KDE, Stability of Manjaro

[soundofthunder]

@oldtux

I know many will disagree with me and they are right

Well, at least you seem to have the aptitude and willingness to read the documentation when necessary, and seek informed assistance; so that already places you ahead of the curve as compared many of the newer (and not-so-newer) users in this forum.

[oldtux]

@soundofthunder

Well, at least you seem to have the aptitude and willingness to read the documentation when necessary, and seek informed assistance; so that already places you ahead of the curve

Wow. Thanks for the compliment.
I do my best generally to learn as much as I can about everything and anything.

I am a bookworm. I read a lot about almost everything.

You know what, when I was a kid my gifts and prizes were not toys or such… they were books, non fiction books. I hope you won’t think or consider me a dull guy.

[soundofthunder]

@oldtux

You know what, when I was a kid my gifts and prizes were not toys or such… they were books, non fiction books. I hope you won’t think or consider me a dull guy.

Don’t worry… it’s all geek to many of us here.

[toast]

You are doing the opposite of what I have done.

I spent more than 3 years using Manjaro KDE, but have very recently moved the desktop and the laptop to mxlinux kde.

Manjaro was super stable. I’ve heard lots of people here say that you should not install Manjaro unless you are prepared to do the work to fix it if it breaks, but it does not break in my experience. They say you should read the release notes before updating but I never did and through more than 3 years all updates worked great.

I did have a breakage once but I provoked that myself by using REISUB to force shutdown the system and it broke some configuration in KDE Plasma.

So don’t worry about Manjaro being unstable. It’s fine. I think some like to scare people off with arch talk, but I am no Linux expert and I did fine with Manjaro with my limited skills.

[owburp]

@oldtux

Celebrating 1 full week on Manjaro, KDE Stable, latest 2 LTS kernels.
In like 2 or 3 days I made a fresh install with BTRFS, and related stuff so it automatically snapshots whenever I install/uninstall/update…
My conclusion after distro hopping and trying almost everything out there:

• I believe any OS should be rolling.

Back when I first installed Manjaro on one of my machines, I had decided to start with plain vanilla instead of setting it up with BTRFS. Rather than have the automatic snapshots and backing up that BTRFS offered (among other things) I stayed with what was comfortable for me – imaging the drive(s) and learning to use Timeshift (and later on, Restic to backup my data). I’ve had to use Timeshift to go back a snapshot a few times and I’ve found it very simple to use. Timeshift can be set to run automatically although I’ve left it on manual. I believe it was a good decision now that I’ve seen the number of forum posts associated with problems that mention BTRFS.

I admit I was a bit naive in my belief that a rolling release OS would require less work than having to fully reinstall MX Linux every year or so. My process in doing the Manjaro updates entails doing a Timeshift snapshot, backing up my data with Restic, and using Rescuezilla to image the install (not including the swap partition). This is done for multiple computers here and it only gets done after reading through the forum posts for the update’s announcement thread to see what problems have been encountered and how to deal with them. It does take up a bit of time and it can get pretty involved one or two times each month when the updates are released. Much of this is mentioned in @Aragorn’s excellent post at [Consideration] Is Manjaro the right distribution for you?

[oldtux]

@owburp

I had decided to start with plain vanilla

@owburp

Timeshift

this is what I did.

@owburp

a bit naive in my belief that a rolling release OS would require less work than having to fully reinstall MX Linux every year or so.

For me, I think a rolling release is much better than the hassle of a fresh install or upgrading. It is not a big issue to sudo pacman -Syyu once a day or every few days.

@owburp

Much of this is mentioned in @Aragorn’s excellent post at [Consideration] Is Manjaro the right distribution for you?

With all my due respect, I believe Manjaro is very easy to install, update and maintain especially if they follow the defaults during installation and do not really play with the system settings/configurations.
If people are using Windows, they get lots of updates and reboots… etc. I believe the way Arch based updates are much easier than those of Windows.

@owburp

using Rescuezilla to image the install

I really thank you for mentioning Rescuezilla. I am looking at both Rescuezilla and Clonezilla.

Downloading Clonezilla now to copy it to my Ventoy USB and play with it. I may do Rescuzilla as well. But I am more interested in Clonezilla as it can create an OEM ISO without personal data.

[soundofthunder]

@oldtux

It is not a big issue to sudo pacman -Syyu once a day or every few days.

