What are the advantages or disadvantages to using Manjaro instead of Ubuntu-based distros?

Non-technical Questions
29

I came from Linux Mint, and at the time was using the KDE Desktop. I had to make a decision because if I was going to stick with KDE, I wanted a distribution that supported it natively. Ironically, I’m using the XFCE desktop now, which meets my needs and more. I still read Clem’s monthly blog. And the forum was always respectful and helpful.

I wanted an estalished distribution, and was looking at moving away from a fixed release distribution. I had already discounted slackware, redhat or related, and opensuse. I had been running arch on a VM for some time.

It’s helpful if you can describe what you want in a distribution. There are technical, usage, and philosophical differences. It’s good to stretch and learn, but the grass isn’t always greener.

A couple of main differences, from an end user’s perspective. One is the type of distribution. Manjaro is a rolling release and Ubuntu (based on Debian) and Linux Minut (based on Ubuntu) or LMDE (based on Debian) are fixed releases. Another difference is how software is packaged, therefore the tools you use to install, remove, and update software. The utilties that come from gnu.org or freedesktop.org, or the applications like gimp, libreoffice, blender should be the same. But each distribution, will have their own default settings and homegrown applications. Each distribution supports a different set of desktops, and may customize them.

Here is my original response, why I’m using Manjaro, when it was fresh in my mind.

This site distrowatch might be helpful.

Also this youtube channel, OldTechBloke. He has specific videos on Manjaro, Arch, Linux Mint and other distributions… imho, he does an awesome job. Really, he’ll discuss the topics you need to know to increase your happiness as a linux user.

PS: I once got flagged by a user on this forum for simply suggesting pamac as an alternative to yay. Oh well. I value hearing people’s experiences. You never know what you might learn, or be able to give back, in a good way.

6 Likes
30

Hello @CRISPR2384

If you know how to use apt well, you can compare it with pacman, what options are there in pacman:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Rosetta

It would be helpful if you get to know how to use pacman quickly.

3 Likes
33

Thanks for the clarification!

2 Likes
34

Perhaps another use case might be helpful: I inherited a 2016 Acer One Cloudbook, and if you’ve ever experienced a $250 Windows laptop, it is basically bloat and lag. It was never a decent laptop, and my understanding was that it soon became a closet bookend, until I received it, this year. 2GB RAM, Celeron N3050, 32GB storage. Typically, I’ve found that decent laptops from that era work very well with just about any flavor of linux, but this one seems to have been born with a very bad limp. Manjaro Xfce was its savior. Lightweight, modern-looking, and capable. Generally, I agree with everyone on this thread that the decision to go with a certain distro or desktop is a personal one, based primarily on use case and experience. In my case, I’d add that manjaro is nimble, surprisingly frugal on memory, and packs a lot of modern features, to boot. As you get accustomed to Manjaro, you might fall in love with Pacman and its gui derivatives, too. Here I am, actually using this old laptop as my primary driver for home use, battery life amazing, stability phenomenal, and all due to the fine folks developing and supporting manjaro.

4 Likes
36

Thank you very much for your summary!

Why do you say Manjaro may require more maintenance? And what do you mean by maintenance here?

Also, if you could expand on the overall better performance, that would be much appreciated!

37

Thread tidied to remove leftovers from the previous cleanup. @linux-aarhus was kind enough to keep the thread listed and not close it earlier.

Please review:

:warning: Any further inappropriate behavior in this thread will be grounds to close it permanently. :warning:

2 Likes
38

In my experience, being a rolling-release distribution and at the cutting (but not bleeding) edge of keeping with updates, I’ve found that Manjaro seems to offer updated software at a greater frequency than, say, Linux Mint or Ubuntu. For me, this has been a pleasure, but it does mean that one may need to pay a bit more attention to updates than with a less cutting-edge distro. For performance, the overall system seems to be snappier and certainly more capable with Manjaro (and performance deltas are very noticeable on the very underpowered laptop I use it on). One thing that may not have been mentioned: I really like the design decisions the manjaro team has made for Gnome, KDE, and my current Xfce. For the latter, many distros either provide the default options and themes or make decisions I am not fond of, resulting in some unnecessary tuning after install. For Manjaro Xfce, it was very usable right out of the box. I realize the question wasn’t directed to me, but all feedback can be helpful. :slight_smile:

39

Many people claim that rolling releases may require more maintenance, i’m not sure what it actually means but feels like a disadvantage.

Rolling releases perform better in multiple areas, file system, disk I/O, GPU and CPU, gaming, responsiveness, desktop smoothness and performance.

Rolling releases bring the latest software such as DE, kernel, drivers, all this brings performance improvements.

