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
Anything but Manjaro. I won’t get into the reasons why because it’s easy to find, but suffice it to say that it’s an amateur distro that makes dumb mistakes.
If you want rolling, Arch, Tumbleweed and Endeavour are the first places to look. Maybe even Fedora because it updates very fast, although it’s not rolling.
I’ve been using Manjaro for years without issue. I fully understand the arguments against using it, but it’s never been a problem for me and I’m too lazy to distro hop for no good reason.
Are there problems with Manjaro? Yes, of course.
Are they bad enough that “anything but Manjaro” is good advice to give to someone? IMO, no.
This is getting ridiculous. Manjaro is the only Arch derivate that actually makes an effort to add something for the user that’s more than just “reskinned Arch”. The package management, graphical driver handling and kernel handling is all top notch and super user friendly. Also ready for gaming out of the box.
So can we stop quoting things that happened years ago? Every distro makes mistakes at some point, and speaking of which, recommending Tumbleweed in this context is hilarious.