Most notably, this is the update that brings Plasma 6 to stable (also LxQt gains Qt6 support). There are other notable changes ofc but this is probably what most people were waiting for.
My favourite thing about Arch is pretty much always finding up-to-date versions of the software I am looking for in either the repos or the AUR. This includes commercial stuff like Rider, Postman, and Burp Suite.
It is also great to always have an up-to-date kernel. I started using bcachefs just days after support was added to the kernel ( as an example ).
Do you always find what you want in the Debian repos? What do you do when you don’t?
I love Debian, but isn’t testing frozen for some time before the release of the next stable? I think during the freeze you won’t even get security updates.
Can you elaborate on why you think they suck? IMO most of the Arch derivates fill very good roles. Arch itself is a nice distro but you can never suit every user, and the derivates do things that Arch itself would never do.
Most importantly I believe there are lots of people who would have never used Arch vanilla but they get to enjoy “second hand Arch” and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
My take on the most prominent Arch derivates (forgive me if I forget any, it’s off the top of my head):
Endeavour has a rapid GUI installer. It may seem like a small thing but sometimes you don’t want to go through an uber-customizable multi-hour install process. It’s not a beginner vs advanced thing; seasoned users can also want to save time. This installer goes against the Arch goal of providing full install customization so it will probably never be in Arch, but it is useful.
Garuda goes one step further and offers lots of optimizations out of the box. As great as it is to have complete freedom to configure your system sometimes you want a distro to step in and do it for you.
Manjaro goes in another direction and attempts to be “stable Arch”. That may sound like a wierd thing to do with a rolling distro but it works suprisingly well. The catch is that in doing so it sacrifices a lot of what makes Arch Arch; it has a “mommy knows best” approach and tells the user to not customize their system too much. This of course is complete Arch heresy (which probably explains all the rage against it). But I think it has struck a good niche as “Arch for the lazy” – people who would like a rolling distro but are afraid of bleeding edge.
Endeavour is ok I just did like it that much I like that wallpapers
Garuda gave up on it in the installer like the look those jelly window should never be on by default and my ThinkPad Just Said No when I tried to install it I have a t480 I was testing it on there before I put it on my main pc
Manjaro I never got it to work properly just unstable there package installer is worse then discover (discover is not bad I just can’t get it working when I install it)
I’m fine with people using arch bases distros I just don’t use them and I won’t force backs arch on anyone
This is not a comment on you as it is a reasonable question but I have wasted too much time arguing with Manjaro fans and I do not want to go down that road again.
To answer the question partially, there were two classes of problem:
1 - governance - this includes the stuff like not renewing certs and not testing core packages. My system became unbootable more than once and one of those times I was not knowledgeable enough to recover and ended up reinstalling ( mostly a skill issue in retrospect ).
2 - package delays - I found more than once that the delay in releasing packages caused problems with the AUR. First, it sometimes meant I could not use AUR stuff because of missing dependencies ( like when that was the only place you could get dotnet - now in extras ). That was frustrating but not destructive. Worse, delays sometimes caused AUR dependencies to get installed instead of ones from extras or community ( because they were not there yet ). This happened with newish software or with packages that had been renamed or refactored. Once the AUR packages had been installed, they would sometimes stay even after the packages appeared in Manjaro repos. Then sometimes the AUR packages would disappear ( be abandoned as they had been moved into the core repos ) and I would end up with packages that would not update because of dependencies or where I would end up using source packages that took forever to build ( because git versions were the only ones available ). I thought all this was just the nature of the AUR until I switched to Arch it stopped happening. I have installed Manjaro since and had it happen again. I do use the AUR heavily.
Sorry, I ended up saying more than I wanted to. I wanted to answer your question but I do not want to argue. Honestly, if Manjaro works for you, I am very happy. If you think I am wrong, that is ok. I wish you luck.
Thank you for explaining and sharing your journey.
Regarding 1: A system not booting anymore really is a major issue. Maybe I was lucky to not have encountered that, maybe didn’t happen because I use a custom kernel. Regarding the certs: Honestly I don’t really care about the Manjaro website. The certs of the package repositories are important to me though.
Regarding 2: I’m using the AUR to install some third-party applications like “gpu-screen-recorder”. If you use it for system packages it will cause problems, because the Manjaro repos are delayed on purpose. One would encounter the same problem when using Debian stable and installing system stuff from a PPA.
Pretty much, yeah. Definitely agree with you on that one. I use Manjaro mostly bc im lazy to install regular arch and also bc I actually found that delay in the update cycle to be really good in my case. With regular arch the times I used it broke a lot more than what Manjaro ever did for me, and I’m not that particularly interested in “bleeding edge” that much, but instead I liked arch and arch based distros because of the compatibility and tools I need. The AUR is amazing, and there’s tons of custom repos to be added on top of arch which give me said tools I need to use + (yeah im lazy as hell).
So yeah, Manjaro is pretty much a bit of a more stable arch for lazy people, so right up my alley!
