Manjaro is supposed to have repositories with slightly older and more stable software, but in my experience it's less stable and well-documented. Manjaro also comes a bit more pre-configured but I don't really see the point in that now that arch has a guided installer. At this point in time, I don't really see myself using anything other than arch or debian. Unless some distro gets really big and systemd is less relevant.

I don't believe that arch is really that hard to maintain. You don't have to update if you don't want to. You can always install an LTS kernel and chill. Often I will add the kernel packages to the ignore list and then once every couple months I'll update everything and reboot. You can always install an LTS kernel and chill. If there is a breakage, 90% of the time it's because you have something misconfigured (eg update changing syntax of config file) or a reboot will fix it. If the updated package really is just buggy, you can downgrade (I use the downgrade aur package for this) or install a different version via flatpak or aur. Ideally you are doing system backup and recovery with a program like timeshift so you don't need to panic in the case something breaks really hard and you're suddenly in dependency hell. That's only happened to me a couple times in 6 years though.

For me the biggest selling points for Arch is the package manager/AUR and the documentation. You also have the freedom to change a lot of things without pissing off something in your system. Downside is it can take a little longer to set things up in the way you want. But at least you CAN do that and you CAN fix breakages.

Mint is a fine distro. If you want a "just werks" situation, that might be one of the best fits for most people.

Aug 27, 2022 11:51:51 Michael via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org>:

thanks for telling me about this mb. I'm not advanced enough in my knowledge of Linux to use arch. I'll stick with mint.... but what about manjaro? Manjaro users: Do you have the same issue with it; is it good for a casual Linux user??

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 1:31 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
I'll second arch, I've been using it for a good 4-5 years now, and only thing I run on personal hardware anymore.

That said, it can be cranky, even with rolling updates.  I've had them randomly blow up at least one system that I couldn't figure out how to fix, and upgrades can be a pain with AUR repos pulling in sometimes dubious maintenance builds of packages that later break.  When it occurs, you often end up in dependency recursion hell, where something is dependent on upgrading something else that it can't, due to something else wanting a particular version, nor will it let you simply remove it because you'd have to replace/remove 50 other things.  I've spent at times days beating my head on a keyboard to fix these manually gutting packages ugly-style and forcing replacements over others to fix.

Another good one, I just picked up a new (used) lenovo thinkpad T15g that installing arch on is panic-ing the kernel on boot before I can really even do anything, even in recovery.  This should be fun like ants to fix...

I do love arch, but it still tries my patience at times.

-mb



On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:38 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
this has weird knockon effects too.  since arch is rolling release, and highly customizable, they don't tend to switch up major pieces often.  say with fedora they decided to go to ext3 to ext4 to xfs, then btrfs filesystems.  now, if you run the upgrade scripts on time you can go from fedora 35 to 36, but you won't have your filesystem changed to btrfs (i don't remember the exact verison they made that change).  but assumptions are made that if you're running fedora 36 you have a certain setup, and hilarity ensues.

You often can't have as long-lived a system with fedora or ubuntu as you can with arch since arch lets you set it up how you want and organizes its updates to take that into account.  whereas fedora or ubuntu kinda assumes you're installing from their media without too much customization and the cruft that can build up if you've run the update scripts a few times can get downright nasty.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:32 AM James Mcphee <jmcphe@gmail.com> wrote:
oh, they have a good test system.  what i mean is breaking versions.  upgrading from one version of software to another.  say a kernel that decides a particular tuning variable  is no longer used in favor of something else.  and all the sudden your database performance chunks horribly because you had to patch.  (yes, that's happened to me more than once).

or, say your favorite tls layer deciding to deprecate ciphers you've manually defined in your configs.

the more versioned systems (fedora and ubuntu, etc) will patch the versions they have until the next release when they make a big jump in software versions (often requiring you to learn large amounts of changes at once).

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:28 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
wonderful. with breaking patches: is it fixed like the next day or is it usually later than that?

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 9:21 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
…


--
:-)~MIKE~(-:
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss


--
James McPhee
jmcphe@gmail.com


--
James McPhee
jmcphe@gmail.com
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss


--
:-)~MIKE~(-: