I am in the process of starting a small business with very limited funds, and system stability is critical for me.
Yesterday I experienced my second serious system failure. This time it happened after a regular system upgrade. The graphics drivers broke, resulting in a black screen and complete loss of access to the system. I spent roughly 6 hours troubleshooting using a live USB (chroot, kernel reinstall, GRUB repair, Nvidia drivers, etc.) before I could recover the system. I recovered the system using online documentation and external help, including AI-assisted troubleshooting.
While I eventually got help and learned a lot, this kind of downtime is not acceptable in a business context ā especially when important files are on the system and time is limited.
My questions are:
Is it realistically possible to run Manjaro in a stable, business-safe way?
If so, what concrete practices are recommended (kernels, update strategy, snapshots, graphics handling)?
Or should I consider moving to something else (e.g. Windows 11 or a fixed-release Linux)?
For context:
I already plan to keep backups (Raspberry Pi 5 with synced important files).
Hardware: in bio
Just want to clarify that I have limited time for troubleshooting, but time for maintenance.-
I appreciate honest advice from users who run Manjaro in production or professional environments.
I sorry to hear that, usually this does not happen, although I suspect Nvidia GPU as this is the single most significant issue.
Running an operating system - and a free one, provided by people that does not get paid, but do it because it is fun - requires the user to exercise due diligence.
I you favor stability over convenience, you shoul coonsider creating your own local mirror. It is easier than you might think, and it gives you peace of mind.
I my opinion, yes - even more if you take Nvidia out of the equation.
Yes, it is. I run Manjaro on one of my servers, and I am planning to rebuild my Heztner instance to use Manjaro as well.
You can set up a raspberry pi to serve the mirror to your local network
pacman-mirrors has a configuration for that purpose Static = option
If you require something that builds from AUR recipes, build it locally and use a custom repo to serve those packges - e.g. printer driver, it could be anything.
You should do exactly what serves your interests best.
I believe I just did. I have been using Manjaro for many years, an all my work is done with Manjaro as my only operating system.
Yes, Manjaro is generally rolling, but you can keep it stable.
This cannot be answered by the community, using a forum topic as entry point.
The company side of Manjaro specialise in just that.
Any computer operating system will inevitably need some downtime whenever it has a significant update to apply. So a rolling release like Manjaro really isnāt suited to business use in my opinion. Youād be far better off with a distro that has a long release-cycle, such as Debian. That way you should only have major updates every few years rather than several times a month.
On the subject of backups, Iād strongly recommend using USB-connected discs and keeping several generations of backups with your discs kept in a different building to the computer. Two reasons:
If you get hit by ransomware and your backups are accessible from the computer, theyāll get encrypted as well. If theyāre disconnected youāve got some hope of at least recovering all but your most recent data.
In the event of a fire or other disaster, again you want to at least have some hope of recovering most of your business data. If your backups are in the same building, youāll probably lose the lot. This is why when I was a shift operator in a big data centre I spent so much time on the road taking tapes (in those days) to the disaster store.
Multiple copies of backups are always worthwhile in case one copy gets corrupted; my own (non-business) computer has backups on (1) a separate physical disc inside the box, (2) a USB disc kept outside my house and (3) in the cloud.
Did you also read through the relevant Update Announcement(s), in particular the Known Issues and Solutions section, and comments throughout the thread? It is strongly recommended to do this before applying updates, as they will often prepare you for manual interventions that only you as the system administrator can perform.
Iāll make the presumption that you use the Manjaro Stable branch:
I agree.
Choosing a so-called rolling release distribution infers that you are both capable and willing to perform both preventative and regular maintenance tasks.
The Manjaro forum exists to help wherever possible, however, being aware of issues that might prevent otherwise smooth operation of your OS is ultimately your responsibility.
Of late, there have been many factors contributing to unexpected issues; GNOME dumping X11 and switching to Wayland exclusively; KDE now defaulting to Wayland while leaving X11 to be re-installed by those who might still prefer it (as from Plasma 6.8 of X11 will be removed completely); one of the latest Nvidia driver series (580xx) has been unstable across the board, forcing radical workarounds for Arch based distributions; and so on.
