Manjaro is a free and open source Linux operating system that emphasizes privacy
manjaro.org
manjaro.org
I used to recommend Manjaro to people as an alternative to Arch that's a bit friendlier, but I stopped after trying to debug an issue and realizing that they have overcomplicated a lot of things (kernel management in particular bugs me in Manjaro.)
Arch now has some kind of installer, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, I really wish Valve could package something like SteamOS 3 for regular desktops. I'm aware of multiple projects that do similar things, but the execution on Deck is quite good. The "immutable" concept is certainly going to be an important part of Linux on desktops in the future, probably in different forms.
Using Arch without a bigger org managing it for you is kind of dangerous. Their policy is that they just wantonly push anything, and if there’s something wrong with a package they’ll tell you in the upgrade message. That you’ll have to manually evoke. And check for each package upgrade.
I learned a lot from setting up Arch a couple of times, but ultimately I think they have a few policies that are terrible for the average user or even company.
I work in Deep Learning, and the NVIDIA version comes in really handy.
I never face NVIDIA issues like my peers frequently complain.
Special optimizations? How? Compile the world like Gentoo so as to use every single instruction of your CPU? Cool, I can actually stand behind that and install the OS because of it.
But what does "a hardened Linux kernel" mean?
I feel that that page expects you to know a lot about CachyOS already and I found myself impatiently closing the browser tab when I was about 50% in.
Are there better introduction articles?
Basically they package many kernels with different schedulers, hardening and such to choose from. I believe hardened linux may even be a vanilla Arch kernel?
And its not like Gentoo, they run their own repos like Clear Linux or ALHP were everything is basically built for Haswell and up (and very soon AVX512 CPUs like rocket lake/zen4). But unlike Manjaro, the vanilla Arch repos are also used, and are the system target.
Other than that... Its more or less an Arch installer, like EndeavorOS. Perhaps that is why it doesn't need an introduction, because beyond some qol it is Arch Linux. Thats kinda the point.
Which is both good, and actually sane.
NixOS: Exists. (And runs great after I moved from Arch 1.5 years ago!)
I found this to be 100% correct. You feel like you won’t ever need to distro-hop again, right? Like this is the penultimate Linux distro? Right?
Since NixOS's rough edges can be quite rough, perhaps 'penultimate' may be more apt. (I mean, when NixOS works well, then it is amazing; but if you hit some use case where NixOS is difficult to use, then it requires more effort/understanding to get through).
1. Use flakes to set up your system and do work with. It sometimes feels underdocumented, but it's worth some headscratching imo.
2. Don't worry about putting everything in the base system. Stick to services (Tailscale, Syncthing, etc) and system/base desktop software. It's easy enough to use nix run, or Podman, or flatpak, or even AppImage to a degree.
3. Want to configure something declaratively? Before pulling out HomeManager or another user tool, consider configuring software at the system level. I do this for Zsh, SwayWM, etc. As a bonus, you can easily block off shell startup files and chown them to root so that malware can't trivially insert themselves there. (It's a weak protection, but definitely doesn't hurt in addition to other approaches.)
There's more (I recommend using Nix-ld to support AppImage and raw binaries better) but these things go a long way.
Nix is basically the future of operating systems. The one problem that still needs solving, which is blocking wider adoption, is ease of use. People are working on making the command line tools easier, but what will really do it is something that abstracts away config generation with a UI installer and tools, but opens up the config if you go into "advanced mode" or something like that.
Helps to get some intuition on what fits where.
Surely, hammer is fast enough to render retro indie games at 60fps. :-)
I don't want to babysit my computers. My wife would also not be amused
The only thing with arch that is blocking a non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly person is the installation process (even with the script, knowing what a DE is, making a conscious decision which to choose, KDE etc)
I think your definition of "non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly" is quite different from the rest of the population.
Also note, that just because you happened to had months of no problems, that does not mean it will be the same experience for someone else. Speaking of it: for a non-techy person, using the terminal is already a problem.
What OS is she using now?
As a young teenager I got the bright idea to get my mother using Linux. Later I bought her a Mac and she was much happier. Wish I'd thought of that sooner.
(I have no particular attachment to any OS (hate them all equally ;), it's mostly a matter of what you're used to, and picking the right tool for the job.)
Approx how many times have you observed this in practice over, say, the past 2~5 years?
I then switched to Ubuntu and then to Manjaro and had only one break (it just wouldn't boot, but I easily found instructions on how to fix that) in many years straight.
I don't say Arch is bad but to me it seems like it is rather far from perfect while Manjaro is the closest to perfect I have ever seen.
