Yo! Apologies for the spam. I just wanted you to know that I appreciated this interaction and adore your enthusiasm towards Manjaro. Wish ya tha best. Bye!

As others have stated, reviving them through Linux should be a piece of cake.

However, how many is “a tonne”? This is important information for the community to provide recommendations on administrating those systems.

Do you use it?

Nope.

What are your problems with it?

If you meant problems from usage; none, as I’m not using Manjaro.

Besides, I don’t need to use Manjaro to state the problems some of its users have experienced.

Btw, I’ve read your comment(s) under this post in which you clearly outline your thoughts on Manjarno. Thank you for those insights! My only question at this point would be have you (or whosoever) voiced this to Manjarno’s maintainer?

I say this, because I believe this approach to be a lot more effective and productive than discussing this with random people on Lemmy. Heck, one of Manjaro’s contributors has opened issues in Manjarno and it has gone as you’d expect; i.e. the truth prevailed and Manjarno changed some of its content to better represent reality.

Or, have you (or whosoever) considered writing up a ‘Manjaryes’? In which, most misconceptions regarding Manjaro are addressed and discussed.

Last year, this piece was written on it. And, based on an extremely small sample size (N=1), the takeaway was basically that the 1% lows (and the 0.1% lows) do seem to benefit on some games.

But, there are so many factors at play, it’s pretty hard to back up any claim of performance increase (or decrease). However, if you’ve got the time and you want to play around, then please feel free to benchmark the 1% lows (and 0.1% lows) of the games you play on different distros and come to your own conclusions.

Small nitpick; layering is technically only a thing on Fedora Atomic. Not all immutable distros subscribe to it.

I’m glad to be proven wrong.

Thank you for being more optimistic than I am.

I honestly suspect the main issue is related to either the opinionatedness of Ubuntu compared to Debian or the absence of Snap. Why do you think that Distrobox will help them with their choice?

I’m afraid that you won’t get an answer from OP. Based on the last couple of days, and OP’s many posts, we’ve noted that OP has only rarely answered questions. I don’t think it will be different this time.

So, while I can’t read their intentions, I will provide my thoughts.

OP is a newb. And has asked this community many different (but somehow related) questions.

OP was on Xubuntu, but experienced a problem. After they saw that the solution involved more steps than they’re willing to take, they instead opted to switch distros. After prompting the community for some input and inspiration, they decided to go for Debian with Xfce. However, they’ve experienced a bunch of things since that have made them second-guess their choice; Xubuntu was perhaps better at some things AND Linux Mint Xfce was actually the popular pick in their earlier community prompt.

So, in order to resolve their second-guessing, they intend to put them all to the test simultaneously though multi-boot before finalizing their decision.

But as far as I know, NVIDIA just supports enterprise distros.

I tried looking this up, but to no avail. Got any proof to back this up?

I didnt know that, but uBlue uses random OCI container builds by Fedora for all their stuff, that Fedora doesnt even officially use themselves.

I don’t know how it is currently. However, initially, images were provided by maintainers affiliated to Fedora. Could you provide a link in which your current understanding is better described/explained?

I will make my case clear of what I meant earlier:

Me:

• Doesn’t understand by everything that has already been mentioned under this post why one is considering Manjaro.
• But, I am glad to hear that it has been working lovely for some people.
• Doesn’t accuse those who’ve enjoyed using Manjaro for lying, being not genuine or misrepresenting reality.

You:

• Argue why Manjaro should be considered.
• Mention how your experiences don’t quite align to the ones others are experiencing.
• Your reception to concerns:

That page is not legit criticism, it’s a bunch of nonsense. It misrepresents what Manjaro does, outright lying in some cases, it fails to understand how package updates and AUR work, it glosses over the fact that Manjaro helped the AUR infrastructure. It’s prejudiced information made out specifically to make it look bad.

There is not one pertinent criticism in there. It’s all meaningless drivel presented as legit concerns.

I suppose I don’t need to spell it out for ya. How about, instead of taking the subject to other places, you address the following elephant in the room:

All of that is cool and all, but trust is what it’s all about.

• Do you aknowledge that trust is the end all be all for considering a distro?
• Do you outright deny every single thing mentioned in the infamous Manjarno?
• If so, are you aware of any place where (with facts) a rebuttal (or something similar) can be found?
• If not, could you write up one yourself? So that we may benefit from that as a community.

I like for the truth to prevail. And for injustice to be stopped. If Manjaro is actually accused of crimes they’ve not committed and if (therefore) misinformation is spread, then I’d desire that the world is ridden of that fake news.

