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1 • Manjaro (and Vivaldi) (by Brad on 2023-04-17 00:37:57 GMT from United States)
Sorry you had so many issues - I've installed (and used) Manjaro on a number of different laptops without issue.
I recently tried the Cinnamon spin, because I wanted to see how the experience compared with Linux Mint. I was pleased with the experience, and I am now using the spin on all my laptops.
I was especially pleased to see that Vivaldi was the default browser (I've been using it for a while now), and it's such a refreshing change from Firefox, which seems to be the default for most distros. I've found Firefox to be (over)burdened with ads, whereas Vivaldi's ad and tracker blockers are easy to enable on first use.
The best part of Vivaldi is the "built-in" mail client. No need for Thunderbird any more! One app to rule them all...
: - )
2 • Manjaro (by Pumpino on 2023-04-17 00:53:48 GMT from Australia)
I've run Manjaro Cinnamon (unstable branch) on two devices for several months (and priot to that, years with XFCE) and I've never experienced similar issues to what Jesse described.
Interestingly, I received Nemo 5.6.5 in Manjaro this morning and it's still not available for Vera or Vanessa in Linux Mint; nor has it been built at packages.linuxmint.com. I'm not sure how Arch/Manjaro manages to build and release it before the creator of Cinnamon does in his distro.
3 • Manjaro (by rich52 on 2023-04-17 01:00:04 GMT from United States)
Sorry to see you had nothing but failures. . . I used Manjaro for a couple years but have moved on to EndeavourOS Linux using Cinnamon. It has been a great experience. Manjaro would be a backup if I ever needed one but the last time I installed the OS things didn't feel too familiar and changes weren't too appealing. Maybe next time things will work out. Software is always evolving and sometimes changes don't work as well as expected.
Rich;)
4 • Manjaro (by mnrv-ovrf-year-c on 2023-04-17 01:23:21 GMT from Puerto Rico)
What I think is that Jesse responded basically to one guy commenting last week and then a whole bunch of answers were directed at that user accused of being half-ignorant. "Next time review a popular distro so they settle down!" LOL. I'm just kidding.
The review of Manjaro is much appreciated because that OS often brings about mixed feelings. This was the very first distro with KDE Plasma that embraced me, and I still have an installation although I had to redo it six times at least. I'm going to be frank here: Pamac is being requested for all other Arch-based distros, but it's not an advantage for Manjaro. There are other things that make me hesitate checking out Big Linux and Mabox further than I actually did, besides the fact they are more bloated than eg. EndeavourOS. The "non-official" flavors of Manjaro aren't getting as much love, permanently discouraged me with GNOME as well because it was significantly slower on my system than EndeavourOS and RebornOS.
5 • Install issues (by fenglengshun on 2023-04-17 01:56:22 GMT from Malaysia)
At this point, there's pretty much a hardware/install issue every week for the DistroWatch reviews. As a recent ex-Manjaro user, I know it has its issues, but this doesn't talk about any of that, and it is frustrating to read.
It's honestly distracting -- it stops being a review of distro and more "talk about hardware/install issue for a third up to half of the review section, then finally found one that works well enough to make a long enough review section.
I don't know if it's a curse thicker than LTT's curse with Linux or what have you, but I'd rather have actual reviews, please.
6 • @5 install issues (by Titus Groan on 2023-04-17 04:17:07 GMT from New Zealand)
to quote Jesse:
"This was unusual for me. Most of my past experiments with Manjaro have gone well and offered mostly positive experiences. This time around it was one disappointment after another and so I decided to move on. "
If it wont install,and I appreciate the efforts that Jesse went to to try, this is what he reported. He says that he has not had issues installing Manjaro previously, so it appears that there has been a significant failure here. He also issues with the Live experience. Either poor QA or a poor build. S&#t happens.
As mentioned in last weeks comments, those now wishing to try Manjaro have some pointers and traps to be aware of.
Trisequel: I have often thought about installing, but all my h/w requires non-free drivers, so it appears to be a hard pass for me.
7 • Manjaro (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-17 04:23:07 GMT from Australia)
Certainly you'd think Manjaro would be a "safe" choice for a review - like others, I've always found this an excellent distro. But there do seem to be issues with 22.0.
I tried the XFCE edition on a VirtualBox VM with 2Gb RAM allocated (yes that was optimistic) and encountered the same installer crash issue that Jesse reported.
