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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting that Manjaro has had a somewhat tarnished reputation, which has been widely covered before but it's still worth mentioning.[1]

I used to recommend Manjaro to people as an alternative to Arch that's a bit friendlier, but I stopped after trying to debug an issue and realizing that they have overcomplicated a lot of things (kernel management in particular bugs me in Manjaro.)

Arch now has some kind of installer, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, I really wish Valve could package something like SteamOS 3 for regular desktops. I'm aware of multiple projects that do similar things, but the execution on Deck is quite good. The "immutable" concept is certainly going to be an important part of Linux on desktops in the future, probably in different forms.

[1]: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

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EndeavourOS is a (so far, time will tell) more reliable and sane normie-friendly desktop Arch with installer. The Budgie DE is def worth checking out for F&F.

I switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS last year after using Manjaro for two (Manjaro was my first experience with Linux as a daily driver) and agree with this fully. I much prefer using Arch's regular repositories to Manjaro's. But having used Manjaro as my first distribution (I shouldn't have been using an Arch-based distro, but that aside), I don't think EndeavourOS is a one-to-one normie replacement in all respects. While I don't need or want Manjaro's GUI tools now, Pamac and its GUI kernel/driver tools helped me make the adjustment from having only used Windows to Linux. I am sure I could have managed on EndeavourOS, but it would have been more difficult at the time.

The true replacement for casual users is Pop_OS. For more mid-tier users I’d recommend installing base Arch once, then wiping and installing OpenSUSE.

Using Arch without a bigger org managing it for you is kind of dangerous. Their policy is that they just wantonly push anything, and if there’s something wrong with a package they’ll tell you in the upgrade message. That you’ll have to manually evoke. And check for each package upgrade.

I learned a lot from setting up Arch a couple of times, but ultimately I think they have a few policies that are terrible for the average user or even company.

I use Pop_OS as my daily driver because of the existence of the NVIDIA version of the distro.

I work in Deep Learning, and the NVIDIA version comes in really handy.

I never face NVIDIA issues like my peers frequently complain.

I pop endeavouros cassini nova on most machine now (xfce), never gets in the way.. I used to roll with mint xfce but I needed an arch base.

I've been running an EndeavourOS setup for a few years now with almost zero hiccups. Great starting point.

Completely agreed. I’ve been using EndeavourOS for half a year now, and it’s great. It’s almost the same as vanilla Arch, just with more packages installed by default and a few UX improvements.

The problem with Arch is not with the installer. Installing it actually is pretty straightforward thanks to their Wiki (although it may seem intimidating to those who never actually tried reading it). The problem (also a key feature) is they apparently ship totally untested packages immediately as upstream releases (so updates often break something) while Manjaro does some reasonable testing and fitting (so updates almost never break anything) while still managing to ship reasonably fresh. Most of the the other distros ship ancient versions of everything. So to me Manjaro feels the golden point between radically fresh (Arch) and obsolete (others).

Funny thing I've found arch the rolling distro with the least breakages. I've tried (and liked) tumbleweed, sidux and others, but ended up with arch because it was just very stable.

This probably is true as long as you don't compare to Manjaro which does additional testing and fitting. I once (this was long ago, but after I have had used Arch already) tried the latest unstable Debian and found it so broken I just couldn't use it at all, let alone rely on it.

This isn't really true last I checked. They merely make their testing repo, what's effectively in line with normal arch release, available for 2 weeks then rely on someone telling them something is wrong in their forum. They don't do much, if any, testing themselves.

> updates often break something

Approx how many times have you observed this in practice over, say, the past 2~5 years?

I used Arch in 2010-2012 (when I was very new to Linux yet had no problem installing Arch thanks to the Wiki) and something broke a number of times (maybe like 3 times a year). It also felt surprisingly slower than Ubuntu despite using XFCE vs Gnome2.

I then switched to Ubuntu and then to Manjaro and had only one break (it just wouldn't boot, but I easily found instructions on how to fix that) in many years straight.

