Sometimes people tell me I should have gone with either Linux Mint or EndeavourOS, and otherwise don’t really tell me why it’s bad, just that it’s bad. So far I only could find one thing, which is that their repo isn’t 100% rolling for stability, and sometimes it does not guarantee stability.
There are a lot of good reasons from other users in this thread which explains why not to trust the company. My reason is that Manjaro as an OS is broken.
I’ve ran it on 2 laptops and both had system breaking bugs which corrupted the install after a few months. I tried installing just from their repo I’ve tried being careful when I update but every time the system would one day update and never turn back on.
Arch especially AUR supported arch is amazing. But Manjaro isn’t the way to use it.
Having experienced instability I’d say that is a pretty good reason. It’s one of those things that don’t matter until it happens to you, and I think everyone assumes won’t happen to them.
Having said that it can be managed. It’s infuriating when your OS just stops working, but if you have good backups and can roll back the system quickly it’s fine.
Rolling releases are great for having the latest versions of software, but it’s also like constantly being a beta tester. And the distros approach to rolling release makes a big difference.
Manjaro does have a small development team compared to other big name rolling releases, so it just isn’t able to do the same level of testing and prep as a better resourced distro like Fedora for example. It does a reasonably good job with a small team but it inevitably makes things more difficult.
Manjaro is also Arch based but it’s not Arch, and one source of breakages can be using AUR. I think people think of Manjaro as just a more convenient version of Arch but Manjaro is it’s own distro, and using the packages in the AUR can break things. People seem to forget that Arch is bleeding edge while Manjaro does hold packages back for testing, so the two distros are not in sync.
If Manjaro is used as Manjaro and not treated as arch-light then it’s a fine distro. But it’s somewhat pushed as an easier to use version of Arch, so then inexperienced users in particular can get into trouble trying to use things like the AUR. But Manjaro itself is generally fine.
I personally don’t recommend Manjaro to people. That’s because for me there are better rolling release distros which are better resourced (such as OpenSuSE or Fedora), better options for systems stable systems, or if users want Arch then Arch itself is the way to go. Manjaro is absolutely fine but I wouldn’t say it’s the best option in any category, including Arch based distros.
Everyone has listed a lot of reasons, and there’s also https://manjarno.pages.dev/ which pretty much sums up all the technical reasons.
I’d just like to add why I switched. I used Manjaro for a couple of years, and suggested it to friends and family for a while. It was fine when it worked. But when it didn’t, it was a pain to figure out wtf was wrong. Their forum wasn’t helpful, and you can’t get help in the Arch forums, because it’s just different enough. Also, whenever something broke, their logic was always backwards. Like SSL broke for the 5th time, just roll back your clock guys. It felt like being in an abusive relationship with a distro.
I finally switched to EndeavourOS some 4 years ago, and it’s been very smooth ever since. In fact, I’ve had a good experience with pretty much every distro that I’ve used long term (e.g. AlmaLinux, Debian, Fedora, and even Ubuntu), except for Manjaro.
Pretty much everybody I know who have used manjaro, say it fucked up their computer because of an update.
In general, it has update problems
Probably something to do with their main package deleting the pacman lock file so it can run a nested pacman update command… Which means two pacman instances running at the same time and nothing stopping other ones after that nested one has completed.
I used Manjaro for a while, recommended it a bunch of people because it was all so very pretty. even the grub screen looked nice. for me it did however break on three separate updates, each requiring a lot of fiddling and manual intervention, despite my system being rather vanilla at the time. the last time it broke i just installed fedora instead and never looked back. all the friends i’ve recommended it to also switched at some point, because of it either being unstable/ dying or not having the features one wants. i generally recommend against manjaro, not just because of my bad experiences, but also because better distros exist.
They’re devs constantly make mistakes that harm the ecosystem, they suggest poor practices, and are generally incompetent.
They ddosed the aur twice the second time the exact same way as the first. No solution was put into place to fix the root cause and it caused a major issue. They didn’t learn.
The lead arm Dev pushed an update to Asahi (trusted, due to their position) that broke the system for half of the users (those using xorg) showing the dev didn’t test it on xorg at all. The problem? They upped a version for a dependency which had nothing to do with their code. The issue was documented. This dev, their lead arm dev, didn’t check the docs before upoing the version. Didn’t test at all either. This is a lead dev. That’s their standard
Before asahi was released they claimed manjaro worked on the m1 macbooks with a marketing page and all shipping a random dev version of the Asahi kernal known to not even boot. This was lucky as if it could, the build had a chance to break the computer. What did they do this? Who knows.
They forgot to update their SSL certs 5 times telling people to change their system clocks the first time. You can automate SSL cert renewal by the way. It’s easy and takes at max twenty minutes if it’s not cooperating and you’ll never have to worry again. This shows, again, they’re not competant and don’t learn from their mistakes.
They suggested, and strongly defended, using sudo pacman -Syyu which forces a database refresh for every install. This is not likely ever needed unless something fucks up bad and puts unnecessary stress on the repos.
