this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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I've been trying to decide what distro I want to go with for my desktop (Microsoft recently pushed copilot onto my windows 10). While I like the idea of Arch (fast, lightweight) and the fact that it'd be fully compatible with whatever I get on my steam deck, stuff like this makes me think a Debian-based distro would be better.
(That and the fact that most Linux stuff is designed for Debian and I don't have enough experience to try and rebuild Debian stuff for Arch)
The aur usually has what I need, only have had to manually build once... Before I found the aur package. Endeavoros is a good easy way to get into arch if you are worried about the manual configuration.
Alright, cool. Why not Manjaro? I did a quick Google search and saw people saying Manjaro is bloated in comparison to EndevorOS, are there other reasons as well?
Yeah, they like forgot to reupload a new cert 3 times.
And they hold packages back. EndeavourOS uses Arch's repos directly, whereas Manjaro has it's own repos. EndeavourOS is just Arch with a GUI installer and some handy prepicked choices, like a DE.
Thanks!
It happens to everybody, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc.
Actually, most of them have automatic cert renewal... in fact, most web services have that nowadays.
DNS at any company tends to be a mess. Multiply that by a thousand for a large multinational corporation. Case in point, here's Microsoft (and these are never going to stop, due to the sheer complexity):
Even when you use an automated service things can go wrong. For example I use Let's Encrypt but it needs to verify my DNS ownership so I use an API token to let the certbot make the modifications to prove that. At some point I wanted to restrict the token rights so it only has access to certain TXT records (to increase security in case the token every gets compromised). Long story short I forgot to include one wildcard and that particular certificate couldn't get renewed so it was out for the day until I fixed it.
Manjaro's website is made for presentation purposes and whether it's up or not has no impact on how the distro runs or whether you can download packages. Furthermore it's a completely different team from the distro developers so this has no bearing on the package quality. I've been a Manjaro user when some of the manjaro.org certificates expired but I never knew about it because it didn't affect me in any way.
manjaro.org uses Let's Encrypt now and it's been recently redesigned.
Hasn't been updated in a while, but still valid:
https://manjarno.pages.dev/
That thing hasn't been "valid" in half a decade.
There are three distros derived from Arch that try to do very different things:
But seriously, I have mixed feelings recommending Manjaro to a beginner. The distro itself is super-stable and easy to use because you basically have to do nothing. I have non-computer savvy family members on Manjaro without admin privileges and it works perfectly.
But the trick is that doing nothing part. You have to leave it alone and not modify the way it works, and beginners often feel the need to tinker with the system.. Not only that but it's hard as a beginner to figure out online what's generic Arch advice and what's Manjaro-specific and which of that can be applied safely on Manjaro and which is an Arch-ism that will ruin your install.
If you're set on trying Manjaro I can offer a list of recommendations to give you an idea of how to navigate the dos and donts.
Just ignore "bloat" on principle. It's a meaningless term and leads to much suffering.
Untold numbers of systems have been made unbootable, untold years of time wasted, trying to get rid of "bloat".
The most "bloated" distro in the world is probably a default Slackware installation.
It installs every single package in its repo. Including several desktop environments and every single KDE program.
And it's just 2/3 of the size of a Windows installation.
The Deck is configured by Valve in a way uniquely suited to it, and they also make sure it works properly. It's not going to be the same on vanilla Arch installed by you on your own PC.
Common wisdom for a beginner is to use something like Debian or Debian-based like Mint or Ubuntu because they're popular and stable so you can get a safe start. I wouldn't recommend Arch or Arch-based to a complete beginner.
Honestly I’ve found the opposite of what you said, where on Debian based distros I commonly had to go to a project’s git repo and follow readme instructions to build when it wasn’t in an apt repository. Meanwhile on arch, the only thing you have to install manually is yay and then afterwards everything is in the AUR. Not saying that makes arch more user friendly than Debian (obviously), but that one aspect I do actually find easier on arch at least if you’re willing to use an AUR helper.
It's mostly game-related tools that I've discovered typically have Debian versions but no apparent (official) Arch support. Seems like most people who develop modding tools, save editors, stuff like that, mainly use windows and if you're lucky will have a Mac and maybe Debian version
Edit: the windows binaries aren't a huge issue, they usually work in Wine just fine; I just prefer not having to use wine.
I use mint. Everything works without too much fuss. Certainly easier than dealing with an endless stream of corpo shenanigans. It works quicker than windows ever did.
Oh and another point: on Debian every package you get is Debian. On Arch the stuff in AUR is not Arch and is not supported by Arch, it's unstable experimental stuff and you take your chances with it.
In practice, generally, the AUR stuff trends to mostly work fine but it's never guaranteed. It can and it does break spontaneously from time to time.
This applies to ALL Arch-based distros. So if you plan on counting on AUR to supplement your app needs, please reconsider.
Debian stable has ~100k stable packages included. Arch has ~15k bleeding edge packages included and ~80k "varies wildly" in the AUR. It will not be the same experience.
Debian with Steam and other popular desktop apps (like LibreOffice and Firefox) installed from Flatpak will be a much more reliable experience.
The form needs to add "updated system while not using an lts kernal". (Screen flickering is beutiful on an amd and nvidia duel GPU machine)
Debian is nice.
Linux Mint
There's always Fedora as well
Or... install bazzite on one or both... and use an Arch distrobox to get all the Arch/AUR goodness with none of the system breaking risks. I was on Arch for a few years, learned a lot, but as a first distro ? Your funeral...
I used to use Ubuntu years ago. The beauty of that distro is that it will fuck itself up. No action required on your part. Versions after 16 would black screen themselves after an upgrade, or the mouse pointer would go on vacation. Even better, it would say your 100% correct password was incorrect and lock you out.
You’re not really any worse off with something like Arch, aside from the initial install. Overall, less headaches for me.
Wait until you need to validate the installed state of files on the machine. You'll reconsider Debian like many security people do.
I doubt I'll ever have to do that since I don't really work in software development (I'm guessing that's only relevant in software dev?), but thanks for the heads up.
I don't think I've ever had to do that in all my years of using Debian. What does it even mean?