Needless to say I appreciate Arch exists and am very grateful for the amazing job they do. Obviously no Manjaro would exist without Arch in the first place. Arch Wiki deserves a separate mention as it is of great quality and often helps a lot no matter what actual distro are you tweaking (it helped me with Ubuntu).
I found reading the installation guide intimidating!
It is worth doing at least once, it teaches you a lot about Linux.
There's nothing about Manjaro that makes it significantly more free than the other top Linux distributions (as an aggregate).
There's nothing about Manjaro that makes it significantly more open source than the other top Linux distributions (as an aggregate).
There's nothing about Manjaro that makes it significantly more private than the other top Linux distributions (as an aggregate).
In my experience it is significantly less stable and using an Arch based distro without the basic knowledge of an Arch system seens like a recipe for frustration.
Manjaro is more for those who are not. Really, the first time you install Arch you're stuck in pages and pages of wiki trying to make decisions like what kind of partition scheme you want, what kind of network configuration tool, what kind of disk encryption, blabla.
For people like you and me, this is fine. The idea is you learn from it as you go, you tailor the system to your needs. Personally I use FreeBSD, not Arch which takes a similar approach (a slight bit more guided) and is a little bit more opinionated but also offers some cool options not as readily available in the linux world.
But reality is, most people are not like us, they are already put off by a Next-Next-Finish installer. The Arch wiki might as well be in Chinese for them (or in Dutch, if the user just happens to be Chinese).
While I've never used Manjaro other than on a Live CD, I understand this is the usecase it tries to cover.
I met Arch users that are all 1337 and think they are the best. Usually they don't actually know much about their system at all.
And others that are like you say... Helpful but a bit protective.
It is a good feeling to start with something minimal and build on it until you have something that is totally customized to your needs. Sure you can start with a distro that has a lot of things preconfigured but you will need to reverse engineer first. Arch gives you the greenfield approach which is in my opinion more enjoyable.
What will EndeavourOS do better?
The AUR is so nice, as you know. Not having to really mess around with Snap vs. Flatpak and the like and just using yay or pacman to get everything is amazing.
I'm not sure how much better it is than Manjaro, but it's just good. It feels like I could dive into doing things the hardcore Arch way any time I wanted, but also provides the UX tools to do most of the same things if you want the more simple option with some guardrails.
In this entire thread several people basically say "Arch > Manjaro" and proceed to use the word "feel" multiple times which -- as I'm sure you can see -- is not a compelling and logical emotionless argument.
I've messed around on a Manjaro machine a lot and only broke it once (and I knew that I did so, it wasn't a random problem). It seems that nobody can answer clearly and differentiate one distro in favor of another. :|
- I had another poster say Arch is "flexible" -- as if Manjaro straight up disallows you to install new software? -- and I got confused what do they mean.
- Another one said too much software is installed by Manjaro out of the box and this is something that I half-agree with, but I still prefer that to Arch where you are booted to a root terminal and you are supposed to figure out how to make a basic functioning system (and I don't find that "having a root terminal in VGA mode on a blinding display contrast" constitutes "a basic functioning system").
- I think another one (but not on this thread) said they're not okay with Manjaro pre-setting some desktop environment visuals and settings for you. I super strongly disagree with them though, for reasons outlined below.
In general I spotted some tinge of elitism. It is strange to me that this still exists in 2023. A lot of us "the nerds" that tinkered with computers since teenagers are 40+ now and our work-life-hobby balance is tilting more and more towards the "life" part, so I personally prefer a system that gives me a working desktop environment with sensible defaults and yes, some extra software that I might not need, because after that me as an experienced programmer can clean up the machine to the extent I'd feel comfortable calling it "minimal" (always a subjective term, of course).
Oh, let's not even mention MHWD. I'd throw my hands in the air and never use Linux again -- very likely -- if that didn't exist. But I might be a bit extreme here, I hear that a good amount of distros have high-quality hardware detectors and automatic (at OS installing time, I mean) installers of the right drivers / kernel modules. But for now I am not keen on going out of my comfortable zone to experiment.
Thanks for entertaining the discussion.
EDIT: Also, supposedly, Manjaro team has some management issues.
I mean, just don't use them?
Not at all the case any more. Arch isos now come with an install script (literally just 'archinstall' from the live medium). I had never installed arch and it took me 15 minutes, it's a fully guided setup.
I'm a Manjaro user specifically because of the easy install. It's not that I'm not capable (Linux/sysadmin internals are interesting to me and I am often going down rabbit holes and exploring distro differences) but it's just that (a) when I want to install an OS I usually want to be up and running fast and (b) I'd like something with more conventions so when things do inevitably go wrong it's a bit easier to reason about the system relative to other users.