  • GNOME 41 is butter smooth when compared to GNOME 36 that Ubuntu uses
  • Kernel 5.16 brought Futex2 which reduces CPU usage in games and improves frame rates
  • Kernel 5.15 brought a new NTFS driver which greatly improves copy and write speeds of NTFS formatted devices
  • Latest drivers improve graphics performance not only in games but in general
  • Latest kernel improves CPU performance, file system performance, compiling speeds
  • Latest desktop environment version improves UI performance and responsiveness

There are many factors that make a rolling release perform considerably better than point releases, those factors i have mentioned are just a few that i know of, the main reasons are latest DE kernel drivers, and they improve performance in many ways.

Point releases usually freeze their packages, they only bring new features and improvements on major upgrades, which means you won’t get any new shiny stuff until a new version is released.

3 Likes
40

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation and categorization of information, makes it easier to learn as well.

Quite honestly, I don’t think I am knowledgeable enough to even describe exactly what I want from a Linux distribution. Perhaps performance, security and ease-of-use with a steep learning curve. Personally I like using the terminal too, and seeing and comparing some of the basic pacman syntaxes against Debian’s apt kind of put me off a bit, but I’ll give Manjaro a try. I don’t plan on becoming a computer programmer or work with development or anything, I just choose to stay far from Apple and Microsoft products/services that’s all.

I like the philosophy of opensource and this seems to be good Linux community with lots of good people contributing to it.

41

What it means is that rolling releases have no good way to keep breaking changes out of regular updates unless they want to be stuck with outdated software forever.

Thing, e.g., of a major (first-digit) new release of KDE Plasma (e.g., Plasma 5 when it was new, or probably soon Plasma 6). What a non-rolling distribution will do is to stick to the old version for the lifetime of the stable distribution release, and offer the new upstream version only in the next distribution release. That, together with continued support for the old distribution version (for a limited time, which may be as short as 1 month after the new release or as long as 10 years total, depending on the distribution), allows users to pick their own schedule for the potentially breaking upgrade. Of course, that comes at the price of sometimes running outdated software.

A rolling distribution obviously cannot do that, because there is (by design) no “next distribution release” to begin with. It can delay major updates for some time so that they can get some amount of testing (and in fact Manjaro does that, even for minor updates), but ultimately the update will have to go out. There are really only 3 things the rolling distribution can do:

  1. ignore the new upstream version forever – obviously not a reasonable thing to do,
  2. automatically upgrade users to the new upstream version – usually the most reasonable thing to do, but can require maintenance if the upgrade breaks something, or
  3. require users to manually upgrade to the new upstream version (e.g., by installing a differently named package that conflicts with the old one) – sounds like a good idea, but is actually the most maintenance-intensive approach, and risks users unknowingly being stuck on an old version that is no longer updated (by upstream and/or by the distribution).

One example is the switch of the telephony backend in Plasma Mobile from ofono to ModemManager: The new feature release of Plasma Mobile with the switch went out to Manjaro ARM stable pretty quickly, users were upgraded automatically, but had to manually disable ofono and enable ModemManager for telephony to actually keep working. There were also some regressions fixed in later updates. A non-rolling distribution would probably only have offered the new version in a new release (but on the other hand, this makes non-rolling distributions not very useful for Plasma Mobile at this time, at its current pace of development).

1 Like
42

Thanks for clarifying.

Never had Manjaro break anything on me, i have used it for many months and it was pretty solid so far.

2 Likes
43

My experience as well after many years on unstable branch.

1 Like
44

And Manjaro has always said it’s a curated rolling release. Just as it’s based on Arch but not, in fact, Arch.

I’ve always said that I like and prefer Ubuntu LTS for my servers. But I’m sure Manjaro can work, if you’re prepared to perform the regularly required maintenance.

3 Likes
45

Hahaha, i think you should stop dreaming or maybe learn what is a production environment.

I am talking about companies, with employees…
Servers are home hahaha not serious bro.

46

Yeah, I know what you mean. And I stand by my point, because I specified the qualifier:

If you leave it as is, it can also work if and only if you don’t install anything new.

I haven’t experienced any unexpected behavior since doing proper maintenance. I.e.: keeping it updated, staying on the stable channel and merging all .pacnew files after an update.

So I stand by my point, I’m sure it can be used for it. No, I don’t think it should.

2 Likes
47

Ubuntu seems faster with the security updates.

1 Like
48

What do you mean by “merging all pacnew files after an update”?

49
50

This should help

2 Likes
51

My general perception tells me that those who choose to venture into Linux is doing so for reasons like

  • privacy
  • security
  • resistance against malware

As coder and software architect I had a few more reasons …

2 Likes