I don't say Arch is bad but to me it seems like it is rather far from perfect while Manjaro is the closest to perfect I have ever seen.

Needless to say I appreciate Arch exists and am very grateful for the amazing job they do. Obviously no Manjaro would exist without Arch in the first place. Arch Wiki deserves a separate mention as it is of great quality and often helps a lot no matter what actual distro are you tweaking (it helped me with Ubuntu).

Arch has matured since 2012. I think you'd have a very different experience today.

I wanted to say this same sentence. I'm on arch since 2010 and it's 2023 now- it's really not the same arch as back then (and I enjoyed 2010 arch too)

>Installing [Arch] [...] may seem intimidating to those who never actually tried reading [the Arch Wiki]

I found reading the installation guide intimidating!

It really isn't hard for technical folks. I've done it maybe 4 times now (I am a chronic distrohopper). The guide is long because it covers a bunch of cases. By the 4th time round I was basically using the guide to remind myself how to use some commands that are rarely used outside of an installation (fdisk gets me every time).

It is worth doing at least once, it teaches you a lot about Linux.

I am tired of seeing this website linked everywhere. People are posting it like a Pavlovian reflex any time Manjaro is mentioned in order to cancel the distribution, even if the criticism is very mild in my eyes. It is merely fuel for the distro war, which is a big deterrent for newcomers.

Wow frankly I do not think the failure to renew an archived forums cert is as big of a deal as this article makes it out to be

They only make it out to be a big deal as they've let more important certs expire four other times. Though that certificate wasn't important, it shows they still haven't properly addressed one of their long term problems.

CachyOS is another great Arch distro worth checking out, being AVX2-optimized similar to Intel's Clear Linux or Gentoo, but otherwise basically being EndeavorOS.

Sadly the home Wiki page of CachyOS does not sell it well for me. I appreciate we're given more options for a filesystem on install but beyond that I'm not sure what's so different.

Special optimizations? How? Compile the world like Gentoo so as to use every single instruction of your CPU? Cool, I can actually stand behind that and install the OS because of it.

But what does "a hardened Linux kernel" mean?

I feel that that page expects you to know a lot about CachyOS already and I found myself impatiently closing the browser tab when I was about 50% in.

Are there better introduction articles?

Apparently it uses this in the kernel, which optimizes scheduling for responsiveness: https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler

Yeah, the website feels like a placeholder... The wiki, git and Discord/Matrix chat are better:

https://wiki.cachyos.org/

https://github.com/CachyOS

Basically they package many kernels with different schedulers, hardening and such to choose from. I believe hardened linux may even be a vanilla Arch kernel?

And its not like Gentoo, they run their own repos like Clear Linux or ALHP were everything is basically built for Haswell and up (and very soon AVX512 CPUs like rocket lake/zen4). But unlike Manjaro, the vanilla Arch repos are also used, and are the system target.

Other than that... Its more or less an Arch installer, like EndeavorOS. Perhaps that is why it doesn't need an introduction, because beyond some qol it is Arch Linux. Thats kinda the point.

Related Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32503090

Why not just use base Arch? It seems kind of silly to try anything else when the options are laid out very easily in front of you in the base installer.

Arch is too much work. I know it doesn't look like it to people who love to fiddle, but it's true.

I don't want to babysit my computers. My wife would also not be amused

It used to be like that before, but now there's this archinstall script which works wonders. You can select what DE to install, extra packages, setup your locale, keyboard, etc. It's much easier than it was before.

I don't like to fiddle with my computer too much, I just installed arch with KDE using their installer and kind of forgot about it for many months and it just worked™ (until I broke it myself in a way any distro would have broken, but that's a different story).

The only thing with arch that is blocking a non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly person is the installation process (even with the script, knowing what a DE is, making a conscious decision which to choose, KDE etc)

"The only thing with arch that is blocking a non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly person is the installation process "

I think your definition of "non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly" is quite different from the rest of the population.

Also note, that just because you happened to had months of no problems, that does not mean it will be the same experience for someone else. Speaking of it: for a non-techy person, using the terminal is already a problem.