So I'm wondering if my next install should be Arch or one of the other Arch-based distro -- is archinstall not a 15 minute install or does it have some other pressing issue?
The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.
Nobody says "Arch is a great first choice of distro" except with the explicit qualifier "if you want to get your hands dirty and read a lot of documentation". So nobody that comes to Arch has any excuse, in my opinion, for not bothering to learn how to do it. Again this isn't the attitude "Arch should be hard". It's the attitude that you shouldn't expect other Arch users to spoonfeed you when they've already provided a comprehensive wiki and installation guide and there are searchable forums full of troubleshooting you can refer to. Arch isn't made hard on purpose, but as a natural consequence of the way it is structured (minimally) it is difficult for a completely new user to get going unless they read the documentation.
Ironically, projects like archinstall prove that difficulty isn't a goal but an unfortunate side-effect: they're perfectly happy to make things easier if it doesn't compromise the integrity of the project. They're not going to automatically install a desktop environment for everyone just to make things easier.
The deepest I’ve had to go is search the forum if I couldn’t figure out something from the wiki.
The wiki is so good that it’s common to come across it and find your answer for your linux question even if you are using a distro other than arch.
Eventually someone joined the community who did want to maintain an installer, so now they have archinstall.
To be honest I think most people are better served with other distros, because they tend to deliver them the experience they actually want.
I’ve been running Arch for almost a decade and it hasn’t been all easy, but I have a system now that I know in and out, is built exactly how I want it, etc. I have wanted to try Manjaro because I’ve heard good things about it, but what can it provide for me? Nothing.
Coming from the other side, if someone isn’t comfortable with a terminal and a lot of frustration, why would they look to an Arch distro? Debian or Fedora are much friendlier for first-time Linux users.
It seems to me that in trying to appeal to everyone, Manjaro has coincidentally appealed to no one.
What's more is it usually comes out the box with sane defaults, much like Debian. I've not had to do anything "technical" to run my desktop, any more than I would have to on an OSX laptop for work, say.
So it isn't really right to say Manjaro appeals to nobody. It appeals to the technically minded and impatient, which I am.
Nerd arrogance at its best
Maybe there are better than Manjaro arch based starter distros, but for getting someone into Linux, my experience with Manjaro was great.
When the manual doesn't work (The most recent installer ISO I was using had versions of some commands where what the wiki said to do wasn't a valid flag) you're really gonna have a bad time. Especially when, as is seemingly often the case, you don't realize that the command you ran didn't do everything it needed to until 4-5 commands later when something entirely different fails.
I can imagine it's easier to install on older~ hardware with no dual boot though.
You don't have to bother with even that nowadays (except maybe to connect to wifi before installation). Arch ISOs nowadays come with an easy, self-explanatory TUI installer with which you can install it just as easily as you would install Ubuntu.
A distro like Manjaro that delays package updates for a few weeks seems preferable for me.
It is actually worse, especially if you are using AUR packages.
But to be honest Arch has been extremely stable for me.
I haven't tried EndeavourOS or any of the other Manjaro replacements, but next time that I need to set up a Linux computer quickly and don't have the patience to set up Arch, I probably will try one of them.
I will say in Manjaro's defense that even with some of its weirdness, I think I've had fewer issues on Manjaro than I have on Debian-based systems like Ubuntu. But I don't think that's a fair comparison because I haven't used Ubuntu in a while and I wasn't running it in parallel to Manjaro. So I suspect some of the increased stability has come from just general Linux progress and me knowing more about how to keep a computer stable.
I've never used it but I know Manjaro is basically a more opinionated and easier to use Arch. If you want rolling debian isn't an option but something like OpenSUSE tumbleweed is.
But I really wonder what's supposed to be so much better in terms of privacy on Manjaro.
There's nothing you can do with any of the security-oriented distros that you can't do with any other distro, but the security-oriented ones can ease initial configuration and perhaps make it less likely that you overlooked something.
Second, the defaults on something like Debian are very security focused. Out of the box it installs hardly anything.
Also I have never heard of Manjaro trying to be a "security-focused" distro until now. Not in the sense of OpenBSD, Whonix, or Hardened Gentoo. I'm sure it's not bad at privacy and security but really for most Linux distros this is a given.
But, again, that's a state you can achieve with every distro. It's just with normal distros, it takes more work.
Manjaro has little of this as a default out of the box. They are mostly able to claim that they are privacy oriented because any OS that isn't borderline spyware like Windows is privacy oriented in comparison.
There are various sandboxing tools but they are developed upstream, not by distros.
