Linux

Opinion you said?... https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

Thankfully the Manjaro team didn't seem to have a major mess-up recently, but they did have some very troubled past. Especially now that Arch has a real installer that bundles entire DEs for you, the premise of using an "Arch Linux but easy to use" OS seems less and less

To each their own though! Nothing wrong with using Manjaro at all if someone really likes it

I heard that the maintainers let some important web certificates expire, which is a big no-no.

Never used it, but in my mind it will always be the distribution that told its users to roll the date on their machines back because they forgot to renew their website's SSL certificate.

Twice.

It has no meaningful place or benefits and everyone defending it seems to just be saying "erm, well why not!" and ignoring the problems its caused when compared to distros like endeavouros

I like the idea and used Manjaro for a few years, but its run by less competent people than Id like (or at least in comparison to other distros), so I stopped and moved to a different distro.

Manjaro is what got me into Arch so I'll always have a soft spot for it. I don't keep up with internet drama so much but I do remember people saying some stuff about the devs being shady/shitty. But I'm not sure how much truth there is to that.

I enjoy Manjaro and I would even say its the reason I switched to linux (I didn't like the other distros) but I've had updates that brick my operating system however this isnt so much of a problem for me now since i back up my data and use timeshift now.

I think most of the Manjaro hate comes from people comparing it to arch linux

This site gives some reasons: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

i used manjaro for a while but endeavour felt a lot more stable when i switched, im on nobara now though

Used it for a year, hated it after the year (but enjoyed it while using because it was better than other distros becaus of Arch underneath).

Manjaro was always a hard and buggy mess to install something from the AUR or to change GPU drivers, its easy to break the system but in my Opinion Ubuntu is even easier to break and not understand what is going on.

Maybe its just me, maybe I need Arch, Debian or to fully set my system from the ground up. (I switched from Manjaro to Arch and never needed to reinstall Arch ever again compared to Manjaro)

I liked it when I used it but that was 5 years ago and there was still dev drama even back then. Contributors said they didn't feel valued iirc.

It seems alright but I've seen a lot of issues.

Back when I contributed to ALMA - we'd constantly get issues created by Manjaro users, as it wouldn't work due to Manjaro having the kernel package set up differently IIRC.

I'd just use Arch Linux tbh, it's only painful the first time.

I tried it on bare metal some years ago. The main issue I had was that it wasn’t very stable and I kept running into bugs that made the system hard to use. I’m sure they have fixed that by now but that was my experience.

Manjaro was the first Linux distro I used as a daily driver, from October 2020 to July 2021, when I switched to EndeavourOS. To be fair the main reason I switched was all those previous mess-ups by the developers and the troubled past, which I didn't know of when I moved to Linux. In the year or so I used it, I didn't have any messed update or crash myself.

I would say it's still a fine distro for beginners who want to try a rolling release (as EndeavourOS is imho better in every way, but it doesn't come with any GUI package manager so I wouldn't call it a distro for absolute beginners), but can't see any other usage case, as it's especially risky if you want to use packages from the AUR.

Manjaro is what happens when you have a really nice installer for arch linux and some neat extras; but it's made by people who looked at a 20 minute youtube tutorial about the subject and think they're now the best in their subject even though they barely know how to refresh their own domain name.

if you want an arch-like experience use something like XeroxLinux, arco linux, or EndeavourOS instead, they all have their own place in the arch space and are way better at teaching you how to actually use and maintain your system rather than throw some system at it that will break because it is barely maintained and arch is a rolling release distro.

Brodie Robertson on youtube did a series of videos on the different fuckups by the manjaro team ranging from not refreshing their domain name, DDOS-ing the AUR with their tooling, and pushing broken patches upstream with a rat's ass of knowledge of what's actually going on.

I heard some security issues with it, can't confirm.

