Started learning Linux with Manjaro a few years ago, but there were always stability issues pushing me away from daily driving. I found when I did have time to use my PC, it was largely for gaming, and when any issue presented and needed to be fixed it was a bit of a barrier to entry.
Because of biases I always leaned to Arch for that ‘bleeding edge’ and rolling updates, so when I gave Linux another shot long term a few months ago I went with EndeavourOS. Everything was rock solid but I found a lot of nitpicks and after a week or so my monitors wouldn’t wake from sleep… I of course don’t blame the OS as more than likely there was a log somewhere explaining my issue, but I really just want to enjoy playing games after a long day.
So I gave up on my faux dream of living on the edge and instead installed Pop_OS!, and to my pleasant surprise it has been rock solid and performant to boot! My preconceived biases against Debian and it’s derivatives drove me to borderline tribalism. Flatpak has remedied worries of outdated packages, and even if I did have an issue (bluetooth headphones defaulting to HSP not AD2P) I found the solution on the archwiki!
The beauty of this ecosystem is that Linux is Linux, we all benefit from improvements so long as they are made open and free, and no matter what flavor you choose, you’ll always be part of the family.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to the contributors who work tirelessly to make an open and free desktop a reality :)
I did really like the look and feel of manjaro, which is why I picked it after playing with like 7 different live environments… But eventually things just started breaking during updates and it got worse and worse until I gave it up. From reading around now after the fact it seems trying to be a hybrid between rolling release and LTS causes fucky versioning/updates that can cause a lot of problems for some people. :/ it scared me off Linux entirely for about 3 years.
Probably, knowing more about Linux in general, I could have got it back to 100% again, but it was too much work for my skill level at the time.
Yeah, the only ‘issues’ I have had aren’t specific to Manjaro, but they are specific to a rolling-release distro.
For example, normal updates will sometimes include major version changes of software. Programs like PostgreSQL need intervention in between major versions. This wouldn’t happen with a point-release distro like Ubuntu or Debian until I upgrade between major versions of those.
This same issue would be present on Arch Linux.
That said, most software does play nicely and requires no intervention at all between versions, major or minor.