I’ve been using Linux Mint since forever. I’ve never felt a reason to change. But I’m interested in what persuaded others to move.
Every couple of years I think to myself “You know, I can’t actually remember why I don’t like Ubuntu. It must have just been some weird one-off thing that soured me on it last time. Besides, I’ve got N more years of Linux experience under my belt, so I know how to avoid sticky situations with apt, and they’ve had N more years to make their OS more user friendly! I pride myself on not holding grudges, and if this distro still gets recommended to newbies, how bad can it possibly be, especially for someone with my level of expertise?”
And then I download Ubuntu.
And then I remember.
Gentoo. No. Compiling all of the things was not for me.
Use flags in
emergewas my breaking point
Most of them.
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Debian world - apt sucks. For something with a sole purpose of resolving a dependency tree, it’s surprisingly bad at that.
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Redhat world - everything is soooo old. I can see why business people like it, buy I rarely, if ever, agree with business people.
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Opensuse world - I’ve only tried it once, probably 15 years ago. Didn’t really know my way around computers all that much at the time, but it didn’t click and I’ve left it. Later on I found out about their selling out to Microsoft and never bothered touching it again.
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Arch - it was my daily for a year or two. Big fan. It still runs my email. At some point the size of packages started to annoy me, though. Still has the best wiki. I’ve never really bothered with the spinoffs, as the model of Arch makes them useless and more problematic to deal with.
I’ve got the Gentoo bug now. For the first time I genuinely feel
~/. A lean, mean system of machines :)never really bothered with the spinoffs, as the model of Arch makes them useless and more problematic to deal with
I highly enjoy using EndeavourOS. But then again, I wouldn’t classify it as a spinoff, it’s pretty much vanilla Arch, but purple.
Now Manjaro on the other hand… Tried it and understood why so many people don’t like it within the first week.
Mind to elaborate a little bit more about the Manjaro problem? I am driving it since a couple of years without any issue but I keep hearing this… now I am afraid :)
I hope it works for you forever. I am not going to get in an argument with the other Manjaro users here that will come to argue with you.
Just keep in mind that most of the people warning you away from Manjaro have a story that basically sums up as “I used to love Manjaro until, one day, it totally broke on me. Now I won’t touch it.” Sadly, this includes me. Will you join us one day? I hope not.
Now Manjaro on the other hand… Tried it and understood why so many people don’t like it within the first week.
I see this a lot and nobody really ever explains, properly, why.
I have used Linux off and on for many years (mainly server OS such as RHEL and CentOS). I have now migrated from Windows desktop to Manjaro KDE. Using it for a year. Had one issue (wouldn’t boot after a kernel update), which I sorted quickly. Other than that it’s been rock solid.
But this isn’t a ‘I have a great experience so you’re all just haters’ post.
I know the stuff about it being a week or behind Arch. I remember something about the maintainers (can’t remember specifics) but they seem to be minor niggles that don’t affect most people.
Genuine question.
Why do you dislike Manjaro? I also know it’s a common theme to dislike it, so any other insight there?
Not the guy you asked, but my 2 main gripes are:
- holding back main repos and not aur? That’s dumb and just asking for trouble.
- sheer incompetence. Remember their certs expiring? Remember their public recommended workaround? That’s webdev level of bs. They absolutely do not understand their own setup.
webdev level of bs
Based
What does
basedmean?
Never saw this?
Wow, they haven’t fucked up for more than a year? Is this some kind of record?
I am responding too much but this question seems genuine so I hope this answer helps.
1 - I, at least, do not “dislike” Manjaro. I think it is very good looking. I loved the out of the box experience. I liked it a lot.
2 - Manjaro broke on me multiple times. I now consider it “unsafe”. That is not really “dislike”.
Why unsafe?
1 - the project has governance issues. You can say we should get over them but they have been repetitive. Once bitten, twice shy as they say.
2 - more systemically, using the AUR is less safe than on other Arch distros
Why? Well, primarily because the Manjaro repos “hold back” packages for something like 2 - 4 weeks ( I honestly cannot remember but the number is not the issue ). Manjaro does not curate the AUR itself though so the AUR is “current” compared to other Arch distros.
I will not run through all the ways this can break things. I will point out though that when Manjaro defenders say that “it all syncs up again in a couple of weeks”, they are wrong.
