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?
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. :)