Actually, the title says it all. I have run Manjaro before. Being a teacher i am dependent on flawless functioning of my desktop in conjunction with a digital blackboard and here in lies the rub: many times after an update of the nvidia drivers the black board refuses reception and the hdmi connnection crashes. I was forced to revert back to another distro which i shall not name here.
I would love to work solely with Manjaro since there is a lot to like.
Curious what your opinion is in this matter.
Nvidia is hard to avoid - nontheless it is possible - and for a stable predictable Linux system - I recommend to avoid Nvidia.
There is no shame in that - a good craftsman uses the best tool for the job - whether it is his favorite tool or not.
Some Linux is simply created for stability e.g. Red Hat Entreprise Linux - and there is a trick to get Red Hat free of charge - sign up for developer account and use that to register your RHEL.
My personal, strong opinion
After years using Manjaro as my primary system I have found that following unstable branch provides a much more stable experience.
That is - in my opinion - because the unstable branch is updated albeit a faster pace, the updates does not come in one big chunk, and therefore there it is less likely to introduce a major cataclysmic failure.
Well now, I think if you ask that same question over at the Ubuntu forums, you’ll get pretty much the same answer. And Debian. And Garuda. And Redhat.
It depends on you, on your situation, on your technical knowledge. On you. No one else.
Personally I found Manjaro to be the best out there. It’s because of Manjaro that I finally ditched Windoze.
As a Nvdia user I haven’t had a problem in the past 3 years I’ve been using Manjaro. I would recommend though to use a LTS kernel, because one of the most common problem I have seen in the forums related to Nvidia is people that doesn’t update their kernel on time until it gets out of support (and no Nvidia driver).
As I said, personally I haven’t had any problems, but I suppose it depends on the graphics card model.
That is so true - although I did run a Nvidia Quadro 2000 GPU and had no issues with it - I have seen many issues with the later 1060, 2060 and 3060 series.
If you run a GPU supported by the Nouveau driver there is usually no issues but later on - especially after the GPL debacle a few years back - I saw too many issues with Nvidia - not that AMD kernel driver is issue less, but it is not as dominant as Nvidia.
The digital blackboard may prove the real obstacle here as it relies on the GPU output.
The question Is Manjaro the right distro for ? has been asked before and it cannot be answered by the community as @Mirdarthos points out - there is no right answer.
Only if you are willing to be the system administrator and don’t expect Manjaro to be flawless then perhaps it will be the right distribution for you too.
I have the very same experience, by just following unstable branch for months on end, I never had any problem with - the almost dayly - updates ! Your guess that stable updates are simply “to big” at once, are spot on !
There is no “the right distro” for everybody. It’s either for you or not for you, that’s as far as it can go. It is for me, as I can do everything I want and need in this distro and its philosophy suits me. You see how many “me” and “I” there?
From what I sense, you would be better using a point release distro like Ubuntu if what you want is installing the system and not having to lookout for updates and eventual problem with this and that from new updates.
Manjaro is a “bleeding edge” distro, you’ll get the latest and greatest for all packages, and it is not guaranteed that a new issue doesn’t arise or whatever.
I’m an academic and I work most of the time at my laptop. Having used Manjaro for 6-7 years (I don’t remember exactly when I first installed it), I have very rarely (which means: once) experienced serious regressions that made me unable to work – and I’m on the testing branch. I guess on the stable branch Manjaro is 99% rock solid.