I am relatively new to Arch and thinking of installing Manjaro.
I have seen many posts about a problem with Grub boot loader.
How is it with Manjaro?
I know you have your own repos and you have 2 versions, one is fast updating and another that is a bit slower and more tested.
Where can I get a real stable and minimal iso that does not have this Grub problem?
Is it possible during installation to chose rEFInd instead of Grub?
Thanks for guiding a newbie.
What problem? If you mean the recent issues on Arch and other derivatives, that does not affect Manjaro. We did not update to the problematic version.
Without knowing what problem you mean:
If you do a fresh install now, you’ll not encounter that problem.
It only affects older installations, where grub was installed a long time ago and now, due to some changes to it, problems can arise.
fresh install now == no problem
Thank you for your replies.
Sorry I do not know much about Linux, but I am after stability and performance it provides.
So, I understand that downloading, installing, then later on if there is a Grub update system will update normally without breakage?
That is it will just work and keep working (I understand of course there can be problems anytime with any software).
a little simplified (but just a little 
):
Yes and yes.
Thank you very much.
How can I chose repos? which repos to chose?
… separate issue
but:
the standard repos are already chosen and active
What do you mean by choosing them?
Perhaps you install - and have a look -
then you might be able to ask a more specific question
or
it might have just resolved itself in that instant
OK, thanks a lot for feed back.
oh - does that mean that the (possible) problem might still surface later on?
and that I gave the wrong advise?
looks like it (to me)
Not really.
AFAIK Manjaro controls what software goes to repos so it will break only if Manjaro adds the defective version to repos.
The problem with the grub package was (is) that the grub developers expect the update process to run grub-install and update-grub scripts for the system being updated. That may be new or old information - I have no idea.
This information seems to have escaped - for unknown reasons - the common knowledge pool within Arch and Manjaro developers and maintainers.
The fact that this process was not a core part of neither Manjaro nor Arch package resulted in an issue where Manjaro unstable was hit and mitigated - but also other Arch derivatives where grub is the preferred loader.
Why wasn’t it caught with Arch repos before rolled out?
That cannot be answered. One suggestion could be the widely used systemd boot loader - which is widely used by Arch based EFI systems - mostly due to it’s simplicity.
As far as I know it is not a “defective” version - it is simply a newer version with … let’s say: more features.
Which may cause problems with already installed grub.
It’s actually easy to just run grub-install and update grub,
but many users have never done that consciously as it was part of the installation.
The command to run differs depending on whether you run a BIOS or an EFI system, and it needs to know where, to which disk, the boot loader is to be installed
and to know and perform that relatively simple task is just too much to ask of users who never dealt with that.
… but grub can’t be held back indefinitely by Manjaro just to avoid the potential problem
So:
my confident answer to your first question was not entirely correct.
The potential problem still exists and is waiting to either (maybe) hit you or to be resolved by some automagic when grub is brought up to the current version eventually.
I wonder why not updating/installing gets done automatically after Grub update.
Not all users are techies, even though a user may be not focusing, tired, sleepy or just did
yay -Syu xyz without remembering or focusing
Something should be done I think. It can’t be just left as it is now.
There is no surefire way which fits all installations (uefi vs bios, where is the boot loader installed etc.)
Also, just because the grub package is installed doesn’t necessarily mean:
grub is the boot loader