I am mid switch, but it’s not been smooth or easy. I chose Manjaro and maybe I chose poorly. I am a lifelong techie, and have used Ubuntu and Mint in short stints in the past, but the transition is rough.
I didn’t attempt the switch before because I primarily played Destiny 2 and Bungie hates Linux. The enshittification of Destiny drove me away, and in theory the games I am playing now should work. I have had mixed results however.
I play Darktide and Vermintide 2 and heavily use their modding scenes to make them fully playable. Vortex mod manager is a huge bonus for this, and I still haven’t been able to set this up.
My Elgato equipment has community support, but has a bunch of steps to get working that I haven’t spent the time to fully research or attempt.
I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.
I am going to keep trying, because I hate Microsoft right now more than I dislike the learning curve and limitations. Not sure if that is enough to make this the year of the Linux desktop though.
One thing about Linux: don’t let people bully you over which distro you use. This isn’t a competition, use what feels most natural to you. If Manjaro is too steep of a curve, start somewhere else. Not everyone needs to be running arch. If you want to use arch but want it easier, I had an easier time with endeavor os than with manjaro, but ymmv. If I were you, I’d use the easiest distro out there: mint. If you are a big gamer, PopOS has a lot of gaming support right out of the box, but these days if you are primarily on Steam then you shouldn’t hit too many issues in any distro.
I am also mid transition, but haven’t booted windows in over a year. I tried dual-access storage, and I think your best bet is to keep the two systems separate. There are ways to make it work, but they are not beginner friendly imo.
As for mods, it is really hit or miss. And kernel level anticheat is a blocker in Linux, so any games that require it will not be playable. But what I do is have a single-drive windows machine that has the software that doesn’t have Linux support installed, and boot into it when I need it. But I’ve actually found linux-friendly replacements for all the stuff I personally use, and will probably never touch the windows system again.
There’s the rub. Every distro has vocal supporters and detractors, and appears simultaneously good or “dog shit”. Determining who is accurate is a crapshoot, and there apparently is no right answer. Manjaro was attractive because of built-in automatic snapshots for recovery when I inevitably break my installation. There was also previously a well reviewed gaming focused Manjaro fork, though I stuck with the main fork.
Mint had just as vocal of detractors saying it was unstable. Same with Ubuntu and I dislike the company focus anyway. Arch is Arch, and Manjaro is an Arch fork anyway. It’s the same problem someone looking at starting One Piece or Bleach or Naruto have: there is too much and even the fans appear to hate it more than anyone else, lol.
I don’t want to distro hop, that doesn’t interest me at my current stage. I want long term (at least a year) in between reinstallations. More self hosting is lined up for the future, so desktop is dipping my toes in the water as my server is piecemealed together.
Anyone who says Mint is unstable doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Mint is great if you just want to install and forget. Any rolling release distro will always require more effort to keep it running. Mint updates are largely painless.
I’m sure Mint is in a great place now, I enjoyed it when I tried it 8-10 years ago during my last foray into Linux. I looked at the reviews complaining about Mint as outliers, but did the same for Manjaro and PopOS and all the others. PopOS was what I was initially planning on for Nvidia support, but my 2080S started acting like it might be dying and I picked up a 7900XTX to open up my Linux options more.
BTRFS snapshots sounded like a good “training wheel” for easy restoration after I inevitably break something, which was a selling point for Manjaro. Rolling release is also both a plus and a minus. It is easy to get choice paralysis with trying to jump into Linux, especially if you don’t want to do a bunch of initial distro hopping to feel out the different options.
I am mid switch, but it’s not been smooth or easy. I chose Manjaro and maybe I chose poorly. I am a lifelong techie, and have used Ubuntu and Mint in short stints in the past, but the transition is rough.
I didn’t attempt the switch before because I primarily played Destiny 2 and Bungie hates Linux. The enshittification of Destiny drove me away, and in theory the games I am playing now should work. I have had mixed results however.
I play Darktide and Vermintide 2 and heavily use their modding scenes to make them fully playable. Vortex mod manager is a huge bonus for this, and I still haven’t been able to set this up.
My Elgato equipment has community support, but has a bunch of steps to get working that I haven’t spent the time to fully research or attempt.
I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.
I am going to keep trying, because I hate Microsoft right now more than I dislike the learning curve and limitations. Not sure if that is enough to make this the year of the Linux desktop though.
One thing about Linux: don’t let people bully you over which distro you use. This isn’t a competition, use what feels most natural to you. If Manjaro is too steep of a curve, start somewhere else. Not everyone needs to be running arch. If you want to use arch but want it easier, I had an easier time with endeavor os than with manjaro, but ymmv. If I were you, I’d use the easiest distro out there: mint. If you are a big gamer, PopOS has a lot of gaming support right out of the box, but these days if you are primarily on Steam then you shouldn’t hit too many issues in any distro.
I am also mid transition, but haven’t booted windows in over a year. I tried dual-access storage, and I think your best bet is to keep the two systems separate. There are ways to make it work, but they are not beginner friendly imo.
As for mods, it is really hit or miss. And kernel level anticheat is a blocker in Linux, so any games that require it will not be playable. But what I do is have a single-drive windows machine that has the software that doesn’t have Linux support installed, and boot into it when I need it. But I’ve actually found linux-friendly replacements for all the stuff I personally use, and will probably never touch the windows system again.
stupid. Manjaro is dog shit
Manjaro isn’t the best choice if you value ease of use and stability.
There’s the rub. Every distro has vocal supporters and detractors, and appears simultaneously good or “dog shit”. Determining who is accurate is a crapshoot, and there apparently is no right answer. Manjaro was attractive because of built-in automatic snapshots for recovery when I inevitably break my installation. There was also previously a well reviewed gaming focused Manjaro fork, though I stuck with the main fork.
Mint had just as vocal of detractors saying it was unstable. Same with Ubuntu and I dislike the company focus anyway. Arch is Arch, and Manjaro is an Arch fork anyway. It’s the same problem someone looking at starting One Piece or Bleach or Naruto have: there is too much and even the fans appear to hate it more than anyone else, lol.
I don’t want to distro hop, that doesn’t interest me at my current stage. I want long term (at least a year) in between reinstallations. More self hosting is lined up for the future, so desktop is dipping my toes in the water as my server is piecemealed together.
Anyone who says Mint is unstable doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Mint is great if you just want to install and forget. Any rolling release distro will always require more effort to keep it running. Mint updates are largely painless.
I’m sure Mint is in a great place now, I enjoyed it when I tried it 8-10 years ago during my last foray into Linux. I looked at the reviews complaining about Mint as outliers, but did the same for Manjaro and PopOS and all the others. PopOS was what I was initially planning on for Nvidia support, but my 2080S started acting like it might be dying and I picked up a 7900XTX to open up my Linux options more.
BTRFS snapshots sounded like a good “training wheel” for easy restoration after I inevitably break something, which was a selling point for Manjaro. Rolling release is also both a plus and a minus. It is easy to get choice paralysis with trying to jump into Linux, especially if you don’t want to do a bunch of initial distro hopping to feel out the different options.