These are only the main highlights ā if you were previously unaware of any of those factors mentioned, to the extent they may be relevant to the Manjaro edition you are using, then unfortunately the weak link is you.
Regarding your questions:
Yes, as long as you are prepared to make the effort required in maintaining the system ā to allow yourself sufficient time for troubleshooting; maintenance ā use the available resources in the Manjaro forum
the Manjaro Wiki:
the Arch Linux Wiki:
These areas open various topics in themselves; topics I should mention have been frequently covered throughout the forum and the Wiki(s).
We cannot decide for you.
However, if youāre not prepared to spend the time; do the work; that a rolling release distribution demands, then certainly a point-release distribution may be better suited to you, wherein updates are required quarterly, six-monthly, or even yearly.
The downside (in some cases) is that you will have to perform a fresh installation for every major āpoint releaseā ā some distributions allow alternate methods ā for example, Debian will allow a distribution upgrade without requiring a reinstall ā most discover that in the Debian documentation at some point.
I personally use Debian, MacOS, FreeBSD and Windows in addition to Manjaro, and in all the years Iām yet to find an OS that absolutely fulfills my expectations ā most do, however, fulfill my needs. The main problem many seem to face is in carrying forward the notion; the expectation; that Linux will be another Windows with a different name ā that cannot be further from the truth.
For the sake of further clarification, we can provide access to information and help (via the forum generally, the Update Announcements, and Tutorials) and if you have a specfic issue, the Support categories are also at your disposal.
Beyond that, whether you use those resources (or not) is entirely up to you.
Whatever you decide, I trust it will better serve your needs, and only you know what those needs may be. I can only wish you luck.
Thanks for the good advice. As an old quality engineer, I am aware of backup. Preferably with an extern organization. Manjaro has worked well when I play games with Steam.
Maybe I should run an LTS alongside Manjaro for business use?
This seems a decent idea as then you should at least still have a working system if one OS has issues.
Itās worth bearing in mind though that Manjaroās GRUB needs to be the one used for booting, since Iāve been reading that there are issues trying to boot Manjaro via a non-Arch-based distroās iteration of GRUB.
Gaming and business should be kept on different computers.
The kernels will make no difference for the stability gaming vs. business. It is good practice to run mission critical systems on a stable kernel. LTS is not more stable than other kernels. It just a matter of the time frame where security fixes is backported.
At this time there is no indication of the type of machine in question. However, with the presumption of a desktop machine, may I suggest installing each OS to a separate disk in order to maintain a modicum of separation between the two systems.
The following is a tutorial for multi-booting Manjaro and Windows ā however, the basic premise should nonetheless be transferable to another OS.
I am dual booting Manjaro and Fedora, and for me it is Fedora that is managing the boot process because the Manjaro os-prober cant detect the Fedora installation. I also installed Fedora after Manjaro so the Fedora GRUB2 took over during the installation. In fact I have never seen the Manjaro GRUB menu.
for not taking over this thread, I ll finish here on that topic but would like in near future to come back to this issue, because I am curious to learn about the background. If you happen to know any informative forum threads that have dealt with this issue, I would be happy to start readingā¦
I wouldnāt run nVidia with Manjaro for a business. Iām sorry, but after my experience from 2007 to 2013 I still canāt shake the idea that people using it are either stupid, or just new to the scene.
I upgraded from an nVidia gaming rig to an i3-4130, and later to a Ryzen 5600G, and never had any issue whatsoever since 2013.
Iāve had the same Plasma desktop for 9 years now - and most of the instability comes from KDEās blunders (like now, I can reliably cause Dolphin to freeze and die by creating a folder in a certain way). I also have quite a few AUR installations which everyone keeps reminding me is such a bad ideaā¦
Snapshots, Backups, just be safe. It really depends on what you need to runā¦ the only reason I left Mint and installed Manjaro is that some software I needed to use came up in the AUR, it did show up later on in Flatpak (but still, I went back to the AUR when it was available because it runs better that way).
Otherwise I wouldnāt have moved from Mintā¦ and if Ubuntu hadnāt pushed Unity I might have stayed around for Gnome3 (at that time I felt Cinnamon was a better fit).
