Manjaro, Why beginners should use this

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Okay so with this I am going to put my opinions and suggestions out on the table in a guide, it is all based on my experience and what I found best, but its designed to be a absolute basic base for beginners, as I still class my self as a beginner but I am starting to stand on my two feet as it where.

Okay so as it has been told before dont expect to learn everything in one night, the big boys have been doing this for years, they started like you, they got the knowledge and are kind enough to help and share with us so we too can learn, its an experience not a race.

Okay so as a beginner in Linux I personally would want something stable but a bit more to bleeding edge and true control for this I recommend an Arch based distro, Not arch its self as some things are a bit weird to get your head around such as partitioning and file system creation, also the X server and drivers can be a bit annoying, So we need a distro that has all this out from the beginning so I say use Manjaro, this is a very very highly recommended distro from me, personally I am back on Fedora for now, but Manjaro still runs my laptop due to a RPM distro GPU bug.

With Manjaro you get a superb base, better than Ubuntu. Why is this though? Let me list.

-> MHWD detects all your system drivers and installs them, this includes things like Catalyst, and they work.
-> You get AUR, in the form of Yaourt, this allows you to easily build packages from source, this is used for building packages not included in the Pacman system.
-> Its fast, very fast, On SSD I boot into Manjaro in 10 seconds without tweaks, 4 with.
-> Community based and its not american. Avoid business based and american distros, I know I use Fedora which is funded by RHEL, but its still community at heart for now.
-> Arch has one of the best documentations on the planet, you have a bug? chances are the Arch guys have seen it, fixed it and got the t-shirt.
-> Pacman is simple, So simple it sticks like glue, I really enjoy pacman :)
-> Minimal by design, which means less security issues, less resources and you cherry pick what you want, although manjaro gives you some highly recommended high quality apps.
-> Steam is pre-installed.
-> Very easy to install, easier than Windows. 

There you go, there are some other things but they don't matter for a super basic user.

 After you have it installed you have a very stable, fast, bleeding edge ish, secure system that just works, I mean just works, I have never had any real issues with XFCE manjaro.

This is all a new Linux user needs, forget software centres, forget having to look through forums to fix a GPU driver.

Adding to that if you feel risky, you can become really modular with this system, you can add new kernels easily, remove drivers and swap them easily, and you can replace hardware without reinstall like Windows needs.

Welcome to the future my friends, and it starts with a very nice distro that was built for beginners and advanced users alike, just remember if you want to learn Linux take your time, Enjoy your self, engage in the community and ask if your stuck, we will try to help no matter the situation this is true of our community and others such as Linux.org, Arch forums and the Manjaro forums, Also pop into their IRC for a friendly chat, its nice there :)

2

The only thing I don't like about Manjaro up to this point is that, with pretty much all DE implementations of Manjaro up to this point, you have to get down and dirty with customization. Sure, Openbox and KDE (maybe?) comes with Turbulence, which is cool, but if you want to make any changes to the vanilla appearance, good luck. Also, for some reason, I find the settings to be particularly unintuitive. Openbox is cool, but is not very well supported with LXDE (having a two mixed-resolution monitor set-up probably doesn't help). Openbox was really fun to work with when I was using it, especially with the hotkey fixes (while down and dirty, XML is pretty simple, and I actually used the hotkey customizations as opposed to GUI implementations in other DEs).

One other complaint I have is that they do not include the Linux headers with a base release. This makes me sad, for I have to install a wireless driver with any Linux install, and I have to use an ethernet adapter with Manjaro because of the headers. That makes me sad faic :(

However, it does have its advantages of its Debian equivalent, Linux Mint. Those features probably wouldn't be used all that much by a beginning user, though, such as the AUR. It's nice, but probably only something only people who like to get down-and-dirty with their system would use.

3

as you said in your last paragraph, its for basic users though, hence why no WM, and I never found that issue with LXDE, but I dont like how they made LXDE look, I have never had any issues with manjaro detecting hardware, you must have a obscure card? what card do you use?

Also Linux Mint has issues with graphics I have found, all deb based ones have to be reconfigured on my laptop, but as is always said with linux, no one box is the same

4

Very good. I definitely agree with you on this one. Manjaro is a fantastic distro for beginners. There is one problem I am experiencing though. Whenever I try to install Brackets (an open source code editor by Adobe) from the AUR it does not get installed. After starting the download it asks if I want to Edit PKGBUILD, then it asks if I want to edit brackets.install. I selected n (no) on both of those, it then asks me if I want to continue building brackets. Of course I type y. After doing some work it starts installing libgcrypt15 and it asks again if I would like to edit PKGBUILD. After typing n I agree on continuing on building libgcrypt15. After asking for my password and proceeding with the installation I get an error message: "failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)". My packages got saved in /tmp/yaourt-tmp-maeb , it then asks if I want to restart building brackets. Well... I tried that, but then it begins again and ends the same way.