Here’s one quick tip: Updating Manjaro only required one y in that command, despite other users that habitually use two. Be kind to the server:

sudo pacman -Syu

And to make sure mirrors used are fresh before updating:

sudo pacman-mirrors --continent && sudo pacman -Syu

This can often avoid some common update issues.

@toast

I’ve heard lots of people here say that you should not install Manjaro unless you are prepared to do the work to fix it if it breaks, but it does not break in my experience.

You must also be prepared to do the work to prevent breakage; adopt habits favourable to a healthy system (and don’t treat it like Windows).

Be prepared to take responsibility for your own actions/ignorance/stupidity – all of which you likely did as a matter of course to reap the benefits of a relatively trouble-free experience.

I can’t recall many issues that were not ultimately due to my own negligence.

@owburp

I admit I was a bit naive in my belief that a rolling release OS would require less work than having to fully reinstall MX Linux every year or so.

Both are more or less on par, really. Most point release distributions still have updates between the major releases; plenty of scope to require extra work to fix things oneself. With Debian and most derivitives, you don’t even need to reinstall from scratch at every major release. (Basically) point at the updated repositories via sources.list and you’re done.

Those willing to do the necessary work (no matter whether their chosen OS is a point or rolling release) will reap the rewards in more ways than one. Those who avoid having to do any work (and there are many), insisting that others should just fix it for them will reap what they sow, also.

[owburp]

@oldtux

For me, I think a rolling release is much better than the hassle of a fresh install or upgrading.

Yes, when I first considered the rolling release concept, I felt that way as well. It wasn’t until about a year’s worth of Manjaro updates (with the procedure as I had outlined in my previous post) that the time I was spending on a regular basis was making me wonder if maybe a reinstall of MX Linux every year or so balanced out. Of course, the stability of Manjaro and this very active and helpful forum more than make up for it all.

@oldtux

I believe Manjaro is very easy to install, update and maintain

You’ll get no argument from me on that point. During the very long stretch of time I was on Windows, I relied on a forum similar to this one called AskWoody; there would be reports on update problems and whether to hold off on specific updates. That worked well up to the point when Microsnot decided to change their outlook and would force updates on users. That’s what led me to look at Linux. Now with Manjaro, one can’t really hold off updates or do partial updates, but this forum helps us deal with update problems. And because the actual Manjaro developers participate here, they can and do pull back any really problematic updates. That is one HUGE plus for using Manjaro!!

@oldtux

I am looking at both Rescuezilla and Clonezilla.

Rescuezilla uses Clonezilla as its imaging tool and includes a number of other helpful utilities in its toolkit, like gparted.

@soundofthunder

Here’s one quick tip: Updating Manjaro only required one y in that command

For quite a while, I flipped back and forth between the one and the two “y” each time I came across conflicting statements here on the forum, eg, using the double “y” when updating the mirrors. I’ve decided that the way to go is, as you recommended, with the single “y”.

[Aragorn]

@owburp

I flipped back and forth between the one and the two “y” each time I came across conflicting statements here on the forum, eg, using the double “y” when updating the mirrors. I’ve decided that the way to go is, as you recommended, with the single “y”.

Always use a single “y” for everything unless you are switching branches — e.g. from Stable to Testing or Unstable, or in the other direction — in which case you should use “yy”.

[soundofthunder]

@owburp

I’ve decided that the way to go is, as you recommended, with the single “y”.

Most likely @Yochanan would be more than willing to confirm that as the better choice, and why.

@oldtux

I am looking at both Rescuezilla and Clonezilla.

CloneZilla is included with RescueZilla; think of RescueZilla as a toolbox, and CloneZilla as one of the tools. How’s that for a simple analogy?!

I created a quick single purpose CloneZilla guide recently that you might find interesting; [HowTo] Clone Manjaro directly to a larger disk using CloneZilla.

[CGA]

Rescuezilla is very useful, reliable and easy to use. It has gotten me out of a pickle on more than one occasion. I image my system drive about once a month, even made a grub entry for it and a separate partition where I store the ISO, booting into it takes a couple of seconds and I don’t need to insert a USB stick.

[Teo]

@soundofthunder

Most point release distributions still have updates between the major releases; plenty of scope to require extra work to fix things oneself. With Debian and most derivitives, you don’t even need to reinstall from scratch at every major release. (Basically) point at the updated repositories via sources.list and you’re done.

Indeed my experience with ubuntu. I switched not because i thought i will have more maintanance work here, but because i wanted newer programs. In debian world even on a freshly released distro the versions were 1 year behind. Use an LTS and you can easily end up with 4 year old versions of, for example, filezilla. No wonder Cannonical used its own flaw as a selling point of the snaps (which now i am on rolling, are in many cases, also outdated in comparison to upstream).