It is not about delaying updates ( sorry if I am insulting your intelligence to say this but Manjaro defenders often insist on thinking this is “the problem” that people have with Manjaro ). This cannot be the problem. Different users update at different times. I do it frequently. Some people wait months.
You can manually delay updates on any Arch distro. EndeavourOS even includes a utility ( eos-update ) to specify a specific delay on package updates.
In short, the problems stem from the lack of repo sync at INSTALL time. Manjaro differs from every other Arch distro in terms of what packages are available when you install software from the AUR.
You can believe that this matters, as I have learned, or you can believe that it does not. I hope it works out for you. I really do.
In short, the problems stem from the lack of repo sync at INSTALL time. Manjaro differs from every other Arch distro in terms of what packages are available when you install software from the AUR.
Which is completely irrelevant because AUR “packages” are only very loosely related to Arch binaries. Your average AUR is just a source package developed by someone who most likely doesn’t use Arch, plus a thin wrapper script that says “it needs these packages to compile and these packages to run”.
As users of source based distros like Nix and Gentoo will show you, you can get a well-made source package to compile and run on an extremely wide variety of system states (and also distros, architectures etc.)
The fact that binaries on Manjaro are a few weeks late is completely irrelevant for something compiled from source from a reasonably recent source package.
You seem to be under the impression that AUR packagers perform extensive testing. They don’t. They run it once, if it works for them they publish. They did that weeks or months or in some cases years ago compared to the time you install. By which time the relevance of that test to Arch or Manjaro or any Arch distro is tenuous at best.
There is one case where an AUR package can fail installing, and that’s if the packager has requested a dependency in a version that for some reason isn’t available on your system. This can happen to Manjaro due to the delay but also to any other Arch distro depending on whether the user is willing and able get that version at that particular time. Not everybody is willing to drop everything and update three times a day.
The other thing that people can’t seem to get through their head is that AUR packages will break eventually as the system binaries are updated. You have to recompile AUR packages when they break. This is the same for all Arch distros.
I’ve used EndeavourOS but thought it was fugly enough not to use it hah
Well damn, federation took its sweet time to show me your reply
A few years ago I wanted to get away from Ubuntu on my desktop PC so I sat down and considered about a dozen of the most recommended Linux distros install images.
My requirements were:
- Image should be live so I could test it without installing.
- Should work out of the box with everything I could think to throw at it: wifi, Bluetooth devices including controllers, network shares, play music/video out of the box, printing, audio devices on USB etc.
- Easy to install and maintain. No need for brain-dead install or zero maintenance, I’m a seasoned Linux user and anyway I don’t want to be absurd, but I also don’t want to spend my spare time debugging or maintaining the desktop system. I have a server for that.
- Recent packages and frequent updates, but stable.
- Usable for everyday use, work (mostly Citrix and other forms of remote desktop) and of course gaming.
- Rolling release.
Guess which distro ticked absolutely every single box.
You are trolling us.
If you want stable, the answer is not Manjaro. If you do not have time for debugging, the answer is for sure not Manjaro.
Suit yourself. I’m telling you that you’re sleeping on one of the most user-friendly, up to date, gaming-ready, stable and generally hassle free distros out there, and it’s coming from someone who actually tried all the popular ones.
In exchange you just have to stick to a LTS kernel and not replace critical system components from AUR. Which I think you’ll agree are reasonable conditions for all Arch distros, heck, all distros.
Try it, don’t try it, up to you.
I disbelive the debian answer here. Sounds like a case of frankendebian https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
Been usig Debian for home and work and on hundreds of servers for 2 decades and it have been near flawless. Any issues i have had have always been my own fault.
Gentoo all the way since 20 years, on all kind of devices, going strong and never looked back.
Ubuntu, I hate you. A messy complex windows-esque caricature in the Linux world, where “somebody else” knows better than me and shoves it down my gully.
So there you go, my best and worst distros choice.
I’ve only got a few years on Gentoo - how has your journey been? You must’ve started with stage 1!
Well, yes, stage3 has been a revolution. But I don’t remember using stage1 directly. I started with Linux way earlier than gentoo… On 386.
I need to try Gentoo again. The installer used to be absolute garbage and required a ton of work to get the a usable system if you deviated too far from a normal computer setup.
