EDIT: I kinda solved it by installing Wayland (with Nvidia card, Ouch!) to replace Xorg. Not sure if this is gonna last though. Perhaps Manjaro is the one I'm gonna throw out FIRST if anything happens from now on.
What should be the first line of defense? Timeshift?
This happened after I installed AUR package masterpdfeditor and 2 applications from github (some hashing algorithm programs, I think they were "Dilithium" and "Latice-based-cryptography-main", one of them was provided by NIST.)
If using GUI: I login, black screen for few seconds, then back at login screen.
If going to ctrl+alt+f2, login successful, then startx, see picture provided (higher quality).
I tried adding a new user, but result is the same.
I have a live usb to do the Timeshift. (I can also chroot if necessary... But I'm not extremely professional)
Manjaro is not up-to-date with Arch repos. Using AUR in Manjaro is a huge mistake.
If you wanna use AUR, I suggest you to go all in with Arch itself
However I still recommend you to use AUR as less as possible, cause too many AUR can mess even with Arch
I'm using 75 AUR packages without any issues and I've been using Manjaro for 4 years. But I'm really worried now that you've said that. 😬 When should I begin to expect AUR trouble? Does it happen on the 5th year? What if I reinstall, do I get another 4 years?
Good for you. Have you heard about anecdotal evidence already?
I'm hearing anecdotal evidence all the time, from people who avoid using AUR packages. I'm a person who uses them, and uses a lot of them, and has been doing it for extended periods of time. That's not anecdotal, it's concrete proof.
Based on what?
Based on Arch USER Repository.
AUR packages are maintained by users and can install and overwrite packages in your system and if you install AUR enough, you'll certainly install a package that corrupts your system.
That's ridiculous. You can blindly install crap that breaks your system on any distro. Just don't blindly install things from the AUR and you'll be fine.
Definitely can. But AUR make it easier, once it's not officially supported and has permission to install things on your base system with root access.
It's kinda the same as you download a deb file and install it or use ppa on debian-based distro. All of that can make your system breaks, but in other distros the general recommendation is to use official repos always when the app is available on repos
Right -- so like I said, nothing to do with the AUR and everything to do with being smart about what software you install.