Windows ->

Fedora Kinoite: A relatively mature atomic/immutable distro combined with excellent security standards and that resembles Windows’ workflow. Unfortunately, it broke almost immediately. Though, to be fair, it was a known issue with the ISO back then. As a newb, however, I couldn’t be bothered with it. ->

Fedora Silverblue: Well…, I didn’t have much of a choice 😜. Or I had to forego Fedora Atomic altogether. However, I actually really enjoyed GNOME’s workflow. I used this as my main system for about year. Until I found a related project… ->

Arch: The memes got me 😅. In all honesty, though, it was mostly curiosity. Still, I didn’t intend to throw away my working Silverblue installation for the sake of quenching my thirst for experiencing Arch. So, as dual boot, I tried to install it. This was pre archinstall, so it took a couple of tries before I booted into GNOME. However, I guess I did mess up something as I don’t recall ever booting back into that system 😅. So, what if I want Arch, but don’t want to spend more time with the installation… ->

EndeavourOS: Yup. I actually enjoyed it. I also took the opportunity to install another DE; KDE. Tried out the hardened kernel. Was able to make Davinci Resolve work, which just caused a lot of trouble on Silverblue. Access to AUR. It was cool, really. And, for some time, I was actually pondering to dismiss Silverblue altogether in favor of EndeavourOS. But, I started to miss the ‘stability’ that I was used to from Silverblue. Though, I don’t exactly recall if it was the fault of being based on Arch, or rather linked/attributed to KDE instead. Regardless, I noticed that (over time) I spend more and more time on Silverblue. At some point, booting into EndeavourOS didn’t work any more. It had broken. I did engage in some troubleshooting efforts, but to no avail… ->

Zorin OS lite: On backup laptop; the poor thing couldn’t run Windows but (even today) it’s still kicking on Linux ->

Nobara: So, I guess I did miss some of the functionality provided by EndeavourOS; running Davinci Resolve being the primary one. But, I didn’t want to pass out of the opportunity to try something else. Back then, Nobara was released relatively recently and was received very positively by the community. And had even a special guide/tutorial to make Davinci Resolve work on AMD devices. Nobara was cool. But, it didn’t feel very special. I actually enjoyed EndeavourOS a lot more. It was mostly utilized for Davinci Resolve and for gaming if Silverblue wasn’t fit for the job (for whatever reason). Unfortunately, even this one broke at some point 😅. I could still boot into it. But, the system just didn’t do what it’s supposed to do. I tried troubleshooting. But, once again, to no avail. ->

uBlue; Silverblue image: Through all that was previously mentioned, I had stability in Fedora Silverblue. It was reliable. I could trust it. Well…, most of the time 😅. Decisions related to mesa or video acceleration in browsers definitely felt more like misses rather than hits. I can’t blame Fedora as they’re legally restricted. But, shouldn’t we be able to do better? Enter uBlue. It seemed like some black magic shenanigans. The earlier issues would have never occurred (nor did they occur) on uBlue. This ‘managed’ aspect of uBlue was clearly, at least for me, the reason to consider it over regular Silverblue. And so, I parted with regular Silverblue and started using the Silverblue image provided by uBlue. Not long after, I even had my own (hardened) custom image. But, eventually (to be more precise; about half a year after switching to uBlue), keeping up with hardening took up too much effort for me to bear. But, thankfully, I had already found the perfect solution… ->

secureblue (based on the Silverblue image): This was Silverblue hardened by someone that actually knows their shit. And, thankfully, I didn’t have to maintain this myself. I used this for a couple of months until the next best thing… ->

secureblue (based on the Bluefin image): Currently on this for I think half a year now. It has just been a lovely experience through and through. Everything I could have asked is provided.

I’m glad to hear that it has been working out for ya.

But, you see, I don’t dismiss the fact that you and others like you are still using and enjoying Manjaro. In fact, as I just stated already, I’m happy for y’all. However, why do you dismiss/belie/behave like an ostrich that burry their head in the sand when so many others voice their concerns?

Thank you for contributing so that people don’t misunderstand!

I didnt know they have testing images, but makesbsense in their flagship variants.

You can verify it yourself from here.

Though, with all that’s mentioned above; do you still think Pop!_OS is better than Bazzite for Nvidia?