A lot more too but I’m sleepy. I rarely say a distro is a bad choice but manjaro is the strongest exception for me. You can’t trust their devs. Of course the entire AUR and update issue but that’s hit or miss on whether it effects you
If you want a semi rolling release like manjaro I’d suggest OpenSuse tumbleweed. Same release idea but with consistantly competant devs.
Manjaro is a wet fart. I don’t want them sitting in my lap man
Just use vanilla Arch😭
I like EndeavourOS because it’s pretty much vanilla Arch, just with a nice installer. (Although we do now have the archinstall script.) After installation, there’s pretty much no difference. Also, I like the logo. I only installed Arch once for the bragging rights lol.
I ran vanilla Arch on 3 machines for over 15 years, but these days I just use Endeavor. Easy install, sane defaults, and then hands you a fully working and customizable arch. Absolutely love the project.
I can’t recommend EndeavourOS to my friends because there’s no app store. Manjaro Plasma comes with Discover.
I mean, you can just install Discover on EndeavourOS if you want.
Manjaro is a wet fart. I don’t want them sitting in my lap man
Pure poetry of yours, Wordsworth’s can go take a dump.
They suggested, and strongly defended, using sudo pacman -Syyu
Wait I’m not supposed to run that?
It won’t harm your system but it puts an undue burden on the repos. Just sudo pacman -Syu works perfectly
The double y forces a full database refresh which is rarely needed. One example of when it might be useful might be if you lost power during a dB upgrade.
Manjaro is a great distribution that has had its share of controversies in the past, but in my opinion, it has something essential: control over its own repositories. I would not use any derivative distribution that does not have control over its own repositories, nor would I ever use a rolling distribution that does not have a system recovery system configured by default in case of failure. Manjaro has control over its repositories and Timeshift configured and ready to use as soon as the system is installed. If Tumbleweed did not exist, I would probably be using Manjaro.
They have repeatedly caused a ddos on Arch servers, ignored security concerns, had supply chain issues when it comes to Pinephones (and more).
On top of that, their deployment strategy for core repositories is just a rollout delay with practically 0 quality assurance, which is even more bizarre, granted that they butcher perfectly functional Arch pkgsbuilds. No idea for why they continue to imply this somehow improves stability. Stability in what?
There’s a reason why people don’t recommend it, and there’s a reason why you shouldn’t either.
They have a poor history of incidents that leaves many people not trust them.
That site is hilarious
I liked it when I used it a couple years ago. But I did have update bork my computer.
Because of the their choice to hold back package updates by a bit, it breaks AUR support. I have Aldo heard people talk about stability problems. The biggest reason IMHO to choose EndeavourOS (or even CachyOS) over Manjaro is that the former is much closer to base Arch Linux. Manjaro just has a bad reputation. When I used Manjaro like 6 years ago it was fine.
@Neptr @ZILtoid1991 in my experience, 90% of the AUR packages work. And AUR is not officially supported by Arch…
It ,changes in early days it was ubuntu , now its manjaro, next will be arch.
I started with linux mint 12 on my laptop,went afterwards to manjaro KDE,both gave me great pleasure for learning at my own tempo , now i switch between 4 different distro,still learning new things.
I used to use Manjaro despite the hate, it works fine. I moved to Fedora KDE because it’s as up to date or better than Manjaro and even though I rarely had issues with Manjaro, I’ve had even less with Fedora, and the software available is almost as good, without the sketchiness of the AUR.
The probleem is located between chair and
PcI just went to https://manjaro.org/ to look up reasons to install manjaro. I couldn’t find anything on their site. Literally nothing.
What is in your opinion / experience / knowledge the advantage of manjaro compared to arch and/or endeavour?
And if not, why would you choose it over fedora? What is the advantage for you to choose an arch base?
Package manager with aur is no reason anymore since distrobox exists.
Btw, I use opensuse.
There is nothing. They hold back updates and say it’s more stable. The thing is, if you set up Arch with btrfs snapshots, which is literally included in archinstall, you already have a system that’s basically unbreakable. (Although their setup is not perfect imo, but you can easily fix that as well.)
@illusionist @ZILtoid1991 more stable builds, less frequent updates but security issues solved.
When I used arch for a couple of months, everything was stable. I’ve never heard anyone complaining about it. What exactly did you face? (So that I can learn)
What’s the advantage of the lower update frequency? It’s your choice how often you update. You don’t have to update 3 times a day.
Security issues resolved? Do you mean the RAT incident? It is aur.
DISCLAIMER: AUR packages are user produced content. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk.
This is aur’s disclaimer. When taking the disclaimer seriously, I read: do not use it for a security critical usage. And I’d consider my personal web browsing habit as security critical. Hence, I don’t use it for critical stuff like banking. Besides, I probably should install user apps with flatpak like on other distros.
If I use the same method like I would on any other distro, you have to compare other stuff besides that. Likewise, if you really want to install the stuff from aur, you don’t have to use arch, you can use another base with distrobox.
