Questions for Mint users who have investigated Manjaro

[EmphaticItalic]

I am becoming very curious to do another round of investigation with trying Manjaro. Back in Feburary after being curious about Manjaro for 18 months I bit the bullet and installed it as my main OS (with the deepin desktop), using it for six weeks as a "trial period".

I eventually went back to Mint I think because with Mint, everything "just works", and it's a fair bit easier and a fair bit more streamlined. Ultimately I like the vibe of the Mint community better. I liked the Mint developers approach to be a bit conservative and keep things elegant, focus on things that just work easily, to remain faithful to software that while being an older version is known to be stable and works great.

The other reason was is that I still like to use my desktop as a PVR. It's much easier to set up the app I like to use for it - Me-TV. Me-TV is also something that "just works" and requires minimal setup compared to other TV software.

After trying the latest Manjaro Xfce on a live USB recently I was blown away by how fast and slick everything is, and in particular how it Manjaro (still) seems to make better use of my video hardware in particular.

I think that while Manjaro is at least faster, Mint still wins when considering almost any other aspect. Mint 18.3 Cinnamon has certainly improved out of sight how snappy it is use Mint on my hardware.

Does anyone at the Mint forums know why Manjaro seems so fast? What is is doing differently from Mint? What is going on with how it implements everything that it is seemingly able to produce much smoother video from my hardware?

For those that have given Manjaro a real go, what made you decide to stick with Mint?

[catweazel]

For those that have given Manjaro a real go, what made you decide to stick with Mint?

I didn't stick with Mint. I 'm sticking with the Mint community.

[jameskga]

catweasel rox

[smurphos]

I use both - Mint Cinnamon and Manjaro Cinnamon. I don't see any obvious differences in performance between the two (although Mint is booting from an SSD and Manjaro from an external HDD so maybe Manjaro would be speedier if it was on an SSD as-well)

Main differences are Manjaro has more up to date packages for everything - including kernels - if your hardware benefits from a newer kernel then you will see a difference. It also defaults to a different driver for intel graphics than Mint. Downside is Manjaro is marginally less stable - e.g. I'm using it a lot at the moment to update themes with the initial release of Cinnamon 4, which has a few bugs. It's very nice of the folks using Arch based distros to provide the initial round of beta testing on new Cinnamon versions before it gets to Mint/LMDE users.... .

I feel more comfortable in Mint, but thats just because I've been using it longer.

[kukamuumuka]

I have installed Manjaro twice. The first installation broke itself, because update manager did not be able to solve all dependency problems, and the second installation about two years later was workable, but lack of language support got me to discard that installation.

Anyway, Manjaro is good for testing, but for everyday use, it is too unstable.

[richf]

I spent 3 days trying to make Manjaro my default Linux OS.

To me it's the best looking distro out there, even better looking than Mint. Connecting to my network drives was a breeze, connecting to my networked printer/scanner worked easily, Remmina worked great and I love KDE. The whole setup was fast and snappy.

However, I eventually had to give up. Several times it locked up and I had to force reboot it only to be welcomed to HUGE oversized UI elements, missing icons, etc which I spent hours trying to resolve. More than once I had to resolve issues with my GTX1070 card which took a lot of guess work. Twice after crashing it refused to boot requiring me to reinstall thus losing hours of setting it up to my liking.

So, after 3 complete installs, half a dozen forced shut downs and another trashed UEFI boot partition, I went with Mint.

I do not like Cinnamon anywhere near as much as KDE BUT... I've only had to reboot a single time in the last week and Mint behaved well.

I didn't find Manjaro any faster than Mint, just prettier.

[Pierre]

it seems that the Manjaro Project has more up-to-date software & Kernel Base,,
whereas the LinuxMint Project is much more conservative & thus has slightly older software.

this can be an issue for those folks, who do like the cutting-edge software that the LinuxMint doesn't have.
- Manjaro has a nice setup & does run well, but I'd also had some minor issues with using it,
and thus did prefer the more conservative LinuxMint, that I've become accustom to using.

sometimes, I'm off installing some other Linux System - - usually in an VirtualBox,,
and then onto BareMetal to really check it out -properly - - most don't last long.

[kc1di]

I've tried Manjaro on several occasions on different Machines. But always seem to end up back on Mint for reasons mentioned earlier. It's just more stable and I can somewhat predict how it's going to work from one day to the next. Don't get me wrong Manjaro and other Arch derivatives are very good at cutting edge stuff. But I really don't need that as much as a consistent stable work horse. Manjaro is a bit faster but not by much on my machines.

[xfrank]

I'v tried Manjaro years ago, as pointed before, it was pretty (Xfce) and easy to manage but unstable. My installation at some point crashed, and I realized that Manjaro isn't a distro suitable for everyday productive work. Stability is first, I haven't time to fix things when I need to do the job.

