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A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 4:00 pm
by catweazel
I've just spent the last week using Manjaro linux with Cinnamon. For a beta distro it's in excellent shape and it looks like it will give many other distros a run for their money further down the track.

Speed-wise it just flies, and I installed it to a pair of SSDs in RAID0 and even firefox starts quickly. However the installation process really lets it down hard. While it works well for a standard installation, the same can't be said for a more complex installation, such as to a RAID set. I had to do it all by hand, which was a bit scary for me as I've only been using linux for 3 months. It is much more complex to install to RAID 0 than is Mint.

There were issues with pacman, the Arch package installer. I had to turn off security keys to get Manjaro installed. I also had absolutely no end of trouble trying to get AMD's proprietary driver to remember settings.

Because the distro is based on Arch Linux it puts a lot of stuff into tmpfs, which, in and of itself, is a good thing, especially for those using SSDs, however it also puts auto-mounted devices in there as well, so things that go looking for mounted devices, Unetbootin being one of them, don't want to work properly.

On the plus side I learned a lot. For starters I'm now far more comfortable with rescuing my system from the commandline if it goes belly up. Arch has dropped support for AMD catalyst drivers because AMD is slow to respond to Xorg changes and the AMD devs apparently do shoddy work. This means that if you want to run an AMD card on the fglrx driver you must downgrade Xorg to 1.13. This won't be an issue for those using Ubuntu-based Mint because AMD are concentrating on Ubuntu, which uses Xorg 1.13. Also, Steam have announced they'll be using Ubuntu as their reference distro, so that's another reason AMD aren't doing anything with the more recent Xorg versions. So, that prompted me to trash my recently purchased AMD HD7970 and replace it with Gigabyte's nVidia GTX 680 Super Overclocked card, which arrives by courier today.

This morning I booted Manjaro and kernel 3.8 had died. Fortunately I didn't remove kernel 3.7 so I was able to get my early morning linux fix. However that incident was enough to convince me it was time to leave the bleeding edge and return to Mint, which is by far and away more stable.

Manjaro is a lovely distro, especially with infinality font rendering installed. I did this by hand too. I think Manjaro will be a distro to be reckoned with further down the track, but despite all the positives it's not for me right now. I need my system to keep running and not suffer unexplained cases of heartburn at boot time.

All that said, if there is the one thing that has made my mind up to return to Mint it's the lively forum community. Manjaro's community has a lot of rough edges. It lacks a lot in the language department; there aren't that many native English speakers on the forum and at my age I don't have patience for trying to understand technical instructions written in badly broken English. Of course, that's got everything to do with me and nothing to do with Manjaro or its community. Even if I set aside the language problems I experienced on the Manjaro forums, Mint's community is still far and away a much better place to be. So, kudos to the whole Mint community.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyeed the story.

I'll reinstall Mint later today.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 4:20 pm
by bigj231
So, that prompted me to trash my recently purchased AMD HD7970
:shock: Don't you think the GTX680 is a bit of a downgrade? (AMD's drivers do suck, but that's a different story)

I agree with you on quite a few points from my experience with ARCH. It's wicked fast, but a real pain to setup.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 9:32 pm
by Macmeister
Good read catweazel, thanks for sharing! It makes me all the more confident that I made the right choice by going with Mint, but like you, I've no doubt that I'll experiment with other distros.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:15 am
by catweazel
bigj231 wrote::shock: Don't you think the GTX680 is a bit of a downgrade?
It's the SOC model, as in super overclocked. The thing has a radiator on it as big as a car's, and 5 fans. It takes up three slots and pumps 34414 FPS in glxgears :mrgreen:

So, no, it's not a downgrade.

Cheers.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:17 am
by ashtonford
I tried manjaro awhile back and it was decent. Recently I downloaded it to try out its newest and its really gone backward instead of forward. The packman gui is a night mare full of bugs etc. They really need to stop putting out new versions till they can get things more stable. Its a good idea they have but its far from being ready for prime time.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:40 am
by bigj231
catweazel wrote:It's the SOC model, as in super overclocked. The thing has a radiator on it as big as a car's, and 5 fans. It takes up three slots and pumps 34414 FPS in glxgears :mrgreen:
I do remember seeing one of those. Somebody was trying to sell the heatsink because he wanted water cooling instead. I still don't know why he didn't buy a cheaper one with a smaller heatsink and overclock it.
The real question is, Can it play Crysis? :lol:

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:22 pm
by 3fRI
Since I'm not using RAID or have SSD, I can't address Catweasel's issues, but as a desk- and laptop user, I've had no significant issues with Manjaro with HDD installs--at least using the standard versions of Xfce and Openbox since 0.8.2. Manajaro testing and rc are what they say--like similar versions in other distros. They help the developers fix bugs and make the distro flavors more user friendly for newcomers to Arch via Manjaro. FWIW, I've been running Manjaro 0.8.4 Xfce on my laptop for several weeks and have update/upgraded during that time with no problems. I'm dual-booting the same version on my desktop and also have had no problems there. In sum, everything has worked pretty much out of the box, save the usual tweaks that most of us Linuxers find necessary from time to time. :wink:

Personally, I'd recommend starting with Manjaro Xfce because it's the most developed flavor so far. Next, I'd recommend Openbox if you want lean and mean and want to configure things your way. Cinnamon, KDE, and E-17 are getting there but are still works in progress.

