Manjaro is NOT Arch

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Manjaro isn't Arch. That's what I've been hearing a lot of people say and I'm starting to agree. What are your thoughts?

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Produced by Brandon Hopkins
Written by PizzaLovingNerd
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[stephanieking]

It all depends on what you use your computer for. Manjaro IS Arch based, but it's not pure Arch and never pretended to be. If people thought it was, they were simply taking advice from unwise sources.

[aeedi]

The reason I picked manjaro is that I wanted the rolling release model of arch, with relatively up to date packages, but because this was on a laptop for home use, I didn't want to spend time customizing every little tiny thing. I just wanted it to work. I didn't mind if the packages were a few weeks or a month old, stability was more important. Manjaro seemed like the perfect fit

[DominikLuebben]

I absolutely love Manjaro. For me, it's the best distro on the market. But that depends on your type and needs, of course. I would agree, that Manjaro isn't Arch, however I disagree if you say it's not Arch-based. Of course it is Arch-based, since it uses pacman and kind of works like Arch under the hood. I would not consider Manjaro a "beginner's distro" as it is often marketed as. Manjaro is a good intermediate distro with a lot of features that make it easy to set up and use. That's actually the reason, why I'm using it instead of vanilla Arch. I tried vanilla Arch several months ago on my computers and decided to go back to Manjaro, since on Arch from time to time things just didn't work they should and I had no idea why. I'm a Linux user for more than 20 years now, but I still got these problems on Arch and I have a family, I'm a "casual user" not a "developer" or "hacker" or whatever people supposedly use Linux. I'm just a regular user who likes Linux better than Windows and MacOS, that's it. I don't want to bother with the issues a vanilla Arch system has. As you stated correctly in your video, you are even told to manually intervene in updates. That's not the way I want to use my computer. I have a life! I also tried out Fedora, since you and others recommended Fedora as "the best" Linux, which I cannot confirm at all, but that's another topic. If people like to tinker around with their computers and are able or willing to waste their time for frustrating configurations and solving problems, they should use Arch or endeavor os. Manjaro is for "normal" poeple who like rolling release distros. Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu or Mint are too old for me. Fedora is kind of in between, but there are several other things I don't like, but as I said ... different topic.

[snowmean]

Manjaro used to be an Arch with GUI installer and 2 weeks delay in 2014 when I install it on my machine and felt in love. However during the recent years, Manjaro were getting further and further away from Arch - delays become bigger (3 months for new KDE or Gnome releases), and instead of providing better stability by delaying updates, they started to add their own packages which are worse than Arch in terms of stability. I do remember their linux-5.8 kernel made installation unbootable due to weird initrd file name, also pamac was responsible for the DDoS attack on AUR which also increased Manjaro stigma among Arch community. I eventually converted my Manjaro installation into a full-pledged Arch in 2020 and never looked back.

[gddrew]

I tried using Arch for a little, but couldn’t wireless working (still a newbie), so I installed Manjaro and problem solved. I love it (but I still like Arch). I may check out Endeavor and Arco. Thanks for the video, very informative.

[KaiserWodka]

My secondary pc is running Manjaro for almost 2 years now and every single time that i switch to a newer kernel version, the nvidia drivers break. So i got to spend hours fixing them because their driver utility tool is terrible. But the straw that broke the camel's back was the Manjaro team holding back a new version of OBS for 3+ months with a feature that i desperately needed. So I went with ArcoLinux on my main machine 9 months ago and zero issues regarding kernel and driver updates. And the maintainer is an incredible resource for arch related issues and deserves more credit than he gets.

[hellomiakoda]

I went to Manjaro because I'm not ready to try Arch.
Manjaro has the few things I wanted from Arch, with none of what I didn't want to deal with on my daily driver.
The AUR, pacman, the rolling release, and it's as close to bleeding edge as I can get without giving up too much stability. The biggest reason I wanted an Arch based distros is I got fed up with PPAs on Ubuntu based distros. I had been using Ubuntu for years, went to Pop for a while, and still, those damn Papas were a nightmare. I had already left Ubuntu based distros when Snaps showed up.
Manjaro has been rock solid, and the only time my Manjaro install went belly up is when I tried to switch it from Gnome to Plasma. I probably could have fixed it, but went for the reinstall for a number of reasons.
Manjaro also has Zsh. I didn't think I'd like it having come from Bash, but now I find myself missing it when I'm on a Bash system. My server, for example, is Bash.
The only systems I have not running some flavor of Manjaro are two very low spec machines running Linux Lite.