Increasing RAM to 3Gb did overcome that issue but then the installed version failed to boot - simply hung. Disappointing and out of character - hopefully that will soon be sorted by the Manjaro devs.
@5 You can't start to review a distro (or actually use it) if you can't install it. Obviously a failed installation, especially of a popular distro like Manjaro, needs to be written about.
8 • Manjaro (by Tran Older on 2023-04-17 04:30:02 GMT from Vietnam)
I have installed Manjaro Cinnamon on a Ryzen based entry-level HP laptop with a reiser file system and has not experienced any issues as above mentioned. However, when I tried a Qt-based desktop on the same Cinnamon spin (sudo pamac -S cutefish), I could only log into the cutefish desktop and everything got stuck. Tried to install ukui desktop, I got the same problem. IMHO, there was something wrong either with the implementation of Qt or with the co-working between Qt and gtk. Vivaldi, on the other hand, is a remarkable choice of browser for an office laptop, although the Translator as powered by Linvanex was far from being perfect, text translation from English to Chinese and Vietnamese was either incomprehensive or, at times, sarcastically humourous. Also, the inclusion of Microsoft Office Online (JAK) to the Cinnamon spin is a plus.
9 • Enjoying Manjaro (by all manjo banjo on 2023-04-17 04:33:00 GMT from New Zealand)
I have almost all my machines running Manjaro with the Cinnamon desktop. The only issue so far is fresh installs on some newer model high-end HP laptops - no sound. You have to add 'sof-firmware'. Somewhere, someone missed a checkbox :) to include it in the default install. I add the 'sof-tools' for good measure.
If you asked me 4 years ago, everything was Mint, Mint, Mint. Today I enjoy and demand the latest software, no 6 week or 3 year delays.
10 • Manjaro (by Tran Older on 2023-04-17 04:46:21 GMT from Vietnam)
Sorry, that should be sudo pacman -S cutefish. Also, I have tried to install the cutefish desktop on the Manjaro Mate spin of another laptop and met with success. Problem pinpointed, there was something quite wrong with the implemention of the Gnome 43 library files on the Cinnamon spin. I also installed the Epiphany browser and it refused to be launched.
11 • Recommending Trisquel KDE (by eco2geek on 2023-04-17 05:42:26 GMT from United States)
Let me recommend the KDE version of Trisquel.
To be honest I think the RMS way of thinking about how everything has to be free/libre software to be somewhat religious, and I'm not into religion. But it doesn't matter. Trisquel KDE is polished and easy to use.
A wireless card would probably have the same issues in the KDE version as the MATE version, but my wired internet connection works just fine.
If you want to add extensions to Abrowser from the Firefox collection, head on over to extensions.mozilla.org and have at it. You're not limited to Trisquel's collection. Likewise, Trisquel comes with VLC Media Player, which plays just about any audio/video format, so you're not going to have much trouble playing movies.
No screen reader starts by default in the live environment (in the KDE version).
And finally, there's a really nice touch in that if you put it on a USB stick with enough room, it'll automatically save your changes, making it persistent.
IMHO Trisquel KDE is not just for believers in free software; it's a good general purpose distribution.
12 • Manjaro as a "safe" distro, and RMS (@11) (by Simon on 2023-04-17 08:04:51 GMT from New Zealand)
Manjaro is based on Arch, so it's not "safe": occasional problems should be expected. A curated snapshot of a rolling release distro is still nothing remotely like a stable, well-tested (by thousands of users with identical package versions) release, in one of the many genuinely safe distros. "Somewhat safer than Arch" is a better description.
Re Stallman's staunch software freedom stance as "religion", that's like calling a staunch refusal to smoke cigarettes "religious" because it refuses to compromise (just a few puffs each day, what's the big deal?). It amazes me that so many people enjoying the free software that they have thanks to Stallman's genius (both in terms of his creating software tools like the GCC to create free software, and his creating the GPL to make sure we continue to have access to it all) treat him as though he's an idiot for refusing to compromise his perfectly sensible principles re software freedom. The problem is not RMS being "religious": the problem is that not enough of us take him seriously. If we did, and bought only freedom-respecting hardware, hardware manufacturers would eventually have to respect our freedom because their sneaky closed proprietary crap would sit unused on shelves, being bought by nobody. Of course nobody's going to do that (who's going to give up a better gaming experience for themselves right now, just for the sake of a long term improvement in the experience for everybody?), so everyone laughs at RMS and continues to shell out money for tech that serves its manufacturers instead of us. Stallman's like a non-smoker in a city full of smokers, inhaling our smoke: he may look like an idiot, sticking to his principles despite the fact that he's going down with rest of us because nobody's listening, but I admire him for at least having the integrity to practise what he preaches, and to model what we'd all be doing if we had the collective brains to do what was in our own collective interest.