I installed Manjaro sometime during 2018, and I have been using it without any major issues. The only issue I had is when AUR packages fail to update. I find that most of the time the issue will resolve itself eventually anyway. Overall, I feel that Manjaro is a nice and stable distro.

The only negative I can think of is the community. At the time, I was bluntly told to read the manual whenever I needed help or pointers. But, my negative experience was from a few years ago, so hopefully the community has improved today.

My daily driver distro today is Mint, which I think is more polished than Manjaro.

I doesn't deserve the hate it gets, it's not that big of a project but it's being treated like it pushed kids to kill themselves, the devs fucked up a few times and made some questionable decision (freeoffice...) but they put upe a nice working distro and aren't completely insane like the gnome/ubuntu devs

I use Manjaro ARM on my Orange PI because I couldn't get Arch ARM to work on it, while Manjaro has support of my devices out of the box. Since I installed a minimal possible version (without any DE), it doesn't feel bloated or something. It feels like I'm using Arch but with slower updates. Overall, it's good and I don't notice much difference from Arch. But anyway, I haven't tried it for a desktop station.

I don't know. I don't feel right if not arch like something missing

I have heard things previously about Manjaro that make me want to avoid it.

OTOH, as an Arch user, some of the things I feel could use improvement are better with Manjaro. Pretty much every Arch derivative does something about the major pain points of Arch, though, slapping on a installation gui (though, honestly, just advertising the archinstall CLI script that's on the install usb stick and fixing it up a bit would help Arch), and giving you an AUR helper by default.

I recently tried the XFCE version of Endeavor in a vm, and I quite like it, so if I move from Arch, I'm more inclined to go that direction.

I love it. Been daily driving for about 3 years and haven't looked back. I call it the 'Windows' of Linux distros because of its relentless focus on practical usability.

@IUsedTo Recently migrated from Manjaro > Arch > NixOS.

I enjoyed Manjaro! Ignoring some of the issues outlined in other resources (one in this thread) which are completely valid, I think its a good way to get involved in the arch/arch-based space. I felt it was very easy to setup and get running. Most of the software support seemed pretty great and it was relatively snappy. I had no issues during my time (although I didn't need to use the AUR) and would definitely recommend it to others considering it.

It's fine. Sometimes an update breaks the stuff installed via aur, that's fixable by issuing a command like that:

yay -S $(pacman -Qoq /usr/lib/python3.11) --answerclean All

Otherwise it works rocksolid. I've got it for 2 years on my thinkpad and no issues. Are there better Arch like distros? Probably. Would I choose another distro like Endeavour OS when I have to make fresh install? Probably. But until then, its okay.

Irresponsible devs, delayed packages for no reason causing massive issues with ours and quite often invalid site certificates due to neglect. It's just arch but worse since it uses their repo which delays packages for practically no reason causing aur incompatibilities. Endeavour is a far better distro for beginners (or arch install script) with the exception of it not having pamac preinstalled.

Manjaro was my intro to Linux, but now that I know more about it, I can't recommend it in good conscience. Letting their SSL certs expire is something that happens (even though they could automate it), but telling their users to change their clocks so it works is a big no-no.

Worse than that is how they manage packages from upstream. Simply freezing them for two weeks is, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds. You don't get timely security updates, but you still end up with the issues of being on the bleeding edge - just late. It also means that if you use the AUR (which is really one of the biggest perks of Arch-based systems), it's possible that the necessary dependencies are out of date.

I think that if one wants "Arch with an installer" they should go with EndeavourOS, or try the archinstall script.

I ran Manjaro for a year or so. It works well and the default theming looks great but I don't really see a point to the distro really. It's basically just Arch from a couple weeks ago with no AUR support.

I've been using it for nearly 3 years and encountered minimal issues. I'm using it on a Lenovo E14 all AMD laptop, mostly for gaming and web browsing.

I haven't used it but it's my go-to recommendation for Linux newbies. Partly because it's easy for me as an Arch user to solve their problems