Over the last couple of years I have tried to get manjaro working on my desktop on various pieces of hardware, fresh installs and completely new drives. In all my attempts I haven’t once been able to create a usable instance of manjaro. I’m not doing anything fancy and I’m sticking to defaults but not once has a manjaro install lasted longer than a day on any desktop install.
I daily drive manjaro on my laptop and it just works but the same cannot be said about desktop. I’ve just spent 3 hours trying to get manjaro to work on my desktop and no matter what gpu drivers I use eventually it just stops booting after doing nothing but changing display settings trying to get my monitors working or I get a black screen after login on one display and no signal on the other. That’s after having to set up my monitors one by one because having both plugged in results in broken scaling.
Today I’ve tried using the default open source driver, 470 nvidia driver and the other nvidia driver including completely reinstalling manjaro multiple times. I have yet to even install a single program or even use the OS. Before I get that far it just breaks for no apparent reason and stops booting.
If you want my repro steps here they are:
Create bootable USB
Launch bootable USB
Unplug a monitor because it’s broken with 2 plugged in
Install manjaro
Load into new manjaro install and configure monitors one by one
Receive black screen no longer able to use monitors even after restart
Launch bootable USB again
Unplug the monitor again
Install manjaro again
Load into new manjaro install and install either nvidia proprietary driver
Configure monitors and have them work perfectly
Restart PC
PC won’t boot anymore resulting in purely white text output
Then go download an Ubuntu iso because you just want a working Linux install for kvm
I don’t get how the experiences I’ve had since 2020 are still the exact same today where a manjaro install on desktop doesn’t last more than a day before just dying. This is on completely different hardware too.
Hey @jubjub, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been having issues getting Manjaro to run on you desktop setup(s). Look like it’s your first post on the forums, so I would suggest that if you ever want to give installing Manjaro a shot on a desktop system again (as it seems you do enjoy Manjaro on your laptop) and run into problems you should reach out to the forums for support. We have a lot of knowledgeable people here who would probably be able to easily resolve your issues by looking at some of the logs. In the case of a boot but no GUI, you can still access your system through a secondary virtual console to see what went wrong.
Please have a look through this post:
You asking for support may even help Manjaro or some upstream software find a bug and help others out to in the same situation. We don’t know what we don’t know so we can’t solve issues we aren’t aware of or don’t have enough information on.
Don’t hate a Linux distro for the problems a Graphics card manufacturer causes…
We all hate nVidia, and unfortunatly im still using one also…
This problem is not related to Manjaro specific, but is the same on all distro’s Ubuntu included, because nVidia provides the drivers and they just sux at it…
That said, maybe people will be able to assist if you provide some logs when the GUI doesn’t show properly, using a console session…
You should be able to switch to a text console using CTRL+ALT+Fn where n is >=2, and login there…
I would advise you to do things step-by-step:
Boot while having the propitary drivers installed, but only 1 monitor configured.
This way you will be sure the driver is working properly.
Try to adjust your settings to allow the use of the other monitor.
This process might be troublesome, and cause all kind of problems, but none that are not fixable or cause you to be unable to get into your system at all…
This is manjaro specific. After encountering these issues I installed Ubuntu and successfully got everything working without hassle. Both monitors even run at full refresh rate now and I’ve got kvm working which is what I needed.
The exact same issues happened to me back in 2020 and 2021 as well when I tried getting manjaro to work on my desktop.
I haven’t tried anything like that other than trying to change gpu drivers with chroot. I get that it’s run by volunteers but if there are bugs that prevent booting with 13th gen that seems like a pretty important fix especially now that it’s been out for almost 6 months.
Since I need my os install to actually work I’m going to wait until I actually have my project working before I come back and try manjaro again. I really want it to work but with how broken all my attempts have been and how easily I got Ubuntu to work it’s really disheartening.
I’ve used chroot to try changing gpu drivers (which never solved my issues) so I’m aware of the recovery options but right now I just need something that works and Ubuntu just works. Maybe after I’ve gotten my project to a more mature state I’ll come back and try again but I’m not just installing it for fun so I don’t have the time to spend debugging an out of the box OS install that should just work. Ubuntu has just worked for me with no issues and I can even run my monitors at full refresh rate. I hate using Ubuntu especially compared to using manjaro with kde plasma but I want to get on with my project and not spend days working on getting an os to boot.