Later on I found out about their selling out to Microsoft and never bothered touching it again.
Ah yes, when Microsoft looked for a contractor to develop FOSS implementations of some Windows technologies to meet demands by the EU and Mark Shullteworth made a big fuss of it until making deals with Microsoft himself…
What’s the relation between opensuse and microsoft?
In 2014 some wrote that there is none https://forums.opensuse.org/t/what-relationship-between-opensuse-and-microsoft/104583/5
It is that deal from 2006(?) or so. Agreeing to not be sued for an exchange of money is dodgy. Add the competition which was not offered the same deal; add in the environment which was drastically different; it was a shit thing to do. Purely a business decision. I understand why the shareholders wanted that, but that doesn’t make it right nor desirable for me.
Granted, nothing came out of it in the end and Linux managed to get itself established in a way where one could argue is close to impossible to get rid of it, but I feel like this deal is similar to getting stabbed - the one being stabbed will always bear a scar and remember, while others will forget over time. People growing up after this deal will never have experienced the mood and environment of that time which only makes it more difficult to understand why it was a big deal.
Instead of providing apple’s chips to everyone, they keep them to themselves.
I’ll support suse as that’s not really an issue in my opinion.
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I daily drive Fedora, but I’ve used Arch, OpenSUSE, Debian, and more. Once you get used to how Linux works, distro doesn’t really matter that much aside from edge case distros that operate totally differently like Nix. I chose Fedora because I like the dnf package manager.
The only distro I don’t like is Ubuntu. I had to setup a Linux VM at work so I figured Ubuntu would be a good choice for that. Firefox is painfully slow to open because of Snap, so I uninstall it and run “apt install firefox” which Ubuntu overrides and installs the Snap again.
Fuck. That. Deleted the VM and installed Debian instead.
All of them, so I’m still on Windows
Basic, but Ubuntu. It’s got snaps which are slow and generally suck, plus Canonical
Debian – I just wasn’t ready for it. Got told “oh you’re using Mint? That’s nice but you should try out Debian it’s the Real Deal™” but the reason I was using Mint back then in the first place was that it was my first step out of the Windows ecosystem, I was scared shitless and didn’t understand anything. What do you mean I don’t get a huge pretty start menu?! How am I supposed to find stuff then?!
I think you are referring to gnome more than debian. I’ve been trying debian with kde and so far I haven’t found that many problems.
Obviously, yes, but at that level of knowledge as a user, you either don’t know about that or don’t feel comfortable enough to deal with it.
Debian with Gnome is also pretty alright. I’ve been using that for a long time now. I guess it depends a bit where you come from. If you want something like Windows, it’s probably a big deal for you. If you’re used to Android or MacOS, you might enjoy the Gnome experience.
The Whisker menu in XFCE and Cinnamon start menus are GODSENDS to new users.
I needed them so badly when I was first getting started in Linux because I didn’t even know what programs I had installed.
As someone who hates Windows with a passion, once everyone recommend Linux Mint, I knew I had to try it.
I immediately had negative first impressions. I simply don’t wanna use something with a desktop environment that reminds me of something that I hate. I get that it makes transitioning a lot easier for many, but for me it simply looks too similar to Windows.
I’m sure you know it by now, but Mint is the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Windows!” distro very much on purpose, haha.
As a person who doesn’t want to fiddle with my OS or the terminal, yeah, I love me some Mint.
It’s good for those that want it, but some would rather just having a completely new user experience.
Swapping out KDE/Plasma for Gnome or anything else is dead simple most of the time. The DE isn’t locked to the distro, you can have multiple DEs and windowing systems (X and Wayland) installed at once. You can select them from your login manager.
I wish I knew about this sooner.
Heh, no problem, never too late to learn. If you’re coming from Windows or OS X it’s easy to think that the WM/DE is tied to the OS but due to the way Linux is written, the entire GUI stack is separate from the base system. I use SDDM as my login manager and in the upper left-hand corner there is a drop-down to choose the DE and Windowing System.
Didn’t you already reply with a comment similar to this?
Possibly, I reply to a lot of people and I’m on Mobile most of the time and lose track of what I type.
Looking at my comment history, I noticed that this ended up happening to some of my comments too.