13 • convert from ext4 to btrfs (by Didier Spaier on 2023-04-17 08:12:10 GMT from France)
A basic recommendation is to have plenty of space in the partition where that hosts the ext4 file system to be converted, as btrfs-convert stores a copy of each file it compress in a backup subvolume while processing them and that needs a lot of space.
As it is highly recommended anyway to back up all files to be converted before proceeding, my recommendation is, instead of using btrfs-convert, to just use wipefs to get rid of the ext4 file system after verification of the backup, then partprobe to make the kernel aware of that change, create the btrfs file system with compression, mount it and copy recursively the files from the backup to the new file system. This has several advantages:
- It is safer.
- It works even if initially the partition was almost full.
- The files are automatically compressed (according to he compress option of the mount command, like "compress=zstd:3") during the copy, no need for post-processing.
Of course edit /etc/fstab after copy.
I have had success using btrfs-convert (The Slint distribution that maintain use btrfs for installation at least in case of auto-partitioning, so had to experiment) but just copy from a backup into the new file system is more straightforward and safer in my opinion.
14 • Trisquel (by Dave Postles on 2023-04-17 08:12:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have Trisquel on a Star Lite. I just use a USB to Ethernet adapter.
15 • 4MLinux (by Dan on 2023-04-17 09:36:08 GMT from United States)
I just recently installed the 42.0 version of 4MLinux, and as usual, no problems with installation. Probably the quickest installation of any distro.
16 • Trisquel and wi-fi (by Tagalo on 2023-04-17 10:02:43 GMT from Italy)
To use wi-fi with Trisquel you need a Wireless N USB Adapter with chipset AR9271 (a wireless pci card Qualcomm Atheros for desktops should work also).
17 • Manjaro (by Ian on 2023-04-17 10:24:44 GMT from Ireland)
I can get Manjaro to run live, I install it then it refuses to boot - never mind
18 • Manjaro (by Former on 2023-04-17 11:42:23 GMT from United States)
Quite non-tipycal for Manjaro that every flavor would fail. Maybe you could use two different computers for testing? :-)
About a year ago, I couldn't get something to work on my main, Debian based computer, so I dual boot Manjaro and Endeavour on a second computer to get that thing going. Between the two, I liked Endeavour much better. (same experience with super nice and friendly Endeavor forum users) At that time, there were quite a lot of experienced users at Endeavour that moved over from Manjaro, based on forum posts. I have no clue what situation is now.
Since I'm too noob for 'with rolling distro, it is expected to sometimes some things go wrong' I stopped using both as soon as I got all sorted out on my main distro.
That being said, I wish Manjaro all the best, and I hope they sort their problems out.
19 • Manjaro (by RetiredIT on 2023-04-17 12:52:09 GMT from United States)
Like so MANY other distros of the past several years Manjaro has turned into a convoluted mess! My recent experience confirms that. It wouldn't even recognize my flash drive which I use just about every day. I will stick with MX Linux 21 and Linux Mint 20 for the time being.
20 • Manjaro as a "safe" distro (@12) (by fox on 2023-04-17 13:12:20 GMT from Canada)
I agree with @12 that no rolling-release distro is safe, unless one is ready to do extra work to keep it this way. I really like Manjaro, and I have keep it twice as a "test" distro. The first time it lasted about six months before it failed after an update. Most recently it lasted two years before failing after an update; now when I boot up it cannot find the partition it resides on. I had a backup and I could have used that until the problem was fixed (if it was), But it was a good reminder as to why I don't depend on a rolling release distro.
21 • Manjaro (by Dan on 2023-04-17 14:11:00 GMT from United States)
I never really had problems with Manjaro, but for me the definative Arch based distro is Artix.
22 • Reviews are becoming useless by the day (by AmG on 2023-04-17 15:09:00 GMT from Germany)
Buy an old hardware if needed and give us good reviews. We dont come here every monday to see how various distros.. one after the other, fail to work on your miserable hardware. You might as well use win 11 on your latest and greatest H/W.