[Lanzetsu]

Manjaro is not the only Arch distro I liked but also the only Gnome distro customization out of the box as you said I honestly like, for me Manjaro is something quite unique and I love it, but I use it as my secondary SO, my daily driver is still OpenSuse KDE and for my family I usually install Pop_OS or Mint which are also quite particular instead of simply "An ubuntu forked version"

[samganji]

I understand that for people who want pure Arch yeah Manjaro ain't it. But I disagree with the statement that people who want Arch shouldn't at least start with Manjaro. For me personally I wanted Arch because of AUR and Manajro is like Arch on easy mode honestly.

[SwitchedtoLinux]

I would tend to agree. I run Manjaro on my Pi and Endeavour on my media PC. I use it on the Pi because it is the most stable distro that I found where everything works on pi, though I may need to check out the new Endeavour option for it that was just released.

[andrewd]

Manjaro made my pinebook pro a fantastic little laptop. I have used it for a couple of years. It is great. When I found out that minisforum were doing a Manjaro UM700 I bought one, and have been very happy with it. I have no experience of arch, so couldn't make a comparison.

[Crackalacking_Z]

Sounds to me like Manjaro IS Arch based, but with additional safety nets and less default bleeding edge.

[Cavi]

I agree and I think that's good. Manjaro is a great distro that combines the strenghts of both the more stable solutions (like debian) and pure arch. You're still better off than on Ubuntu but you aren't getting the bad things about using Arch daily. It's great. A great compromise.

[chairman]

I use Manjaro as it's own standalone rolling release distro with it's own Official Repos using pamac.. I don't know anything about Arch and I'm cool with that..

[jesse]

I agree totally with your comparison of Manjaro to Arch being like Ubuntu to Debian. Good video as always!

[HShango]

I love manjaro, I've been using the OS on and off, now i'm back on it full time.

[reoencarcelado]

"Manjaro is NOT Arch":


Manjaro isn't Arch. It's based[-]on Arch source-code, but it isn't Arch.

The same way Ubuntu isn't Debian. It's based-on Debian source-code, but it isn't Debian.

You could say, that Manjaro is the "Ubuntu" of Arch. (In that, that like Ubuntu, it has to make the transition to Linux easier).

Manjaro also uses its-own-Software-Servers (ie. Software-Repositories). It doesn't-use Arch's software-repositories.

Just-like Ubuntu doesn't-use Debian's software-repositories. It-made--&--uses its *own* software-repositories.


I dunno what-else--to-say about the differences between Arch and Manjaro but if I think of any more I will edit this comment and type them.

[dochood]

I have Manjaro on a ProxMox VM and a 2014 Macbook Pro (I call it the MANBook Pro... see what I did there?). The biggest thing I like about it is how they setup ZSH / Oh-My-ZSH on the Gnome version, as well as the Gnome theming / skinning and the desktop style selector. If I could get a TRUE Arch that had those features, I'd go with it, if the project had enough momentum. The next best Arch in my opinion is EndeavourOS, but they don't give KDE or Gnome as much attention as XFCE, leaving those pretty much stock. Pop!OS is my daily driver (since I have two personal System76 laptops and one for work), but I'm starting to feel a little limited with it.

[juanpablo]

I love manjaro, I was going through some diestro hopping and after deciding I didn't like debian, I gave it a go. I literally said okay I'll have this just, I'll tweak a lil bit and keep going with another stuff, and here I am one year later still using it and not even ONCE finding a breaking bug. I just love it. Very customizable, very powerful, allowing me to do crazy stuff, and also very easy and good for learning. 10/10

[rlosangeleskings]

I might need to try Manjaro on my next laptop restoration project...

I've been using Debian based Linux for these projects...

Ubuntu will not stick to anything I've built in the past... Mint sometimes did and it's my favorite (if it actually runs on those laptops)... The LMDE always worked and it's my preferred Linux based laptop version...not to mention desktop...