Which is more stable Manjaro or Arch?

[Vecna]

I was thinking about getting Manjaro XFCE for my low end laptop to game, but then saw some posts talking about it being buggy?!. I really do not mind how it looks or how easy it is to setup. I kinda like the long setup process anyway. If all I cared about was performance and stability, do you think I should go with Arch instead of Manjaro? If yes, is XFCE perfectly fine or should I mess around with i3 or KDE?

[Naijin]

1 hour ago, Vecna said:

I was thinking about getting Manjaro XFCE for my low end laptop to game, but then saw some posts talking about it being buggy?!. I really do not mind how it looks or how easy it is to setup. I kinda like the long setup process anyway. If all I cared about was performance and stability, do you think I should go with Arch instead of Manjaro? If yes, is XFCE perfectly fine or should I mess around with i3 or KDE?

Try both and see what you like? You can get both as stable or unstable as you like, also depends on your hardware etc.

[WereCat]

Check how Manjaro manages packages and decide. There is a reason why many don't really like Manjaro as it will eventually and inevitably break dependencies.

[Vecna]

6 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Check how Manjaro manages packages and decide. There is a reason why many don't really like Manjaro as it will eventually and inevitably break dependencies.

Oh alright. Okay so then should I just get Arch or change my mind and get some debian based distro like kubuntu or linux mint?

[wasab]

Both ship pretty unstable and experimental packages but manjaro has less chance of you breaking things since you aren't force to install all the packages yourself. 

[BoomerDutch]

Nobara is pretty minimal if you ask me.

Kubuntu was my older gaming os until ive stumbled on nobara.

[Vecna]

2 hours ago, BoomerDutch said:

Nobara is pretty minimal if you ask me.

Kubuntu was my older gaming os until ive stumbled on nobara.

Why did you switch from Kubuntu to Nobara? Is the frames and performance better?

[BoomerDutch]

37 minutes ago, Vecna said:

Why did you switch from Kubuntu to Nobara? Is the frames and performance better?

It's more like it's designed for gaming so it includes all support for linux gaming without me needing to track down missing packages for better performance and it includes eggroll proton program so steam is prepared for install which means all permissions and other various things is prepared to run smoothly.

 

It also has nice welcome screen if you want add more like flatpak and webapps

Which is nice to have but I've never installed it because i want to be minimal only for gaming.

 

Ive simply installed + updated + gpu driver install + restart + launched steam.

 

You could say I'm very happy user of nobara.

[Vecna]

17 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

It's more like it's designed for gaming so it includes all support for linux gaming without me needing to track down missing packages for better performance and it includes eggroll proton program so steam is prepared for install which means all permissions and other various things is prepared to run smoothly.

 

It also has nice welcome screen if you want add more like flatpak and webapps

Which is nice to have but I've never installed it because i want to be minimal only for gaming.

 

Ive simply installed + updated + gpu driver install + restart + launched steam.

 

You could say I'm very happy user of nobara.

Please correct me if im wrong, but is there any built in software with nobara that improves performance? I have heard of gamemoderun. Is it built in? Also, have you noticed any fps gains between kubuntu and nobara? Thanks

[BoomerDutch]

3 minutes ago, Vecna said:

Please correct me if im wrong, but is there any built in software with nobara that improves performance? I have heard of gamemoderun. Is it built in? Also, have you noticed any fps gains between kubuntu and nobara? Thanks

Yes as I've mentioned protong from glorious eggroll is included which improves performance and no I haven't used gamemoderun so i have no idea.

 

Yes in my experience its bit more smoother because of those extra packages that supports it.

 

And i have no idea how much fps difference there is but i do feel it had little more performance.

[Vecna]

1 minute ago, BoomerDutch said:

Yes as I've mentioned protong from glorious eggroll is included which improves performance and no I haven't used gamemoderun so i have no idea.

 

Yes in my experience its bit more smoother because of those extra packages that supports it.

 

And i have no idea how much fps difference there is but i do feel it had little more performance.

Wow okay alright. Final doubt. Which Desktop Environment do you use with Nobara? Are there any graphical glitches? If there are none, I might stick with Nobara as my main OS.

[BoomerDutch]

6 minutes ago, Vecna said:

Wow okay alright. Final doubt. Which Desktop Environment do you use with Nobara? Are there any graphical glitches? If there are none, I might stick with Nobara as my main OS.

I'm KDE user.

 

None that i know of.

 

Except in some cases some games can tank fps in fullscreen settings try switch to borderless fullscreen or other option and it will run smoothly.

[Vecna]

10 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

I'm KDE user.

 

None that i know of.

 

Except in some cases some games can tank fps in fullscreen settings try switch to borderless fullscreen or other option and it will run smoothly.

Alright then! Thanks a lot for your help

[GreyFive]

I have been using KDE with arch for over a year and haven't had any issues. I would say try both and find out what you like better.I'm on a fully AMD system so that may be a bit of a benefit.

[goatedpenguin]

Both are bleeding edge, manjaro breaks more because people don't know how to use it. If you want something stable go with debian or a debian based distro.

