Manjaro 2.0 Synopsis This document covers the organizational, technical, management, and other changes we (the Manjaro Team, et al) like to see applied to the Manjaro Project. The goal of this document is to serve as a point of discussion, and ultimately, once a consensus on its contents and written goals has been reached, as a guide for the organizational restructuring of the Manjaro Project. Motivation The Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizabl...
Bazzite is good indeed, we can agree here. My main issue with it is exactly what makes it good for many - namely, immutability.
On the upside, it does indeed remove a lot of footguns. It’s much harder to actually bork your immutable install (although it is possible, I did once manage to cause seemingly irreversible damage to Aurora, which is another Fedora-based immutable).
On the downside, it takes different approaches to management and system administration compared to regular mutable distros. This makes troubleshooting more complicated, as a lot of general Linux solutions just won’t work. Also, some things still stubbornly refuse to work on an immutable distro. I recognize a lot of this is growing pains, but they are currently there.
Currently, I strike a good balance with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It is exceptionally stable for a rolling release distribution, it is mutable, and at the same time, it has extensive automatic snapshots and easy recovery. So, whatever you manage to break, you can roll it back. Still, I wouldn’t recommend it to newbies in my right mind, because, just like Fedora, it still expects the user to know what they’re doing, and is quite terminal-intensive. Maybe it could be forked into something newbie-friendly, and it would make a strong rival to Manjaro.
There’s one more aspect for me personally, though. Debian and Arch are the only two upstreams that are:
Debian has a very slow release schedule, and as I do appreciate more frequent updates, I’m pretty much squeezed into Arch territory. And in there, Manjaro comes with least technical expertise expected of the user, and with the most user-friendly approach. And if not for some weird issues I have with all Arch distros on my particular machine, I would consider running Manjaro to this day.
Oh, and on the impossibility of removing footguns from Arch: KDE actually works on immutable Arch, which must be very low-maintenance, so we’ll see how it goes.
If you don’t like the immutability then use nobara.
Tbh I don’t think the issues with immutability are CURRENTLY there.
you said this:
“Entirely community-driven (so suffer much less from corporate influence, and are better from the Linux “freedom” standpoint compared to Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc.)”
give me one example of a time this mattered
“Widely adopted (have extensive communities supporting the repos, a large knowledge base and active forums)”
fedora obviously has this.
“Not heavily opinionated (allow proprietary programs, work with systemd, etc.)” And this.
i conclude that you have still not made any case that there is even one reason to use manjaro that isn’t the cost of switching.
CentOS and the way it was killed, managed by same team that manages Fedora, alongside the rest of Red Hat drama. Outside of Fedora, Canonical has made numerous breaking changes to Ubuntu, most notably by pushing snap down users’ throats and rolling out Ubuntu Pro, putting not only extended updates, but also vital security features behind a paywall. Part of the reason I opted for Tumbleweed is because SUSE is least prone to such acts - but it’s still a questionable arrangement in the long run.
All in all, I agree to disagree. We may just conclude that you personally have no reason to prefer Manjaro, especially since you had to manage it for others (which is not something I face), and that’s fine. I only interjected because you are very generous at extending your preferences and understanding on others.
I like to have Manjaro as an option. And I don’t mind Nobara, Bazzite or something else entirely - they have their userbase, and I’m happy the latter works for your needs.