Should i switch to EndeavourOS?

First, i apologize if you’ve seen tons of these type of posts. I am a Manjaro user and, due to recent drama where a manjaro mod made a post blaming users for their mistakes (which is gone btw), i decided that i may move to this distro. Take it easy with me please, i’m still a noob :slight_smile: Is this distro pretty stable for daily usage? (mainly school and semi-gaming stuff)
And can somebody give me a few reasons why this distro is better than Manjaro? Thank you!

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Welcome TurkeyJohn, EndeavourOS will work fine for you. The community is friendly, many are former Manjaro users like me. You may notice that our lounge is open. Also you may check-out the registered users list (up in the hamburger icon). This is a much more transparent distro.

Check it out and happy trails…
:slightly_smiling_face:

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Welcome to the forum!

EndeavourOS is pretty much vanilla Arch, with an easy GUI installer, and this great forum here. The only other difference is a tiny additional repository which contains some theming, a couple of useful scripts, and a couple of system utilities like inxi and yay. Other than that, it’s just Arch Linux.

And that’s a very good thing, because Arch is awesome. There have already been many posts describing the differences between Manjaro and EndeavourOS. Just search for “Manjaro” here on the forum. The main difference is that you will not have Manjaro custom kernels and MHWD. If you have to use an exotic, outdated kernel or have to use drivers for an ancient Nvidia card, you will have to install it from the AUR (not a big deal, but some care is needed). Another big difference is that you will use Arch repos directly, without a middle man, like on Manjaro. Manjaro repos are curated by the Manjaro Team, EndeavourOS does not have its own repos (apart from that tiny one), it uses Arch mirror servers directly, which in practice means that updates are much smaller, much more frequent, and typically download much faster.

EndeavourOS markets itself as a “terminal-centric distro”, so if you’re comfortable with using the terminal, it will work great for you. Though, we have users here on the forum who dislike using the terminal and go against the current and force their EndeavourOS to be more GUI-centric. I don’t know how well that works, but they seem content with it, so who am I to complain? :slight_smile:

Regarding stability, it all depends on what you mean by stable. If you mean: “not breaking on its own”, then EndeavourOS (or Arch, for that matter) is very stable (at least as stable as Manjaro, if not more). I’ve been using int since 26th July (so about two and a half months) and I haven’t had any major breakages (and if I do, I always have timeshift snapshots, so I’m not concerned in the slightest).

But if by stable you mean “not updating much”, then no, it is not stable in that sense. There will be multiple small updates every day (you don’t have to update right away, of course). I just run yay every other day to update and then I reboot. That’s pretty much all system maintenance required, for the most part. There is no point in using an update notifier, because there are almost always updates to install.

Is it good enough for daily usage? Yes. I use EndeavourOS every day on all my desktop computers and on my laptop.

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Hello. Thank you a lot for your post!
Yeah so i am a bit skeptical with daily updates (that or maybe it’s my PTSD with the Windows Updates, haha). Well rn i need it for school and stuff. Manjaro is not bad at all, i admit that, but with the drama on the forums here and there makes me believe that Manjaro will become a toxic environment for people who just want to use Linux, hence why i want to try Endeavour OS.
About Kernel things, isn’t there any some sort of manager or anything easy that assures me i don’t use some beta version of the kernel? And i forgot to add : Does nvidia-hybrid-prime exist here? Because i use Optimus-Manager to change my cards and all that. Thanks!

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I’d just stick to the Arch mainline kernel, or LTS.1

You can use Optimus Manager, there are forum posts detailing how to set it up, and if you have any problems, just open a new thread, there will be plenty of people willing to help you.


1Unless you have a good reason to use something else (9 out of 10 times you don’t). You can have multiple kernels installed, like on Manjaro (the difference is that older kernels are not separate packages, so you need to find them in the AUR, assuming you need that - most likely, you don’t). I don’t recommend using any GUI tool to install and manage kernels: just use pacman or yay to install them and post-transaction hooks will take care of the rest automatically, and you’ll be able to pick a kernel to boot in your GRUB menu.