Not so much about āstabilityā or whatever - more of a very personal set of circumstances that simply dictated each decision based entirely on my use-case.
For a business, I would certainly be setting up differently, instead of my ATX case with multiple drives, Iād have a single 1TB NVME, plus NAS storage for shared backups/snapshots storage (good to recover if your CPU or NVME suddenly go on the fritz).
I can recover from complete hardware failure in 20 minutes - add an extra few hours or days to iron out any issues if I replace that with entirely different hardware.
There is not a world in which a rolling release distribution is more stable than point release. I just do not think it is that suitable for business. Regardless if it is arch based, fedora based, or something else. Hell, even the normal ubuntu is kind of rolling with 6 months cycle, so i would always choose the LTS there. The only exception is debian, because they have a very quirky understanding of the world, so their āunstableā is actually stable, and their āstableā translates as āancient and outdatedā.
That said, i had my first 2 issues with unbootable system on the first 2 days of my manjaro usage (which i caused myself before i have learned a bit for the system) and then not a serious problem for almost 3 years. There is a bit of learning required for some common good practices (pretty much just read the tutorials section of the forum). So the people that are lazy and do not read suffer more. That is why we say it is not the easiest or the most user friendly distro ever, because it requires a little bit more effort in comparison with ubuntu or windows.
And there is also the statisticā¦and some known troublemakers. If you avoid them you will be fine, if take an extra reading, time and education for them you can also be fine.
The prime example which you gave yourself and which is the current hot topic is Nvidia. They are just not user friendly and linux friendly. So if one have a choice, that means buys or assembles a new pc for linux usage - just avoid them like the Plague. Let them make chips for AI, Microsoft or whoever they want, but as a linux user just do not buy them. Because they did not make the chip with YOU in mind. That said, if you already have it you will obviously not throw away the pc, so you will have to learn to deal with it.
Another good example is wayland. It is ānewā. If you are just coming to linux and searching for alternatives for common windows programs, chances are, you will start working with wayland compatible programs right away. If you are a seasoned linux user who is used to work with a particular program since 15 years and you have an older installation, chances are - the convertion will cause some problems.
Plasma is another prime example, as well as btrfs. If you have a car like Rolls-Royce with a lot of gimmicks and thech, the statistical probability that something breaks is higher. You just cannot have a broken āstarry headlinerā in your toyota corollaā¦because it does not have a starry headliner.
So if you want it fancy and modern, be prepared to deal with some issues on major updates. That is why i use xfce - it is simple, there is not much to break.
Or the instant snapshot function of btrfs. It is nice, until you actually have to change anything and then you realise nothing of your previous knowledge for filesystems is applicable.
p.s. i have an ext4, unencrypted, with x11 and xfce, the builtin video, use the stable branch with only 1-2 aurs and a LTS kernel. I also know how to update (with pacman) and make backups with timeshift. And it is rock stable.
Well there might be - but thatās why I laboured the point that in my case, it was specific to the software and set up that I needed to achieve.
Though time has passed, and Iām sure things have changed a lot since the time I was relying on PPAās and scrabbling to get some software that wasnāt ancientā¦
Flatpak might cover those cases nowā¦ so generally Iād say youāre right - but not definitely.
So my question to OP would be this:
Whatās wrong with Linux Mint?
You need to give a very detailed answer, specifically tailored to your exact use case.
Respond only with factual, concise answers without speculation.
Then perhaps we might come closer to a sensible answer.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply and share your experiences.
I want to clarify that my intention was never to criticise Manjaro as a project. I actually like it a lot, and it has served me very well for personal use and gaming. I also understand that many users run Manjaro successfully for years without major issues.
My situation is simply about risk management. When trying to start a small business with very limited resources, I have to separate experimentation and enjoyment from systems that need to be predictable under pressure. That doesnāt mean Manjaro is āunstableā in general, only that my tolerance for downtime is different in a business context.
I fully acknowledge that both logic and emotion are involved in these choices. Passion for a distribution is a good thing, but so is being realistic about oneās own constraints and use-case.
