By definition that’s impossible, stable means packages don’t get updated, so their version is stable. If you meant stability outside of the Linux world, as in “doesn’t break” then most rolling release would fit, personally I use Manjaro, and have used Arch and Gentoo in the past, Tumbleweed is also a good option that others have recommended.
This is what I do too. I’ve been considering switching to XFCE everywhere, because why use more resources, when XFCE does the job insert The Office “why waste time say lot words …”-gif
I like that I don’t even care about it. The main user of it is my wife, who is non-technical. It’s the only computer she uses, for everything (browsing, shopping, banking, word processing, printing) for 20+ years, and if you ask her which distro it is, well, she doesn’t know what “distro” means.
She doesn’t “use Linux” because she wanted to “learn Linux” nor to “try this distro”. She uses youtube, instagram, the bank site, amazon, libreoffice, etc. The closest she gets to the OS is accepting the package manager prompt to update.
I wish one day most people can answer your question with “I don’t know, whatever came with my computer”, because it’ll mean all of them are as easy to use, as unobtrusive and as unimportant to the user as possible.
But to finally answer it, kubuntu, some ancient, still updatable LTS version (can’t even recall when I last upgraded), because it was easier for my wife to adapt, coming from windows 95 when she started using it.
Part of it is the same reason that Debian users bash Ubuntu or Mint users. Why use a derivative when the original works well?
That is a bit superficial, though. Debian isn’t ideal for everybody and neither is Arch. I’ve used Manjaro before. I like the installation process for general desktop use. Easy and straightforward. People who are used to graphical OS installers may be put off by Arch’s approach. I don’t distrohop personally and stick with Arch (btw), so OS installation is a one time headache for every device and archinstall is doable. I think the Arch installation process can be a sort of insider shibboleth for self-identifying linux badasses and a graphical install (for them) is missing the point of Arch. Whatever.
I saw a few posts on edditRay that critiqued the Manjaro team for failing to renew SSL certificates one or more times. That may have led to a perception that the team is not competent to run a distro, which seems like a very harsh position to take.
Also, Manjaro holds back updates from time to time for further testing/stability. This goes against the point of a rolling release distro to an extent, since you aren’t technically getting the very latest software. The tradeoff may make sense for you, though.
You can try copying over your dotfiles if you switch to Arch or Arco. That might be a good start for the overall layout. You might need to install any extra packages used by manjaro in addition to sway for icons, menus, power management, backgrounds, etc.
There’s a lot of reasons people hate on Manjaro, though generally they boil down to instability - despite being on a slower schedule than Arch, a lot of people report worse breakage; their main “testing” is just being a week behind Arch without actually testing much.
Crucially, this can break things when mixing in AUR packages since those are shared w/ Arch and so anything in there that’s precompiled against the Arch version of relevant libraries might just break.
It also has considerably deficient security policies, such as the GUI installer pamac allowing unsuspecting users to trivially install unvetted packages from the AUR without even a clear indication they may be dangerous, and they forgot to update their SSL certificates twice edit: five times (see lemmy.ml/comment/1343440), asking users to manually overwrite them as a “fix”.
Unrelated to desktop, I’ve also noticed Manjaro staff are quite hostile and unpleasant to work with; I’m involved in a project that works on Linux on mobile devices, and Manjaro’s mobile team has been less than the most pleasant. This is a personal gripe for sure and unrelated to the distro itself, but if I’m going to take a dump on Manjaro I’ll do it all the way.
As for your other question; you can simply copy the sway config file from the Manjaro install. Either mount the ISO and search there, or if it needs to be installed to populate the sway config, just install in a VM and copy it from there. Necessary packages should be relatively easy to find by just reading the errors sway spits out and googling them.
This…all of it. I started with Arch using Manjaro, like so many do. There was a mass exodus that exploded, and the worst lot remained on the dev team. Beyond that, as you stated, they convice their users that holding back packages is for their benefit, when in reality, your system becomes unstable at times as a result, especially becoming out of sync with AUR. It is still one of the most popular Arch distros, and …well…I feel sorry for their uninformed users who believe it is a stable choice.
I used Arch in the past but don’t have much time to tinker with my Linux installs anymore, so I switched to Manjaro on most of my devices, hoping to get a balance between low maintenance and access to bleeding edge and AUR ecosystem. I do notice the issues with updates getting delayed more and more in the past few months, and issues with AUR packages getting out of sync like you mentioned.
I wonder if I should start looking into something else. Any recommendation?
