Hi All,
Over the previous 20 years I’ve used at home mostly Mandriva, then kUbuntu and just installed a Manjaro. So I am not “new to Linux” but still new to Manjaro/arch. Has anyone a good “primer” for people migrating ?
A few questions I have
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How does pacman work compared to apt-get ? and how to find in which package an command lies. I struggled a bit to get lsinput (to configure a rudder pedal for flight sim)
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I am struggling a bit with Zsh, like I ended up starting bash to configure an environment variable, any ressources on-it. Or shall I simply change my setting (and how) to use bash that I know a bit. It’s a home/Gaming PC so I don’t plan to use the console that much but as anyone who has been using linux based OS for a while, I find-it more conveinient
My suggestion to you, is please oh please replace Manjaro with EndeavourOS. It does everything Manjaro does but better. The learning curve will still be the same.
pacman: EndeavourOS has yay installed by default, which is an AUR helper. It interacts with pacman and builds your packages for you. yay -S steam for instance calls up pacman and builds the steam package from the repo and takes some of the head scratching out of it. Very easy to use. A simple “yay” to update, no sudo needed, yay will ask for a sudo password when it needs it.
Shell selection: bash is fine, and bash is enabled by default in EndeavourOS.
But the real reason to use EndeavourOS, aside from having an arch based rolling release distro, is its community and support. An amazing forum, tons of documentation between EOS and arch itself, and fantastic wiki that guides you through various tools and utilities you may want to use.
It is a terminal centric distro, but you can easily install GUI tools for things you don’t want to do in the CLI.
I would even be down to correspond and help you out if need be. Manjaro looks cool when you’re in those early stages of outgrowing Ubuntu, but it’s not the distro you’re looking for, I promise.
This x1000. If you want a good arch experience, without doing the install yourself, EndeavorOS is the way to go. Just whatever you do, stay away from Manjaro unless you want problems.
I’ve tried tons of Arch distros over the years out of laziness, once I already had success manually installing it myself.
I’ll preface my question by saying that it may be a n00b question. I started using Linux as my daily driver about 4 or 5 months ago.
What makes EndeavourOS so terminal centric? I’ve been using it for about a month now (maybe two) having moved from Pop!_OS. I don’t think I’m using the terminal more now than I did in Pop!_OS.
For context, I use my PC for video/photo editing, gaining occasionally, and work (we use our personal computers).
I would say that EndeavourOS, while being more fleshed out than vanilla Arch, has a lot fewer GUI tools for system configuration than say, Linux Mint. Mint has GUI tools for managing PPAs and extra repositories, managing graphics drivers, updating packages and much much more. This has become pretty common in distros aimed toward ease of use for newcomers. EndeavourOS has none of that, with the stated goal of seeing users dive into the command line a little more.
As a result I’ve learned a lot in the CLI. Setting up BTRFS with timeshift auto snaps taught me a little about configuring grub and systemd, so now I’m learning how to set my fan curves and AIO pump to presets I’ve built into shell scripts to interact with liquidctl, and systemd config files to make them persistent after sleep and reboot. You could totally do all of that in the terminal in any distro, but EndeavorOS not having any GUI handholding made me leave my comfort zone and start learning more.
In general I’m not a fan of commenters immediately telling someone on Manjaro to leave Manjaro. But since you’re just transitioning to it, I have to agree, EndeavorOS is the way to go. Manjaro has some anti-patterns that create more trouble than they’re worth.
Yeah, let’s be real, if you like manjaro, okay whatever, but no one should be using manjaro when EndeavourOS exists.
Which makes me wonder, if manjaro tanked, what other twists on an Arch based distro aimed at gaming and content creators could spring up in its place? Something with the level of execution of EndeavourOS but with its own comprehensive GUI tools?
I dunno if it is “the main” one, but it’s where I landed for my desktop gaming rig. Benchmarks seem to hold it in good regard and it’s been really easy to transition to from limited previous Linux knowledge.
I’d highly recommend it to anyone that’s used Linux before, but maybe not to someone that’s never left windows or macos.
I personally wouldn’t use Manjaro, especially if you plan to use anything from the AUR.
So… why don’t you transition to Debian and use it for the next 20 years? :)
New hardware, so wanted something moving a bit faster than debian, and I thought it was the opportunity to switch from Ubuntu is an old African word meaning I can’t configure Debian to Manjaro is an old African word meaning I can’t configure arch :)
You can always do what a lot of people are doing, use Debian as your base OS and install all software via Flatpak, solid OS with the latest software. Doesn’t get any faster :P
At that point why not go immutable distros? Like atomic Fedoras, or Bazzite for if you’re a gamer.
Manjaro is not a good Arch downstream afaik. What they try is like produce a stable Arch, like Debian Sid vs. Stable.
But if they do that, they need an automated QA path so that packages are put in based on how they work, and not just delay them by a few weeks all the time.
And hack my stuff like the AUR wouldnt be possible there, they would need to host such packages their own and make sure they work on that specific frozen release.
Its simply more work that what I know they invest. So stay away from Manjaro, use Arch, Opensuse TW, Fedora etc.