[Vecna]

6 hours ago, goatedpenguin said:

Both are bleeding edge, manjaro breaks more because people don't know how to use it. If you want something stable go with debian or a debian based distro.

how about kubuntu? anyway im testing all distros so ill let u know the results

[goatedpenguin]

On 3/5/2024 at 7:05 PM, Vecna said:

how about kubuntu?

Ubuntu is a debian based distro it has quite a tarnished reputation in its past and its new wunbuntu flavor is very controversial. I would never recommend ubuntu.

[BoomerDutch]

On 3/6/2024 at 5:11 AM, goatedpenguin said:

Ubuntu is a debian based distro it has quite a tarnished reputation in its past amd its new wunbuntu flavor is very controversial. I would never recommend a ubuntu distro.

Smh kubuntu is modified by community

So most ubuntu stuff is not in there.

 

So yes it comes from ubuntu but not made by ubuntu themselves but community made. 

 

Kinda sad that you see all Ubuntu is bad. 

[goatedpenguin]

42 minutes ago, BoomerDutch said:

Kinda sad that you see all Ubuntu is bad. 

It is to me imo. And I think many others will agree with me. Not to mention all that snap shit goes against everything what linux was meant to be. Its slow, its CLOSE SOURCE but lets you install opensource packages. The audacity canonical has to make such BS is hilarious. I would never recommend that distro to anyone.

[BoomerDutch]

30 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

It is to me imo. And I think many others will agree with me. Not to mention all that snap shit goes against everything what linux was meant to be. Its slow, its CLOSE SOURCE but lets you install opensource packages. The audacity canonical has to make such BS is hilarious. I would never recommend that distro to anyone.

I dislike snap too However its quite good for server side tbh and I've disabled snap feature anyways and blocked it.

 

But overall it's quite good operation system.

[Mair]

I've used both for over a year each: and I can say pretty conclusively, with a few caveats, that Arch is far more stable and generally a better experience. I wouldn't recommend using anything Arch-based that isn't Arch itself.

 

Manjaro gives users a lot of quick and easy power without appropriately informing users of the risks of using AUR content on the more controlled Manjaro package environment: it is very common for Manjaro updates to conflict with AUR packages and just completely nuke your system.

 

Arch, by contrast, has everything just be Arch. If something goes wrong, it can generally be fixed with a healthy backup schedule and good technical know-how. AUR packages can be compared against Arch packages better and issues ironed out more effectively.

 

In general: Manjaro makes it very easy to go beyond what it is really capable of as a distro and brick your installation. If you do use it, never touch the AUR (and since you're not touching the AUR, you may as well just use Fedora). There is no easy-and-simple way to take advantage of the power of Arch while avoiding the annoying nerd work required to maintain it.

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, Mair said:

I've used both for over a year each: and I can say pretty conclusively, with a few caveats, that Arch is far more stable and generally a better experience. I wouldn't recommend using anything Arch-based that isn't Arch itself.

 

Manjaro gives users a lot of quick and easy power without appropriately informing users of the risks of using AUR content on the more controlled Manjaro package environment: it is very common for Manjaro updates to conflict with AUR packages and just completely nuke your system.

So, ~2 years and 8 months

And this is one of many PCs I've got Manjaro running on.

 

2 hours ago, Mair said:

If you do use it, never touch the AUR (and since you're not touching the AUR, you may as well just use Fedora). There is no easy-and-simple way to take advantage of the power of Arch while avoiding the annoying nerd work required to maintain it.

I also submit to AUR...

 

Anyhow:

- Number of times I had to use timeshift: 0

- Number of times the system was nuked: 0

- Number of times I encoundered a confilt: 3 (out of which use of AUR was to blame: 0)
Each time it was easily fixed because I don't update on day 1, and I check the Manjaro forums.
Funnily enough last time it wasn't related to Manjaro or the AUR, but Arch iteself:
https://archlinux.org/news/incoming-changes-in-jdk-jre-21-packages-may-require-manual-intervention/

 

2 hours ago, Mair said:

There is no easy-and-simple way to take advantage of the power of Arch while avoiding the annoying nerd work required to maintain it.

Sure there is.
Before installing anything make sure you are up-to date (which applies to all Linux distros).

 

As for Manjaro your update procedure should look like this:

- (Optional, but recommended) Make a Timeshift snapshot

- Make sure AUR -> Check for updates is disbaled

- Update Manjaro

- Enable AUR -> Check for updates

- Update your AUR packages

- Disable AUR -> Check for updates

Done

Regardless if you are using Arch or a distro based on Arch you should check pkgbuild before installing/updating an AUR package.
Since it is community maintained you should not trust it. Check if it is downloading what it should be downloading (source), and generaly what it is doing to your system.

 

Which brings me to:

2 hours ago, Mair said:

Arch, by contrast, has everything just be Arch. If something goes wrong, it can generally be fixed with a healthy backup schedule and good technical know-how.