Heh, no problem, never too late to learn. If you’re coming from Windows or OS X it’s easy to think that the WM/DE is tied to the OS but due to the way Linux is written, the entire GUI stack is separate from the base system. You can have both the old school X Windowing system and the new Wayland installed at the same time, along with many different Desktop Environments and Window Managers. I use SDDM as my login manager and in the upper left-hand corner there is a drop-down to choose the DE and Windowing System.
That really is a lot to learn and get used to.
No one ever said learning something completely new was gonna be quick and easy. Take it piece by piece and follow tutorials. Installing Arch Linux will give you a good idea how everything fits together instead of just “click, click, click, reboot” and it’s installed. You don’t learn anything that way.
I remember seeing memes about this all the time.
I credit Arch with actually teaching me how to use Linux, even though I had already been using it for about 2 years at that point.
NixOS… for now. I was on Fedora and was looking for something new. Thought I’d try these new „immutable” distros. Then realised I didn’t know enough about normal ones yet, so I switched to Arch instead. Plus, Nix’ docs are horrendous imo
I tried NixOS too, and their docs are horrible for new users. I found myself looking for anything but the docs to get started. I decided to stay with my EndeavorOS install.
Plus, Nix’ docs are horrendous imo
I’ve been learning Nix recently and I can 100% agree on this. Their community forum is excellent though.
Manjaro - used to love it. Now the only distro I actively advise against
Garuda - just too much ( I prefer Arch / EndeavourOS )
Elementary - wanted to love it - just too limited
Gentoo - realized I just don’t want to build everything
RHEL Workstation - everything too old
Bhodi - honestly do not remember - long ago
Ubuntu - ok, let’s expand…
These days, I dislike Snaps. Ubuntu just never hit the sweet spot for me though. I was already an experienced Linux user when it appeared and preferred RPM based distros at the tome. Ubuntu always seemed slow and fragile to me. Setting things up, like Apache with Mono back in the day, was “different” on Ubuntu and that annoyed me. For most of its history, it is what I would recommend to new users but I just never liked it myself.
Debian Stable - ok, let’s expand
I really like Debian. It was also a little “alien” when I was using Fedora / Mandrake and the like but it never bothered me like Ubuntu. I ran RHEL / Centos as servers so I did not need Debian stability. As a desktop, Debian packages were always just a little too old ( especially for dev ). The lack of non-free firmware made it a pain.
These days though, Debian has been growing on me. The move to include non-free firmware has made it much more practical. With Flatpaks and Distrobox, aging packages is much less of a problem too. I could see myself using Debian. I am strongly considering moving to VanillaOS ( immutable Debian ).
I basically do not run any RHEL servers anymore. At home, I have a fair bit running Debian already ( Proxmox, PiHole, PiVPN, and a Minecraft server ).
EndeavourOS is my primary desktop these days ( and I love it ) but it is mostly for the AUR. A Debian base with an Arch Distrobox might be perfect. Void seems quite nice as well.
I have been an Open Source advocate forever ( and used to say Free Software and FLOSS ). I have used Linux daily since the 0.99 kernels and I even installed 386BSD back in the day. Despite that, the biggest “not for me” distros right now are anything too closely associated with the politics of the GNU project. It has almost made me want to leave Linux and I have considered moving to FreeBSD. I would love to use Haiku. OCI containers and the huge software ecosystem keep me on Linux though.
The distribution that intrigues me the most right now is Chimera Linux. I run it with an Arch distrobox and it may become my daily driver. The pragmatism of projects like SerenityOS really attracts me. Who knows it may be what finally pulls me away after 30+ years of Linux.
What was your problem with Manjaro?
Apparently there’s a lot of hate for the devs/packaging team, people say updates break their systems all the time. I’ve used it on and off for a while years ago, personally and have had no issues. I put it on my parent’s computer over two years ago and they haven’t had any issues either.
Yep there seems to be a lot of hate for stupid reasons (“omg they forgot to renew the SSL cert of the archived forum”). I’ve been using it for 4+ years now and had zero major problems. I have even installed some exotic software from the AUR and am using them without any issues.
Ubuntu, felt like I was being treated like a child with the lack of user customizability
then I chose to jump directly into Arch Linux🙃 and saw despair from analysis paralysis, somehow I learned Arch in just a month tho🤷♀️
Gentoo - too long compile time, especially on my dated CPU. I prefer my system to update quickly.