Yes, stick with Arch. Arch is not the issue if installed without the holding chambers Manjaro puts in place. Arch has a good installer on its own, but if you need a bit more, distros like EndeavourOS, Calam-Arch-Installer, ALCI (Arch Linux Calamares Installer,) and even Garuda are all fine options.
such as the GUI installer pamac allowing unsuspecting users to trivially install unvetted packages from the AUR without even a clear indication they may be dangerous
Unless something has changed since the last time I used Manjaro, this isn’t actually true. You have to go relatively deep into Pamac’s settings menu to enable AUR packages, and when you do, a popup comes up telling you what the AUR is and why it might be dangerous (although iirc, it neglects to tell you that an extra reason is Manjaro packages being out of date).
Not that I’m pro-Manjaro, for all the other reasons you’ve given.
Good point and I absolutely should have mentioned this in my original comment, but I do think there is a risk here worth mentioning. A lot of guides for installing some arbitrary piece of software on Manjaro (or, to be fair, any Arch-based distro) will boil down to installing some package from the AUR, and the average Manjaro user is probably less tech-savvy than the average Arch user. Also, the pamac warning dialog only warns against packages not compiling or being buggy, not against malicious ones, and as far as I know - though it’s been a while since I used pamac - it doesn’t allow you to inspect the PKGBUILD at install-time, whereas most CLI AUR helpers e.g. paru which I use require it and require manual signoff every time said build script changes.
As an entirely unscientific test, I googled “manjaro enable aur” and checked the first 5 results to see if there’s any warnings (I figured this is a relatively common query from Manjaro users?) and only 2 even mentioned the risk of malicious packages, with the top result not mentioning any risks whatsoever, not even breakage or bugginess. I’m sure there are many resources that do make this clear, but I doubt the average Manjaro user will see them.
This is arguably an issue on most Arch-based distros with a pretty installer, though it seems Manjaro is particularly vulnerable since it’s marketed as a beginner-friendly distro despite all of these footguns.
Edit: at the risk of crucifixion, this is also why I usually direct newcomers towards using flatpaks wherever possible instead of using 3rd party repositories unless said repositories come directly from the developers of said (trusted) package. Briefly looking over the Manjaro docs, it seems like enabling flatpaks is actually harder than enabling AUR packages as it requires installing a compat plugin (whereas AUR support appears to just be a settings change). Maybe there’s an option during the installer to enable it, but I couldn’t find a mention, and this might also push users towards the less-secure and unsandboxed AUR.
First of all, the settings: you can boot up a Manjaro machine and copy the .config/sway/config and whatever other files it might be referencing (another config in /etc maybe?). Then it is just a matter of installing the dependencies like the referenced themes and tools(= any programs listed for shortcuts) in there and you should be able to get the same setup, unless Manajro people set GTK themes outside of sway or sth… Feel free to comment once you hit that wall :)
As to why Manjaro is widely criticized: they delay all updates by some time for a false sense of stability (I think two weeks) which is often considered to make no sense since it delays bugs, but also their fixes. Then there is some general philosophical disagreement between them and the Arch community since Manajro breaks Arch’s DIY and learning principles by being ready to use out of the box. This is mainly because they include all kinds of stuff which also makes the distro considered bloated. In the end, one big advice to give right from the start: searching for help in Arch forums as a Manjaro user is rarely tolerated, if you run Arco, your problem will likely be accepted though.
The config is also split up into usr/share directories, too, if I remember correctly. I installed Manjaro sway on my laptop to get and Arch-based OS with sway on it installed quickly. Then I tweaked it to my liking over a few months and wanted the same setup on my desktop.
It was a pain to transfer the config over to say the least, and then all the pixel perfect alignments I had done in waybar we’re broken on my desktop anyway.
OP is better off putting together a new sway config from scratch, using the Manjaro install for reference if possible. Maybe spin up a VM to have both at the same time easily?
Thanks both of you for the tip on where the configa might lie, and specially the suggestion to spin up a VM an try to get it right there, that’s a great tip that didn’t occured to me, I’ll try it!
I wasn’t aware people hated Manjaro. I don’t really have a distro of Linux that I hate. I have some that I prefer over others for certain reasons but anything open source is a-okay with me in the larger scale of things.
I don’t think Manjaro made Asahi, that seems like poor phrasing. Manjaro has tried to get into the ARM scene for sure (and royally messed up), but Asahi is a completely independent project. Asahi is directly based on Arch ARM.
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