Office 365 on the web works well on Linux if that has enough functionality for you. If not, the only way to get a modern version of the real Microsoft Office is in a VM. Older versions will run over Wine.
As far as alternatives go, OnlyOffice has the best reputation for file compatibility. I use LibreOffice and am very happy with it.
Avoid OpenOffice. It is really just an ancient version of LibreOffice.
Me too. I have had more problems with the “stable” ones too I often break things trying to work around missing packages.
Use what you like. In answer to your question though, my experience has been that Arch is super stable. I have had fewer problems with it than maybe any other distro before.
I update very frequently, multiple times per week. There is almost always something to update. Most of the time it is just before I wrap up. Sometimes it is while I am reading something. Often, it is just as I sit down ( if I have the time, I sometimes look into new features that have arrived ). According to Lemmy, this behaviour should lead to my system being down all the time and me getting nothing done. My system has been rock solid and productive.
Now it may sound like a lot of admin but it is a mindless one line command to update and it just works. For me, it is fast, unobtrusive, and reliable. I for sure spent more time looking for missing packages on other distros. I spent a lot of time finding ways to run newer versions on other distros. I spent a lot more time dealing with problems caused by multiples application sources on other distros. Like the reading example, I mostly update while I do other things so it is not actually taking any time.
I pretty much never see the need to use Flatpak on Arch for example. I for sure am not doing anything like PPAs. I do use the AUR heavily.
IMHO, Linux works best when everything is managed by the package manager. While I have never used Nix, Arch is the only system that has made that possible for me.
Well, I should be honest on this last point. I have added the CacheyOS repos to one system ( it is actually EndeavourOS but essentially Arch ). From those repos I run a binary pre-release of the new System76 COSMIC desktop. The same package is available in the AUR but would build from source there so the CacheyOS repo is just a convenience. Obviously this system is just recreational so I am taking more risk with the packages I am using. Still, other than the incomplete status of COSMIC, this system has also been rock solid. It is in my living room ( as opposed to office ) and so I use it quite a lot every day.
There is one thing that bugs me about Arch systems. If you do not update for a while, you will get two problems.
1 - you will likely get multiple packages which have been replaced or duplicated ( multiple sources for NodeJS as an example ) and you will be asked for each one which you want to use. The system will be fine but it is a bit annoying if there are a bunch at once.
2 - New GPG keys may have been added and you may have a chicken and egg problem where you cannot move ahead without installing the new keyring but do not have the right certs to do that. You can resolve this quickly but it sucks the first time it happens and you will be Googling. It is my number one complaint about Arch.
I have only run into the second problem above for systems that I have not updated in months but I have run into it so, again, I want to be honest. That said, I have had Arch systems that laid dormant for years which I was able bring right up to date. I had a laptop that was powered off for three years. I had to refresh the keyring and the update was gigs in size but it was completely up-to-date and solid as a rock at the end of it ( same update command that I use every day - “yay -Syu” ).
Ok, one other issue…
I use the AUR extensively including to install proprietary software like IntelliJ, Rider, Microsoft Edge, Postman, and BurpSuite. As a result, occasionally I get whacked with a massive update. I did not update my main system for two weeks and got hit with a 14 Gb update! That can be mitigated though.
Mostly I update with yay or paru which includes everything from the AUR. When hit with a big update, you can use pacman instead which updates just the stuff in the core repos ( not the AUR ). So you can put all the AUR stuff off until a better time. Nothing in the core repos is that big.
With yay, you can also select which individual packages to update. So, you can skip stuff like IDEA ( about 5 gigs on its own I think ) or something that is going to take ages to compile from source.
I prefer package management from the command-line. There is pacseek for a nice TUI. If you really want a GUI, both pamac-gtk3 and octopi are in the AUR.
While I have some pure Arch systems, I mostly use EndeavourOS these days. It is faster to install and I like the defaults, including that it installs yay by default ( providing out-of-the-box access to the AUR ). EOS used to default to Xfce. It uses KDE 6 now. The online installer gives you quite a few desktops to choose from. I do not thin that Hyprland is one of them but it can be installed easily after.
Anyway, I can only speak from my own experience but Arch does not break on me and I push it pretty hard. I keep saying I want to try something like Debian as the base with Arch in a Distrobox so I still get access to all the packages. I just have not bothered yet because Arch ( or EOS ) works so well for me.
I just installed EOS a couple of minutes ago and realized what you are saying.
So, during install, you did not click on the box that says “firewall” ( selected by default ) and you did not click on the box that says “Printing support” ( not selected by default ). To you, that means that EOS does not know who it is targeting?
These seem like sensible defaults. Regular users should use a firewall. Many systems will not connect to a printer.
