Yet another "recommend me a distro" post

Hey fellas friends. Sorry to create yet another post on this topic (maybe we should have a sticky for this?).

About 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to move on from Windows and installed Manjaro. I would consider myself a newbie-intermediate level linux user.

Though I’ve used Windows most my life, we use Linux servers (no GUI) at work, managing them is part of job description. I also own a late 2011 Macbook Pro with vanilla Arch Linux. I barely ever use it but boy, Arch really brought it back to life!

I’ve been reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive to use but the community has made me aware that Manjaro is maybe a questionable choice. Since I don´t plan on distro-hopping a lot I want to get it right sooner rather than later.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

  • Rolling distribution, preferably. Though this machine is also used for work, our environment depends mostly on remote servers anyway. I’d rather have a distribution that provides the most recent packages for whatever I want
  • I don´t mind running a distribution that forces me learn new things or do things in a different way, I kinda embrace it. I just don´t enjoy complexity for complexity’s sake.
  • KDE is my preferred Desktop Environment so far, though I guess that’s not very relevant. I’d love to run Hyprland, but you know… Nvidia :(
  • I play games on Steam but from my understanding this doesn´t matter either. Everything I tried worked great, I don´t think I want a ¨gaming focused" distro or anything like that
  • No Ubuntu, please.

My hardware, in case you feel is relevant!


<span style="color:#323232;">OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Shell: bash 5.1.16 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">WM: KWin 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Terminal: konsole 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Terminal Font: MesloLGS NF 10 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">CPU: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K (20) @ 4.900GHz 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Memory: 23313MiB / 64087MiB 
</span>
KISSmyOS,

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed gets recommended here a lot. Just be aware: It’s an expert distro masquerading as beginner-friendly.
Out of the box, it won’t recognize printers and scanners. Setting them up is a hassle without cups-airprint and sane-airscan which aren’t preinstalled, and the latter is only available through a user’s repo.

Printer setup will also fail unless you add an exception to the built-in firewall. Nothing in the GUI tells you about this.

It also won’t play web videos before you install the codecs. These are available in the packman repo, which will require learning the concept of repo priorities and “vendor-change”, what it does and when to use it. (It can break your system)

The package manager is very sophisticated and complex, but some of its features shouldn’t be used in Tumbleweed. Updating Tumbleweed like you would the normal fixed release system is possible (in fact, if you use the GUI, it’s the default) but it will break your system.

And the system administration tool YAST offers a lot of functionality that is already present in the KDE options. What the differences are? Who knows.

arirr,

Have you looked into Solus at all? They are rolling and build with a focus on desktop usage.

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

You want to game on your work machine?? Okay.

So KDE, and gaming, and rolling, and stable kinda.

  • Opensuse Kalpa: Tumbleweed based immutable, not sure about codecs
  • Fedora Kinoite-nvidia from ublue
pathief,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

You want to game on your work machine?? Okay.

It’s more like the other way around, I happen to work on my gaming machine :P Cheers!

danielfgom,
@danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

In short: Manjaro sucks. No one should ever use it.

For rolling distro you should look at:

  1. Opensuse Tumbleweed: latest packages, well tested, bullet proof reliability and built in system rollback. RPM based.
  2. Garuda Linux: full flavoured ARCH. Very fast, has all the latest packages. Reliable. Built in rollback. Cool theming.
Aties,

In short: Manjaro sucks. No one should ever use it.

I’ve seen their certificates fail to renew multiple times. I feel like I don’t know anything, but I could at least certbot.

danielfgom,
@danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

They are notorious for breaking your system because they mix old packages with new which causes dependency issues and driver issues.

If you’re using a rolling distro both the system packages and library’s, as well as the apps packages must both be up to date.

Manjaro doesn’t follow this

adam,
@adam@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I switched to fedora some months ago and I’ve been really enjoying it. Maybe worth a shot.