23 • Hardware (by Jesse on 2023-04-17 15:15:07 GMT from Canada)
A few people have commented wondering why I don't use multiple machines for reviews to avoid hardware problems, or use multiple environments.
The thing is, I do. Those familiar with my reviews are already aware I test virtually everything in at least two environments, one computer and a virtual machine to avoid hardware-related quirks. If a distro doesn't work on one machine, like my workstation, I'll typically try it on a laptop too in order to confirm if the problem persists across environments.
In other words, the experiences mentioned here are typically the result of trying in two, sometimes three, environments and on machines I've confirmed run all the mainstream distributions. If a distro is failing on multiple machines where Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Arch all function well, that is very much a problem for the smaller distro to sort out.
24 • Jesse Manjaro Cinnamon and KDE (by Carlos Arigós on 2023-04-17 15:52:35 GMT from Argentina)
I have tried to reproduce the drawbacks found by Jesse Smith, both with Manjaro Cinnamon and KDE (live sessions only), without success. Both with proprietary and free drivers.
My desktop is an i7700K, 32Gb, and an Nvidia 1660 super.
The contribution of a veteran, and satisfied, Manjaro KDE user.
25 • Manjaro - safe? (by Roger Brown on 2023-04-17 15:58:29 GMT from Australia)
To be fair to Manjaro XFCE 22.05 which I reported as hanging at bootup - trying again on a different machine with more memory and allocating the recommended 4GB to my VirtualBox VM was much more successful.
Installation flew and with a change of VirtualBox driver settings (to VBoxVGA) the installed machine booted and ran perfectly.
26 • Reply to 22 (by Heinrich on 2023-04-17 15:59:35 GMT from United States)
You’re right, we’re paying Jesse so much for his reviews, we should get to demand he do his reviews our way and buy the test hardware we think he should be using.
Wait…we’re not paying him anything unless we choose to donate, and he’s putting in hours and hours of time basically for free as a long-time volunteer. As far as I can tell, he’s using hardware he paid for out of his own pocket.
If you think he should be using particular hardware, you can offer to buy it for him.
I enjoy Jesse’s reviews, but if you don’t, no one is forcing you to read them.
27 • @20 fox: (by dragonmouth on 2023-04-17 17:15:57 GMT from United States)
While I know it is anecdotal but I have been using PCLinuxOS (rolling release distro) for over 5 years and never had it hiccup. So I cannot agree with your or Simoin's statements.
28 • Trisquel (by Pecka on 2023-04-17 18:06:16 GMT from Sweden)
Isn't Trisquel RMSs distro of choice?
He's a bit extreme to say the least, I read somewhere that he's "browsing" the web via e-mail.
29 • Manjaro (by Otis on 2023-04-17 22:13:33 GMT from United States)
Good to see Manjaro reviewed these days. A few years ago that was my go to distro, but the systemd thing and bad luck with updates chipped away at my loyalty and I moved to MX (very happy with that choice).
I wonder about the review being maybe hardware specific in its reported problems (at least partially). My main issues with Manjaro early on had to do with an old HP and things went fine with a newer Acer. But, as I mentioned, updates seemed poison the experience quite often, plus I'm one of the non-systemd users (putting up with it being there in MX but not deployed by default).
30 • manjaro & hardware (by radu on 2023-04-17 22:13:52 GMT from Moldova)
It is very strange that Manjaro failed in this review, cause it is top 5 on distrowatch,
but it is not uncommon for an old live cd of any arch based distro to fail if user is very active with live session.
Usually you need to `pacman -Syu` and abort before you wanna do something when installing stuff inside the live session....
Then the distro will work as expected..
p.s:
Also maybe all the circumstances collided, and Manjaro released a batch of new .iso that suck,
it rarely happens, but it sometimes happens to every complicated arch based distro out there.
Myself was succesfully using Manjaro Mate (with .iso generated in December, and .iso generated in January)
I am sure they will fix this soon with new .iso files.