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First off - the incoming updates are not usually time-critical items - some of us let it sit a week, and other run the updates several times a day (if there are enough of them). Some people keep an eye on WHAT is waiting in the updates list, and decide on that basis. It is pretty much your choice - and very easy. Also - some of us (me, for instance) use ‘running the updates’ as a break from whatever else we’re doing on the system - it usually only takes a minute or 2.

The kernels can be managed by akm (another kernel manager) if you want - but the basic choice is whether to be ‘maximally up-to-date’ (latest release) or to run the LTS kernel (long term support) instead. Many users have both available, and choose which to start up with on boot. From the sound of things so far, I would suggest trying the LTS setup first, and then ‘experimenting’ if you decide to. The LTS doesn’t update very often, and the ‘latest release’ is mostly recommended for newer hardware - as that’s where the changes are concentrated.

As for the Hybrid graphics - they exist here - and there a certainly a lot of people that use them! Try a search on the forum for examples of troubleshooting - there are lots as they can be tricky on some laptops. There are lots of experts, though, so you shouldn’t have any trouble…

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Welcome to our refugee camp :wink:

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Welcome .

As noted , it’s stable in one manner of speaking , not so much in another (things change , there is no ‘freeze’ ) . But that’s the same as Manjaro really , they just drop batch updates …

Everything has been said , my only advice now is set it up with BTRFS snapshots . Easy peasy

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Yeah i love you all! I will give it a try this weekend and if i don’t get into a roadblock with broken stuff, i will make the switch. Thank you!

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welcome skipper, if you are on a newer optimus hybrid system with nvidia + intel you may simple can use nvidia installer option (choose nvidia on bootup) and install optimus-manager after boot into installed system.

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Well i know about optimus manager, but still thanks. I might use Endeavour OS with XFCE. One question though, can somebody explain to me how can i be sure i use the stable release and not the rolling release? Still a noob sorry :frowning:
Also i forgot to add a question about performance, if this distro is better than Manjaro when it comes to gaming and daily usage…

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Welcome! You’ll do great here. There’s a lot of folks who have come here recently.

As far as stable or rolling, this is based on arch so the only option is rolling. If arch updates, so do we.

Although one of our members has gone and setup a “stable” workaround for us. Maybe @jonathon can link to it and explain it a bit more since I don’t really understand how that works too be honest. It does require some leg work to get going, but it could be the stability you’re looking for.

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Well i don’t want the os to die when i am in an exam or anything like that, I’m very skeptical in general :smile:

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Then don’t update until after the exam and you’ll be just fine.

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Then don’t update when you are in an exam. :wink:

Generally: the smaller the update process the smaller the chance for issues, the smaller the number of packages which could be the cause, and the less work it is to work out what broke.

To prevent “accidental” updates you can either limit your use of -y, use the ALA, or use e.g. my stepped repo (Current, Daily, Weekly, Deferred mirror setup - #5 by jonathon).

And for “ultimate” safety, install onto a BTRFS root and install grub-btrfs and either timeshift or snapper, then you can easily boot to a previous snapshot of the OS.

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Welcome aboard Hope you enjoy the OS and the forums. As for that other place you mentioned that’s a life raft that they cut a hole in so to they could see if there are ant sharks below, and then they wonder why they are sinking. Again welcome aboard.

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Friendly reminder… :hugs:

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Yeah don’t worry about it. I saw a review about this distro where it had a few performance problems when it came to gaming. Maybe it was a flawed review, i’m not sure

I think you have been fed a whole bunch of misleading information before coming over hear. As a arch user Arch is as stable as it gets in fact more stable than most of the fixed release distros out their, You came from Manjaro it has its own problems but if you prefer Manjaro that is fine with me.
But like everything else if you don’t try Endeavour you will spend your life wondering if you mad a mistake,
Its your decision only you can make that choice

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Can i make it not search for updates automatically, or that’s default?