I have been using Linux for a few years, usually some flavor of Debian. But recently I acquired an older Thinkpad and thought it would behoove me to use something more… involved.
So I chose to dive into Manjaro and only broke pacman once. So now the question… can I say I’m using Arch btw or is that a faux pas?
Nah, Manjaro is Arch for toddlers.
Well, jokes aside, people who install Arch usually want maximum flexibility out of their system (I have no idea why you would torture yourself like that otherwise). And after some time spent with Manjaro, I can confidently say that it greatly sacrifices your ability to tinker with the system in the name of user friendliness. A great distro to start with, but if you still like it after a couple of months, you probably didn’t need Arch in the first place.
Oh definitely, Manjaro is all about “mommy knows best”. It’s why people who say “you should use Arch instead of Manjaro” are completely missing the point.
Technically, Manjaro used Arch exactly as intended, leveraging its flexibility, but it’s very ironic that it used it to remove said flexibility. I’m guessing it’s why some Arch fans feel betrayed and hate Manjaro.
Install Arch, it’s not that difficult if you use Archinstall. Even the “manual” method isn’t hard, just make the partitions and pacstrap all of the packages.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Manjaro, is in fact, Arch/Manjaro, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Arch plus Manjaro. Manjaro is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Arch system made useful by pacman, yay and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
I can see future archeologists (god forbid, Ai archeologists) digging up old posts like this and going, “tf, this was upvoted? Interjecting with too much tangential information? The tone came off rude though?” and not get the reference if they weren’t versed in linux community culture already
I mean, its mostly a meme anyways so I say go for it
Also a pro tip: Use endeavourOS not manjaro, it’s more stable
Arch is relatively unstable just by being rolling, but manjaro is another level of unstable lol. if wish to use it, im not gonna stop you, but I’d advise you not to rely on the computer you install it on.
Don’t update any arch based distro for long enough and your life will be plenty exciting when you do. Bonus points if you use a non-lts kernel that can blip out of existence at any moment along with all the graphics drivers
How long is to long? I’ve been running the same arch install for a few years and wondering if it supposed to be time for a reinstall?
*I also have backups of all my configs and read the arch news before updating so I’m not really that worried.