ARCH FOR NEW USERS

MANJARO UPDATES, MAINTENANCE, SECURITY AND NEW USERS

Arch Linux, a rolling release distribution, has great documentation. Everything to do with a terminal command even for Ubuntu can be found in the Arch Wiki or some other form of Arch documentation. The problem with Arch Linux is that it is so very difficult to install for new users. Many times when going into an arch related forum, you get called names and ridiculed for asking a question. Manjaro Linux on the other hand, they don’t do that. They are knowledgeable and helpful. They offer almost immediate assistance, at least within 24 hours. They have equally good documentation for a lot of the things related to Arch and their own distro. Many times, it is encouraged still to use the Arch Wiki, however.

STABLE, TESTING, UNSTABLE

There are three branches within the Manjaro package management world. Each has their own set of mirrors. When switching between them, it is advisable to use sudo pacman-mirrors b(ranch) and then the branch’s name. This generates a mirrorlist for your branch. If you are on stable and just want to load a faster branch, they have recently made changes that better facilitate that. To get a faster set of mirrors, sudo pacman-mirrors -f 5 this generates a mirrorlist with the five speediest and most local mirrors for your area. Stable usually doesn’t update very often, but when it’s been a while or when checking and the repositories synchronize very slowly, it is a great idea to run this. You can alternatively run sudo pacman-mirrors -G for the stable branch as well.

USER-FRIENDLY

Manjaro is only one of the Arch-based distributions as there are a few, but it is the one that is most user-friendly. It has a graphical or otherwise easily readable tool for almost every part of the set up process now. I have scripts that help set up a system, and yeah, these do this in under an hour, but it’s almost as easy to do it without. It does take a while for getting started at first, however, it took me two or three days to get the hang of it myself. I had to often find solutions for things, but it was half the fun. It is very good at multiple things, as a general distribution it can do almost anything. Maybe Ubuntu server is still better for server stuff, but Manjaro is the most usable client distribution that I’ve ever used. I didn’t even have to have a Computer Science degree to manipulate it.

LOADS OF PACKAGES FROM THE START, VERY LITTLE NEED TO INSTALL MORE

Manjaro Linux is a full featured distribution. Applications like Gimp, Libreoffice, Firefox, Audacious, VLC-Nightly and others are already pre-installed. My biggest gripe right now is that VLC-Nightly is installed rather than the stable version. VLC has problems in Manjaro right now with no qt4 plugins installed. Easy to fix though. Just install Clementine, remove audacious(unless you like it or rhythmbox), remove vlc-nightly and install stable vlc. That getst VLC working perfectly again. All in all, I wouldn’t consider that a shortcoming, more like a minor inconvenience. But the other packages work flawlessly. I only had to install Opera, Vivaldi, and a few sensor programs to help me monitor my temps. Manjaro already has sensor applications built in, they’re just not exactly what I use.

GUI THAT INSTALLS KERNELS AND WHY YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO

Kernels are a big thing in the Linux world, you hear about them often. Kernels are the very base part of the Linux distribution that takes over after the BIOS of the machine and automatically loads and houses the drivers. Without the Kernel your system wouldn’t work… at all. Manjaro implemented its own Gui utility to help with managing Kernels and drivers. This is a special settings manager for that and for installing language packs. This was a genius idea by the Manjaro team. It allows you to quickly and effortlessly install whatever kernels you want to have on your system for testing. I wouldn’t recommend installing new kernels though. Most of the time, issues arise that hamper sleep mode or graphical support in a newer version. Even networking issues have arisen from upgrading to the newest LTS on the block. Generally, it’s been pretty easy to just load Manjaro up, Install it, then leave the default kernel alone. Manjaro already uses an LTS that’s stable and lasts for a long time. Even when the kernel reaches EOL, it’s generally ok to keep running it for a while, the kernel will cease to get upgrades, but the system won’t. Manjaro is a rolling release like Arch. Sometimes it’s necessary to install an older kernel for older hardware, but otherwise, I’d leave the default.

BEST OF THE ALMOST BLEEDING EDGE

Manjaro carries with it many up-to-date packages. These packages are almost bleeding edge, but they do provide their own testing before they are released to stable. This allows the stable Manjaro user to get only the best that Arch has to offer. Randomly, Manjaro has had its issues, but the developers owned it, it was usually rectified shortly after. Manjaro Stable is still almost as stable as Ubuntu… Almost! For a new user, they do still have a little ways to go, but they are so close, with Manjaro 17.1.1 they are closer than they’ve ever been.

MANJARO NEEDS ALMOST NO MAINTENANCE

There is almost no maintenance required. Granted, most users will want to do a few things. Many users coming from Windows remember how things use to be. Just a few simple commands are needed. Those simple commands are;

1. sudo rm -r .cache/*
2. sudo rm -r .thumbnails/*
3. sudo rm -r ~/.local/share/Trash/*
4. Occasionally sudo pacman -Rs $(pacman -Qqdt)

These clean and maintain a pretty healthy installation in themselves.

GETS OUT OF YOUR WAY

It just gets out of your way and lets you do things. You don’t have to worry about updating every day, but if you did update every day it would probably be ok. It also allows you the ability to ignore packages if something breaks. Manjaro isn’t lacking anything, Almost any software you’d find on Windows is either here or has a replacement that is here. Their Xfce desktop is the very best iteration of Xfce. It’s clean, it themes well. Everything just works.