I myself had problems with Manjaro, Antergos, Endeavor & Garuda during the ages, but not wasting time for setup of X and Deskop every time is priceless (cause it is already not funny for me to install Arch nowadays from scratch after I think 10 times for 2009-2015 years)
31 • Manjaro (by fiona on 2023-04-18 01:37:39 GMT from United States)
I like to switch between distros, and still need Windows for some applications. As such, I dual boot, and rely a lot on grub2 to switch between my installed OSes. Late in 2022, I installed Manjaro on my machine and it overwrote my existing configuration when it wrote to the MBR. I was able to recover, but this was rather annoying. It also crashed during the installation, and I was forced to hard reboot into the live distro to repair the install. I definitely don't recommend Manjaro for dual-booting users.
32 • Testing Linux operating systems. BTRFS file compression. (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-18 04:08:17 GMT from Australia)
Fanboys claim that the latest and greatest hardware shows no problems with {brandname} operating system. This is standard, predictable fanboy behavior.
Most amateur users might have a medium powered machine, with medium specs. So the default Distrowatch setup might be ok. However, to avoid the tedious and time-wasting tasks, I suggest fast ports, including fast SSD main drive.
Experienced testers here know by numerous tests, that the systems with large teams of alpha and beta testers, have better, more reliable final releases. The small and one person creators cannot have the diversity of hardware & software that their final releases really need for testing. Largest development teams are Red Hat (extremely conservative), Debian, Canonical & Mint. So their final products work with the greatest variety of hardware & software settings, with OEM limitations (legal and international legal compliance).
Worthwhile operating systems have many legal & illegal “derivates”, imitators, look-alikes, and work-alikes. These derivatives are much more adventurous, legally and otherwise "careless". Most Linux creators choose their derivative foundations, in order of numerical numbers: Ubuntu-base (which is derived from Debian), Debian-base, Red Hat base, Arch-base, Mint-base, Fedora-base, Puppy-base, and assorted non-Red Hat base settings. This has been demonstrated by myself a few times here in these messages, over the years, using the standard Distrowatch database.
Most Linux systems can easily & reliably use either of the Microsoft NTFS file system for non-operating system files. This has fast compression, similar to ZIP compression. However, defragmenting and file system repair usually means modifying these NTFS-compressed partitions within any appropriate application in the Windows operating system. All our external partitions are NTFS-compressed. Multi-booting with many Windows & Linux operating systems is best and simplest with Linux's Grub-customizer type applications.
BTRFS partitions vary with the usability of Grub-customizer type applications. Later versions of installing Linux, Grub & grub customizer have better reliability & predictability for most users. BTRFS is the problem ,because it needs further development & refinement, especially with its necessary GUI utilities (multi-booting, defragmenting, indexing, compression settings, etc).
In this issue's review, this distro offered the option of two types of installation. Both are very different. "Normal" using the assigned & previously determined "flagged" boot partition, or using the grub installation method. Using this "normal" method, the boot flag can be set with ,
Both methods differ greatly, but I have yet to know which to use, or why. Unsure why none have noticed these strange features with many Linux operating system installations.
33 • Installing Linux operating systems: "virtual", flagged "boot", or grub? (by Greg Zeng on 2023-04-18 04:43:05 GMT from Australia)
Distrowatch unfortunately does not allow editing posts here in the comments from readers like myself. Continuing from my INSTALLING LINUX comment above.
Distrowatch Weekly showed as usual the virtual box, and the hard mounted installation. Virtual box is possible in a few other ways, besides using any of the few “virtual box” applications.
Some Linux systems are designed to not be installed on any main hardware. These run on the temporary software memory systems only. Sometimes these systems use the installation medium as a “slow” cache, instead, or as well as just the dynamic main memory.
Most mature Linux systems allow test-driving to be done with any installation to the main computer, provided that the raw memory is enough to hold the operating system files. Some of these mature test-driving can also allow modifying the various files of the main system, with or without the administrator's permission of the main system.
The Manjaro installation as tested by myself offers the test-drive system above, and at least two types of direct installation to the main hardware. “Normal” requires at most one-only partition top be officially “flagged” as the “boot partition”. KDE partition makes this almost impossible to do. Gparted is much better.
Another Linux installation choice uses the “grub” option. Which to use, and why, is not known to me. If one does not work, the other might. Wikipedia:
"The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) system partition or ESP is a partition on a data storage device (usually a hard disk drive or solid-state drive) that is used by computers having the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).
Some (most, or all?) hardware computers offer one or both booting choices, with or without EFI.
