Manjaro 20.1

[raymac46]

I haven't played around with Manjaro since I had it installed in a 32 bit version on my old netbook, so I decided to give release 20.1 a spin in VirtualBox. My take:

• It works great in VBox. There is an option to boot the Live ISO with proprietary drivers and I chose that. The VBox drivers were installed and all the guest additions worked on the ISO, so I got a full screen.
• The desktop I chose was Xfce and it is nicely themed and quite pretty. I wouldn't feel much need to customize it beyond addding my own wallpaper.
• No office software is provided so I just added Abiword and Gnumeric. I am not going to do much serious work in VBox.
• Manjaro is differentiating itself from Arch quite significantly. There should be nobody thinking that Manjaro is Arch with an easy installer.
• The installer works fast and is easy to use.
• Manjaro recommends NOT using pacman and yay but instead doing everything with their pamac package manager. Pamac can be used as a GUI or from the CLI. The terminal version has a syntax more like apt and runs from the user prompt. What's up with that?
• I know Manjaro is based on Arch but I'd say the user experience is more like Linux Mint. I guess that is okay.
• I don't know how stable it will be but I'll try it for a couple of weeks and let you know.
• The Manjaro "company" is trying to be Canonical light and get some OEMs to pre-install it on new hardware. On the surface this doesn't look like a bad idea if the distro is stable enough for new users. Certainly it would be easy enough for a new user to pick up.
• If this were 2007, I was coming to Linux for the first time, I might consider being part of the Manjaro community. I still don't like their attitude over there, but one of the major nimrods was involved in the financial follies and is no longer part of their team.
• Would I install it on one of my go-to machines, knowing what I know now? Nah.

Edited April 5, 2021 by raymac46

[saturnian]

Thanks for the info, raymac46! Highly appreciated! "Wow" about this part: "Manjaro recommends NOT using pacman and yay but instead doing everything with their pamac package manager."

 

The Arch-based distros I've tried in the past, I wanted to end up with the Arch repos and not much (if anything) from outside of those. Manjaro ain't for me, but I figure it must be relatively stable, since it seems to be so popular these days. Interesting comments here, though: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=ratings&distro=manjaro

[raymac46]

https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/pacman-vs-pamac-vs-yay/122495

 

Read Phil's comment in this thread.

[securitybreach]

On 4/5/2021 at 11:11 AM, raymac46 said:

https://archived.forum.manjaro.org/t/pacman-vs-pamac-vs-yay/122495

 

Read Phil's comment in this thread.

 

Going by the comments, it just seems like they made their own AUR helper which still uses pacman on the backend. Like yay or pacaur but with a graphical interface and since its a Manjaro project, they want you to only use that. And they plan on using flatpaks in the future instead of pacman:

 

So for short: in a not so short distant future we will pre-install pamac by default without the need of having any AUR helper nor pacman installed. And currently we are working on supporting flatpaks thru pamac.

 

Talk about a frankenstein distro  

[raymac46]

You can use pamac from the terminal but it looks more like apt when you do.

I don't have any insight into their plans, but it looks to me as if the Manjaro company wants to get the OEMs to use it on machines as a pre-installed Linux. An Ubuntu alternative I guess. That would require a more "idiot proof" way of adding and updating software than you get with pacman.

Certainly they are going out of their way to differentiate Manjaro from Arch.

Edited April 7, 2021 by raymac46

[securitybreach]

9 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

Certainly they are going out of their way to differentiate Manjaro from Arch.

 

I wish they would pass that on to their users. It doesn't happen as frequently as it used to but some users still think they are running Archlinux which makes no sense really. Anyway, good for them.

[raymac46]

They say quite clearly at the start of their wiki : Manjaro is not Arch Linux. So I don't see how any informed Manjaro user could be under the impression that Manjaro is "Arch made easy."

Nobody running Mint or Ubuntu believes they have "Debian with wifi that works out of the box." At least I hope they don't.

Edited April 7, 2021 by raymac46

[securitybreach]

Well it probably stems from the fact that "Archlinux made easy" was their slogan until they were threatened by Archlinux for copyright.

[securitybreach]

That wasn't exact wording but it was similar.

 

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

Nobody running Mint or Ubuntu believes they have "Debian with wifi that works out of the box." At least I hope they don't.

 

I bet quite a few do not even know what Debian is or that Mint and Ubuntu are derivatives of Debian, well in the same family of distros.

[raymac46]

Here is the page I was referring to where Manjaro highlights the differences between it and Arch.

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Manjaro:A_Different_Kind_of_Beast

I don't recall seeing "Arch made Easy" but I can see how that would have caused them some problems. Any distro that has to define itself as "Distro X with a few different features" isn't really offering the user much. That's how I see it anyway.

[securitybreach]

I completely agree  

 

Then you have articles like this which confuse people even more (both from 2020)

Manjaro Linux Review: ‘Arch Linux for Human Beings’ Provides Rolling Release for Every User 

Turn your Manjaro in Arch

[securitybreach]

Here is a link from 2013 talking about Manjaro calling itself Archlinux made easy http://coffeeandmanjarolinux.blogspot.com/2013/10/manjaro-linux-arch-done-right-arch-for_1089.html

[raymac46]

Well hopefully the distro and its users have matured a bit since then. I don't have the same amount of time and emotional capital invested in either Arch or Manjaro, and I just want to enjoy using them without any sort of pi$$ing contest. That said, it makes more sense for me to be an Arch user and have Debian as my backup distro. I'll also continue to use Linux Mint for machines needed by family members.

[raymac46]

1 hour ago, securitybreach said:

I completely agree  

 

Then you have articles like this which confuse people even more (both from 2020)

Manjaro Linux Review: ‘Arch Linux for Human Beings’ Provides Rolling Release for Every User 

Turn your Manjaro in Arch

Gag me.

[raymac46]

I just did an upgrade of Manjaro in VBox - 153 packages. I was a bit concerned about a virtual install having such a huge upgrade but it worked OK after a restart.

[securitybreach]

Cool

[Hedon James]

16 hours ago, raymac46 said:

I just did an upgrade of Manjaro in VBox - 153 packages. I was a bit concerned about a virtual install having such a huge upgrade but it worked OK after a restart.

Through trial and error, I have learned that Arch & Manjaro can go about 30 days.  As long as I update those VMs every 30 days (first of every month), I am good.  If I wait 40-45....maybe it will go well, maybe it won't.  Wait 2-3 months....forget it....just nuke & repave.  FWIW...

[securitybreach]

Well you can go much longer on arch, you just need to read the news on the front page before updating.

 

If my cousin doesn't run his updates or manual intervention is required, I update his machine when I come into town. It's been over six months before and it worked out fine. I just had to fix a few things as I went until pacman didn't complain.

 

That said, even though you can fix it, I wouldn't wait that long to update.

[raymac46]

Another 115 package upgrade and everything is working OK. Manjaro would appear to be stable in VBox right now.