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Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

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Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#201

I also ditched Ubuntu after using it for over a decade and went to Arch Linux, which Manjaro is based on. Seems to be a common migration story.

I used Arch for years but switched to Ubuntu because I got tired of coping with Arch's broken networking in the default kernels, and then they shipped a totally broken avr-gcc which prevented me from doing actual proper work.

This was a while ago, probably about ten years ago, and I've used Ubuntu ever since.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#202
post #36

If you have the stomach for starting from nothing and installing only what you need, Alpine is wonderful. It uses musl libc so there are some things you need flatpaks for, but the vast majority of stuff I've tried just works, and it's small enough that the entire OS is comprehensible to a mere mortal.

I'm also using Alpine, but 100% of binary distributions of software I've tried have failed to run. Even AppImages don't run on Alpine, due to lack of glibc. It's honestly pretty frustrating--though I don't blame Alpine for this! As a mitigation, I use Nix to run anything that isn't packaged for Alpine (e.g. Deno), and that actually works pretty well, but having a parallel set of libraries kind of defeats my whole pur…

You can install glibc on Alpine but it's a shitemare from start to finish. Better to stick to Arch for a very similar user experience.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#204
post #157

I just moved my Raspberry Pi 4 (8MB) from Ubuntu to Debian 11. I run Ubuntu in several other environments so having one common Linux has been good. But Debian 11 is significantly faster. Same hardware, just noticeably faster. There are a few anomalies, I suspect mostly from the fact that Gnome is a post install add on. The Gnome network applet doesn't work but the network works fine. The only thing that is problemati…

Check out DietPi — Debian-based OS with optimized software packages for devices such as Raspberry Pi. And super easy upgrade options. https://dietpi.com

Thanks!!

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#205
post #147

Just a reminder to everybody, Debian 12 is about to release in 2 days. A few years ago I moved back from Ubuntu to Debian and couldn't be happier.

I have a devuan desktop, but it somehow self-nuked its grub. I really, really dislike systemd, but the other desktop is a manjaro setup. It was stable for a while, but now something with logind (which is somehow related to systemd) broke. The one reason I switched to manjaro is that the machine is shared between kids and two parents, and I wanted to be able to switch accounts from the screensaver prompt. That routine…

Have you tried Alpine Linux? Fairly straightforward to set up as a desktop and no systemd (OpenRC FWIW) by default. Flatpak Steam reportedly runs fine.

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Steam

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#206
post #34

Arch Linux is a meme but also a really solid distro. I'm writing this from a 2+ year old Arch install that has had basically 0 stability issues. "Rolling release" gets an undeserved bad reputation in my opinion, and many arch packages aren't as bleeding edge as you'd expect. Compared to Ubuntu where I'd often have major issues in between releases, I don't think I could ever go back.

Many people don't realize that Arch is basically just providing the latest stable release from upstreams, nothing more and nothing less. Most projects do testing before making a release of course, and for lots of software releases are very reliable. The kernel is an example of this, where Arch packages the most recent "stable" kernel rather than sticking to an LTS version. There is nothing "unstable" about this, in t…

The word "stable" can have different meanings, e.g. stable behavior/stable interfaces. I am using arch/manjaro on my personal machine, but I installed Debian for some of my remote family members (who mostly just need firefox+libreoffice+vlc+cups) since this makes me confident that they can get periodic security updates and bugfixes all by themselves without needing my intervention (while rolling releases sometimes require some adjustments or troubleshooting e.g. on the config files, etc).

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#207

Manjaro isn't much better. They tried to force a proprietary office suite on their users and tried their hand at the adware thing too. Stop relying on "user friendly" distros, you haven't needed them for almost a decade, most common distributions run out of the box with no problems most of the time.

You say that, but I can take an SSD out of its wrapper, fit it to a PC, put an Ubuntu USB stick in, and have a fully-functioning machine in five minutes without actually having to interact with it in any way. What else can you recommend that does that?

Fedora. Boot stick, select the drive you want to install to, click install.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#208
My actual choices are: Debian for servers and tinkering hardware (including derivatives such as Armbian on non x86 embedded boards), Alpine on small servers and very small/older hardware and Manjaro on my laptops and PCs that I convert to Linux for other people, relatives etc. So far I've been very happy with these three choices, and Manjaro helped a lot to introduce Linux to non tech people.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#209

Manjaro isn't much better. They tried to force a proprietary office suite on their users and tried their hand at the adware thing too. Stop relying on "user friendly" distros, you haven't needed them for almost a decade, most common distributions run out of the box with no problems most of the time.

You say that, but I can take an SSD out of its wrapper, fit it to a PC, put an Ubuntu USB stick in, and have a fully-functioning machine in five minutes without actually having to interact with it in any way. What else can you recommend that does that?

Most distros have installers. Even Arch, which I installed recently, had just a couple choices to make and hit enter a few times.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?

#210
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Arch is a dream compared to things like Ubuntu for me. PPAs and release cycles made upgrades awkward on Ubuntu. I've been a user for 3 years on my work laptop and have had everything be almost completely painless. (One time yay broke something and a python module had to be removed lol)

Arch works fine but sometimes I think I might prefer something like Debian Stable + Flatpak because the repos are frozen. Since Arch doesn't support partial upgrades, you have to upgrade the whole system every time a repo list refresh is required, basically. So some days after the last upgrade, some package you want to install is bumped, and a repo refresh list is required, which wouldn't be a problem in Debian. But…

Debian + Flatpak has been my go to for some time now.

That stable base I don’t have to worry about plus up to date apps is living the dream, as far as I’m concerned.

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