I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based on Ubuntu, so no Pop OS. Is Manjaro a possibly good distro for me to check out?
This makes so much sense… I used Manjaro like 2 or 3 years ago and really loved it… Until it just died one day a couple months in. I spent a good amount of time troubleshooting and when I couldn’t fix it I gave up on it.
Figured since Manjaro came so highly recommended, Linux and I just weren’t enough on the same level yet and to give it some more time… But from reading all the comments in this thread, it sounds like I had the typical Manjaro experience.
Man, I kinda wish it wasn’t as commonly recommended. Hell even I’ve recommended it as I had a really good experience with it before it died and I assumed that was my fault; after all, so many people recommend manjaro that it’s more likely I alone was the problem, not the distro…
Yeah, and that’s the problem. It’s kind they gave all of the elitism of typical Arch users, but without the general stability to back it up. They try to make Arch more stable but holding back certain updates, but that just creates more problems because they don’t have the manpower to actually test that combination of packages.
If you want a “stable” rolling release, use Tumbleweed, they have a decent team that prioritizes testing. If you want a super customized setup, use Arch (or Void). If you want Arch, but don’t want to install it manually, use EndeavorOS. But don’t use Manjaro, it can break in unexpected ways because of how they manage their package repository.
But if you’re new to Linux, you should probably use Mint. It works really well out of the box, there are lots of flavors, and it’ll be easy to find guides and support.
I’ve been using Garuda, another arch based distro, for several months now that have been smooth sailing. If I start tumbling into trouble town again though, I will heed your advice and switch to mint. :)