My experience with using Manjaro for a month

[kelvinhall05]

So I've been using Manjaro with the Deepin DE for roughly a month now, and I have a few things I would like to touch on in terms of how well it works (and, in some cases, how it doesn't work lol).

 

1. Gaming

Gaming has given me the most issues by far. Not only was it annoying to set it up because I had the wrong driver selected in the kernel so I couldn't run any games for a while, but some games such as BeamNG and War Thunder will completely lock up my computer to the point where I have to press the reset/power button. Another game I play a lot, Automation, works fine, except if I try to export a car to BeamNG, it just doesn't work. It says it did it successfully, but the car doesn't show up in BeamNG. Also, the performance of the games that do work (or the games that only occasionally work) is worse than on Windows.

2. Productivity

Lol who am I kidding, I don't do any productivity. But there are some small things I miss from Window such as pressing Winkey + shift + arrow keys to quickly move windows between monitors.

3. Installation of the OS and apps

The OS install was easier than Windows IMO. Not really gonna expand on it, but it's very simple to do and very fast. Installing apps is generally easy; it's finding apps that's the hard part. I now have to add "Linux alternatives" to every Google search for an app unless I know it's on Linux/AUR.

4. General use

Works fine. Audio is a bit finicky, especially BlueTooth.

 

So yeah. That's kind of it. The crashes are the main issue I have, but I believe those are related to my overclock (even though a higher OC was stable on Windows, so idk).

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Not only was it annoying to set it up because I had the wrong driver selected in the kernel so I couldn't run any games for a while

you're welcome for the fix

 

but that's not Manjaro's fault. it's because Linux is focused on stability and running the AMDGPU driver is less stable than Radeon, but for Windows games you need to because DXVK requires it...

[Oalei]

4 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

you're welcome for the fix

 

but that's not Manjaro's fault. it's because Linux is focused on stability and running the AMDGPU driver is less stable than Radeon, but for Windows games you need to because DXVK requires it...

really dude? might want a nVidia GPU then, well idk if its Linux  for all not some im using ubuntu based distro.

[Bananasplit_00]

1: I have had no real issues with games since i got the right driver/kernel combo going (latest NVIDIA and 4.20 kernel). Easiest setup i have ever experienced besides that, just click Lutris and Wine in package installer and bam, done.

2: never use that shortcut, i find Manjaro to be pretty nice besides the screenshot app which i will be looking into replacing because not being able to snip another snip like the snip tool in windows can pisses me off

3: installing Manjaro is a blast, its simple. The gui apps for drivers and kernel are really apretiated IMO because im more of a gui dood than a CLI dood. Before i sudo saved my xserver config it would always forget it which hassnt happaned on any other distro or OS for me, odd issue but with an easy fix.

4: General use is IMO really nice, Discord dosnt seem to get pissed at ALSA, window clipping works well enough and all that. No audio issues for me besides what can be blamed on ALSA(SBX not working right when its supposed to be supported now)

 

im not as happy with Manjaro as i was on mint but Mint was 100X worse to get to play games. 5 series kernels worked on Mint but dont want to work for me on Manjaro which makes me kinda sad though

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, Oalei said:

really dude? might want a nVidia GPU then, well idk if its Linux  for all not some im using ubuntu based distro.

you. dont. want. nvidia. and. linux.

 

 

no.

[Oalei]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

you. dont. want. nvidia. and. linux.

 

 

no.

iNTel hD GraPhics?

no, why seriously?

[SenKa]

16 minutes ago, Oalei said:

iNTel hD GraPhics?

no, why seriously?

nVidia drivers on Linux are still shit, even the "non-free" driver which is the best of the best supposedly.

[Oalei]

2 minutes ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

nVidia drivers on Linux are still shit, even the "non-free" driver which is the best of the best supposedly.

i know too little about software or hardware in general. So im like guarenteed for a problem 1 way or another.

[kelvinhall05]

28 minutes ago, Oalei said:

really dude? might want a nVidia GPU then, well idk if its Linux  for all not some im using ubuntu based distro.

Gotta love when people make comments like this, just expecting me to pull hundreds of dollars out of my ass and drop it on a GPU.

 

 

If the easiest option was to just upgrade my GPU, maybe I would've done that. And it happened on all distros. Manjaro was actually the most stable by far.

[kelvinhall05]

26 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

1: I have had no real issues with games since i got the right driver/kernel combo going (latest NVIDIA and 4.20 kernel). Easiest setup i have ever experienced besides that, just click Lutris and Wine in package installer and bam, done.

2: never use that shortcut, i find Manjaro to be pretty nice besides the screenshot app which i will be looking into replacing because not being able to snip another snip like the snip tool in windows can pisses me off

3: installing Manjaro is a blast, its simple. The gui apps for drivers and kernel are really apretiated IMO because im more of a gui dood than a CLI dood. Before i sudo saved my xserver config it would always forget it which hassnt happaned on any other distro or OS for me, odd issue but with an easy fix.

4: General use is IMO really nice, Discord dosnt seem to get pissed at ALSA, window clipping works well enough and all that. No audio issues for me besides what can be blamed on ALSA(SBX not working right when its supposed to be supported now)

 

im not as happy with Manjaro as i was on mint but Mint was 100X worse to get to play games. 5 series kernels worked on Mint but dont want to work for me on Manjaro which makes me kinda sad though

Yeah, all the Ubuntu/Debian based distros were awful. They work fine on other hardware but were complete aids on my desktop. It was more unstable than Windows on a bad OC.