I think we’re misunderstanding eachother. So perhaps consider to outline if you agree with the following:

• uBlue has some systems in place that enable it to detect some breakages.
• uBlue’s pipeline is such to not ship you the detected breakages.
• After a method has been found to fix a breakage (or other issues), uBlue’s maintainers implement these fixes and then, the very next update, the users will receive an image that contains both the updated package and the fixes required for it to not cause problems. Heck, the user didn’t know anything was up in the first place. They didn’t notice a thing*.
• uBlue’s issue/problem detect systems are not absolute; things might slip through.
• However, Nvidia drivers will not cause breakage that will make you shiver in fear.
• uBlue does not fix it on your device. They fix the image and that fixed image will deliver you the fix built-in; so manual intervention are a thing of the past (except for edge cases).
• Their pipeline does not require nor does it detect (through telemetry or whatsoever) the breakage on the device of the user. Heck, as implied earlier, most breakages are detected, prevented from shipping broken, fixed, ship the fixed one before any end user is disturbed by it.
• uBlue is not a Stable system (i.e. it does not freeze packages (apart from security updates) until the next major release). So yes, you receive updates all the time.
• Not being tied to legal restrictions is cool. However, a lot of derivatives do this. So this can’t be its unique selling point.
• uBlue is not entirely free. Its maintainers do pay money for providing some of their services (as has been mentioned by Jorge).
• Some of their images do have testing branch; even Bazzite has.

From the FAQ of Qubes OS (i.e. most secure desktop OS for general use):

“Why does Qubes use Xen instead of KVM or some other hypervisor?”

“In short: we believe the Xen architecture allows for the creation of more secure systems (i.e. with a much smaller TCB, which translates to a smaller attack surface). We discuss this in much greater depth in our Architecture Specification document.”

I wanted to know from OP why they’re considering Manjaro.

Because it’s an excellent distribution which is also in the top of the Steam Survey (alongside Arch, Ubuntu, Mint and PopOS) (and Flatpak, and Steam Deck’s SteamOS).

I’d argue it’s to Arch what Ubuntu is to Debian. Do with that whatever you will.

Btw, ProtonDB’s numbers show that Manjaro is losing lots of ground over the years. I won’t deny that the negativity around it plays a significant role in this. However, to me, if it’s already installed on your device, your experience with it is simply more important than whatever’s said about it. Therefore, I’d argue that Manjaro’s ever decreasing market share has to be linked to users being ever so upset of its vision, direction and mishaps.

It’s a rolling distro but mitigates the risks of bleeding edge with a curated stable branch, offers LTS kernels going back to 4.19 but you can choose LTS or newer versions or RT patches, it does not force you to switch kernel version if you don’t want to, has visual management tools for packages, kernel management and driver installation, does a great job installing drivers during install, comes with extra safety features (update rollback built-in if you use BTRFS for root), Steam works great, you can use AUR and Flatpak etc.

All of that is cool and all, but trust is what it’s all about. And honestly, I think someone should get a diagnose for Stockholm syndrome if they’re still putting up with Manjaro after all it has done.

But there is no automatic repair voodoo anywhere, on any distro. That driver is proprietary, only NVIDIA can fix it.

Consider to revisit this, cuz this is basically (at least for me) most of uBlue’s schtick:

“No more building drivers on your laptop, dealing with signing, akmods, third party repo conflicts, or any of that. We’ve fully automated it so that if there’s an issue, we fix it in GitHub, for everyone.”

And the way it’s setup, is so that you don’t get the broken update ever on your device in the first place.

So, contrary to what you might expect, this black magic (or just excellent engineering) somehow does exist.

But they rely on rpmfusion, an external repo packaging the proprietary NVIDIA stuff for Fedora. The repo is not supported by Fedora, and the drivers cannot be fixed by anyone.

Not sure what you’re trying to say here. Would you mind elaborating? FWIW, Bazzite’s model (by default) allows automatic fixes to be applied to a broken driver without requiring any manual intervention from its user.

In your case it’s still an excellent choice.

Though, other opinionated images by uBlue (like e.g. Aurora and Bluefin) do deserve a mention. I’m on Bluefin (through secureblue to be more precise) as I desired more hardening than what Fedora offers by default.

The excellent part is also that it’s possible to rebase to another branch without reinstalling. So, let’s say you’re actually interested in experiencing these different images without going through the installation process over and over again. Then, you simple enter the following command:

rpm-ostree rebase ...

With ... being replaced by whatever is required for the image and/or branch you’re interested in. Then, simply reboot, (pro-tip: make a new user account and through the new user account) experience the other image. Rinse and repeat to your heart’s content.

Why are you even considering Manjaro?

If gaming is the priority, then I honestly don’t think anything out there can beat Bazzite in terms of ease of use, ‘hands-off’-ness, robustness and stability.

Honorable mentions include: Nobara and Pop!_OS.