Hey ~~fellas~~ friends. Sorry to create yet another post on this topic (maybe we should have a sticky for this?).
About 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to move on from Windows and installed Manjaro. I would consider myself a newbie-intermediate level linux user.
Though I've used Windows most my life, we use Linux servers (no GUI) at work, managing them is part of job description. I also own a late 2011 Macbook Pro with vanilla Arch Linux. I barely ever use it but boy, Arch really brought it back to life!
I've been reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive to use but the community has made me aware that Manjaro is maybe a questionable choice. Since I don´t plan on distro-hopping a lot I want to get it right sooner rather than later.
Here's what I'm looking for:
- Rolling distribution, preferably. Though this machine is also used for work, our environment depends mostly on remote servers anyway. I'd rather have a distribution that provides the most recent packages for whatever I want
- I don´t mind running a distribution that forces me learn new things or do things in a different way, I kinda embrace it. I just don´t enjoy complexity for complexity's sake.
- KDE is my preferred Desktop Environment so far, though I guess that's not very relevant. I'd love to run Hyprland, but you know.. Nvidia :(
- I play games on Steam but from my understanding this doesn´t matter either. Everything I tried worked great, I don´t think I want a ¨gaming focused" distro or anything like that
- No Ubuntu, please.
My hardware, in case you feel is relevant!
OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440
WM: KWin
Terminal: konsole
Terminal Font: MesloLGS NF 10
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K (20) @ 4.900GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate
Memory: 23313MiB / 64087MiB
I can only speak to my expierence with Manjaro, and it was....not good. It pretty much found a way to uniquely break itself every boot from me...just treating it like I would Arch (i didn't find out how you're maybe supposed to use it till later, when i moved on to another distro). And in every Manjaro post or comment, there's several anecdotes that are similiar to mine: somehow, someway, Manjaro freaked out and died...and then there's a couple that are like yours: "I've used it for several years with zero problems" and i gotta ask: how? Legit curious. Is "waiting 14 days to update + not using the AUR at all, if possible" sound advise or am I waaaay off the mark?
It sounds equally weird to me to hear about people breaking Manjaro and I feel like I should be the one asking "how?" 🙂
There's no need to wait 14 days to update, I update whenever I feel like it. And there's no need to hold back from using the AUR, I have 76 AUR packages installed right now.
The only rule about AUR is the same rule they recommend on Arch too: don't use it for critical packages. So don't install kernels from AUR, or graphical drivers, or replace system packages with AUR stuff. Because AUR stuff will break, it's not a question of "if" it's a question of "when", and it will happen on Arch just as well as any Arch derivate.
Other than that I can't think of any reason why a Manjaro install would spontaneously break. Perhaps if you install an experimental kernel as the only kernel on your machine and it breaks? I've always stuck to LTS kernels myself, and I keep two LTS installed, just in case.
I'm in the same boat; been using Manjaro on my desktop for years without anything really breaking. I've told myself that when it does break and I can't fix it I'll distro hop again, but it just hasn't been the case yet.