The dangers(?) of Manjaro, Yaourt and ignorance

Software & Operating Systems Linux
1

A lot o people use, let's say, Arch because they want greater control over everything the machine is doing, and they want to understand everything under the hood, so they can fix everything.... that's great!
I like to understand how things work (of course! who doesn't?) but sometimes I want to do more than just maintenance, sometime I want things to "just work"... and they DO(most times)!

I'm lazy, I kept switching distros until I found one that was perfect for ME out of the box, and I found one: Manjaro-Gnome. Had no hardware issues, I use most of the pre installed stuff, had to reconfigure a minimal amount of things, tools are easy to use, repos are mostly updated...
If I was gonna install Arch, I would manually install most packages and maintenance tools that come with Manjaro, cause they're so convenient! So why bother? I can only think of learning purposes so I might try it on a secondary machine.
I keep reading that Manjaro defeats the purposes and/or philosophies of Arch or Linux (in general) so it should be discouraged. This pisses me off. Manjaro is the OS that gave me less headache and let me do more, so I don't give a shit about any "intended purposes".

I'm sorry all this sounded a bit like propaganda.

I've been using Manjaro for about a year now. and, from time to time, I see some warnings in forums and guides (such as ArchWiki's).
The example that comes to my mind is Yaourt. When I was figuring out how to use the distro I came across the AUR, with the myriad of updated packages... seems wonderful, right? It IS!
So I started using it with Yaourt's help and everything has been working wonderfully for months. What really bothers me is this kind of message:

"Warning: There is not and will never be an official mechanism for installing build material from the AUR.
All AUR users should be familiar with the build process."

I understand Arch devs don't want to support whatever tool. But why do I keep seeing people saying that I have to understand the inner workings of the tools I use before I ever use them?

Anyway, the reasons I'm posting this are that I wonder if I'm missing something (maybe I'm misinterpreting something), want to check my sanity, and felt like ranting a bit (sorry about that).

What do you think?

2

I'm an Manjaro user, and I will say this. for me as a Manjaro user. (And I will admit i've been using Linux exclusively for about a week now) It installs more bloatware than a bloody Windows install. it's going to offend people and honestly i don't care. it installs so much bullshit i don't use. I have to remove most of the stuff. also to add on to the fact that it takes forever to update packages. and not like it's bad. it's actually very good. Sudo Pacman -Su. BOOM updated.. but.. jesus it takes forever to update like 250 packages that the distro comes with.. too much non-sense..

As for usability.. I have had no issues installing Manjaro Gnome.. BUT the issue i've noticed is 3 things.. at least they are things that bother me.. the Wi-Fi is ULTRA slow. idk why. but it's slow.. and i have a 100 download 50 upload speed connection. i get 1/10th of that on Wi-Fi. idk what's the issue but I don't know how to properly fix it..

two.. the track-pad just stops working if i close the lid on my laptop and reopen it. I have to do "Sudo Reboot" from time to time with the distro.

The final thing is, Logitech mice or just mice in general are retarded to get working.. i don't know why but i have the issue where the mouse works. but clicking doesn't.. eventually idk how but it started working on it's own. after doing Sudo pacman -Su to update the packages about 3 times. idk how that fixed but it did.. everything was working perfectly.

Other than that. I like Manjaro. it's a awesome rolling release distro.. but those 3 things bother me.. plus the bloatware.

As for the Arch philosophy or whatever users seem to argue about? Manjaro is a nice distro for people who wnat to enter the Arch World without the headache.. me personally i don't care for any philosophy. i just want to install a distro and it better work. if i want to build it. i will gladly learn how to. and honestly in my opinion some of the arch users or just some linux users in general are worse than Nvidia fanboys.

what I've learned over the years after following the politics of the tech community in general.. no one wants to let you have your cake in peace. people feel the need to critique you for everything.

Other than that it's an awesome distro. if you want to enter the arch world without the headache Manjaro is definitely the way to go.

1 Like
3

I think, you might just have missed the point and I don't know if I have either. So, Arch is a strange one, I used it as a daily driver for a couple months and it was painful. Particularly, because to do anything you have to read pages of documentation and hope what you had done before was compatible with what you intend to do next. If I didn't have work to do and didn't need a stable system then I would love to read and learn, however , that's not the case.

I think, if you want mastery of your operating system then you can easily learn whichever one you like with a bit of effort by using it, when it's functional. Arch, forces you to learn the most because you install and configure everything and it inevitably it breaks all the damn time. The only thing to do is try to keep up, its the bleeding edge, and it's a bloody terrible amount of work.

I am using Fedora right now because I like the leading edge but I don't want to waste my mental space on memorizing an infinite amount of configuration files.

I apologise for the poor prose and non-liner thought process, I'm half way through a bottle of Thor's Hammer.

In summary, Arch is for people with an enormous amount of time on their hands, no work to do and who want to feel smug about their supposed superiority. (Or a suitable application like a custom Beowulf cluster)

Cheers!

4

I agree it feels kind of bloated, most bloat comes with Gnome's DE though.

Regarding the hardware issues you talked about:
This is the main kind of thing I'm running from when I switch distros. Had no problems so far on two computers... guess it's kind of hit or miss.

Just as a side note: I think it's better to add the -y option to the update command, so pacman -Syu, so it refreshes the packages list. It's a recommendation in the pacman manual pages.

5

I'm not criticizing anyone for using arch. The thing is I feel I'm doing something wrong when I read something like "Don't try to use Yaourt if you're not familiar with the build process of AUR.", like I'm being irresponsible or something (just an example). I think automatic tools for AUR, managing kernels, configuring drivers... are awesome. I wonder why some people try to convince others that not using them is better. IMO these tools are the solution to a lot of what scares people away from Linux and more "advanced" distros.

6

Well, that's the thing, you should know how to make-install in general, and that AUR packages may or may not be as advertised. The line they say is just a trigger warning so that people know what you do with AUR is your own fault.

I agree with you, I like having tools that work. I think some people prefer learning everything about a program and its configuration, that's why they dislike tools. Practically it gives them a lot of control, and they can make it exactly how they want it. I like that, but I don't have the time to master all of the configuration files (my gf would probably feel neglected ).

Yeah, although the problem with the tools, I found, is that they're never 1:1 with the config files and when things break one always must use them anyway. Linux still lives in the command line.

7

That's true, many things on linux still rely on the user's understanding. But, in my opinion, many others don't. I know how to build from source but I don't see how it's safer than running a script that does it for me. If a package is not as advertised, there will be nothing in the make-install process that will warn me about it. What tells me if something is trust worthy are the comments and ratings by the community. It bothers me that people tell others that, in order to use a tool, they are REQUIRED to learn something beforehand just because they just MIGHT need someday. It scares people off pointlessly.

8

As a power user, and using only linux for more than 2 years now, I found aur the best way to get any software installed the way you want and with the integration with the package manager that any user want. But, and thats a big but, there is that, you can not install somthing from the aur and expect to work like a breeze forever. Those are unsuported packages and you have to know at least that there is a relative risk by installing somthing from there.

1 Like
9

I guess the thing that bothers me is if yaourt is completely reliable or not. Like is everything safe or am I going to accidentally download a virus thinking it's from a reliable source when really I have no idea?

Like you said, I just don't feel like spending tons of time getting everything to work when I could just type in one line and hit Y a couple times and have it up and running. I've installed Arch before and gone through all that, but I just think it's silly to have to deal with that all the time unless it's something you really like to do for fun, but personally I need my laptop to always be working so I can use it for school. So I go with Manjaro so that if I do break my OS then I can just pop the USB stick back in and have it up and ready to go again within an hour. I know there's some bloat, but I don't care. Every distro that's easy to get going has some bloat.

So far I haven't broken anything with it. I got brackets and sublime text working perfectly with yaourt. So I guess my main concern is: does yaourt come strictly from AUR, or could I be downloading something potentially harmful? Also along those lines; Is there anything potentially harmful in AUR, or is it regulated?




PS: I too have an internet issue lol. Mine isn't so much that it's slow, but that sometimes it just won't load a page. It doesn't time out or show any errors; it just doesn't do anything.

1 Like
10

Alllllright lets back up here and go from the top.

All the people who are telling you that the philosophy is different and blah blah blah can go.........somewhere else to put it politely.

The real issue is that manjaro holds certain packages back.

If some packages are new, and others are old, it can cause issues because the new packages might need the old packages to be new in order to work as intended.

Some people have this problem more than others and it depends a lot on what you have installed on your computer and so on.

Soooooooo your mileage may vary. Obviously for you it does not seem to be an issue.....so it does not matter.

As for build process, someone already mentioned this.

They are basically saying. HEY! If this does not install correctly, please build it from source.

Build in this case literally means to build it yourself.

1 Like
11

I see what you mean. I guess I'm exaggerating a bit the meaning of these recommendations.

12

I'm aware of the -y thing. i was just typing fast when i wrote it.

the hardware issues vary from distro to distro. I've had MASSIVE issues installing Ubuntu 15.04. for me personally everything was broken out the box. then I tried Ubuntu 14.04. everything worked perfectly. as previously mentioned mileage may vary. my main issue with Linux as a whole is why is this still an issue with things breaking..

13

"Drivers should be familiar with the automotive building process"
I tell you, I have met some great mechanics that were terrible drivers.

1 Like
14

That is the one most annoying and frustrating thing I constantly encounter. Upgrading from one f*kn version to the next and most stops working that previously did.

15

the good news though is from what i hear Canonical has updated 15.04, a few days ago. and it has some nice added features. it comes with Kernel 4.2, Native Steam Controller support and all that stuff..

Oh and they announced Ubuntu 16.04. that will come with Unity 8 and a bunch of new features as well.

16

Really excited for 16.04

17

Arch only officially supports about 5000 packages, everything else is community run including aur. they don't include any aur integration apparently because they want pacman to be usable by anyone (not sure why its just not good enough for any one to sanely consider it). The likely reason for the warning message is for one reason, security. because the aur is essentially a community addon to the community addon there's little checks, and the vetting of build scripts is user driven. Its the reason that a lot of aur helpers give you the option to read the build scripts, because they could be doing anything, its why most decent aur helpers refuse to build as root.

18

What they always forget on their feature listing are all the regressions :P Realy each new version breaks something that already had been working fine.

19

for me 15.04 broke Wi-Fi and Apt-get after install lol the distro was basically useless for me.

20

For me on a T440p and a T450s 15.04 worked like charm. 15.10 is ok except some buggering minor regressions... like crashing on shut-down and popping sound on each hardware recognition.