Making the switch from Ubuntu to Manjaro
Arch Linux has gained a strong market share among Linux distributions (‘distro’ for short). And I’ve finally made the switch to an Arch-based distro, called Manjaro, this week.
For the longest time, I’ve been an Ubuntu user. I had made the shift from Windows to Linux half a decade ago, and I chose Ubuntu because it was ubiquitous, well documented, and pitched as a beginner-friendly distro. It was popular as both a daily driver and for use in servers. This was ideal, as having a similarity between the one’s PC and a production environment made deploying applications easier. You had the same familiar commands and set of software packages to deal with after all. And if it compiles on your Ubuntu development environment, one wouldn’t expect the program to fail on the target Ubuntu host. And to add to the fun, you had a bit of variety since Ubuntu comes with different official ‘flavors’. The default Ubuntu desktop used Gnome, but you could also use Kubuntu, which used KDE, or Xubuntu which comes with Xfce. And later on there was Pop!_OS, which is based on Ubuntu, and it attempted to make Ubuntu an even more pleasant out-of-the-box experience.
However, things have changed. Arch has gained ground, and Manjaro is currently in the top 5 among the Linux distros listed on DistroWatch. SteamOS, the Linux distribution Valve is developing as a platform for their games had made the switch from Debian to Arch. The Steam Hardware & Software Survey: February 2022 reports that Arch Linux 64 bit and Manjaro Linux 64 bit contributed 12.51% and 12.08% of Linux usage on the platform respectively. Almost a quarter just with these two distros. This is impressive because for the most part, Ubuntu was the distro most software and video game providers target.
I was honestly initially skeptical of Arch. I’ve seen posts online claiming that it was unstable. And it’s rolling release model added to that idea. Small frequent updates sounded like a weak foundation for any serious work after all. It made me hesitant to trust it with mission-critical software. It greatly differed from having scheduled release cycles like with Debian-based distros.
Nevertheless, people were clearly seeing something in it. What broke the camel’s back was when I was chatting with people on Discord about a small hobby web project, and the guy who wanted it recommended Arch for a virtual private server(VPS).He was still a student and a total beginner on Linux. And yet he this was what he recommended. It was obvious that Arch had come a long way in terms of maturity and popularity, to the point that amateur developers are choosing it despite the reputation of complexity.
So I’ve decided to try it out. Rather than installing Arch however, I chose Manjaro KDE Plasma 21.2.5. Manjaro is based on Arch, and like Ubuntu, Manjaro is touted as being user-friendly version of the distro it’s based on.A similar relationship between Debian and Ubuntu.
The version I went with has KDE Plasma as the desktop environment, which wasn’t completely foreign to me. I had used Ubuntu’s for KDE flavor called Kubuntu before, so I know I wouldn’t be too difficult to navigate. Like Arch, KDE used to have a reputation of being unstable. But with the coming of Plasma, it has been re-surging among Linux users. A lot of the sluggishness and bugs were addressed. It is simple yet very customizable, and even surprisingly lean. I remember comparing Ubuntu 18 with Gnome to Kubuntu 18 once, and I noticed Kubuntu have less RAM usage on idle.
This was all appealing to me. My ideal distro is one that can fulfill most of my needs out-of-the-box. In the end of the day, all I wanted was to install an operating system and immediately become productive. Here are my first impressions:
Booting from USB
I connected the flash drive that I’ll be initially booting from. I saw that I was given the choice between booting with open source drivers or proprietary drivers. My PC had an NVIDIA video card installed, so I figured I take the proprietary drivers option. Almost immediately there was an issue. I reached the part where the screen was printing out all the various bits of software that was being loaded, then stopped at “Reached target Graphical Interface”. Gave it a chance to keep proceeding. You never know if it’s actually stuck or not with this sort of thing. “Maybe it was just taking a particularly longer time to load?” I thought to myself. But after 5 minutes or so, I decided to manually shut down the computer.
A quick search engine query for “manjaro Reached target Graphical Interface” on my phone indicated that this was a common issue. But it wasn’t clear what the solution was. No matter. I tried again, but this time, booting open source drivers. It booted with no further issues.
Installation
The installation was simple and intuitive. It was just your bog-standard forms for your initial setup. Inputting your timezone, keyboard configurations, and initial user credentials. Once that was done, I went ahead and restarted the computer, removing the bootable flash drive since it was no longer needed.
When I finally got to the login screen and entered my login credentials, it loaded to the desktop then froze. At that point, I figured it was because KDE’s notification pop-ups tried to come up simultaneously, trying to tell me about all the stuff that needed updating. However, when I restarted the PC and tried again, my screen froze yet again. I couldn’t really find anything online that would indicate why this happened. But when I switched from Wayland to the X11 protocol, and that somehow fixed everything it. X11 is older and more stable compared to Wayland, which is still in development, so it’s strange to me why Wayland would be the default. Whatever the case, X11 is what I’ll use going forward.
First thing to do on a new distro installation; Update. The notification pop-up that showed up on the bottom right told me that over 200 packages needed updating. Proceeded to opened Konsole, the terminal emulator that KDE provides and ran “sudo pacman -Syu”. It took a little while to update everything, but there were no issues to speak of. Once that was all done, I restarted to computer to make sure all the newly updated packages were up and running.
I mentioned earlier that I had a NVIDIA graphics card installed on my machine. That means I need propriety drivers to get it working optimally. This was no problem as well. It was as simple as opening the Settings window, navigating to the Hardware Configuration, and clicking the “Auto Install Proprietary Driver” button. To test it out, I opened Steam client which comes pre-installed in Manjaro. Steam is a gaming platform and digital right manager that allows you to purchase and install games to your PC. In this case, I installed DOTA 2 and Stellaris. Both worked perfectly.
Documentation
I think is this where the distro indirectly shines the greatest. The first thing you see on the desktop as a new user is the Manjaro Hello window. It guides you towards useful resources such as the Manjaro Forum, the Manjaro Wiki, and the AUR Repository. The ArchWiki, while not specifically targeting Manjaro users, is a great resource as well. These sites detail how to accomplish most of what a user could ever possibly need out of the distro. From installing software, to configuration, and resolving common issues, there was never any point where I felt completely lost. As a beginner, felt great to have a large and comprehensive repository of knowledge at my disposal.
Installing packages
Now I want to install the software I commonly use. Almost all of the packages I want were apparently available from Arch’s repositories, which are divided into categories such as ‘core’, ‘extras’, ‘community’, etc. Details about these repositories are available here. Arch uses pacman as its package manager. Just run “sudo pacman -S [package name]” and you’re done. Simple.
For instance, I wanted to install neofetch. It is a small tool that prints out details about your machine in a terminal. I looked it up and saw that it was available in the Arch community repository. Thus, I typed in “sudo pacman -S neofetch” and began the installation process. It was installed within a few seconds. No need to fuss about with PPAs or downloading .deb files. Chances are, whatever you want to install in Arch is probably already available via the pacman.
Will I be sticking with it?
My experience with Manjaro so far has been very positive. All the programs I expected to work, worked. I didn’t have to manually fix issues with drivers to get audio or games working. Software installation is centralized in Arch’s repositories which make things very straightforward. I haven’t experienced any sluggishness or crashes in the two days that I’ve been working with it. I see myself sticking with it for the long haul.
That’s all I have to say about Manjaro for now, thanks for reading!