Holzkohlen,
@Holzkohlen@feddit.de avatar

Yet another one of my Garuda Linux shill posts. IMHO thr best arch based distro. As easy to setup as Manjaro. Check out their KDE light version if you don’t like their theme, which is what I use. I think their edgy theme is THE WORST. The distro itself is great tho. Been running it for a few months without distro hopping, this is huge for me.

theshatterstone54,

I’d say either OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or either (depending on if you want a graphical installer) EndeavourOS or Arch.

lemmyvore,

There’s nothing wrong with Manjaro. If you say that you’re “reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive” and you’re not into distro-hopping then I see no reason for you to switch.

If you’ve already installed Arch on another machine you probably know these things already, but here’s the basics for using an Arch-based distro (any Arch-based distro, this applies to all of them):

  • You gotta keep rolling. You don’t have to upgrade every day, you don’t have to upgrade every week, but once every few months you should. That’s the whole point of a rolling distro, if you don’t want rolling you can look into point-release distros.
  • It’s best to use pacman -Syu on command line to do upgrades.
  • Don’t install critical stuff from AUR. Don’t install AUR graphical drivers, or AUR kernels, or replace system packages with AUR packages.
  • Don’t install experimental kernels and especially don’t uninstall all other kernels and only keep the experimental ones, that’s just asking for trouble. Stick to stable/longterm kernels and always keep two versions around, just in case.

Specifically for Manjaro there’s similar advice:

  • Stick to the stable releases, don’t mess around with testing or unstable unless you really know what you’re doing.
  • If you want to know what’s coming in updates you can check out the announcements page. That’s also where you can find tips for fixing various package upstream annoyances – in every release post, under “known fixes and workarounds” (which happen occasionally, it’s the price you pay when using a rolling distro and staying on the bleeding edge).
backhdlp,
@backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

There’s nothing wrong with Manjaro

That’s not quite right.

zingo,

OpenSuse Tumbleweed is an excellent choice, if you want the most stable rolling release distro.

High quality OS.

cocolopez,
@cocolopez@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve already mentioned this a couple of time this week, so I hope no one get bothered. But I can’t recommend Xerolinux enough (page). I think it’s what you may like. Rolling release, gorgeous KDE, a ready to use as is system. I’ve been distro hopping for a while but this made me settled.

pathief,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

Do they use Arch official repositories or is it like manjaro where they have their own repo?

Skerse,
@Skerse@lemmy.world avatar

It uses the Arch official repositories so it’s as rolling as pure Arch, i used it before it’s great. It uses KDE Plasma and has different theming options to pick from that all look really nice.

You can always try it in a live environment before installing it to see if you like it.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian testing

EntropyPure,

This is the closest to a rolling Debian release, and I really like it. It’s basically the next major release for Debian, Updates are plenty and the packages much newer than in the stable, though not bleeding edge.

Best of both worlds IMHO

BRINGit34,
@BRINGit34@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Man I used arch for a while and many other “bleeding edge” distros and I just can’t get enough of Fedora. It is so stable and has such reasonable defaults. I use the fedora kde spin and have zero issues with my setup. Now since you are on nvidia you may have more issues, since by default fedora only ships the open source nvidia drivers and you would have to use rpmfusion.org/Configuration to get the nonfree stuff. Also you’d have to use dnf which is very similar to apt in my eyes and is very easy to use. Fedora even gets stuff sooner than arch on ocassion which is nice.

I do enjoy my time with fedora and for the most part it has very little setup. It’s a very set it and forget it distro

hottari,

If you are tired of Arch, why not give Tumbleweed a chance.

pastermil,

I’d usually recommend Linux Mint, but since you seems to be up for a challenge, how about Gentoo?

Otherwise for something more mild, you can go for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

pathief,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like I’d break Gentoo really fast, to be honest

pastermil,

Just follow the handbook. You’ll be fine.

GamesRevolution,
@GamesRevolution@programming.dev avatar

If you want to be a little adventurous, just install vanilla arch and it will be great, but if you want a little bit of a easier install with all the same benefits, use endeavor os.

If you want something not arch based the only thing I can recommend is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I’ve heard great things about it.

Also about Hyprland and Nvidia, I’ve been using Hyprland for some months now with Nvidia and it’s been working great. I do have a significantly older card then you, but it could be worth a try to see if it works. You just have to follow the Hyprland wiki very carefully and you should be fine.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •