It’s FOSS posted a recent article comparing Endeavour with Manjaro. It looks like the article boils down to Endeavour is closer to vanilla arch and Manjaro supposedly holds ones hand more.
There is much more hand holding on this forum, here, than on Manjaro forum.
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One of the many features of pacman is that it handles dependencies for you.
I can’t say this is false but I am not sure that is really the defining feature of pacman.
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no comparison … two different target usr + ideas . both are great for different usrs
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I’ve always seen the statement, “Manjaro doesn’t do any ‘testing’ just holds back packages for 2 weeks”
Is there truth to this statement or is it like some common misconception that just gets repeated? I’m unaware for the actual inter-workings of Manjaro development, so I’m really just curious.
When the author explains the Manjaro repository setup with unstable, testing and stable he says:
This method of testing packages ensures that there are no unexpected breaking of packages because “xyz” was changed.
I have said it at various occasions: This is not working. Manjaro breaks every now and then. And if it breaks it can break big time. I have experienced failed Manjaro updates with an unbootable PC at least twice. Never had that with Arch which I ran in parallel in a virtualbox at the same time.
Seeing this written in an article is a clear indication that the author is clueless.
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I think the misconception comes from Manjaro Wiki, which is somewhat misleading:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Switching_Branches
Furthermore, many Manjaro users have switched to “Unstable” branch (which is, more or less, identical to Arch Stable, up to a few hours), just because it broke less often. I can think of at least three frequent users of the old Manjaro forum who swore that “Unstable” is more robust than “Stable”.
This is not my experience with Manjaro, though. I’m quite lucky that stuff rarely breaks on its own for me (or I just have a higher tolerance for what people consider “broken”).
At first, what I really liked about Manjaro was the fact that updates happened only once or twice a month. As a new user, I didn’t want to think about updating my system very often, but I did enjoy having fresh software (unlike on 'Buntu, which I used for years prior to Manjaro, where programs were often quite outdated). However, then I realised that less frequent updates means that the updates are huge, often several gigabytes. And with such huge updates there is more opportunity for something to go wrong. I used to do all Manjaro updates in the tty, after logging out of my DE, and I was always a bit on edge. Timeshift? Absolutely! With every update, there was a forum post where people voted whether the update went smoothly. It was always made to be a big deal, updating Manjaro. 
With EndeavourOS, I run yay whenever I remember to, sometimes several times a day, never in a tty, often with other programs running, and often I don’t even reboot after updating. I don’t use Timeshift any more. It’s not a big deal. If something breaks, and it rarely does, it’s usually a couple of minutes to figure out what and fix it.
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I don’t know if it is “a misconception” but it is not an entirely fair perspective.
Manjaro stages changes in their testing branch and relies on a portion of the community to test it. The problem is that the testing branch is generally less stable than both the stable and unstable branches so the pool of community members willing to use the testing branch and report issues is somewhat small so it is possible for things to slip through.
In time with Manjaro I saw many times where an issue with Arch never became an issue with Manjaro because they avoided it or worked around it. On the other hand, I also saw times where something that wasn’t an issue with Arch became an issue on Manjaro because of the way the branches were managed and/or interactions with Manjaro-specific packages.
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Not again … 
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I do like the community here a lot.
Manjaro, at least on the OS level, is more set up “out of the box” for a casual user I suppose. And also obviously their use of GUI Pamac.
As with any distro, what works best for someone depends on their own use case. Endeavour thus far has definitely been my favorite Arch based distro, even more than just straight Arch honestly.
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I actually uninstalled Pamac while I was using Manjaro. I hated Pamac
A Pamacless Manjaro was much more comfy to use, for me at least.
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That’s why EOS is closer to the KISS principle. Install stuff you want/need instead of deleting pre-installed stuff you won’t use.
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I didn’t uninstall it (was on Arcolinux at the time) - but I found the Rosetta stone page in the Archwiki, and have stayed with pacman ever since. I actually could not really figure out what Pamac was trying to do! If you flagged (or unflagged) an item - did that mean no update would happen? How could you get to the AUR? etc etc…
After years of Ubuntu (and apt-get then apt) I was more at home on the command line!
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there is a missing thing in comparison
- kernels and drivers ( videos , bluethooth , wifi , firmwares ) are not all coming from Arch ,
results in 5 years - only trouble in drivers ethernet or systemd ( do not retain edge systemd )
- no error on drivers nvidia ( under xfce /xorg ) 495.46 working ( in testing )
here , about one year and half ,
- trouble on nvidia drivers 495.46 , i think coming with mate
( Xorg / marco / nvidia ) cant login ( Xorg failed )
both install are in barebone
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That was certainly my experience. My best experience was with unstable. Then I realized it was easier and better without pamac as @Kresimir said.
And then I decided to hell with all of it and just went with Arch which was more stable than Manjaro over all in my opinion.
Then I found a bunch of like minded folk here and now all of my computer aspirations have been met.
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I can understand that users with new and shiny hardware for gaming gets frustrated.
For myself I can say I have been extremely upset and annoyed with the constant problems using KDE and Gnome - so I ditched them years ago.
There’s a lot of caveats to using Manjaro vs. Arch.
The biggest one being AUR - where the PKGBUILDS matches Arch.
The pitfalls - to name a few
- virtualbox-ext-oracle
- packages utilizing dkms
- packages requiring kernel-headers
- drivers
- python
There is nothing inherently wrong with the branch system on Manjaro - where it can go awry is when the user does not realize the differences and applies Arch packages on a Manjaro system.
Once I understood the branch nature of Manjaro I immediately switched to unstable and never spent much time with stable branch simply because what attracted me long time ago was the installation and the fact the theming was fairly consistent - never like the green color though 
.
I have never had any serious problems with Manjaro and this is most likely due to my habits and my hardware preferences.
I joined a local Linux community - Ubuntu Aarhus - and it turned out I was the expert (me having very little experience at the time - it says a lot about the level of knowledge in that community) - didn’t expect that - I wanted - I needed a system I could trust so I joined one of the few active communities around Arch based system I could find around 2015 - it was Manjaro
If it wasn’t because of the Manjaro community I wouldn’t have the knowledge of the inner workings of an Arch system that I now have.
I have switched back and forth between Arch, EndeavourOS and Manjaro and they all serve well - theres is really no major difference to me. The main reason I am still using Manjaro is because I have created the perfect Openbox system for my usecase and had the privilege fo sharing it with the community for a couple of years. Being a creature of habits I have a hard time adjusting.
Speaking of colors - being second generation hippie - I have a preference for purple and orange.
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I’ve understood it painfully when needed to use older CUDA (AUR) once on Manjaro…
Not very straightforward knowledge to get around. 
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One of the big issues with manjaro atm is updates get missed, several times recently packages have gone straight from unstable to stable and missed out testing leaving testing branch behind/out of sync with the other branches.
That being said i find manjaro easier to use as I prefer to use gui to cli (just my preference) but I agree with the comments about endeavour community being a more friendly relaxed and helpful place. Both are excellent distros
Ha! One thing I really liked when using Manjaro was the green and teal colours!
I think Manjaro KDE is one of the nicest looking desktops out of the box.
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