My Arch Linux experience - something the Manjaro Devs will love

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Here is a story that the Developers of Manjaro sure will like (if they care at all). :slightly_smiling_face:

So, two weeks ago I installed Arch Linux on one of my computers (Ryzen 5 1600, 8 GB DDR4-RAM, a fanless GT1030). It was running Linux Mint 22.2 perfectly well (thank you very much, Clem & Team), and I wanted to try that “difficult” Arch Linux thing and possibly keep it, in dual boot with Linux Mint.

The Archinstall script made installing “Arch” easy (only thing I had to look up online was which keyboard layout I had to choose - it was “be-latin1”).

I went with Cinnamon and XFCE4 as DE, and had the Nvidia driver installed, as was “recommended.

And then the first “issue” showed up.

  • choosing Cinnamon during login worked fine,
  • choosing XFCE literally did nothing…
  • choosing XFCE/Wayland (I believe it was Wayland?) made the entire login screen “hang”. :frowning_face_with_open_mouth:

Only thing that still worked was the mouse cursor. Luckily my FractalDesign PC case has a RESET button.

Turned out I had to install a few other “things” (from within Cinnamon) in order to get XFCE to work. Why, if XFCE is an option to choose from during install?

(And XFCE with Wayland still made the login screen “hang”).

What, if I had chosen only XFCE as DE - might I have gotten a “broken” and non-functioning Arch Linux install? :frowning_face_with_open_mouth:

Arch Linux comes with the Epiphany Browser, which I remember from ancient times. It worked for a while - until it crashed… I didn’t bother. Exit Epiphany, enter Vivaldi.

While test running “Arch” that first evening, I had YouTube open in Vivaldi, had a text file open and was listening to an mp4 music file in “Video Player” (I believe it was). And then the PC spontaneously rebooted… Never ever had THAT happen. :woozy_face:

LibreOffice Writer did not show quotation marks during typing (I use LO a lot for writing), but tiny triangles or other weird things, depending on the font I tried. First time ever this happened in a Linux install (or in LO Writer).

(Note to self, AGAIN: NEVER update LibreOffice…)

So, the first few hours in this (in?)famous Arch Linux distro, and I had encountered four “issues”.

They most likely were not to be blamed on Arch Linux directly… but as using the Operating System of the “Redmond Posse” (read: Microslop, read: Microsoft) throughout the years has totally ruined my patience when it comes to computer operating systems, I really did not want to look into these “issues” with Arch Linux.

I want computers that LET me work, not computers that MAKE me work. (So, do NOT get me started about Windows 11, or Windows 10, and God, I still miss Windows Vista – yes, THAT Vista).

So, on day 3, I switched off the computer, removed the SSD with Arch Linux on it and reconnected the SSD with Linux Mint, and Linux Mint is again running just perfectly fine on the above mentioned computer.

One of my other computers (an old Core i3-3220, 8 GB DDR3-RAM, RX 6500XT) is running Manjaro/Cinnamon just fine and without ANY issues, thank you very much, Manjaro Team. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

The point of my first (long) message, here at the Manjaro forum, is something that the Manjaro programmers must surely like:

From a user’s point of view, Manjaro Linux is “better” than Arch Linux. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: :slightly_smiling_face:
(as is Linux Mint. And Fedora. And Ubuntu. And Bunsenlabs–MOST beautiful distro I have EVER seen and used. I also have OpenSUSE TW, with a broken Cinnamon after updating…)

I don’t know there is much animosity between Arch and Manjaro users (and/or developers), but eat that, Arch.

To be honest, I was quite disappointed in Arch Linux. I will most likely not (ever?) install it again. Manjaro I will keep for as long as possible. It is one of my most favourite Linux distros.

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Welcome to the forum! :vulcan_salute:

(Kris? :stuck_out_tongue:)

Wayland support in Xfce is still experimental. It’s good for testing, but if you want stability in Xfce, then best is to stick to X11 for now.

Plasma and GNOME on the other hand are now optimized for Wayland. GNOME already doesn’t even support X11 anymore as we speak, and Plasma will be dropping all X11 support with the arrival of Plasma 6.8, which is scheduled for either the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027.

In Manjaro, there are two libreoffice variants to choose from. The default is libreoffice-fresh (which is the cutting-edge one) and libreoffice-still (which is the slow-roll one).

