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

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.

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.

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Ubuntu seems faster with the security updates.

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

This should help

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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 …

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My reason was different, my reason to look for Linux was that Windows 10 broke in just 6 months.

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Indeed.

Not having to reinstall Windows every year or so is a big plus for the Linux operating system, but performance and battery life still suffer on the free and opensource side!

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Maybe things have changed since, having not used Ubuntu in a long time. I remember Ubuntu being frustrating due to so many bugs and lack of latest software. I moved away from Ubuntu to Debian for much less bugginess. But not having access to up to date software on Debian got frustrating, so I eventually moved to Arch. Having up to date software on Arch was nice but was more configuration and breaking than I wanted to deal with (likely due to my own configuration issues). My experience with Manjaro has been almost the complete opposite of Ubuntu, with the benefits of Debian and Arch combined. Manjaro is my first recommendation to anyone moving to Linux for the first time.

The only major issue I have ran into with Manjaro is that since it is a rolling release, you have to keep it reasonably up to date, else you might end up needing to do a fresh install after some months to get up to date. I experienced this after leaving a laptop unused for some months.

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While that may be true to some extent with the Unstable branch of Manjaro, Manjaro unlike Arch and most Arch based distro’s has a Testing and Stable branch. Packages move from one to the other as bugs are worked out. The Stable branch of Manjaro is rock solid. The packages may be a month or so older than Manjaro Unstable, but still newer than most static release disro’s like Ubuntu.

If you want newer packages than Ubuntu Manjaro Stable is a good choice. While offering newer packages it is still stable. I have been running stable for over two years and have had few bugs.
If you want stability there are things you can do to ensure it. First install timeshift and timeshift-autosnap (creates a restore point before upgrades). That way even if a bad update happens its easy to reverse. Second be selective in your use of the AUR. Adding applications is safe, the worst that can happen is the app doesnt work. Do not install system components from the AUR unless absolutely necessary.

Its true that pacman doesnt work with the AUR. But Pamac the Manjaro gui package manager can be configured to work with the AUR. That being said, refer to my previous comment about being selective with the AUR.

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I think the only thing that Ubuntu has over Manjaro is that the LTS version can do live kernel updates, that is, you’ll never have to reboot your system at all, even after a kernel update. I know some people really don’t like doing updates and rebooting afterwards. If you’re that type, Ubuntu LTS is probably better for you than Manjaro. With Manjaro, you’ll need to be more prudent with updates and probably reboot at least once every couple of months. Otherwise, in terms of stability they’re similar from my experience. In terms of software availability, Manjaro is better because of AUR.

I’d say reboot after every major upgrade myself and several times a month. And ensure that mirrors are up to date as well so that any upgrading goes smoothly… Just my 2 cents :wink:

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Many good pros and cons regarding rolling vs. point release have been mentioned already in this thread. Coming from a point release such as Mint or Ubuntu, there is that risk of breaking your system somehow with an update. The first time (and so far the only time, lucky me…) it happened, it was a shock to see a black screen after booting. I’ve seen another instance where changing the screen resolution on a laptop rendered the laptop screen black. The important thing is to keep calm and not take hasty actions if this happens, this forum offers plenty of support and chances are that others have experienced the same issues you have, or at least know how to fix the problem. That’s the cost of having up-to-date versions of lots and lots of software. If this sounds too much cost, it’s better to stick with point releases.

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This is not because of rolling release vs iteration release (version freeze) distros.

It’s everything to do with the package naming convention that Arch (for whatever reason) decided to settle with a long time ago…

Read the subsection titled: “I have to mention this, even if it’s unpopular: a distro like Ubuntu handles kernel updates properly”.

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Anything Debian-based is prone to often breaking its packages out of the blue, that includes Mint. There’s nothing “better” in life than watching a movie and out of nowhere getting a message “you have broken packages, please fix them”. It’s just that debian’s package manager is… well, inferior compared to pacman. Not to mention the other flaw of apt - if you install a program, it will download the most of the dependencies but if it doesn’t work or if you don’t like it and decide to uninstall it, apt WILL NOT remove the downloaded dependencies. In time that leads to a distro size that rivals the size of a Windows 10. :rofl: When I used to use Mint, I had times when its installation had become 75 GB for exactly that reason. If you know which dir to visit and to delete the unnecessary files, then it’s OK, but if you’re a green user, like I was back then, it’s quite frustrating.

Pacman is the exact opposite of apt - if you download 58 packages (1 program and 57 dependencies), then that’s the number of packages that will be removed upon uninstallation. Ever since I started using Arch, I forgot what a broken package was, LOL

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For me, I installed Manjaro KDE on Tuesday 16th, it’s performance. Apps running on Manjaro seem to use less CPU making them more responsive. For example my Virtual Box VMs load a lot faster. Even Firefox, the way I run it… as multiple instances, not Multiple Windows, seems much more responsive.

This for me is a return to KDE, after about 10 or so years, and I’m quite impressed.

I was using Ubuntu and Linux Mint, Linux Mint up until last Weekend, when an 11 hour Upgrade left my desktop mostly broken. That why I decided, after some testing, to move to Manjaro KDE.

Based on what I’m experiencing, it is unlikely I will return to Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Yeah, me too. But I love updating. Some people hate it, and for those, I think updating Manjaro every couple of months should be OK, but not anything beyond that.

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Yeah you’re right, i’ve found that when distros claim to be ‘stable’ what they really mean is that package updates are infrequent, that’s basically it, it doesn’t mean it’s less crash prone or anything like you’d think it would mean.

This kind of stability is important… For servers and enterprise environments; it means behavior of your os or software will not suddenly changelike it can on rolling release distros (e.g. you update some library and some software and maybe the ui is a lil different for that software or the library is not backwards compatible with some software that was made for an older version of that library, etc)

So the real benefit to ‘stable’ distros is really mostly for industrial/corporate applications (it’s the same kind of deal where some governments still use unix machines from the 70s and 80s for stuff because it works and they can’t be bothered to upgrade to new technology/software as that would mean retraining the employees that operate it).

It’s not for consumers/end users, since us consumers generally want the latest versions of stuff so we can have the coolest new features and such (which is exactly how it works on windows for instance) therefore rolling release is actually better for most people. Because most people don’t wanna wait a year to get the latest update (by which time it will certainly no longer be ‘latest’) for some software they use a lot, they’ll want it preferably on day one if it’s an important update.

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sudo apt autoremove

gets rid of unused dependencies, and any old kernels up to the 3rd most recent (by default)

The problem I had with Linux Mint is that for some reason the system Upgrade is way more complicated than it should be In my opinion. Ubuntu is pretty straight forward.

Given that I always install with 3 Partitions (root, home and swap), normally I would simply install the latest version of LM over the top of the older version, then reinstall any missing applications, and replace any I have alternatives for, but at some point the number of not part of the standard install applications become quite large, so I decided to use the LM Upgrade tool, to my detriment.

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