[oldtux]

@soundofthunder

Updating Manjaro only required one y in that command, despite other users that habitually use two. Be kind to the server:

Thanks. Noted and modified.

@soundofthunder

With Debian and most derivitives, you don’t even need to reinstall from scratch at every major release.

I have been on Debian for some time. As far as I read it is not that simple, not only changing repos in repos.list. On their forums they say each release will get its specific procedures to upgrade. Anyway, why do I even need to bother myself with changing repos? For me it is much better to just install only once and only sudo pacman -Syu . I think this is OK for me at least. I can have my system updated and running all the time.

@owburp

Of course, the stability of Manjaro and this very active and helpful forum more than make up for it all.

Now, I am 8 days old on Manjaro, no updates, that is software is still kept back for testing. AFAIK updates is like every couple weeks. It is enough I think to debug and remove serious bugs that can break the system. This is sort of similar to what Debian does, this makes Manjaro the most stable Arch based distro.

@owburp

Rescuezilla uses Clonezilla

I tried downloading Clonezilla, through FireFox, and Chromium, the download never finishes! I don;t know why. Something with the servers or with the ISO itself?! I don’t know. I will try Rescuezilla. Though I was hoping for Clonezill because it allows me to create an OEM ISO of my system so I can give to friends to try.

@soundofthunder

I created a quick single purpose CloneZilla guide recently that you might find interesting; [HowTo] Clone Manjaro directly to a larger disk using CloneZilla .

Thank you very much. Reading it now.

@CGA

I image my system drive about once a month, even made a grub entry for it

This really so interesting. But I hope you create a thread how to do it.
Honestly, thinking of automatically taking a snapshot daily and uploading ot to pCloud (https://e.pcloud.com/#page=register&invite=ClMzZ9y2e9V) (to be honest, if you signup using my link you will get 1 GB storage extra for free, and I get the same both up to 10GB max.) or perhaps to another cloud storage.
So, in case of a disc failure or complete loss I have my system

@Teo

I switched not because i thought i will have more maintanance work here, but because i wanted newer programs.

My 2 cents. I tried several Ubuntus, including LTS… etc. I found it a bit heavy on my machine and really not that stable. I remember something crashed.
Pure Debian is much more stable, but not that responsive as Arch based. PLUS being rolling is a plus for me. I don’t really care about the latest version of a software. I care about stability (not crashing or breaking, which I believe Manjaro is really stable enough) and responsiveness.)

[CGA]

@oldtux

This really so interesting.

There is already a guide for this here.

I’ve had to modify it, though, to get Rescuzilla working and after reading another thread I decided to put the entries in /boot/grub/custom.cfg instead. I’ve also found that RZ doesn’t want to boot if I don’t put the ISO on a separate partition. As an example, here’s my config where I’ve also included a grub entry for the Manjaro ISO.
The location reference, (hd1,3) is of course dependent on your individual setup. It can be found by using the ls command in the grub command line.

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.

menuentry "Rescuezilla" {
  insmod ext2
  set isofile="/rz.iso"
  loopback loop (hd1,3)$isofile
  linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile quiet noeject fastboot toram fsck.mode=skip noprompt splash
  initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}

menuentry "Manjaro  grub_iso"  {
    set isofile="/manjaro.iso"
    set dri="free"
    set lang="en_US"
    set keytable="se"
    set timezone="Europe/Stockholm"
    search --no-floppy -f --set=root $isofile
    probe -u $root --set=abc
    set pqr="/dev/disk/by-uuid/$abc"
    loopback loop (hd1,3)$isofile
    linux  (loop)/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64  img_dev=$pqr img_loop=$isofile driver=$dri tz=$timezone lang=$lang keytable=$keytable copytoram
    initrd  (loop)/boot/intel_ucode.img (loop)/boot/initramfs-x86_64.img
}

[BG405]

@oldtux

I tried downloading Clonezilla, through FireFox, and Chromium

No need for that; it’s in the repos:

pacman -Ss clonezilla
extra/clonezilla 5.6.13-1
    ncurses partition and disk imaging/cloning program

(You can also use pamac search of course).

[oldtux]

@BG405

No need for that; it’s in the repos:

I just wanted to have it as an ISO and make a bootable USB flash disk so I can download from the cloud my ISO and restore it.

