Thank you all for the answers.
@linux-aarhus about MX, personally, in the past, I’ve enjoyed more Arch based distros then other ones, despite all the troubles. Maybe it’s just a personal kink, but it annoys me the fact that I can’t use some Arch distro that fits my current workflow.
@Mirdarthos and @dobedobedo thank you for the tips, I’ll give a try on a VM.
If you can’t find software in the official repositories, as Flatpak or Snap search the AUR (Arch User Repository).
You don’t. This is the warning displayed when installing dpkg:
dpkg installs Debian package manager. This is useful for those who want to create/modify DEB files. However, *do not* use dpkg to install Debian packages in your ArchLinux machine. This will break your system! You will need to go back to Arch wiki and read the installation guide again. You've been warned!
I used to use Debian before. About a year ago, I use manjaro. Maybe I fell in love with manjaro because I couldn’t stand the speed of Debian package update. The premise of stability is to be prepared to update once a week. Otherwise, the probability of bad update is a little higher than that of Debian. Naturally, you can use the Pacman GUI tool he brought to deal with it. For the DEB package you said, usually AUR will be ready-made, and you can install it directly.
Manjaro stable has been a rock of stability since I started using it. No other Arch based distro has come close. That being said, it depends on what you do after install. Heavly using the AUR especially for system components and graphics drivers will make a very unstable install in no time.
Another good thing to do if your worried about stability is to use timeshift and timeshift-autosnap. That way whenever you upgrade the system it creates a restore point. If by some chance you get a bad update, its easily reverted.
As a four years user, the last one in unstable branch I can confirm Manjaro is rock solid. I have even made disruptive tests (kernel compilations, kernel testing, device testing, etc) and Manjaro recovers fine after Timeshift backup.
Yes, don’t even try to make changes without Timeshift!! In a safe disk!! other than root installation!!
I have been using Manjaro now for several years (5+) on a laptop and a desktop pc. So far it was very stable for me. I never had any issues that broke my system or left it unbootable.
There are some minor things every now and then like an AUR package I couldn’t compile due to some incompatible settings, which took a while to solve, or some coredumps in my journal, that apparently don’t have any detrimental effects and that I haven’t been able to trace back to their cause, but nothing serious.
So long story short, I am very happy with Manjaro and would recommend it
Thank you for the link to the smart way post. I missed that one, good info there.
Thank you all.
I tried to setup Manjaro xfce on a spare disk to test performance on native hardware. It seems to work flawlessly, except for a bug with touchpad, wich sometimes is not detected, but it’s something I’ve been struggling almost with all distros I’ve used in the past, so, I think it’s not relevant. I think I will consider seriously to migrate.
A last question about updates: as far as I know, for Arch, it’s a good practice not to update very often. Personally, I prefer doing it using pacman. When should I update? Once a month, twice…? What is a reasonable period of time? And, about kernel, is it safe to use older kernels other then the stock one (of course, among the LTS ones)? When it is adviced to do this?
EDIT: Oh, sorry, I forgot this: I usually like to try new DEs from time to time. Is it safe to switch DE often? Any risk to break something by adding or removing packages or dependencies?
Again, thank you all for the support.
I recommend rather using pamac because it just takes care of more things for you. This is the command I recommend and use:
pamac upgrade --enable-downgrade --aur --devel
And pamac is built using libpacmanlibalpm, so it’s close to the same thing. AFAIK, anyway.
This isn’t true. At all. It’ll cause things to break.
Keep an eye on the update #announcements for your preferred fork, and update when the updates are released. You can also use matray to keep informed of update announcements.
Well, this can be interesting, I think. If you want a solid, reliable, stable system, you can’t go wrong with the LTS ones. That said, I have never had one (1) single crash on the latest one.
If you like to use the latest one, keep an LTS one installed as backup for use if something goes wrong with the latest one, then.
I recommend, and I’ve heard it’s recommended to use only one DE per user, although I’m sure it can work with multiple DEs as well. The reason for this is because every DE handles its configuration its own way. So files can easily become cluttered, confusing. It would’ve been awesome if every DE used a dedicated directory for its configuration, example ~/.config/kde, ~/.config/gnome and so on, but unfortunately that is not the case.
recommend rather using
pamacbecause it just takes care of more things for you
Just want to second this, Pamac is great and just has better commands than pacman (though I always enable ILoveCandy in the config)
Also yes, use the matray app to know when new updates are released and enable timeshift. Definitely don’t let Manjaro (or any rolling release distro) go too long without an update. I typically get my systems updated within a few days of a release.
No - it’s not. It’s possible but you will run weird hard to resolve issues especially when mixing Plasma and Gnome.
Permit me to doubt it 
//EDIT: cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep dpkg ?
Permission granted.
Feel free to doubt all you like. I take care of what I do on my PC, and I can’t remember installing it myself and it’s there. But I might have. Stranger things have happened.
It is safe to use older kernels. LTS kernels work for me. The main reason to move to a newer kernel is for hardware support of newer hardware. Thats a two edged sword at times. Newer kernels that try to make newer hardware work sometimes introduce problems with older hardware. If your hardware is working with the newest LTS kernel I would stick with it.
I usually have at least two kernels installed, mainly from long ago experiences. Its possible to get a bad kernel upgrade. If you only have one there is nothing else to boot into for easier troubleshooting. This is also a good idea if you are installing the latest and greatest, it leaves a known working setup to boot into if problems happen.
For the touchpad issue, does this occur after resuming from suspend? If so,
sudo modprobe -r psmouse && sudo modprobe -a psmouse
might fix it for this and subsequent suspend/resume cycles (until next reboot anyway).
It’s been 9 years since I installed Manjaro on my computer. So I can say that Manjaro is stable in the long term.
I have had several problems, but I have solved all of them thanks to the collaboration of the friends of the forums.
About the software, if you find it on AUR it will most likely work. Although it has happened to me that some things stop working between updates.
In spanish Nueve años han pasado desde que instalé Manjaro ¡Y lo que falta!
Hi, thank you all.
Just switched to manjaro GNOME, everything is almost fine, I really like it.
Thank you all for the help.
Please read this:
Please also don’t forget to come back to your question after your issue has been solved and click the 3 dots below the answer to mark a solution like this below the answer that helped you most:
so that the next person that has the exact same problem you just had will benefit from your post as well as your question will now be in the “solved” status.
(No not this one! One of the excellent answers above)
P.S. My machine has been running stably (with a minor problem left and right) since:
head --lines=1 /var/log/pacman.log
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