Some Linux operating installations then offer other choices after the above irreversible are selected. No easy on-screen help boxes are available, for installing staff. These next options include: Installing alongside, replacing and “customizing” choices. Multi-booting experts like myself choose the last option.
Most published reports of Linux installations pretend that the above traps and barriers do not exist. Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers.
34 • Trisquel does have non-free software scattered through it, so what about NetBSD? (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-18 07:35:18 GMT from Australia)
I am writing this on Firefox Developer Edition, on Trisquel GNU/Linux 11, now. There are references to Vivaldi Web Browser in the .cache or .local directories in the /home/user partition, Matlab support in the Matlab2Tikz program in Synaptic or apt description, and I suppose you could run Matlab/Mathematica but I tried Smath Studio and that didn't work. I expect Zoom wouldn't work either. A commercial proprietary anti-malware product Dr. Web for Linux (its European) runs perfectly well on my system as I learn how to use Clamav to get rid of a disappearing UEFI/BIOS screen after a phishing scam that I didn't fully fall for under Fedora 37 (my previous OS) just because I clicked a link in a Seafood online store, (oh well we all make mistakes!), but I didn't fall for the $2 iPhone 14 in the scam, but it seemed to clobber my UEFI memory test/setup screen.
NetBSD is nearly approaching version 10 and you can't install Adobe Flash Player for obvious reasons (as its not used anymore on the web since pre-COVID times, lol!). Version 9.2 of NBSD had improved Wifi support in the installation but I think that is free-software drivers. Unless it is used in Raspberry Pi binary blob environments I can't see how it is impossible to get non-free firmware into the system so RMS ought to take a good look at NBSD if he thinks Trisquel isn't fully free (as the last FSF-recommended distro on the list is 100% complete free)?
35 • To add insult to injury, Trisquel 10 runs VMWare (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-18 10:18:13 GMT from Australia)
Yep, Folks. Version 16 of VMWare Workstation Pro. With Windows 10 (whatever edition) at the most, so I suppose Trisquel 11 probably runs version 17 and Windows up to 11.
Yeah, I know NetBSD's Xen will probably run Windows too, but on what platform as described by its distrowatch user reviews that some said the X Server crashed at version 9.2. Sorry my bad, version 9.3 (the current version) has improved Wifi drivers in the current install.
You know if one could run freedom distros forever the GNU buck would come one's way, but it has no monetary value. Just to stick on your wall! haha
36 • manjaro & cinnamon (by joncr on 2023-04-18 12:00:56 GMT from United States)
My experience with Manjaro has been problematic so I've stopped considering it for use. If any distribution does not work correctly in live mode, I'm not about to install it.
Fedora's Cinnamon spin is polished and over several releases has performed well for me. Its maintainer participates in Cinnamon's development and package versions are kept very current, as usual for Fedora.
37 • This and that (by EL Guapo on 2023-04-18 13:20:53 GMT from United States)
Tried Trisquel KDE and ended up installing it to a free partition. Quick and easy install except that the installer was mostly unreadable no matter what I did, so had to take a couple of informed guesses. Runs quite well. Since I don't plan to use it as just a typewriter, I got my handy copy of iwlwifi which i keep on a flash drive for Debian net-installs, and all is honky-dory. Of course I run the peril of excommunication from the RMS-GNU congregation , but so be it. A little fiddling with Bluetooth took care of that also. It's really quite a nice distro, but then so are Kubuntu and neon.
Ran Manjaro for a while, but never comfortably. Not so much the installing, but little problems here and there, and especially bothersome was that it got itself in a panic unless it's own grub was in charge. Not helpful for multi-booting and frequent new distros, which I always do. I was more comfortable with EndeavourOS, but I don't run Arch-based anymore because I don't want to be updating all the time.
@32,33, "Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers." Installing any system is not easy for 'beginners to computers'. They usually buy a computer with an OS installed. There are plenty of distros which are pretty easy to install, but's hard to drive a nail if you don't know what a hammer is for. Much of the rest of your posts are way beyond my comprehension.
38 • Installing Linux (by Otis on 2023-04-18 17:31:15 GMT from United States)
@32, @33 Efforts to deligitimize the Linux family, once again, using the sort of logic that could do that to any subject at hand, any science, any discipline, any honorable endeavor; filling the room, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with semi sense and tech talk which only obfuscates.
@37 It is beyond comprehension because it is meant to be so, not because it is over your head.