Whichever version you’ve got installed will always be updated together with the rest of the system during a Stable Update (Announcements > Stable Updates) — or if you’re on Testing, a Testing Update (Announcements > Testing Updates) — provided of course that there is indeed an update for libreoffice. It should also always remain in sync with your chosen language packs and font packages. It’s weird that this was obviously “off” in Arch. :thinking:

Yes, and that’s what Manjaro is all about: the power and performance of Arch, but with user-friendly tools for installing, and for managing kernels, proprietary drivers and language packs, and with a deeper curation process to make sure that everything works properly. :wink:

There’s no animosity towards Arch from our end, but apparently the sentiments are not mutual from their side. I guess we’re not l33t enough by their standards. :man_shrugging:

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A happy customer, we like that! :grin:

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I use libreoffice-fresh since I began using Manjaro. It updates just fine, and runs just fine. Personally I have no issues with it.

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Hey there, I see where you’re coming from… A few years ago it was EOs, before Manjaro I looked at Arch, but wasn’t ready (and really, at this point, just too damn lazy… I wouldn’t want to use Arch-installer, I see that as taking away the main part of Arch - if you don’t build it yourself, it’s not really Arch).

Manjaro really does take a ton of work off your plate - imagine setting up your perfect system, then tuning it over a few years - then you give it away to a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Even if you do it right - it’s like building your house from scratch from a builder’s yard is a big job… there’s the appeal of EOs which is more a vanilla install with a pre-configured prefabricated base; even their KDE Plasma install felt barebones to me with a lot of work left to do.

Anyway, nice to have the story re-told here, because it’s often overlooked and not too frequently re-told.

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@ibizenco You journey is indeed much like most of us. My brother and I wanted to switch my parents 21” iMac to Linux and we settled on Manjaro, we liked the way it worked so much, that we said to ourselves, we should make an ISO configured the way we like it. SO I went about learning the Manjaro building of an ISO and eventually decided to share it with the community. The ISO is a Manjaro Cinnamon Spin, you can read some more about it here: DeLinuxCo feel free to try it out,

It has Xlibre instead of Xorg, LibreOffice as an AppImage, so you get the latest in a complete package, reorganized the Desktop of Cinnamon and quite a few other tweaks.

An welcome!

This concludes my shameless plug…

John

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Welcome to the forum and thanks for your posting.
I’ve tried lots of distros in the past, including Arch (which increased my linux skills massively).

Arch runs perfect, at least on my devices. No words about that.
However I wanted to have a day-by-day distribution and not deal with a configuration and adjustment marathon to get the system running for my needs.

For me (and that’s my personal opinion) Manjaro is a very nice and polished Arch with lots of things making your Arch-life easier.

What else does a user need?

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Manjaro Linux DOES NOT compare to an Arch Linux installation done right - nothing does - perhaps Gentoo - as I recall Arch Linux is heavily inspired by Gentoo but delivers binary packages instead of compile scripts.

The arch install script is not an full fledged installer, it is a helper script - so you don’t need to type the commands by hand - therefore - using the arch install script will only provide a most basic skeleton, based on the recipe you choose to use.

The reason why so many prefer Arch Linux is because it is the ultimate LEGO box set - the build instruction for Arch Linux LEGO box → https://wiki.archlinux.org ←

You can build anything from a blistering fast server to a full fledged workstation with all bells and whistles.

Manjaro Linux exist with it’s own kernels - it exist using Arch Linux packages - and it will never be an Arch Linux system.

EDIT: A huge shout out to all Arch Linux teams and maintainers for providing the packages so that Manjaro Linux can be what it is - without them there would be no Manjaro Linux.

INFO: LEGO is the shortened form of two Danish words Leg Godt meaning Play Well or Play Good. In Danish the words conveys a constructive playing experience with elements of education and explorations of limits by using your imagination and the tools at hand.

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I recommended Arch to a colleague in the 2010’s who encountered a couple of issues and posted on the Arch forum in a normal polite an non-confrontational tone. I also added additional info to his post. He, with 30+ years experience on Solaris, FreeBSD & Slackware, and I with 15+ years on AIX. Red Hat, and Slackware, were told by one of the senior contributors that we were “n00bs who should stick to Windoze”. I can’t repeat what my colleague said to me, but needless to say, he remained on Slackware. We were not l33t enough either. :smiley:

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I got away with it …! (? … I think so, anyway, haven’t checked on their forum recently). :see_no_evil_monkey:

Using the same username and avatar as on here. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :zany_face:
I guess some of their regulars might actually :eyes: here sometimes. But my comments were actually supported and backed-up by a couple of them? So, maybe not. :thinking:

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Thank @philm for that!

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