Manjaro is what got me into Arch so I'll always have a soft spot for it. I don't keep up with internet drama so much but I do remember people saying some stuff about the devs being shady/shitty. But I'm not sure how much truth there is to that.

Opinion you said?... https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

Thankfully the Manjaro team didn't seem to have a major mess-up recently, but they did have some very troubled past. Especially now that Arch has a real installer that bundles entire DEs for you, the premise of using an "Arch Linux but easy to use" OS seems less and less

To each their own though! Nothing wrong with using Manjaro at all if someone really likes it

It is ultimately your choice, but from the many instances of poor communication, carelessness or whatever it was, I can't personally recommend it.

Even from a new user viewpoint they are often not helpful, reverting to rtfm, something that is expected on base arch, but not on something that supposedly wants to be preinstalled on hardware.

I wish them the best and hope that the ship eventually sails without hiccups.

I heard that the maintainers let some important web certificates expire, which is a big no-no.

I've been using it for nearly 3 years and encountered minimal issues. I'm using it on a Lenovo E14 all AMD laptop, mostly for gaming and web browsing.

Manjaro was the first Linux distro I used as a daily driver, from October 2020 to July 2021, when I switched to EndeavourOS. To be fair the main reason I switched was all those previous mess-ups by the developers and the troubled past, which I didn't know of when I moved to Linux. In the year or so I used it, I didn't have any messed update or crash myself.

I would say it's still a fine distro for beginners who want to try a rolling release (as EndeavourOS is imho better in every way, but it doesn't come with any GUI package manager so I wouldn't call it a distro for absolute beginners), but can't see any other usage case, as it's especially risky if you want to use packages from the AUR.

Irresponsible devs, delayed packages for no reason causing massive issues with ours and quite often invalid site certificates due to neglect. It's just arch but worse since it uses their repo which delays packages for practically no reason causing aur incompatibilities. Endeavour is a far better distro for beginners (or arch install script) with the exception of it not having pamac preinstalled.

It has no meaningful place or benefits and everyone defending it seems to just be saying "erm, well why not!" and ignoring the problems its caused when compared to distros like endeavouros

@IUsedTo Recently migrated from Manjaro > Arch > NixOS.

I enjoyed Manjaro! Ignoring some of the issues outlined in other resources (one in this thread) which are completely valid, I think its a good way to get involved in the arch/arch-based space. I felt it was very easy to setup and get running. Most of the software support seemed pretty great and it was relatively snappy. I had no issues during my time (although I didn't need to use the AUR) and would definitely recommend it to others considering it.

It all depends, it's not just the installer which makes it different than Arch, also the configurations (on Arch/Artix for many things to work, or safe configs, you actually need to do a lot of tweaks, whereas I understand Manjaro should work mostly out of the box with sane configs that should work in most regular users). As someone mentioned, for people not used to dealing with configurations, starting their experience with gnu+linux, perhaps Manjaro is the option, and then they can explore Arch/Artix.

I'm also (was)? a manjaro user, and so would like to know the answer. Maybe people just liked the higher barrier of entry for Arch?

I see some people say Manjaro has no place--to just use Arch or some other easier to use distro. IMO the more linux distros the better. I think many believe that more distros means its harder to get support, but using linux is also about being resourceful, and many things other distro communities have solved can be utilized in other distros.

Innovations that Manjaro makes can have an impact on their upstream, and the linux community as a whole. It fills a niche that might get someone to use linux that otherwise wouldn't. At the end of the day what helps out all of the linux community is the number of users.

I installed Manjaro sometime during 2018, and I have been using it without any major issues. The only issue I had is when AUR packages fail to update. I find that most of the time the issue will resolve itself eventually anyway. Overall, I feel that Manjaro is a nice and stable distro.

The only negative I can think of is the community. At the time, I was bluntly told to read the manual whenever I needed help or pointers. But, my negative experience was from a few years ago, so hopefully the community has improved today.

My daily driver distro today is Mint, which I think is more polished than Manjaro.

manjaro was my way in to arch. i used the fully configured xfce version, then several versions of the minimal install until i got something i liked, and didn't break after a couple of weeks.

if you were to ask me for a recommendation on an arch based distro i'd say endeavour, but manjaro is perfectly fine.

I haven’t used vanilla Manjaro, but I use MABOX Linux. which is a Manjaro+open box distro & it is fantastic.

As good as Arch but with a little more hand-holding. Graphical installation, package manager in tray out of the box and not the most bleeding edge versions.

At home, where it's ok to once a year spend some time googling what went wrong and I'd be installing from command line anyway (my $HOME remembers a few other distros and is very fragmented), I use Arch.

For mom's, grandma's and work computers, where I want to just hit update and be done, I use Manjaro.

I liked it but I had issues with changing versions of libraries for development. Sometimes I couldn't run older versions of some code so I had to go back to Debian.

I used it for a while. It's actually not that bad, but they made some really unprofessional blunders in the past and interacting with their main contributors is not very pleasant in my personal experience.

In the end it is mostly just Arch for noobs and it shows.

Personally I use it when I need to spin up a medium to long term virtual machine.

It's fast to set up, it's fresher than a debian based one and you can easily "get dirty" with off the beaten path choices, if you want. Having easy access to the AUR is really a great plus too.

I would never use it as my main distro or as a real OS on the HDD, tho. For that it's just better to use Arch directly, and with the "new" installer it's relatively fast and painless too.

I feel it has its place as a middle ground for someone that wants to learn more about using linux, but who is not really ready to leave the comfort of having an opinionated preassembled experience.

Manjaro had a rough history of not taking security seriously. I hope they have improved, but the impression stuck.

They have done a few things right by making Arch more approachable when Arch was more of a RTFM type distribution. Now Arch is easier and even ships with an installer, but Manjaro's installer is easy.

The end result is still that the user still needs to manage an Arch distro. I would recommend learning the Arch way from Arch instead of taking the easy road.

If you want an easy distro, rolling releases, and up-to-date packages, I would recommend Debian Did over Manjaro. If you want Arch, use Arch.

I use Manjaro ARM on my Orange PI because I couldn't get Arch ARM to work on it, while Manjaro has support of my devices out of the box. Since I installed a minimal possible version (without any DE), it doesn't feel bloated or something. It feels like I'm using Arch but with slower updates. Overall, it's good and I don't notice much difference from Arch. But anyway, I haven't tried it for a desktop station.

I don't know. I don't feel right if not arch like something missing

This site gives some reasons: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

Manjaro was my intro to Linux, but now that I know more about it, I can't recommend it in good conscience. Letting their SSL certs expire is something that happens (even though they could automate it), but telling their users to change their clocks so it works is a big no-no.

Worse than that is how they manage packages from upstream. Simply freezing them for two weeks is, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds. You don't get timely security updates, but you still end up with the issues of being on the bleeding edge - just late. It also means that if you use the AUR (which is really one of the biggest perks of Arch-based systems), it's possible that the necessary dependencies are out of date.

I think that if one wants "Arch with an installer" they should go with EndeavourOS, or try the archinstall script.