If you don't know what you are doing, no distro is a safe pick.
Heck, we've seen Linus delete his DE... on PopOS 

And if you do mess it up, so what?
You should have a decent backup plan regardless of the OS.
You might end up spending a few hours unscrewing whatever you screwed up,

but at the end of the day you will come out knowing more than you've known before.

[Mair]

34 minutes ago, Biohazard777 said:

So, ~2 years and 8 months

And this is one of many PCs I've got Manjaro running on.

 

I also submit to AUR...

 

Anyhow:

- Number of times I had to use timeshift: 0

- Number of times the system was nuked: 0

- Number of times I encoundered a confilt: 3 (out of which use of AUR was to blame: 0)
Each time it was easily fixed because I don't update on day 1, and I check the Manjaro forums.
Funnily enough last time it wasn't related to Manjaro or the AUR, but Arch iteself:
https://archlinux.org/news/incoming-changes-in-jdk-jre-21-packages-may-require-manual-intervention/

 

Sure there is.
Before installing anything make sure you are up-to date (which applies to all Linux distros).

 

As for Manjaro your update procedure should look like this:

- (Optional, but recommended) Make a Timeshift snapshot

- Make sure AUR -> Check for updates is disbaled

- Update Manjaro

- Enable AUR -> Check for updates

- Update your AUR packages

- Disable AUR -> Check for updates

Done

Regardless if you are using Arch or a distro based on Arch you should check pkgbuild before installing/updating an AUR package.
Since it is community maintained you should not trust it. Check if it is downloading what it should be downloading (source), and generaly what it is doing to your system.

 

Which brings me to:

If you don't know what you are doing, no distro is a safe pick.
Heck, we've seen Linus delete his DE... on PopOS 

And if you do mess it up, so what?
You should have a decent backup plan regardless of the OS.
You might end up spending a few hours unscrewing whatever you screwed up,

but at the end of the day you will come out knowing more than you've known before.

I'm glad Manjaro works well for you!

 

I am curious, though, if it's worth going through all this effort to use a spin of Arch that doesn't receive updates as quickly? With this level of investment, surely it's simply easier to use base Arch or something like Endeavour OS?

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, Mair said:

I am curious, though, if it's worth going through all this effort to use a spin of Arch that doesn't receive updates as quickly? With this level of investment, surely it's simply easier to use base Arch or something like Endeavour OS?

EndeavourOS & Garuda Linux were (kinda still are) too young,
initial releases were 2019 & 2020, respectively.
They need to be at least 5yo in my book. (the only exception would be Alma & Rocky, because of IBM's f**kery with CentOS)
Not saying they are bad, or a worse choice... Heck, I might switch over to EndeavourOS at some point.

 

As for Arch, I personally wouldn't mind daily driving it, but...
When I picked up Manjaro as my daily driver I decided to stop doing Windows support for my family members, relatives, and friends.
If they wanted support, I'd be happy to help but it would have to be Linux. 
Manjaro is newb friendly, GUI for most things, and has a decently friendly and informative forum (so that said people can look up stuff without relying on me all the time).
Me being on the same distro means less work.
So far, my choice seems to be good. I didn't have to go over once with a live USB to recover someone's PC heh.

 

As for updates, I'm perfectly fine with updates being a couple of weeks behind Arch.

 

PS
Windows & macOS are fine, use the tool that gets the job done, heck I use them as well when I have to.
But I will not be giving out in-depth free support for commercial products.
You got a problem with Windows... do a clean reinstall. 

 

[goatedpenguin]

7 hours ago, Mair said:

There is no easy-and-simple way to take advantage of the power of Arch while avoiding the annoying nerd work required to maintain it.

If your avoiding any "nerdy work" than linux is not for you even if your using a distro like ubuntu. Once in a while your going to have to use the command line to configure and fix stuff. Any distro can be just "as powerful" as Arch. The only thing that makes Arch fundamentally different from other distros is that it gives you a clean underlying base to install and configure things only you want to have on your machine. Other distros like say Ubuntu come with many tools, bloatware(not gnome stuff) that you will probably never use. The next level above Arch would be Gentoo and then ultimately LFS. 

 

7 hours ago, Mair said:

Manjaro gives users a lot of quick and easy power without appropriately informing users of the risks of using AUR content on the more controlled Manjaro package environment: it is very common for Manjaro updates to conflict with AUR packages and just completely nuke your system.

Not true, if your using manjaro or any arch based distro than you should know the risks. AUR packages by the Manjaro team are discouraged so it's the user's problem.

If you don't beliveve than look at there first line on the manjaro wiki AUR page: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository. The reason it breaks so often is that new users are too lazy to read documentation, they do not know how the manjaro repository works, and most importantly they don't think before they type. 

7 hours ago, Mair said:

Arch, by contrast, has everything just be Arch. If something goes wrong, it can generally be fixed with a healthy backup schedule and good technical know-how. AUR packages can be compared against Arch packages better and issues ironed out more effectively.

 

Manjaro can be fixed with a backup such as timeshift and "good technical knowledge."

 

7 hours ago, Mair said:

never touch the AUR

You can download from the AUR you just have to be more cautious.