What do former Manjaro users like about EOS?

[mandog]

Just so you know Arch testing is also very stable

[jonathon]

I’ll be looking at that next.

[Hystrix]

@anon14644943

I have a stick with the latest Manjaro_Xfce

Is it the Persistent USB image ?

[anon14644943]

@Hystrix

Is it the Persistent USB image ?

yes, it is

[Hystrix]

I am going to try that out soon

[anon14644943]

I thought you came from Manjaro.

[keybreak]

While i completely agree with everything said above…

Still for both Manjaro and Arch my understanding of word Stable is (perfection ), like if something breaks or need manual intervention happens once in 2 years because of some really big failure.

That doesn’t mean i can’t / don’t will to use Arch / Manjaro as they are, still benefits outweighs negatives

Who knows, maybe in more years to come my definition of Stable will == Arch, it evolves pretty damn quick

[ThisPoorGuy]

This is probably longer than it needs to be but…

So around late may/early june I got bored due to the pandemic and decided to check out Linux again. I had used linux many moons ago back when Mandrake 7 was in a box set you had to buy and I shelled out for a new modem so I could get a real hardware 56k modem instead of one of the winmodems. I eventually found debian which I ran for a while, and then gentoo for a bit. Then I got away from it, did a little stint on OS X and then ended up on windows 10 for many a year, aside from a couple dabbles with Arch here and there in a VM, and server work (I’m a system admin professionally).

So June hits and I’m really feeling like experimenting, trying something new, so I dual boot Arch. Or I try to. It doesn’t go well for a variety of reasons. And by then I had heard about Manjaro so I decided to try it out and everything just sort of worked, including nvidia/intel drivers and gaming, which I was really surprised at. Enough where I decided I could just drop windows entirely, so I did. But then the great Manjaro donation mess happened and I was feeling rather iffy about the whole thing so I decided to hop around. I installed Pop_OS! and I really liked it a lot, but it’s Ubuntu based and I really didn’t like the feel of that. However Pop_OS showed me that I really liked gnome ;). I tried Solus after that and I love what they’re doing but the small development team scared me away, particularly because I couldn’t get a read on where, exactly, they wanted to take the distro Snapd no snapd, flatpak, future packaging systems, nvidia support, etc.

At this point Manjaro had gotten some more statements out about the process and the drama that happened and I decided I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt, so I went back there, and then the great forum implosion hit. Lets just say I was less than pleased by some of the changes and the vibe of the new forum. So I decided to just try EnOS.

So finally getting to the point: The best thing about EnOS is that it’s basically Arch, but with a great installer. You’re close to Arch so you can use the arch documentation and info on their forums for help, but you also have this amazing forum and community of super helpful and friendly people (For examples, look at the btrfs guide written by 2000 or the gaming guide. And my post about my gdm issue (even though I eventually solved it, nobody was a jerk about the fact that the solution was right in the wiki )

[Hystrix]

I meant the persistent USB . To see how it performs . It’s unstable , so it will be stable
and I am From Manjaro

[anon14644943]

I had here the 20.0.3 in the live boot, I want to burn it on DVD for my wife’s computer, because with her computer no USB sticks want to boot. Manjaro takes a lot of work off your shoulders if you don’t want to be so busy with the system (like my wife). As a plan B it is still good …

[sawdoctor]

@zoli62

Nowadays, I am increasingly confronted with how many new packages are being withheld at Manjaro from the stable repo for up to weeks due to proper testing. An example is Firefox. So far this has not occurred to me. The EOS is much fresher, but still just as stable. Regardless, Manjaro is still a stable, well-assembled system.

It’s very easy to switch branches on manjaro, i think there unstable is almost inline with EOS

[zoli62]

@jonathon

At the beginning, Manjaro stable was really the only way to reliably use an Arch-based distro. There weren’t many testers, so the Manjaro testing branch was only that in name. Two things happened: one, the community grew and more people started using testing, and then unstable. Two, Arch stable actually became more stable (e.g. you couldn’t run GNOME on Arch a few years ago - it would just break).

I still remember the days when Manjaro Linux only existed in a test branch. Actually, I really noticed then that hey, not just Debian / Ubuntu, Red Hat / Fedora, Mandrake, Suse are in the Linux world. I think we wrote 2015 then.

[zoli62]

@anon14644943

It happened again and again that after an update (which always turned out to be quite large, due to the withholding of the packages) something did not work again. This was especially bad with the KDE version. When I finally switched to the Xfce version it got a bit better, but I wasn’t around long enough to find out more about it.

Exactly, the larger update wave every two to three weeks increased the likelihood of broken packages. Manjaro has also reached the stage of its development when it had to step out of the test umbrella into the world of true stable release distributions.

@anon14644943

At my age one is no longer as willing and able to learn as it used to be

Believe me, I also became more and more comfortable, I use graphics applications a lot of times, even though long ago, while learning how Linux works differently from Windows, it would have been unthinkable not to use a terminal. However, I still have a Debian Sid system where I have to use the command line quite often. EOS doesn’t always need a terminal, though it’s an advantage if you know how to use it.

[zoli62]

You also have a nice story with Linux, you can have a lot of experience.

[zoli62]

@sawdoctor

It’s very easy to switch branches on manjaro, i think there unstable is almost inline with EOS

I haven’t taken a risk so far, but seeing my positive experience with the reliability of the EOS, I might switch to the unstable branch of Manjaro.

[anon14644943]

If I had to reinstall EOs now, let’s say the image is already several months old, then already after the installation many updates are due. What about stability then? How often are new and current images delivered at EOS?

[ramblinwreck]

If you installed now and then did a full update, it would be the same as if you had installed the day the ISO file came out and updated all along (minus the programs you added along the way that aren’t part of the base install), it’s just all happening in one big shot. If the latest update broke something, chances are it would break the same thing no matter what previous version of the program you are updating from. There are always exceptions of course. Hope this helps answer your question.

[freggel.doe]

@zoli62

EOS doesn’t always need a terminal, though it’s an advantage if you know how to use it.

On the homepage It’s described as

EndeavourOS is mainly a terminal-centric distro with some GUI tools out of the box

[anon14644943]

@ramblinwreck

Hope this helps answer your question.

indeed, thank you

[mdoverl]

@shockwave

I am still struggling with hybrid graphics

You’re not the only one. But it’ll be a helpful experience.