Manjaro, user friendly like Solus?

Edward78 · 20 Mar 2021 at 16:10

Well I use to use Mint, but moved to Solus because it is rolling. I want something easy to use & just wonder if Manjaro is better then Solus? I do like how Solus does screenshots where you can cut out a spot in the screen. Anyway, it isn't easy to break is it?

That makes it sound good.

Rainmaker · 21 Mar 2021 at 19:33

This sub-forum moves slow. You could have (and probably have?) fired up a live USB now and found out for yourself. Everyone's needs, likes and so on are different. Manjaro is quite nicely set up, and tends to work well. It does (imo) suck for breaking updates and such though. Plain old Arch doesn't do this, it comes from Manjaro holding back sets of updates to 'test for stability' and then releasing them in blocks. It's not truly rolling like Arch or Solus are, in that regard. Personally if you want an 'easier' Arch based rolling distro I'd look to EndeavourOS or Artix (Arch minus systemd). Both boot to a GUI like Manjaro does, and have a visual/GUI installer.

Other decent rolling distros include openSUSE Tumbleweed, Void Linux, Fedora Rawhide (not for noobs) and Debian unstable (the 'unstable' refers to 'not unchanging', because it's rolling not frozen like 'stable').

Out of those, depending on your needs, I'd probably suggest Endeavour, Void and openSUSE for easy to use but powerful underneath. Void is a bit trickier and less documented than the others, but it's majorly fast.

Buffalo2102 · 21 Mar 2021 at 22:54

Been using Manjaro constantly for about 18 months now and haven't had a single problem with updates. I find it very user friendly and probably one of the best distros for gaming (out-of-the box) that I have tried.

Rainmaker · 22 Mar 2021 at 01:29

Buffalo2102 said:
Been using Manjaro constantly for about 18 months now and haven't had a single problem with updates. I find it very user friendly and probably one of the best distros for gaming (out-of-the box) that I have tried.

I've found extensive issues with their method of holding back updates, and releasing them piecemeal which can break other apps, configs and dependencies. They don't issue fixes for up to a month after they hit the Arch repos. How many security fixes are Manjaro users vulnerable to in that time? :eek:

The Manjaro 'team' have a long history of security snafus and plain bad management... Like the time they forgot to renew the SSL certs and posted to tell users to set their system clock back in time so their site and repos would still work rofl. It'd be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Manjaro looks nice and makes Arch easier, but do be aware of its limitations and quirks. I, personally, don't trust it to run my toaster but ymmv.

Cromulent · 23 Mar 2021 at 00:41

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed if you want a stable, easy to use and constantly updated rolling release distribution. I used to use Arch and then moved to Manjaro but I'd never go back. I think OpenSUSE Tumbleweed will be the only distribution I use for a long time.