> as well as good security practices for the distro maintainers
Some large distributions do this, but it takes a lot of work. How many contributors does Manjaro have?
I've been on Debian unstable for years on multiple devices, without major issues.
Now I run Ubuntu LTS with gnu Guix for most userland software.
Switched from Ubuntu to Manjaro a year ago as Ubuntu updates kept on breaking everything: drivers, issues with Python.
I also quite like the pieces of software that ship with Manjaro. Especially Kate, which I'm now using on my Windows devices as well.
Besides those technicalities, there's the controversy about their corporate management and the partnerships they had.
If you want an Arch-based distro, go either for Arch or EndeavourOS. Manjaro is a big no-no.
On the endeavouros side they only have their DE customization packages + nvidia helper packages + ZFS + small helper applications (I'm assuming wgetpaste and such are for users to easily upload error logs, etc) https://github.com/endeavouros-team/repo/tree/master/endeavo...
It’s a slippery slope, though. Manjaro is just a gateway drug to Arch, and Arch is just a psychiatric test to see how many things perpetually break on you before you snap and move onto the paradise of NixOS.
Yep. I went there. Of course I was going there. My username checks out.
https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso
Give it a shot!
Funnily enough, I moved to Hyprland when one of the Jupiter Broadcasting podcasts (Linux Unplugged possibly?) talked about it. So from this thread alone you can tell that I'm quite easily influenced!
The only gotcha I have come across happens if I do not upgrade any packages for a while and then try to install a new package, which can break dependencies for existing packages. The solution has been to do a system upgrade with `pacman -Syu`.
This is how any rolling release distro works. Manjaro is not different here.
I stopped using it and installed Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS together with gnu GUIX for userland stuff. I have survived dist-upgrades from LTS to LTS with fewer issues than what arch used to give me on a monthly basis.
It's been pretty stable for me, so I don't have any complaints.
I recently got a new laptop and decided to try Arch. I gave up after a while (I think I was tripped up trying to install alongside Windows). I also tried Endeavour, and for reasons I cannot recall also gave up after an hour or two. I'm sure I would have got there in the end, but I ran out of time and went with Manjaro again which installed very easily (to be fair though, I have done it a few times).
What's vaguely interesting to me is that the choice of window manager is what has got me where I am. I wonder how many other people have found that their window manager preference has driven their choice of OS?
https://boilingsteam.com/manjaro-is-losing-ground-very-fast-...
If so, maybe they should set up a referral link to direct folks to the right place and collect a referral bonus to help fund Manjaro <- sorta joke.
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenSnitch_available...
For permission management you want all your apps from outside the distro (like Flathub), or you can manually use bubblewrap or firejail to create custom sandboxes.
I've done all three. Arch isn't on the same level as Ubuntu, Fedora, or Manjaro on level of ease for instillation.
Compiling everything manually would take a long time. You would need to work out all the dependencies, make everything, install everything, create all the configuration files... You'd then need to do this again every time a package is updated. You'd hope that every dependency had an RSS feed you could follow. For those that didn't you'd need to regularly check for updates. Arch requires two commands...
What are you guys using these days? Is Linux Mint any good?
The difference between .deb and other common packages (rpm, pacman) are minimal. Almost all desktop distros will handle dockerfiles just as well as Ubuntu.
I want to run away from `snap` tho.
I switched from Ubuntu too and it was surprising how polished ZorinOS was. Everything was super stable and in the last 2 years, it didn't break by itself, which I can't say the same for Ubuntu sadly.
Linux Mint too is cool but the outdated UI is the only deal breaker for me.
[0] - https://zorin.com/os
Recently picked up a Dell XPS15 with a new i7 and nVidia 3050 and the latest release worked with everything out of the box.
I would prefer rolling release to avoid the situation I'm in with LTS, but otherwise I'm a very happy Mint user and financial contributor.
But I'm pretty happy with OpenSuse for desktop use and MicroOS for my servers. tough if I'm honest, I don't know what are their main advantages over other systems.
Does Manjaro publish privacy practices of every software package in their repository? I would like to see more projects take the Debian approach to transparency. And for Debian to keep pushing this forward.
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
https://www.debian.org/legal/privacy
A while back, they used to publish what packages phone home.
I 've been happy with Arch for years though, but had to try another distro due to a certain large piece of software not working very well there.
Let's see...
I've hit one too many issues where the maintainers' position was "you're just expected to know about that quirk and deal with it yourself".
