this much trouble to setup nvidia or virtualbox on ArchLinux.... FUD and more FUD, i see...

You missed the point. It was a couple of examples. You can't narrow in on them like that.
It sounds to me like you are an elitist, a purist. You know that distro choice is not a religious matter, correct?
I also think that your conclusion of FUD is quite inaccurate. But it seems not worth giving examples based on how you fail to extrapolate.

Wow, asking a question and not accepting the answer. That is a lot of ignorance. But like 14 said, it's not worth the while...

Anyway, yeah for Arch and Manjaro, just getting better and better. I actually found out I was still running NVidia 430 instead of 440. It was my first experience with mhwd, awesome tool, switching driver was a breeze.

I had been using Arch on a daily basis for a long time, and I learned so many things along the way, but when I stopped having enough time to manage it I had to switch to Fedora which is a good intermediate solution for me.
Had Manjaro been a thing when I switched, I would definitely have had a look.

More FUD.... Arch does not need "time" to manage it, in fact, it is the easiest to manage distro on the planet. Once you have set up the distro to your liking, it is just a matter of using pacman (or a wrapper like pacaur for me personally) to update the system periodically, plus monitoring the Arch site/feed for the occasional intervention. I rarely have to change things for months and months, all i do are updates the vast majority of the time.

On the other hand, Fedora needs distro-upgrading every 6 months, how is that better?

Plus Fedora has always been a testing distro, oftentimes they include beta versions of software plus many times things break.

If you've been using Arch for so long, I guess you remember the switch to systemd don't you?

I also guess you never experienced any breaking bug that you had to work around? Like having to investigate which piece of software keeps triggering a kernel panic since your last pacman -Sy?

Sounds strange to me, because as I said I've been using it myself quite a bit - look for my nickname on Arch forums if you need any proof of it - and I do remember quite accurately spending a great deal of time on managing it. I don't mean that it was unpleasant, but it DID take some care and time, and a lot more than a simple Fedora update which amounts to half an hour.

I also don't quite like the tone of your reply, especially you calling me out for spreading "FUD." My goal is absolutely not to keep people away from Arch, in fact I think it's a great way to get to know how a distro works behind the scene, but just to share my experience and tell other people that yes, I would have dug Manjaro if I had the chance to do so at the time.
I may have to mention that I took care of reporting a lot of bugs and I am quite the perfectionist when it comes to how my computer runs, tracking down small errors and all.

Also never had any big technical problem using Fedora, I don't know what you call unfinished or beta state, coming from an Arch user it's quite funny. Who's spreading FUD now?


Last edited by omer666 on 6 March 2020 at 6:42 pm UTC

EndeavourOS, a spiritual successor to the much-missed Antergos, is out now. It uses the Calamares installer, and you end up with a pure vanilla Arch installation.

In well less than 30 minutes. Suddenly anyone can install the basic Arch system without spending a long time reading the Arch wiki, and dealing with certain "RTFM, dammit" Arch Forum users.

I did read one Arch user complaining about installing Manjaro, and taking "hours and hours" to remove the apps he didn't want. Instead, he'll spend a significantly larger amount of time, using the AUR especially, to install the apps he does want. Arch users can be a snotty bunch.