Pitfalls when installing Manjaro
In the Manjaro community we have had a lot of installation related topics - and they fall into one of these categories
- Wireless network
- BIOS/MBR vs. UEFI/GPT
- Secure boot
- Dual-boot Windows
Wireless network
Not all hardware is created with Linux in mind - in fact very little hardware is created with Linux in mind.
This means that there is a lot of WiFi adapters (cards or USB) which do not work with Manjaro until you build a driver for it. Such driver will need rebuild every time you update your kernel.
Your best bet is to ensure your hardware is compatible by doing a thorough research before installing Manjaro.
BIOS vs. UEFI
It is crucial to a successful installation that you know exactly how your current system is installed.
There is two standards used to interface the different hardware components. The older BIOS and the newer UEFI.
The system’s firmware is your hardware’s built-in software which serves as an interface for the operating system to communicate with various devices your system is built from.
BIOS and UEFI each requires a specific filesystem table which is not compatible with each other. The filesystem layout for BIOS is called MBR and the filesystem layout for UEFI is called GPT.
- Do not use MBR to install an UEFI based system.
Secure boot
Secure boot is based on a cryptographic key stored in the UEFI firmware. If the loader does not match the signature the system refuses to boot.
On rare occasions - to disable secure boot - you need to set a firmware password to be able to access the security settings.
Dual-boot Windows
The system clock is a vital component as it is used e.g. to check validity of certificates and of course various time stamps on files etc.
You can use either your local time - which is depending on your geographical region (used by Windows) or you can use UTC (used by Linux) which is a universal format and the current time is then calculated from a user defined timezone.
Dual booting Windows and Manjaro often leads to incorrect times because Windows will adjust the hardware clock to one rule and Linux to another - and the result is confusion and can create other problems e.g. seemingly expired certificates.
Conclusion
Avoiding the above pitfalls will give you a much more pleasant first time Linux experience.