Been using Manjaro KDE for over a month now. And i love it!
I am getting more confortable everyday getting around fixing issues in Manjaro.
But will need to install the Creative: Video, photography, audio, and graphics design software, (Ubuntu Studio) for e.x comes bundled with. Plus web development software.
Manjaro is a cutting edge rolling release distro.
Keeping Manjaro up-to-date is enough to always be at the latest version.
Ubuntu and Debian Stable, offer stability.
But you need to install a newer version of the distro once the LTS is over. And you loose the app configurations, etc. And need to redo all that againā¦
Itās a trade-off. Consistency and stability versus always being up-to-date with upstream development and applications.
To you guys doing Video, photography, audio, graphics design, and web development.
Have you found major roadblocks that forced you to move to a stable distro like ubuntu, (for this particular work)?
I am looking to have my entire SSD dedicated to my long term chosen distro.
I will let the (balance weight) dictate whether to keep using Manjaro or wheter to move to Ubuntu or Debian Stable, for my purpose. And thatās why your feedback is super valuable to me.
Moving away from Manjaro wonāt be from a technical point of view. As i can move around!
But more from a time investment perspective. I donāt want to invest too much time fixing things.
AFAIK Ubuntu can be upgraded without actually reinstalling it.
Otherwise, you can install the latest version of a distribution without losing any user configuration, if you prepared first:
backup your configuration before the upgrade
prepare a distinct home partition beforehand, that will not be overridden next time you install a distribution
I did video editing and software development on Manjaro without being really blocked.
Personal opinion, but if you want it:
Video editing:
kdenlive has an intuitive UI and can handle basic editing needs for yt vids and the like.
You want something more professional, try DaVinci Resolve (paid for full capabilities).
Photography:
darktable or rawtherapee are both good choices.
Audio:
audacity for quick editing/effects. ardour if you want a DAW.
Graphics design:
gimp is basically your only choice for decent image manipulation, horrible UX though, and has to be heavily extended to be able to compete with Photoshop. v3 will likely give a boost to closing the divide.
inkscape I found to be much better than Illustrator, gives you more technical options at the cost of slightly worse UX.
krita is a good choice for digital art.
Web development:
Linux is way easier to set up for any dev, majority of tools are open source.
code/vscodium in the repos/AUR, JetBrains (paid) products are java based, so run just as well, or Netbeans for PHP, but you should compile it yourself, cause Arch tends to lag months to a year on that one.
another aspect: using a stable distro means that the major versions of your SW also stay. If you need something recent, you have to install it from other sources, and then troubles may begin. For ex., iām using digikam and some raw developers, and there you really want a recent version. Years ago, i moved from Ubuntu to Manjaro because some extra-repos several times destroyed my installation. With Manjaro, i just have to wait some weeks and have the latest versions.
HP
This feedback is very meaningful to me!
At the moment i have a windows/manjaro dual boot that is working very well !
I just find it difficult sometimes to fix sound issues and little stuff that manjaro has. I canāt get google teams or zoom to pickup microphone. I lost countless hours over this and itās not funā¦
Stable distros like ubuntu/debian stable, should not have this kind of issues.
I donāt like windows! But my wireless headset works with every program under it.
Do you recommend me to stick with manjaro and just learn to fix things and get better with linux?
Many users move from manjaro to arch. Whatās your view on this?
I intend to use video, photo and sound processing software, for professional results.
I am worried i will hit many software errors with manjaro. But my only option is to test!
Iāve been using Ubuntu Studio, but Iāve been thinking, as there are Real Time Kernels available I thought I might try Manjaro for my Recording Studio set up.
Based on my experience of Manjaro KDE, so far, Iāve got Digikam, and various Photo processing software running smoothly on this laptop, so I donāt see many issues going forward.
The only unknown, is the Real Time Kernel performance of my recording Studio machine.
As far as I can tell, Manjaro should be pretty stable. It is, as they say, a Curated Rolling Release, with a long period of testing in unstable, which is why I chose it over Kubuntu, which was the other contender after I decided to ditch Linux Mint, which I had been using since LM 16, and before that Ubuntu, so I had some trepidation about a new Package Management system (pacman, pamac, yay etc), after years of using apt and related tools, but after a lot of testing I decided it wasnāt a biggie.