Also, this site has ads from companies which provide pre-installed Linux distros, for those who do not wish to enjoy the choices offered by most distros as to installation procedures (so simple in 90% of cases).
I have a Macbook Pro 16 inch, an Acer 17 inch with MX Linux as the sole OS, and a Dell Inspiron with Windows 11. Choices abound, but Linux is the best and always will be for its simplicity and intuitively crafted installation and overall maintenance schema, no matter which distro (although I have landed on MX as day to day).
39 • Sounds familiar... (by GT on 2023-04-18 19:24:18 GMT from United States)
"This made for a total of five attempts across three editions of the distribution which had all failed. While each edition failed in fairly dramatic fashion, I found it interesting that the three editions didn't fail in the same way."
...but I thought this was going to be the year of the Linux Desktop going mainstream, lol.
This sort of stuff is why I cannot rely on Linux beyond tinkering for fun. On three different occasions, an Arch update rendered my computer unbootable, requiring me to chroot from the live ISO to repair it, which is why I gave up on Arch. On a Debian 11 install, the icons would occasionally be missing from the taskbar but for some reason would return after rebooting...never did figure that one out. I could go on and on, but there is always some annoying quirk that rears its ugly head no matter what distro I try out, and often before I even install any extra software.
Linux is a mess, a hodgepodge of constantly changing software, and even the biggest distros can't manage to keep massive bugs at bay. Linux will never be a contender for desktop computing except for those who are willing to accept all the user issues and headaches.
40 • @39 (by Reyfer on 2023-04-18 23:43:59 GMT from Venezuela)
Thank you for your TED talk.....as someone that has been using Linux (Debian) exclusively for the past 7 years both in my personal machines and in my office machines, I never realized what a "mess" LInux is, maybe because it isn't? It is not perfect, far from it, but man at least for me and my company it works a ton better than the other alternative
41 • "user issues... (by Friar Tux on 2023-04-19 00:03:15 GMT from Canada)
@39 (GT) "User issues and headaches" is why I switched to Linux in the first place. With the version 10 of that proprietary OS (we all know which) I had nothing but issues and headaches. The Wife and I, both, switched to Linux and have had no lost-time issues or headaches in the last seven years. None what-so-ever. My Linux distro has worked flawlessly. All the apps and programs I use have no issues. Most are a version or two behind, but, to me, that's fine as it guarantees stability and I don't really need the latest and greatest. The longest update took one minute and ten seconds to complete, to date, but that was my fault as I hadn't updated for a while. This opposed to [proprietary OS] that took an hour for a "short" update - and this ever other day.
I rely on Linux as my daily workhorse and must days I'm on my laptop from 6:30 AM to 10:30 at night.
42 • @33 (by Reyfer on 2023-04-19 03:35:38 GMT from Venezuela)
" Installing Linux systems is not easy for beginners to computers. ".....my 70 years old dad may differ with this statement
43 • Ease of install (by artytux on 2023-04-19 04:55:19 GMT from Australia)
Although most distros are just point and click to install these days,
and those distro that need a bit of manual intervention If you take the time to Read The Fantastic Manual supplied on the distros site for installation help, it can be done and not difficult.
Linux even a complete computer beginner can do that , as I was back then, it just take a little patience from the beginner oh and research.
Over the last twelve ? years the only problems with installs was 1 out of 3 rolling distros I installed gave repeated small to medium breakages all after updates on occasions, not that bad that I would leave it,
I found that an interesting part of the learning curve of open source/Linux AND not a problem where I would go back to THAT other OS.
most other distros (static) run on most hardware properly or just wont install,
you always get what you want,
using mainly KDE the biggest problems for me stemmed from pebcak ! customizing.
And if anyone thinks Linux is a stinker full of problems Hmm
No-one is forced to use Linux.
Freedom of choice
simply go back to that installed OS (( yeah THAT OS with no problems ) cough cough) the one on the computer/laptop when you bought it. LOL
Have used my Linux machine everyday for many years (bit over 12 years) for graphic design work voluntary and paid, music meta tags editing for easy searches of my music library and never had down time from an install not working properly or updating when it wants to,
Linux gives me my computer and the freedom to do what I want, most important when I want .