Linux Mint - don’t like apt, some packages I installed refused to work properly (like Lutris), and the color scheme which is admittedly customizable but I prefer rolling with defaults except when using WM.
Void Linux - after installing it I realized how much I actually missed systemd, couldn’t be arsed to symlink services manually. And yes, I realize that’s the whole point.
NixOS - realized how much there is to learn with the flakes and separating home configurations and whatever, and just gave up
Manjaro - I tried it twice at the beginning of my Linux journey, and both times the nvidia driver shat itself and gave me different problems that I couldn’t fix.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Arch though, as most of my problems probably boil down to “not the same packages”, “not pacman”, “need to learn new skills that weren’t in Arch” and so on. Though admittedly, I did try to explore with an open mind to find a new “cool” distro, but I’d always go back.
Doesn’t Void have a tool that does the symlinking for you?
skill issue, skill issue, skill issue, skill…
/s
I ditched Ubuntu LTS for my homelab virtual machines around 20.04 when they started to push snaps, netplan and cloud-init, meaning I would have to spend a significant amount of effort redoing my bootstrap scripts for no good reason and learning skills that are only applicable in the Ubuntu ecosystem. I went with debian stable instead, and was left wondering why I hadn’t done that sooner. It’s like Ubuntu without all the weirdness.
Get that downvote finger ready!
Arch.
I know it’s what all the cool kids are using, and I keep trying to like it, but I just can’t get into it. I’m a slacker for life.
No downvote here my friend. I love arch, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Plug-and-play distros are great too, they just have different strong points.
Haha, I’ve been daily driving slackware since the late 90s. I like to tinker and install a lot of stuff. I seem to break anything with an automated package manager and dependency resolution.
Oops, I seem to have misread you. Haha, ok, wow I am a total linux noob compared to you.
Nah, I’m just a hobbyist. I’m a n00b compared to all the regulars in the slackware channel on IRC. But I love tinkering and learning. I’d need your help to install vanilla arch, just like you’d probably need mine to get started on slackware. (The slackware install is actually super easy).
I’ve been trying to distrohop the past couple months, see what else is out there. I wasn’t paying attention installing Garuda and borked my EFI partition. I did manage to chroot into my still working slackware partition, but I couldn’t figure out how to re-install grub. So I formatted and did a fresh slackware install.
I am ok with that. If you would consider keeping the baby after ditching the bath water, maybe give EndeavourOS a try.
That’s actually next on my list to check out.
A wild slacker appears.
Are you your own dependency manager too?
Some day I’m going to get someone in one of these “what distro should I try?” posts to install slackware and fall in love with it.
Sbopkg has a slackbuild queue generator
sqgwhich builds the dependencies for applications in it for you. apart from that I’m trying to package ROCm.Holy crap, how did I forget that existed? I would use that for complex stuff like vlc back in the day.
I’ve not heard of ROCm, but I think I get the gist. It’s something like Cuda for AMD?
Are you going to upload and maintain it if you get it working?
Its easy to forget it cause the name is forgettable lol.
yeah basically. Its annoying af to build from source.
yeah i would like to do that but baby steps it needs to build and work.
Come say hi at ##seven on libera.chat if you are so inclined. We’re a group of wild slackers who all met on the main irc channel.
For sure… And come drop in at #slackware:matrix.org if you use matrix. Its an unofficial room btw.
Ubuntu. It has become so shitty over time, it’s oretty sad.
Ubuntu. Started out great but every release got worse with time.
I’ve always used KDE, so always was on kubuntu, or mint, but my latest kubuntu install managed to piss me off badly with its systemd taking over. A simple 10 seconds port=number config in sshd_config change now requires 20 minutes of searches, documentation readup, cursing, and jumping systemd hoops
FUCK systemd
Also FUCK SNAP. Absolute horrid garbage.
My next distro will be debian or some derivative, bye bye Ubuntu
I’ve learned to like systemd over time, but not snaps and how Canonical handles things.
Debian also uses systemd nowadays, maybe you can try devuan (I think that’s how it’s called,) which is debian based but without systemd. I only tried it once on a server but came back to debian.