Soā¦ given that most people, using Ubuntu or Linux Mint, including myself, often installed PPAs, in order to get the latest, or near latest releases of various software, I donāt see that there is any particular issues with the way Manjaro does things. Your milage may vary.
Iām an XFCE user and mainly use Gimp and Inkscape.
Being KDE, you might prefer Krita.
Gmic can be added to Gimp, Krita or as a stand-alone.
If you get into animation, Blender is tremendous.
imagemagick is a great tool to manipluate images from the command line. It can be used to create a quick conact sheet.
Before AUR, consider appimage, flatpak, snap, if you absolutely must.
Pat David is on the GIMP Team. He has a website dedicated to photography, besides the blog, he has a discussion area. I believe it is discourse, same as Manjaro, so it should look somewhat familiar. Hereās a link to the software category.
Sure. I will eventually install some video/photo/audio SW, and report.
Whatās your view on arch linux? Always up to date and secure. Some people swear by it.
I love manjaro but consider a future move to arch unless you advise against.
I was a professional design creative for 20 years. Unfortunately, the main roadblock is that unless you use Adobe for most of these disciplines, you are going to be handicapping yourself. Adobe is the industry standard.
In your first post, you seemed concerned that Manjaro was too unstableā¦ because Rolling Release, well that issue applies more so to Arch.
Personally I am unlikely to go to Arch, because Arch is the parent distro for Manjaro, and it is, I believe a full Rolling Release, and for me that is too unstable. Also from what I read, Arch isnāt as easy to set up as Manjaro, and that isnāt what I want eitherā¦ gone are the days of mucking about in the guts of a distro, just for fun. I have too many other things to do IRL
For me Manjaro provides a nice balance between boring stability ( for multiple years ), and therefore lack of new features in associated software, and up to dateness (I just made that word up) of software. Thatās why I moved to Manjaro after years of using Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
But in the end the choice is yours.
,
Why not try Arch, and any other distro that you think you might like on a VM, and compare it with Manjaro. That is what works for me.
The only unknown, is the Real Time Kernel performance of my recording Studio machine.
RT kernels are not essential for Linux pro-audio use. The u-bump-too wiki has some scatology for their mushroom-management purposes, but users on most other distributions know better
You want to run JACK with very low latency settings that require realtime performance that can only be achieved with an RT kernel
Your hardware configuration triggers poor latency behaviour which might be improved with an RT kernel
The only main difference for pro-audio compared to non-Arch distributions is the method of reconfiguring a system
Many users move from manjaro to arch. Whatās your view on this?
At this moment in time only Manjaro has avoided issues with new versions of GRUB
Other Arch based distributions have always considered the idea of holding back packages from stable repository as pointless waste of time
so my current outlook is mostly contented with an occasional smug smile that some of the github troll fodder is not as useful
Whatās your view on arch linux? Always up to date and secure. Some people swear by it
ā¦ and some other people swear at it or about it!
Most people here would concur that Arch is the best major OS distribution
but for me it is too high maintenance for regular live audio use
I used to produce live audio on icecast every Thursday 7-9:00pm
(3 years on XP; 2 years on Lubuntu (no PulseAudio) and 5 years on Manjaro)
and Manjaro Xfce never missed a beat on a live session
But other Linux producers were using Slackware, Mint and Xubuntu and getting the same reliability
because most of the audio tools are no different on any Linux
Yes. Itās the same thing that holds me back as well.
I donāt want to spend too much time doing maintenance.
Yes. I realize that now. A distribution choice. Specially for experienced Linux users does not matter.
It only comes down to preferring Stability VS Cutting/Bleeding edge release models.
Manjaro seems to be the most perfect distro. Having balance between stable enough and up to dateness software.
Iāve heard rants about the devs or senior forum contributors making major mistakes. But iād like to see the people who criticize, do better.
Iāve been using UbuntuStudio for quite a while, so I sorta kinda assumed RT was necessary for audio recording work.
Iāve used the RT kernel at various times, going as far back as Mandrake Linux, so the comment was really about using the kernel with Manjaro. To get my recording setup working properly I am prepared to experiment.