Clicking clearly presented checkboxes ( or leaving them as default ) at the point the installer asks you to seems pretty friendly. It is certainly a lot more friendly than having to know what pacman -S is and whatever the hell CUPS is ( I know what it is but “printing” seems a bit more newb friendly ).
Not setting stuff up at install time and then complaining that it is not installed the way you want seems….”odd”. Also, the SAMBA packages for EOS come from the Arch repos. The experience adding packages post install is literally identical between the two distros.
This is not a very compelling indictment of EOS.
My favourite thing about Arch is pretty much always finding up-to-date versions of the software I am looking for in either the repos or the AUR. This includes commercial stuff like Rider, Postman, and Burp Suite.
It is also great to always have an up-to-date kernel. I started using bcachefs just days after support was added to the kernel ( as an example ).
Do you always find what you want in the Debian repos? What do you do when you don’t?
I agree that Arch ( well Arch and EOS ) is the best rolling distro but I am not sure I am willing say this not liking it is a skill issue.
Not liking things is a preference. People are allowed to disagree. They are just not allowed to misrepresent the facts.
This is not a comment on you as it is a reasonable question but I have wasted too much time arguing with Manjaro fans and I do not want to go down that road again.
To answer the question partially, there were two classes of problem:
1 - governance - this includes the stuff like not renewing certs and not testing core packages. My system became unbootable more than once and one of those times I was not knowledgeable enough to recover and ended up reinstalling ( mostly a skill issue in retrospect ).
2 - package delays - I found more than once that the delay in releasing packages caused problems with the AUR. First, it sometimes meant I could not use AUR stuff because of missing dependencies ( like when that was the only place you could get dotnet - now in extras ). That was frustrating but not destructive. Worse, delays sometimes caused AUR dependencies to get installed instead of ones from extras or community ( because they were not there yet ). This happened with newish software or with packages that had been renamed or refactored. Once the AUR packages had been installed, they would sometimes stay even after the packages appeared in Manjaro repos. Then sometimes the AUR packages would disappear ( be abandoned as they had been moved into the core repos ) and I would end up with packages that would not update because of dependencies or where I would end up using source packages that took forever to build ( because git versions were the only ones available ). I thought all this was just the nature of the AUR until I switched to Arch it stopped happening. I have installed Manjaro since and had it happen again. I do use the AUR heavily.
Sorry, I ended up saying more than I wanted to. I wanted to answer your question but I do not want to argue. Honestly, if Manjaro works for you, I am very happy. If you think I am wrong, that is ok. I wish you luck.
I have been pretty happy with Dracut and have moved a few other systems to it. I used the instructions in the Arch wiki for how to do that of course. Dracut ( even in EOS ) comes from the Arch repos. Takes a couple minutes.
EOS only moved to Dracut recently so only my newest system would be using it ( rolling updates do not change that kind of thing ). I have all my systems using it now though, including “real” Arch.
I am less enthusiastic about systemd-boot though it does seem faster. It is just part of my bias against systemd.
Regardless, I could certainly move any of my systems to whatever I want. Installing EOS and then migrating away from Dracut would be faster than installing Arch to begin with. Of course, just starting with EOS Galileo ( before the move to Dracut ) works just as well. A simple pacman -Syu brings you to the same place as a newer install.
Honestly, uninstalling eos-hooks from EOS to get Arch is faster than installing yay in Arch to get the AUR ( yay and paru are both in EOS by default ).
Arch uses systemd. Do you mean going back to GRUB from systemd-boot?
You do not have to switch mirrors. EOS uses the Arch repos.
If you uninstall eos-hooks, it will even start reporting as Arch.
First of all, thank you for the reply and I find your position completely reasonable. We agree that EOS is essentially an opinionated Arch install.
That said, the goals of EOS seem antithetical to the Arch project and many of its fans. I think it was elsewhere in this thread that somebody argued that somehow EOS would confuse new users because of mild deviations from the default like dracut or systemd-boot. Those are directly from the Arch repos and yet Arch users still brand them as “the other”. I do not see how EOS could have been done under the Arch umbrella and the decision enforce the separation with pure Arch is driven by the Arch desire to define Arch by a very narrow standard of purity.
I am very happy that EOS uses the vanilla Arch repos and I am very happy that they have limited their ambition in terms of what to change.
That is not what he said. First, he means that the distro is KDE-forward and using that desktop environment by default. Second, he said that KDE was “non-vanilla”. Third, he suggested that the distro has extended KDE with its own utilities ( a more focussed version of the second point ).
To illustrate the difference, Ubuntu is a “bigger distro” but not a KDE one whereas Kubuntu is a KDE distro.
Red Hat does not package KDE ( which I assume means Rocky and Alma do not either ). You have to use a third-party repository to get it. Chimera Linux does not have KDE. I am sure there are others although it is not something I have paid attention to.