Happy Manjaro user here. “Mommy knows best” approach greatly helps to get onboard with Linux without shooting yourself in the foot.
If I would be offered to start my journey with Arch, I just wouldn’t begin this transition to begin with.
And now, I can enjoy a lot of benefits of Arch, be it rolling release, independence, AUR (carefully though), from the comfort of a nice and easy to understand system designed with regular user in mind.
I used Manjaro and did not experience at all that it was more stable. For one thing, the packages do not get changed, just delayed. You are just as bleeding edge just not as current. The delay caused wrong packages to be installed, or unable to be installed, from the AUR sometimes. Also, mostly for governance reasons, Manjaro just plain broke more often than Arch.
EndeavourOS just is Arch once it is installed ( especially if you remove eos-hooks which is what makes EOS report as EOS ). Everything on your system ( including the kernel ) comes from the Arch repos. Even the “unique” EOS configuration choices like dracut and systemd-boot come from the Arch repos. EOS adds a handful of optional utilities on top of Arch ( that you may never use ), some theming, and enables the AUR by default ( by installing yay and paru ). Of course, lots is people use these in Arch too.
I’d argue that Manjaro just doesn’t implement similar procedures with AUR because it’s insanely labor-intensive, all while repos are doing great.
As per the delay - the packages that cause troubles within this 2-week window are not updated until they’re fixed, that’s why this period exists in the first place.
I’ve heard a lot of negative experiences around Manjaro, but most commonly they refer to an experience that has been long ago. As a 1,5-year Linux enjoyer who started with Manjaro and keeps to it for the desktop (though I played around with Arch, Endeavour, and currently have Debian on my laptop), I had no serious issues with the distro - except one time Pamac updated the kernel while I turned off PC. For that, yeah, some guardrails wouldn’t hurt.
Arch is just as easy to install with a smaller ISO and a faster installer. Advertising EndeavourOS to inexperienced users will also lead to issues due to incompatibilities with the wiki due to dracut, the systemd firewall, and potentially systemd-boot.
Second of all: no, Arch is not as easy to install, specially for someone who is looking at Manjaro as a possibility.
And believe me, I was once a Manjaro user.
And for 99% of Manjaro users, what they really wanted was Arch with an installer. Which is what Endeavour OS is. (Although I’ll never understand why Endeavour people didn’t just develop the tools FOR Arch instead of wrapping it all up as their own).
How would Arch have implemented the default installer within Arch itself?
I would argue that EOS in fact did work within Arch as they use the entire Arch repo system ( including even the kernel ). EOS adds a few utilities some of which are not even unique to EOS ( like yay and paru ).
EOS has become more opinionated about the install such as using Dracut and systemd-boot but even those come from the Arch repos.
The other thing that EOS brings is the much friendlier community.
What I mean is that anyone (in fact there were projects that did this) could make an image with an installer GUI for Arch Linux that installed Arch Linux and some opinionated software like Endeavour does. But at the end you just got an easy Arch installation. What bothers me is that instead of pushing for Arch Linux’s brand, Endeavour created their own, virtually wrapping Arch Linux as theirs, and I don’t believe it is enough work to consider it a different distro, because it is LITERALLY ARCH with a couple of extra packages (that could be on the main repos or the AUR).
And I am saying all this as an Endeavour user myself!
First of all, thank you for the reply and I find your position completely reasonable. We agree that EOS is essentially an opinionated Arch install.
That said, the goals of EOS seem antithetical to the Arch project and many of its fans. I think it was elsewhere in this thread that somebody argued that somehow EOS would confuse new users because of mild deviations from the default like dracut or systemd-boot. Those are directly from the Arch repos and yet Arch users still brand them as “the other”. I do not see how EOS could have been done under the Arch umbrella and the decision enforce the separation with pure Arch is driven by the Arch desire to define Arch by a very narrow standard of purity.
I am very happy that EOS uses the vanilla Arch repos and I am very happy that they have limited their ambition in terms of what to change.
People who are are not able to use or dislike a TUI install script should not be using Arch or an Arch based distro. Especially when taking into account that EndeavourOS doesn’t have a GUI package manager.
At least Manjaro has a point with it’s slower repos and pamac.
EndeavorOS is just Arch with Calamares, some welcome window bloat, and pacman hooks to have it be distinguished from Arch by neofetch; all at the cost of the install duration: the download is slower, the flashing is slower, the boot is slower, the installer is slower, even pacman is slower due to the hooks.
You can just download in ISO of Arch with Calamares instead, if you really want it (example)
EndeavorOS does not contribute anything to make the install process easier nor to the experience using it. Why it is still so popular after the reintroduction of archinstall really remains a mystery to me. I really only view it as a security risk due to the smaller team.
Current (1,5 years in) Manjaro user here. If I’d want just an installer for Arch, I’d go with Archinstall. And I doubt I’m 1%, though nice installer might be a selling point for absolute Linux noobs.
There is plenty of experienced people using Manjaro and recognizing its strong and weak sides.
And yes, I don’t understand EndeavourOS as a separate distribution either.
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