Before I forget, the forum community is great and very helpful. True, some don't write English well, but at least they're there for you as are others. Having lived and worked overseas where I had to speak and write in a different language as an employee, I don't sweat the small stuff. :D

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:41 pm
by catweazel
bigj231 wrote:I do remember seeing one of those. Somebody was trying to sell the heatsink because he wanted water cooling instead. I still don't know why he didn't buy a cheaper one with a smaller heatsink and overclock it.
If he knew what he was doing he'd have gone for liquid nitrogen cooling. The card has a button on it that pulls the plug on power limits for running with a nitrogen cooler. That's next on my toy list.
The real question is, Can it play Crysis? :lol:
I play flight gear so I wouldn't know.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:43 pm
by catweazel
3fRI wrote:Since I'm not using RAID or have SSD, I can't address Catweasel's issues
There weren't any issues. I got it running nicely. It was just a long, drawn out process, much slower than what Mint needs to be installed on a RAID set.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:20 am
by The Dark Side
Undoubtedly Manjaro Linux is a distribution with a long future ahead. Keep in mind that so far is a small community with a lot of work ahead. But, yes, working at an amazing speed, to the point that almost every day there is some news about Manjaro Linux.-

The best editions of Manjaro Linux are XFCE and Cinnamon. I'd like to see him dedicate more time and effort to versions with KDE, LXDE and Mate, to be community issues, it shows that they are not as well worked as the previous, but I think with a little more dedication will be as good editions how officers. It promises much, will see what happens..... Greetings.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:50 pm
by AJ1000
Cinnamon maybe being dropped as Arch are dropping it for Gnome. I have been using Manajro Mate version for a few weeks, and it has been a great experience. I am on all the latest packages and linux kernel 3.8, and it is working great. The only thing missing is an equivalent of Remastersys so I can make my own livecd.

Overall, very impressed.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:43 am
by Monsta
http://manjaro.org/2013/04/11/manjaro-c ... -released/
We are happy to release our final Manjaro Cinnamon Community Edition to the public. See this release as our last gift to this amazing Gnome-Fork, as we have to drop the support for Cinnamon in near future. We can not maintain this edition anymore since upstream is dropping Cinnamon due incompatiblility with Gnome 3.8. So we hope some people will still love this release …
Just following upstream. Be warned. :)

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:04 pm
by catweazel
Monsta wrote:http://manjaro.org/2013/04/11/manjaro-c ... -released/
We are happy to release our final Manjaro Cinnamon Community Edition to the public. See this release as our last gift to this amazing Gnome-Fork, as we have to drop the support for Cinnamon in near future. We can not maintain this edition anymore since upstream is dropping Cinnamon due incompatiblility with Gnome 3.8. So we hope some people will still love this release …
Just following upstream. Be warned. :)
Read this: https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/i ... t-16043648

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:42 am
by Monsta
An interesting reading. But I wasn't blaming Cinnamon at all.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 6:47 am
by catweazel
Monsta wrote:
An interesting reading. But I wasn't blaming Cinnamon at all.
Of course not. The idea was simply to point out that Cinnamon isn't going to die anytime soon.

Cheers.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 1:14 pm
by The Dark Side
It is clear that Manjaro Linux Cinnamon his edition with abandoned, as did Cinnarch. A shame, I had never tasted Cinnarch, but the version of Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon.... Manjaro Linux Cinnamon was not bad, but not perfect.....

Now, I think Manjaro will be based on XFCE, KDE and OpenBox, the official version of KDE still have not seen, I have seen some comments on the XFCE version which seems to be the best. I'm going to download and test a little, but I look forward to the new version with KDE (my weakness).-

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 1:27 pm
by Monsta
Well, I was just stating that Manjaro closely follows upstream. If Arch will take any other drastic decisions (not necessarily dropping a DE, it can be some other significant action), Manjaro will probably follow. This can be a surprise for some users who seek stability.

Re: A week of using Manjaro...

Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 3:40 am
by darknetmatrix
Jose Manuel wrote:It is clear that Manjaro Linux Cinnamon his edition with abandoned, as did Cinnarch. A shame, I had never tasted Cinnarch, but the version of Manjaro Linux with Cinnamon.... Manjaro Linux Cinnamon was not bad, but not perfect.....

Now, I think Manjaro will be based on XFCE, KDE and OpenBox, the official version of KDE still have not seen, I have seen some comments on the XFCE version which seems to be the best. I'm going to download and test a little, but I look forward to the new version with KDE (my weakness).-
Manjaro with cinnamon is still alive:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarolinux/files/community/Cinnamon/2013.11/