But that is the only problem I have experienced that I have not been able to solve yet so far. If you know how to solve this, or how to properly install brackets and if you want to share it with me, thank you. If you do not know how to solve this and want to share it with me, thank you for taking your time :D 

Have fun

5

cool, i kinda hate win 8.1 since the games i want to play are not working (simcity 5, civ5, must be something to do with 5) i'm gona give Manjaro a try.

6

If you purchase Brave New World for Civ5, that actually delivers stable gameplay. Not sure why they couldn't introduce a patch. But it has worked in all instances with my Civ5 game crashing, and my friend's Civ5 crashes, in addition.

7

been looking for a reason to buy it. thanks for the tip.

8

TL;DR. I tried Linux mint and it was nice.

9

I've been using Sabayon with Gnome for a while, and I've been really liking it. However I am starting to have some problems with it (Flash isn't working with Chromium) and being a Linux noob I'm struggling to fix it.

Do you think it would be worthwhile to switch over to Manjaro? I do want to switch to Arch sometime, and I sort of feel that using a Gentoo-based distro isn't helping me prepare for using Arch.

Also, if I do switch, which is your preferred DE for Manjaro? I did mess around with it a little in the past, and I seemed to like KDE.

10

Best DLC I've bought for any game. It adds quite a bit of content. Gods and kings is ok, too.

Final tip; the MAC version of BNW is cheaper and it happens to work with Windows... or your preferred OS

11

None of the reasons you listed are compelling enough to suggest anything other than an Ubuntu LTS release.

  • Stability versus Bleeding edge:

For new users, proving to them that desktop linux can be an easy-to-use and enjoyable experience is vastly more important than having the latest software (in the case of Ubuntu this might mean you're behind a few weeks) Most importantly for stable releases new security updates are sent immediately. For some packages in Manjaro, security updates can be delayed due to the way they package things from Arch.

  • Drivers:

If you're installing linux on a PC: You should be fine with any modern graphics card, raw GPU performance won't be as good as Windows. Manjaro does make this easier in some setups than Ubuntu, but not all.

If you're installing linux on a laptop: Ubuntu is preferable here, there are more funky GPU combinations in the laptop world.  If you just have intel graphics (e.g. intel HD 4000 or something) then charge ahead, intel's drivers are great. If you have anything else (like Nvidia Optimus) you will have issues (they aren't impossible to resolve, but they will give you a headache if you're a beginner). Because of Ubuntu's ubiquity, there is a much greater chance your issue has a resolution online, simply google ("Install MYGPU on Ubuntu").

  • AUR

This is a repository created by users, in my experience it usually works, but if it doesn't and you don't know how to install things from source, you're going to have a bad time. On Manjaro you'll have to use to learn pacman and yaourt, and it may not be obvious to beginners which to use, when, and why.

  • Avoid American distros

Ummm... no. I understand your security concerns, but if you live in the western world, you're just as "compromised". It's mostly irrelevant but Ubuntu is based in the UK.

  • Learning versus using

If you want to "learn" linux just take an hour or two out of your weekend and try to install vanilla Arch on a computer you don't need. You're almost guaranteed to fail, but you'll learn something along the way. Then try to set up a home server, then try to reinstall Arch again, then try the home server again, repeat until you know what X11 is, why you are partitioning things the way you are, what a boot loader does, et cetera.

Day to day you want your OS to work, and get out of the way. There's a reason in dev videos for cool new tech like Project Tango or NASA's Curiosity Rover Team use Ubuntu, because it's linux, and it gets out of the way.

There are more reasons to install Ubuntu, it handles things like updates automatically, it includes a GUI software center (full disclosure, the ubuntu software center application is slow and buggy, but 95% it will work), it has a much larger support base than Arch/Manjaro (credit where it's due, Arch's wiki is great), it installs heaps of useful stuff out of the box.

Most importantly, since it's still linux, if you want to open up the terminal and update manually, install software manually, change your settings manually, you totally can.

There are also reasons not to install Ubuntu, the biggest being it's opt-out privacy settings. To fix these, run the www.fixubuntu.com script after installation. Arch / Manjaro do not have this privacy issue out of the box, but overall, Ubuntu is much, much better for beginners.

12

open source [...] by Adobe

Sacrilege!!

More on topic, I'd say the AUR is a great thing for beginners, because pretty much everything is there, regardless of politics between or within distros.

13

Only reason why I use Manjaro over Arch is because it comes with the Wifi and LAN drivers for my laptop. I could not figure out how to get them working for the Arch installation. I went with the minimal install so it worked out anyways.