>My wife would also not be amused

What OS is she using now?

As a young teenager I got the bright idea to get my mother using Linux. Later I bought her a Mac and she was much happier. Wish I'd thought of that sooner.

(I have no particular attachment to any OS (hate them all equally ;), it's mostly a matter of what you're used to, and picking the right tool for the job.)

> The "immutable" concept

Which is both good, and actually sane.

NixOS: Exists. (And runs great after I moved from Arch 1.5 years ago!)

Indeed, I am running NixOS on five different devices. It's quite a time and effort investment, but I feel like once NixOS "clicks" for you, it ruins most other operating systems, which just feel like they're missing something now. I still generally recommend Arch to people (although hearing what people are saying, I'll probably start recommending EndeavorOS instead) because I think most people are barely able to make the Linux commitment in ideal conditions, much less the NixOS commitment.

> It's quite a time and effort investment, but I feel like once NixOS "clicks" for you, it ruins most other operating systems, which just feel like they're missing something now.

I found this to be 100% correct. You feel like you won’t ever need to distro-hop again, right? Like this is the penultimate Linux distro? Right?

To be clear: 'penultimate' means 'next to last', whereas 'ultimate' means 'last'.

Since NixOS's rough edges can be quite rough, perhaps 'penultimate' may be more apt. (I mean, when NixOS works well, then it is amazing; but if you hit some use case where NixOS is difficult to use, then it requires more effort/understanding to get through).

I’m gonna start using NixOS as my daily driver in a short time, may I ask whether you can pinpoint me to that part which needs to click? Is it learning Nix/being able to write derivations? (also learning resources etc.)

What clicks is that the OS seems to go against entropy, getting more stable the longer you use it and update your config, as opposed to other distros, which get cruftier over time, after which you have to reinstall every couple years, not remembering half the things you did to set it up. As others have said, it's immutable and completely built from config, and you can basically configure anything, so you can effectively redeploy a machine form config in minutes. Furthermore, it creates a snapshot every time you deploy, so you can always roll back if you break something.

Nix is basically the future of operating systems. The one problem that still needs solving, which is blocking wider adoption, is ease of use. People are working on making the command line tools easier, but what will really do it is something that abstracts away config generation with a UI installer and tools, but opens up the config if you go into "advanced mode" or something like that.

I can't really fully encapsulate it in a comment really, but I can give you some advice:

1. Use flakes to set up your system and do work with. It sometimes feels underdocumented, but it's worth some headscratching imo.

2. Don't worry about putting everything in the base system. Stick to services (Tailscale, Syncthing, etc) and system/base desktop software. It's easy enough to use nix run, or Podman, or flatpak, or even AppImage to a degree.

3. Want to configure something declaratively? Before pulling out HomeManager or another user tool, consider configuring software at the system level. I do this for Zsh, SwayWM, etc. As a bonus, you can easily block off shell startup files and chown them to root so that malware can't trivially insert themselves there. (It's a weak protection, but definitely doesn't hurt in addition to other approaches.)

There's more (I recommend using Nix-ld to support AppImage and raw binaries better) but these things go a long way.

I'd strongly advice on using Nix in some other context (local dev environment for some or all your projects, for example) before jumping into NixOS as your daily driver, especially for a workstation where you work with dev.

Helps to get some intuition on what fits where.

The entire OS being declarative. You tell it what is required, not how to do it, as in other OS.

Also Fedora SilverBlue... https://fedoraproject.org/silverblue/

Tangent to sibling comments, you are free to make overlays akin to compile derivations with Gentoo-style machine architecture optimizations.

Yep: https://twitter.com/ManjaroLinux/status/1635741158700642304

Have you tried https://garudalinux.org/ ?

Few people choose Manjaro over DragonFly BSD and the mighty HAMMER filesystem!

I'm seriously considering switching to a BSD. Do any of them support steam and zoom?

Surely, hammer is fast enough to render retro indie games at 60fps. :-)

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