Ubuntu’s popularity often makes it the default choice for new Linux users. But there are tons of other Linux operating systems that deserve your attention. As such, I’ve highlighted some Ubuntu alternatives so you can choose based on your needs and requirements—because conformity is boring.
I mean, why not? Manjaro has recent packages and actively focuses on a user-friendly experience. Which includes things like a nice installer, good automatic support for hardware out of the box, a nice GUI for the package manager, GUI managers for drivers and kernel versions, it’s based on the stable Arch branch and it comes with the LTS kernel etc.
Back a few years ago when I was looking to move my desktop away (from Ubuntu, ironically) I downloaded a bunch of distro ISOs (the usual suspects, we all know them, Pop, Mint etc.) and tried the live version to see how it goes. I picked Manjaro because it was the only one that did everything perfectly. Recognized all my peripherals, network shares, played all videos and music, printer, whatever.
(I know the usual arguments against it, btw, but it’s mostly unrelated stuff or outright false.)
During my six month usage of Manjaro (my introduction to Arch-based distros), my desktop broke four times and booted me to the terminal. Almost once a month. I told myself this was the price you paid for living on the edge, using a rolling release. I switched to EndeavourOS and have not had a broken desktop in two whole years.
Manjaro’s handling of AUR packages is fundamentally wrong and with their design decisions it cannot be fixed. You either give up the AUR entirely, or resign yourself to constantly breaking AUR packages and having to try and fix them.
Manjaro’s handling of kernels via a GUI sounds good until you realise it’s entirely manual and if you don’t keep checking you will end up running an unsupported, out of date kernel with Arch packages that expect a newer one. Again, Manjaro violates Arch’s golden rule of avoiding partial upgrades by holding your kernels back until you manually update them in their GUI. If you’re running an Arch-based distro 99% of the time you want the latest kernel and an LTS kernel as a backup, but these are already in Arch as packages (and are thus updated in lockstep with your packages, as designed) so you don’t need Manjaro’s special GUI. Now if you wanted a particular kernel for some reason then sure, but Manjaro’s GUI doesn’t even let you pick the exact version you want anyway! All you can pick is the latest version of each major release.
If you’re anything like I was at the time, you think you like Manjaro but what you actually like is Arch. Manjaro just gets in the way.
my desktop broke four times and booted me to the terminal
How did it break? It never broke for me once in the last 4 years.
You either give up the AUR entirely, or resign yourself to constantly breaking AUR packages and having to try and fix them.
I constantly have dozens of AUR packages installed. I have 70 right now. They don’t break. Everything you’re writing here is false.
Sometimes dynamic linking fails for an AUR package over 6 months or more but that’s because I don’t update them automatically (because none of them are critical). A simple rebuild fixes that.
Manjaro violates Arch’s golden rule of avoiding partial upgrades by holding your kernels back until you manually update them in their GUI.
It’s not holding kernels back. The version you select receives updates. It’s not bumping major versions of that’s what you mean, but that’s exactly how I want it. I don’t want the distro doing that for me. I do not need the latest kernel.
you think you like Manjaro but what you actually like is Arch. Manjaro just gets in the way.
Wrong again. I do not like several decisions in Arch and it requires more attention than Manjaro. Manjaro attempts to offer stability and low maintenance and actually does a good job of it.
I’m an experienced Linux user but I’m lazy and I want my cake and to eat it too. I want recent packages but I don’t want the risks associated with bleeding edge everything. Manjaro gives me that. You can call it “Arch for lazy people”, I don’t mind, it’s true.
My DE broke because Manjaro added untested/beta patches from upstream, sometimes even against the developer’s word. This is something that Manjaro is known for. Guess who inspired dont-ship.it?
Also I would appreciate you not calling my statements on the AUR false. I have personal experience on the matter so we can play my experiences against yours if you like, or we can listen to the official Manjaro maintainers reccommending that it not be used, as it is incompatible with the Manjaro repos. By design Manjaro holds back Arch packages, which means AUR package dependencies often do not match what is expected. This is not false. Can you use the AUR? Sure, but you must keep in mind that Manjaro was not designed for it and it will break AUR packages sometimes. Sometimes it’s as simple as waiting a couple weeks for Manjaro to let new packages through, but sometimes you can’t just wait several weeks and you need to fix it yourself.
And yes, Manjaro does hold kernels back because you have to specify when you want to move off a major release. You can accidentally be using an unsupported kernel and not even notice. Ask me how I know. Manjaro literally requires more maintenance than Arch on this front.
I can’t comment on what maintenance Arch requires that Manjaro doesn’t, as I run EndeavourOS. I’ve found it to be everything Manjaro wishes it was - a thin, user-friendly wrapper around Arch.
Just remember that Manjaro’s official response to them forgetting to update their SSL certs was to roll back your clock, putting everyone at risk of accepting invalid certs in the process.
Do you have proof of Manjaros usual arguments being unrelated or false? The things I’ve read over the years seem like valid criticism.
There’s generally three “arguments” that keep being quoted.
- There’s the criticism about them messing up their website or the bug that DDoS’ed the AUR. While valid, it has nothing to do with the stability of the distro.
- There’s the people who claim it “just broke” on them. This is people new to Linux who get bad advice and do things like switch to unstable, use non-LTS kernels, install drivers from AUR etc. and of course it breaks, as would any distro where you do foolish things. And if you said “it just broke” about any distro you’d get asked things like “what did you do” or “this kind of stuff is not for newbies”. But it’s cool to say it about Manjaro.
- There’s the argument that Manjaro holding back Arch packages for 2 weeks breaks AUR, because when you try to compile an AUR package it might not find the super-new version of a library it needs. While this is technically possible, the chances of it happening are super small. AUR packages are often not that recent, some are years-old. Secondly, if this were such a common problem it would affect everybody on any Arch distro who didn’t upgrade in 2 weeks – and it just doesn’t.
I think it does. If you make the choice to poorly manage your distro’s tools/website it shows that you aren’t responsible enough to manage the distro. They also had the laptop purchasing issue.
I’m not saying every distro needs to be super organized and testing shit but they should be before I recommend it to someone. Especially when there are other Arch based distros that don’t have the issues.
The newbie stuff is fair enough. I do think they get extra flak here because the distro was marked as Arch for noobs.
I don’t think that would be the case. The AUR helper would pull the updated dependencies from the Arch repos which would not be available in Manjaro’s repos
They’re valid arguments and people should be informed about it mainly because of how it was recommended a lot for beginners.
There’s a huge hate bandwagon for Manjaro and I don’t really understand it. I don’t consider myself a linux expert and maybe that’s why but I felt like Manjaro was very accessible to someone new to Linux who wanted to use Arch. You have the ability to install what you need while also having a relatively stable system. I enjoyed that it came with software that I would normally be using but I know there’s a lot of diehards who want just Linux and to install things themselves, in that case they should just use plain Arch or Endeavor, but I think for others Manjaro is perfectly fine.