Having it installed means I have to “dd” the ISO to flash disk every time I create a new ISO.

One important question, if I “dd” the ISO to a flash disk and boot from it, will I be having the option to install it?

[soundofthunder]

@oldtux

I just wanted to have it as an ISO and make a bootable USB flash disk so I can download from the cloud my ISO and restore it.

Has nobody yet introduced you to Ventoy?

Create a Ventoy USB (ISO Launcher)

@VENTOY USB

The beauty of using a Ventoy USB is that nothing else is needed. Simply copy/drag any ISO to the Ventoy USB, and you’re done.

Boot with a Ventoy USB, and ISO files are automatically listed in the Ventoy menu, and can be booted directly.

A 32GB capacity USB should allow ample space to store several ISOs of your choice; an 8GB capacity USB might hold one, or two ISO’s; do the math.

Ventoy is available from the official Manjaro extra repository:

sudo pacman -S ventoy

Ventoy Usage:

Type ventoy (without arguments) to see usage information:

Usage:  Ventoy2Disk.sh CMD [ OPTION ] /dev/sdX  
 CMD:  
  -i  install Ventoy to sdX (fails if disk already installed with Ventoy)  
  -I  force install Ventoy to sdX (no matter if installed or not)  
  -u  update Ventoy in sdX  
  -l  list Ventoy information in sdX  
  
 OPTION: (optional)  
  -r SIZE_MB  preserve some space at the bottom of the disk (only for install)  
  -s/-S       enable/disable secure boot support (default is enabled)  
  -g          use GPT partition style, default is MBR (only for install)  
  -L          Label of the 1st exfat partition (default is Ventoy)  
  -n          try non-destructive installation (only for install)

Creating the Ventoy USB:

Write the Ventoy system to an empty USB drive;
use /dev/sdX to target the device itself, and not a partition:

sudo sh ventoy -i -r 100 -S -g -L VOLUME /dev/sdX

• Enable -s or disable -S Secure Boot.
• Substitute VOLUME for a volume label name to use.
• Substitute /dev/sdX for the location of your USB device.
• Preserve some space on the target device (example allows 100mb).

Updating the Ventoy USB:

Update the Ventoy system on an existing Ventoy USB;
ensure the updated Ventoy version is available in Manjaro; and then:

sudo ventoy -u /dev/sdX

• The Ventoy USB update process is non-destructive.

---

See also: Ventoy (GitHub);

[owburp]

@oldtux

I just wanted to have it as an ISO and make a bootable USB flash disk so I can download from the cloud my ISO and restore it.

Just to clarify what you are trying to do – You want to put a Clonezilla ISO on a flash drive and make it bootable so that, if necessary, you can boot Clonezilla from the flash drive and restore a backup image that you made of your drive(s) with that backup image having been downloaded from your cloud storage.

If that is what you are trying to do, then may I suggest downloading the Rescuezilla ISO, putting a copy of it on a Ventoy USB (see @soundofthunder’s post) so that you can boot the Ventoy flash drive, select Rescuezilla to start from the Ventoy menu, and restore the image. I have done this a couple of times already and it works very smoothly (and quickly). I did NOT try downloading a backup image from a cloud account but I did notice that there is network file access available. Rescuezilla is specifically designed as a bootable rescue toolbox. I think there have been posts here referencing the addition of Clonezilla to a Live Manjaro USB. I chose the simpler route of Rescuezilla.

[soundofthunder]

@owburp

I did NOT try downloading a backup image from a cloud account but I did notice that there is network file access available.

@oldtux

will I be having the option to install it?

With Ventoy, you can use virtually any live environment you have available on ISO to download your backup image to a directory on the same USB; or the Manjaro Live ISO itself, for that matter.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, I combined NomadBSD and Ventoy on the same USB, which resulted in quite a handy tool (it’s a work in progress).

[oldtux]

@soundofthunder

Has nobody yet introduced you to Ventoy?

I am already using Ventoy and distro hopping on live sessions on it.

@owburp

Rescuezilla ISO, putting a copy of it on a Ventoy USB (see @soundofthunder’s post)

I tried to download, but the download fails at the end. When there are just few seconds left for the download to finish it just stays there for like an hour or more. Tried downloading with Firefox and Chromium. Will try again.

@soundofthunder

As mentioned earlier in this thread, I combined NomadBSD and Ventoy on the same USB, which resulted in quite a handy tool (it’s a work in progress).

This NomadBSD looks really very interesting for me to try.
Thank you very much.