Based on the advice here, my plan is to:
Keep Manjaro for personal use and learning
Run a fixed-release LTS system for business work
Maintain strong backups and recovery options
Thanks again for the constructive input, it has helped me think this through more clearly.
Yes i do as well.
I am a consultant and coach, not seldom sitting in front of the client with a projector attached to my Lenovo notebook running only manjaro. And so the client sees if my system works or not. This is a kind of reputation. āIf he is not even able to work with his notebook, how could he help me?ā
It just needs to work ( at least in this moments ). I neither do have the time nor interest in working on the OS at this situations / days.
The / my! main difficulty is the one person sitting in front of the notebook ā¦ itās me ā¦
In the morning, when an update is there ā¦ I am a child, I know, I like to build and play around with new stuff, prepare my notebook to the BEST it is possible - and I want to have it even better ā¦
It is so hard for me on these days when I do have a client meeting in front of me ā¦ NOT to start even the simplest update ā¦ to often I thought ā hey, what should happenā ā¦ and as we all know Murphyās law: it will happen.
It is so hard for me just to let the system work - never touch a running system when a client meeting is in front of me ā¦ this is as difficult for me as for a child not to take the chocolate ā¦
But this is the way I use my Manjaro Notebook for my business.
I am not seldom dependent on the one working Notebook I have with me for several days.
And - at least most of the times (when I do not play around to much) - It just works.
I completely trust on my Manjaro Notebook for my small business.
If I would not do, I would take Debian I think ā¦ but I really do like Manjaro moreā¦
I have been running a small business since 2017. Thatās around when I switched to Manjaro full-time. Before that, I had various experiences with Arch and Manjaro on other hardware. And thatās what itās all about here - the hardware. I didnāt have any major problems with Manjaro on my Dell laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. On my new mini-computer based on Intel components, there are practically no problems. I simply choose hardware that I know Linux will like. I do the same with phones, buying ones on which I can install LineageOS. Pixels are too expensive for me, so using GrapheneOS is out of the question.
Itās absolutely possible, easy and safe. I use Manjaro privately since 2017, on job PCās since my first work as sysadmin (~5 years). I keep some simple rules:
update private PC first, then your work hardware ā I never had any issues
keep 2 kernels ā latest and LTS
no Nvidia, only AMD
keep backup ā I never had timeshift or other fancy backup software, I simply keep my dotfiles in git repository, for other files I have external drives or cloud ā if something broke (probably hardware) I can restore from scratch everything easily in ~1-2h
always keep USB with livecd ā for case you need reinstall system or fix something
An not recommendation, but I love mess with my system and for every day and for work I use Hyprland and some other stuff not considered very stable wich change in fast paceā¦ so if you know and love your system, nothing will be unstable
@Swed Personally All four of the computers we run, are rock solid, one of them, my daily driver, uses the Testing Branch. All of them have Manjaro KDE Plasma, except the Server, which is an SBK Server Spin of Manjaro.
The big thing is we do not use nVidia on any of our computers. (well there is one older Dell Laptop, but I am using the Nouveau driver for thaat.
So yes it is possible to have a stable experience. BTW the advice about reading up on each updateā¦ priceless.
Having been there and done that, albeit with Arch, I can only say do yourself a favour and go with something like Ubuntu LTS. Stable, large repos, good support (supposedly but shouldnāt be needed). Interoperability and stability should be a concern for you and having bleeding edge software is not all that conducive in that respect
I use Manjaro Xfce with GT 730 GPU for audio production, that was simple to switch to 470xx legacy drivers last year. Package updates were always scheduled for Saturday so I had 2 days to resolve issues before any live broadcasts
My partner uses Manjaro Xfce with GTX 970 GPU to manage a wholesale/retail business.
Recent changes for nvidia legacy drivers has been one of the trickiest manual interventions for users. But once the legacy driver and tools are installed, future updates should roll out without issues
Users on non-rolling distributions avoid such problems by reinstalling a new ISO. The downside of this approach is that users are more reliant on distribution maintainers to resolve issues
Answering one good question is like feeding a hungry person one meal, but teaching them research skills by example is showing them how to grow food for a lifetime.
)
). I neither do have the time nor interest in working on the OS at this situations / days.