[Oalei]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

Gotta love when people make comments like this, just expecting me to pull hundreds of dollars out of my ass and drop it on a GPU.

 

 

If the easiest option was to just upgrade my GPU, maybe I would've done that. And it happened on all distros. Manjaro was actually the most stable by far.

well i might do it but i wont exactly do it, a RX 470 costing a roughly 70usd or 90usd for 4gb/8gb of course i will buy RX 470.

Might try Manjaro because i have no reason not to

[kelvinhall05]

2 minutes ago, Oalei said:

well i might do it but i wont exactly do it, a RX 470 costing a roughly 70usd or 90usd for 4gb/8gb of course i will buy RX 470.

Might try Manjaro because i have no reason not to

Yeah, I would highly suggest Manjaro. I love it. And I also love Deepin DE, I suggest that, too.

 

1. I'm in Canada so used deals are much less common and 2. I rarely see 470s going for less than $150 that have decent coolers and haven't been mined on, and I've never seen one sell for double digits.

[Sauron]

44 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

2. Productivity

Lol who am I kidding, I don't do any productivity. But there are some small things I miss from Window such as pressing Winkey + shift + arrow keys to quickly move windows between monitors.

You can definitely remap that

[kelvinhall05]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

You can definitely remap that

Yeah probably. But idk how to do that and I don't care too much to figure out how.

[Oalei]

3 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Yeah, I would highly suggest Manjaro. I love it. And I also love Deepin DE, I suggest that, too.

 

1. I'm in Canada so used deals are much less common and 2. I rarely see 470s going for less than $150 that have decent coolers and haven't been mined on, and I've never seen one sell for double digits.

my use case is similar to yours but im playing dota 2 and csgo which natively developed anyway so its great.
Audio kinda wackey tbh for linux not really that loud.

[Breadpudding]

19 minutes ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

nVidia drivers on Linux are still shit, even the "non-free" driver which is the best of the best supposedly.

I haven't had any issues with the non-free Nvidia driver. Nouveau had a couple of issues for me though.

12 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Yeah, all the Ubuntu/Debian based distros were awful. They work fine on other hardware but were complete aids on my desktop. It was more unstable than Windows on a bad OC.

Debian-based distributions tend to have outdated software. With Debian you can upgrade to Sid(unstable) but your computer may or may not survive the upgrade. For this reason I don't really recommend Debian for people anymore but for whatever reason I can't stop using it myself.

[Bananasplit_00]

7 hours ago, Oalei said:

iNTel hD GraPhics?

no, why seriously?

It's just pure issues. Performance is good, but all the artifacts, not booting, forgetting Xserver settings, needing to find specific versions that aren't broken as shit and all that. The least bad i have gotten it is small green dots on my third screen and discord being covered in static from time to time along with a little bit of blinking of other screens during heavy loads like games. It's literally just a pile of issues

[wasab]

Overclock shouldnt be impacted by the OS. I have an overclock on my fx 8320 and it runs perfectly fine on fedora. 

 

Gaming do have it's problems. I have a game that randomly crashes and fails to launch, it is company of heroes 2. That is not the fault of the OS. That game is just terribly bad. It has been crashing on windows as well. It took feral years to patch it up to the point it can launch without an issue. Crashes is still frequent and both Macs and Linux. 

[2FA]

6 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

It's just pure issues. Performance is good, but all the artifacts, not booting, forgetting Xserver settings, needing to find specific versions that aren't broken as shit and all that. The least bad i have gotten it is small green dots on my third screen and discord being covered in static from time to time along with a little bit of blinking of other screens during heavy loads like games. It's literally just a pile of issues

I've never had any of those problems except when I used KDE.

[Bananasplit_00]

13 minutes ago, 2FA said:

I've never had any of those problems except when I used KDE.

I'm loyal to Cinnamon, it's not impossible it's better on other desktop environments but those are my experiences.

 

*edit*

Card is a GTX 1080

[Koeshi]

1 hour ago, 2FA said:

I've never had any of those problems except when I used KDE.

I find that using the current drivers for my nVidia card (1050) means X fails to start, but using the old, stable line (391) works.  I do use KDE currently, but found the same issue on stock Ubuntu with GNOME.

[2FA]

57 minutes ago, Koeshi said:

I find that using the current drivers for my nVidia card (1050) means X fails to start, but using the old, stable line (391) works.  I do use KDE currently, but found the same issue on stock Ubuntu with GNOME.

Ironically enough, I'm currently running GNOME on Manjaro with latest driver without issue.

[Chunchunmaru_]

16 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Yeah, all the Ubuntu/Debian based distros were awful. They work fine on other hardware but were complete aids on my desktop. It was more unstable than Windows on a bad OC.

Ubuntu LTS is the best compromise to stability and productivity, installing updated drivers is easy with the repos, and here the software generally IS NOT old, it's tested before getting back into the LTS release

 

Unless there is some severe missing driver, where the only solution is to install an updated distro

[Koeshi]

21 hours ago, 2FA said:

Ironically enough, I'm currently running GNOME on Manjaro with latest driver without issue.

I see a lot of people that appear to be using the latest driver without issue.  Maybe I have just been unlucky with my card, but I haven't got the latest drivers yet and I am not clear on what reason there is to move on from the stable ones other than for Vulkan support.