44 • Typo (by artytux on 2023-04-19 04:58:20 GMT from Australia)
you always get what you want,
you don't always get what you want,
45 • manjaro (by hulondalo on 2023-04-19 11:25:57 GMT from Hong Kong)
i've got nothing against manjaro but it's putting too many entries at booting, even simple tasks that can be done with cron, resulting in very long boot times. i just wanna get to desktop as soon as the computer starts. putting it to sleep or hibernation modes is not a solution cause it's dual boot with windows 11.
46 • @39 (by Jay on 2023-04-19 14:03:31 GMT from United States)
Try using more "mainstream" Windows computers set up and maintained by older users. It'll drive you crazier. Windows has just as many weird problems but for some reason it stays afloat. Macs are the same. I hated using one for the first like 5 years because it felt like the worst of both Windows and Linux (BSD is not Linux, and Macs aren't GNU systems). Eventually people adapt and put up with it. The public perception is better and the public perception of Linux is "it just doesn't work." And most of the time it's true because of some stupid proprietary, inferior solution. Most people hate to tinker and would rather just install random crap until something works than understand anything. It's the sad truth.
47 • Trisquel Wi-Fi Free firmware (by Yes on 2023-04-19 19:52:01 GMT from Germany)
There aren't many models of "USB wireless card which works with free firmware", but one that does, the AR9271, is actually widely available and affordable.
But unless you have an at least somewhat old Intel iGPU (or an Nvidia card older than the 900 series and 750Ti) you're indeed going to struggle with 3D graphics.
48 • Why didn't you test out Trisquel's new Server features, Jessie? (by Weallslipupasahypocrite on 2023-04-20 01:53:01 GMT from Australia)
Trisquel 11 released its "press" release saying it had new support for architectures (like I think ARM for Mac M1s(???) and somethings that run on desktops, which Jessie Smith has, but could use for a Server), and other explicit Server architectures (which I and he and many developers may regret not having, as they are probably freedom-delivery Servers). Anyway, they also said they improved text-mode installation for Servers on pre-existing architectures (like AMD64, as long as you have a network setup that supports it, on a Server that could be USB-ethernet to a hub/switch to share connections and a ethernet cord to a Range Extender with OpenVPN to get Wifi to work, for example?), or (well not necessarily new) introduction to other architectures, but he didn't test text-mode?
I mean, I haven't tested these things either yet cause my use case, like many others, for Trisquel, and recently Fedora 38, is the MATE desktop (or whatever spin). But oughtn't a new review, which it mainy does, test out the new features from the release announcement?
Btw. The bit about running Xen on NetBSD I mentioned above, (I think I only did it once with a Linux OS as a guest in version 6.1.5 and my skills weren't all that successful), my bad, from reading the documentation doesn't it dual-boot the Virtual Machine with the NetBSD OS host and if graphics are needed, use the (back then XFree86, yes ladies/gentleman/LGBPQTI+ even NetBSD was that old) X-Window system and its Window/Desktop manager and/or and X-Clients to display visuals? I came across a comment that 6.1.5 was the most stable version of NetBSD around, but of course, not on SSD hard drives, or USB 3.0 devices.
49 • Manjaro (by Andy Prough on 2023-04-20 02:06:26 GMT from United States)
I wanted to try it a couple of times, but it wouldn't boot on the Asus laptop I was using. To be fair, Asus has a weird UEFI setup and a lot of distros won't boot on it, but unless there's something compelling about the distro I don't work hard to get it past failure to boot problems. And there was nothing compelling about Manjaro.
50 • Manjaro (by Hoos on 2023-04-21 06:22:28 GMT from Singapore)
I wonder if they made some Manjaro-specific changes to the installer that aren't working out as well as they hoped.
I have 3 separate installations of Manjaro, created 8, 6 and 3 years ago respectively. All are running well. They are not the only distros I run on the machines (also MX and Artix), but since they are problem-free, I am happy to continue using them.
However, less than a year ago I decided to test their then latest iso release on Virtualbox just for the heck of it. Installing didn't go well.
The live system ran just fine, but about 2 seconds into the installer writing files onto the virtual machine drive, the installer just closed (crashed??) without any warning or error message. After it happened a few times, I checked the integrity of the iso file. Seemed to be fine. I then downloaded a different iso variant from that Manjaro release. Same problem. I gave up after that.
While I am satisfied with the instances of Manjaro currently running on my machines, if I had to install a rolling distro today (I stick to MX for non-rolling), I wouldn't choose Manjaro.
Number of Comments: 50
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