Manjaro was my first experience with the Arch linux ecosystem and my main reason for picking it over Arch itself was that bootstrapping Arch basically amounts to a ~500 step Howto that involves piecing together an enormous amount of details. It's fun but time consuming and definitely not something you can let a non technical user do. Manjaro is nicer but I would not recommend it to people unable to use a command line environment. This is not a distribution for people that are not very hands on with that. I actually like it this way but you have to be honest about things like this.
At the time I installed Manjaro, Arch did not have a usable installer yet and one of the non trivial steps that I got stuck on was configuring bootloaders and disk encryption. I tried it and gave up. Manjaro has a nice installer that does this for you. Since then, Arch now bundles an installer that makes this somewhat easier. It's still a hurdle.
When I got the laptop, I had a client meeting scheduled the next day and I needed a working laptop in a hurry. I got up and running in around four hours. And when I say up and running, I mean I had a working laptop, with my IDE installed, docker up and running, slack and a few other communication tools, etc. I started installing at 7pm and had everything set up before 23:00. With zero experience with Manjaro.
Things I like with Manjaro:
- rolling updates and fast access to latest everything. I ended up installing yay to make updates easier and this seems to work fine. I've been doing this for two years and the process seems very robust. Crucially, Manjaro repos include Yay so installing and upgrading it with pacman is easy. With Arch, you have to build your own package from the git repo. If you are not familiar, Yay is a wrapper around pacman that makes installing / upgrading whatever packages or custom packages a breeze. Just yay whatever and it does it's thing. Or "yay" to upgrade everything.
- Modern desktop with wayland and gnome. You can run whatever of course but this is vaguely a default and well supported. Just worked for me. Wayland is still controversial for some but it seems to work fine for me. X is there too if you need / prefer that.
- Kernel updates via their manjaro settings tool. Every few weeks, I click the latest kernel, install it, reboot and if the system comes up fine (which it generally does), I uninstall the previous kernel. You can also pick LTS kernels and a real time variant. The vanilla linux kernel seems fine however and generally I'm running the latest within days of Linus Torvalds releasing one. That means I get the latest driver tweaks, fixes, etc.
- If you are into gaming, Valve uses arch for their own gaming console and installing Steam on Manjaro is therefore super easy. Just worked for me. Most of my gaming catalog just works on it and proton seems to work well enough with my games with very few exceptions. And having the latest kernel means you generally get the best possible support and performance at any time.
- Between native packages, custom packages, snap, flatpak, and docker, you can run just about anything that you need for work these days. I have Skype, Webex, MS Teams, Slack, Skype installed and a bunch of development tools like VS Code. If it exists for Linux, Manjaro can run it.
- I went with BTRFS and Manjaro wrapped the installer with some scripts that sets up file system snapshots around installation updates. So, if you mess up, you can roll back easily. Nice. I've had to do this once and it was easy to figure out. I'm by no means an expert on this and this is my first time using this file system.
- Things like video card drivers don't require extra work and I've had those from day 1. Of course with Intel there isn't a whole lot on this front. You can go oss only but most users would probably prefer to have the right drivers. Also things like opencl and vulkan work without hassle.
- Part of the reason that Arch / Manjaro is so stable is that their philosophy is that OSS software is packaged and run as-is. There are no kernel patches that they maintain. They don't tweak upstream source code to customize it any more than strictly needed. The packaging is minimalist and straightforward. I like it that way. Things like Ubuntu, Red Hat, and others add months/years of latency to upstream changes and I find their tweaking/testing/integration is just lipstick on a pig generally that removes more value than it adds. I don't miss it. The Arch attitude is that upstream developers know what they are doing and they just pass through whatever gets tagged as stable. My experience is that this actually works great. Manjaro adds a few days lag to this process. Which seems enough for most big issues to be sorted out before they hit my laptop.
Things I don't like:
- Manjaro has their own repositories and they are gate keeping changes from upstream Arch packages. So, there's a bit of lag with updates and as far as I can tell there isn't a whole lot of value being added to the vast majority of those packages. If I installed from scratch, I'd probably use Arch this time despite this being a bit more hassle.
- There is the occasional weirdness that comes with cutting edge. I had some issues with intel sound drivers for example. I got it working in the end with a kernel update and some level of trial and error. But this had me mystified for a bit. Likewise, I had some weird keyboard issues at some point and this too was fixed via a kernel update. Issues like this are rare but when they happen, you are going to have to piece together solutions.
- Disk encryption works out of the box but the way it is setup is super slow on boot. Basically takes two minutes or so for it to get going. After it loads, it's fine. It should be possible to do better than this but I haven't spent the time to figure out how. If you are not comfortable messing with bootloaders (which I'm not), you kind of get stuck with the defaults.
None of this is blocking me; and these are minor annoyances.