If it was a 1 time thing I wouldn’t have made a forum account to share my experience but I’ve been trying to get manjaro to work on my desktop since 2020 and have yet to find any success. I stopped distro hopping on my laptop because of how much better manjaro was and I just want that same experience on the desktop.
I wish I had your luck. Since 2020 I’ve tried many times to get a stable install on my desktop but always eventually encounter issues booting or black screens.
If it’s not something manjaro can control I understand that but there has to be a solution to make it more usable because I was able to install ubuntu and have 0 issues even with GPU drivers which actually just worked and had great performance. I get that ubuntu is bigger too but these issues are clearly solvable in some way.
Creating a forum account just to rant and vent your frustration is bad behavior and frowned upon in Forum Rules - Manjaro.
Rants and complaints are frowned on and may be closed as they are discovered.
Posts of this type are much better suited for a blog or other personal web space and are unwanted on the Manjaro forums.
Public posts should be open, productive and inviting to all members.
Discussions among a select group of users should take place in private message.
For some systems an Arch based distribution may not be the right choice.
If Ubuntu works for that specific system - then Ubuntu it is.
Perhaps the members of this very forum would have been able to help you back then.
A terrible user experience is often caused by the user having to high thoughts as to own troubleshooting quality and capability.
Instead of taking a step by step approach it seems you just throw random commands found at different sources, at the system in the hope that one will work - but in the end you are generating new problems and end up in the infamous XY problem circle.
Then you end with not knowing what’s up or down and decide to reinstall - and then you start all over again - instead of seeking help among like-minded Manjaro users.
But Manjaro is not Arch and certainly not Ubuntu.
Your issue is no doubt related to graphics but yet you don’t provide any system information so I am guessing.
My guess is that you are using an older Nvidia GPU on your desktop perhaps so old it requires the 340 series driver - which is no longer in Manjaro repo. Such card will only work with the opensource driver - if the 340 series are required it is possible to build it - instructions can be found it the Tutorials section.
I put my hardware specs when signing up to the forum. I have a RTX 3080 and a 13700k as the other user worked out. I had the same issues with not booting previously on a 9700k and a 1080ti. Same task, just trying to use kvm because that’s why I use Linux on a desktop.
People like you are why so many are reluctant to even try Linux. I told you exactly what I did in the original post. I literally fresh installed multiple times to negate my own actions from being a factor.
Just because the experience I’m sharing is negative doesn’t mean it’s not valid feedback. If no one speaks up how on earth is anyone meant to find out that the out of the box experience can be so broken. The only reason to not like me sharing my experience is because you want to live in ignorance saying how perfect things are. On second thought if this is the attitude that is to be expected then I don’t know if I want to try again when I’m done working on my project. I thought the LTT linux challenge would have changed people’s attitudes but it’s still the same accusatory stance where people assume the user is lying or wrong.
All I did was install the OS and plug in monitors. I used the graphical interface to try install gpu drivers after I got a permanent black screen no matter what monitor was plugged in that persisted across reboots. I used a fresh install each time I encountered an issue. At that point I tried using chroot to fix the latest install I had that broke and tried to swap gpu drivers that way but it never recovered and I had to go with Ubuntu which proceeded to work.
The common denominator is Nvidia and Nvidia can be pain on LInux - but you know that.
The latest and greatest hardware is never easy with Linux - it has been this way for as long as I remember - I assume you know that too.
When plan on using Linux on the latest and greatest - you really need to be ready work out the kinks - I assume you know that also.
Don’t attack me - attack the problem - you are clearly blaming the distribution - instead you should look at your own ability to troubleshoot and find solutions - make notes - learn from your mistakes - if you made notes - you know what to not repeat.
If you don’t want to troubleshoot - use a distribution that fit’s your workflow.
You spent the better part of 2 years and you only create an account to tell the community how disappointed you are - disappointed you haven’t been able to install Manjaro.
You clearly have a problem - but it is not Manjaro.
Your topic and your comments is not productive by any measure and I highly recommend the topic being unlisted and closed.
As already mentioned, no one can help unless you share more details with logs. Open source software is a community effort and we’re all part of the same team.
…and now you’re projecting. That attitude is not welcome here. I understand you’re frustrated, but this is not the way.
While many distros use the same applications, each distro is at least going to have different versions. Since Debian / Ubuntu maintain older versions for LTS releases, they add patches for security and compatibility. Rolling releases have newer versions and different patches (if necessary).
