My goodness this is a breath of fresh air from Manjaro

[KdK1tt]

I had been driving Manjaro on my personal laptop for the last 4 months or so. The update manager just.. every time it's fetch new keys, update keyrings, update some dependencies that got broken or missed that the upgrade center didn't know how to handle - it was just a lot of /messing/ with stuff. None of it was hard, none of it was really burdensome. But it was a nuisance and finicky.

I've used Mint for two days now and just... wow. I don't feel like I have to coddle this OS into not being fussy. It's just nice. Now honestly that probably isn't a reflection of Arch, it's probably a reflection of how Manjaro handles being tied to Arch. It's probably a reflection of me not being a "daily" driver on a laptop (I use my Steam deck for gaming, and my work laptop for work. I don't need to open my personal laptop super often... a few times a week prolly.

It's probably some of my own fault for mixing in current AUR's (but what can you do if the dang software center can't figure out what it needs or fails on keys and sends me to the console anyway). I thought about switching to just pure Arch, but time after time I heard that Mint was just easy and fun.

So, "good for beginners" label sure does not mean "not feature complete". I've had nothing fight me. Nothing has broken. I can code on it, I can use vpns on it, I can install steam, gog, lutris, like everything just works and everything updates just fine.

Anyway, that's all I got. Also I love Cinnamon. This is all good stuff.

[oswald_c]

Yes, Manjaro sets itself up for failure by holding back updated packages that AUR packages depend on. That policy is bound to cause problems for users at some point. If you were looking at Arch Linux again, I'd recommend EndeavourOS - https://endeavouros.com/

However, you've made an excellent choice in moving to Mint, and I can see you're already enjoying it

[KdK1tt]

Thank you for the reply! I think you hit it right on the head.
Holding back dependencies and the update system not doing logical things is disappointing.

I actually thought about Endeavor, and I may try that or just vanilla Arch at some point.

But like you said. Golly Mint is a friendly OS. I'm having fun.

[Pierre]

Hi KdK1tt ,
welcome to our forum.


some of have looked at, and tested out the various other Linux Systems,
and some of them are rather nice to look at, as well as to use.
it's always interesting to hear of other Linux users experience, too.

[Hoser Rob]

There seems to be a number of distros like the ones mentioned above that try to take a rolling release like Arch and make it more accessible to those users lacking serious CLI repair skills. Which is most of us. I don't think that's really possible.

I know some very, very advanced pro Linux users and AFAIK all of them use LTS release distros themselves unless they have to do otherwise. They may have Gentoo installed but it's for work, not their own personal use.

[TaterChip]

I tried Manjaro before coming to mint. My printer/scanner working with Manjaro was hit or miss, and that was beyond frustrating for a Linux noob. I liked everything else about it, but I had to ditch it. I was already deep into my distro-hopping and had to find something quick so I could get my work computer back up and running.

[Hoser Rob]

My distro hopping days are long gone. That said, I just replaced MX 21 KDE with Debian 12 after just 2 years. That's hopping for me now I guess.

[MiZoG]

You simply have to resist the temptation to enable AUR on Manjaro.

[Hoser Rob]

You simply have to resist the temptation to enable AUR on Manjaro.

I'd find that a tough one.

[MurphCID]

I tried it as well,and it worked well, until it did not.

[Hoser Rob]

I tried it as well,and it worked well, until it did not.

Isn't that the way? Debian or LMDE or MX are pretty much at the other end of that spectrum, I think only RHEL is more conservative. I got a lot of updates in MX but they were usually new features in the MX tools. Which are nice. But definitely fewer Debian updates. Debian 12 has been on mine for a couple of days and no updates since the 1st one after installing. I don't think it's unusual for a rolling release to get 25-30 updates a day most of the time.

I still think that most users would like LMDE more because of the forum. MX's is not bad though, more accessible for most than Debian's. Debian's user forums are excellent to tell the truth. They have a big user base with a lot of expertise so I've always been able to just search. And you don't have to read so many threads that go nowhere. That's not unusual with a lot of distros. But they're more hardcore and more of a commitment for many. LMDE users can use that stuff too. I used them for MX and Ubuntu support sites a lot in Mint. That's a feature.

[MurphCID]

I keep wanting to get MX, and I need a laptop that is non coreboot to make it work. Someday.