[puddleglum]

I never gave Manjaro a chance beyond playing with it on a live release disc. I have moved over to Mint because I no longer have the time I used to to trouble shoot problems. For me Mint is quick & easy to install and maintain on my old equipment. Running Cinnamon now. When that becomes too demanding I will transition over to Mate and then XFCE.

If you want to do a speed comparison why compare Mint Cinnamon vs. Manjaro Xfce? Try running Mint XFCE and see if that feels snappy on your hardware.

[Petermint]

Will you need the most up to date software in the future? Last week, I needed the most recent versions of two applications and both were available as AppImage files, removing the need to change Linux distributions or do anything complicated. For the installations prior to that, there were PPAs providing the latest version.

The only occasion I can think of where there was a problem with Linux Mint, it was that faulty Linux kernel a year ago and the fault appeared on only some hardware combinations. Other Linux distributions had the same problem. For me, that leaves real time kernels as the main reason for choosing something else.

[mediclaser]

I have played with Manjaro each time I see a thread hyping it. What keeps me from staying with it is my growing need to use the terminal to accomplish things with my Linux machines. Every time I have to use the terminal, it means I'm in a hurry to do whatever I wanted to do. And when I'm in a hurry, I don't have time to figure out the pacman equivalent of an apt-get solution I am trying to use.

[ajgringo619]

it seems that the Manjaro Project has more up-to-date software & Kernel Base,,
whereas the LinuxMint Project is much more conservative & thus has slightly older software.

this can be an issue for those folks, who do like the cutting-edge software that the LinuxMint doesn't have.
- Manjaro has a nice setup & does run well, but I'd also had some minor issues with using it,
and thus did prefer the more conservative LinuxMint, that I've become accustom to using.

sometimes, I'm off installing some other Linux System - - usually in an VirtualBox,,
and then onto BareMetal to really check it out -properly - - most don't last long.

+1

This describes me to a tee. I did really like the Vertex-Maia theme, which I'm currently running on my Mint 19 XFCE system.

[smurphos]

I have played with Manjaro each time I see a thread hyping it. What keeps me from staying with it is my growing need to use the terminal to accomplish things with my Linux machines. Every time I have to use the terminal, it means I'm in a hurry to do whatever I wanted to do. And when I'm in a hurry, I don't have time to figure out the pacman equivalent of an apt-get solution I am trying to use.

apt-get install <blah> === pacman -S <blah>
apt-get remove <blah> === pacman -Rs <blah>

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta

[puddleglum]

apt-get install <blah> === pacman -S <blah>
apt-get remove <blah> === pacman -Rs <blah>

The trick is remembering that at the moment you need it. It would be easier to set up aliases for that in your .bash_login file or equivalent. Something like:

Code: Select all

alias my_install="pacman -S"
alias my_remove="pacman -Rs"

Then all you would have to type is my_install <blah> or my_remove <blah>.

[Hoser Rob]

...After trying the latest Manjaro Xfce on a live USB recently I was blown away by how fast and slick everything is, and in particular how it Manjaro (still) seems to make better use of my video hardware in particular....

The trouble with that sort of statement is that it's so anecdotal ... a sample size of one ... and is not guaranteed to reflect any other user's experience with different hardware.

[richf]

...After trying the latest Manjaro Xfce on a live USB recently I was blown away by how fast and slick everything is, and in particular how it Manjaro (still) seems to make better use of my video hardware in particular....

The trouble with that sort of statement is that it's so anecdotal ... a sample size of one ... and is not guaranteed to reflect any other user's experience with different hardware.

Thus so would be the statement(s) of someone and/or persons that have had issues with the video in Manjaro, yes?

[JerryF]

I installed Manjaro in a virtual machine and yes, it's fast. I like the interface.

I just like the idea that Mint is based on Ubuntu and they've been around for a long time.

[Petermint]

There are several reviews of Manjaro versus Ubuntu which recommend Manjaro. They mention problems with Ubuntu that I have not found with Linux Mint.

The main speed advantage of Manjaro appears to be from the XFCE gui and I prefer Cinnamon. Manjaro's replacement for PPAs has the same problems you can get with PPAs. Manjaro is a "rolling" distribution and should be compared to the Debian edition of Linux Mint, not the main edition.

[mediclaser]

There are several reviews of Manjaro versus Ubuntu which recommend Manjaro. They mention problems with Ubuntu that I have not found with Linux Mint.

The main speed advantage of Manjaro appears to be from the XFCE gui and I prefer Cinnamon. Manjaro's replacement for PPAs has the same problems you can get with PPAs. Manjaro is a "rolling" distribution and should be compared to the Debian edition of Linux Mint, not the main edition.

I thought LMDE is not a rolling distro.