I hope it works for you forever. I am not going to get in an argument with the other Manjaro users here that will come to argue with you.
Just keep in mind that most of the people warning you away from Manjaro have a story that basically sums up as “I used to love Manjaro until, one day, it totally broke on me. Now I won’t touch it.” Sadly, this includes me. Will you join us one day? I hope not.
You are trolling us.
If you want stable, the answer is not Manjaro. If you do not have time for debugging, the answer is for sure not Manjaro.
I am ok with that. If you would consider keeping the baby after ditching the bath water, maybe give EndeavourOS a try.
Manjaro - used to love it. Now the only distro I actively advise against
Garuda - just too much ( I prefer Arch / EndeavourOS )
Elementary - wanted to love it - just too limited
Gentoo - realized I just don’t want to build everything
RHEL Workstation - everything too old
Bhodi - honestly do not remember - long ago
Ubuntu - ok, let’s expand…
These days, I dislike Snaps. Ubuntu just never hit the sweet spot for me though. I was already an experienced Linux user when it appeared and preferred RPM based distros at the tome. Ubuntu always seemed slow and fragile to me. Setting things up, like Apache with Mono back in the day, was “different” on Ubuntu and that annoyed me. For most of its history, it is what I would recommend to new users but I just never liked it myself.
Debian Stable - ok, let’s expand
I really like Debian. It was also a little “alien” when I was using Fedora / Mandrake and the like but it never bothered me like Ubuntu. I ran RHEL / Centos as servers so I did not need Debian stability. As a desktop, Debian packages were always just a little too old ( especially for dev ). The lack of non-free firmware made it a pain.
These days though, Debian has been growing on me. The move to include non-free firmware has made it much more practical. With Flatpaks and Distrobox, aging packages is much less of a problem too. I could see myself using Debian. I am strongly considering moving to VanillaOS ( immutable Debian ).
I basically do not run any RHEL servers anymore. At home, I have a fair bit running Debian already ( Proxmox, PiHole, PiVPN, and a Minecraft server ).
EndeavourOS is my primary desktop these days ( and I love it ) but it is mostly for the AUR. A Debian base with an Arch Distrobox might be perfect. Void seems quite nice as well.
I have been an Open Source advocate forever ( and used to say Free Software and FLOSS ). I have used Linux daily since the 0.99 kernels and I even installed 386BSD back in the day. Despite that, the biggest “not for me” distros right now are anything too closely associated with the politics of the GNU project. It has almost made me want to leave Linux and I have considered moving to FreeBSD. I would love to use Haiku. OCI containers and the huge software ecosystem keep me on Linux though.
The distribution that intrigues me the most right now is Chimera Linux. I run it with an Arch distrobox and it may become my daily driver. The pragmatism of projects like SerenityOS really attracts me. Who knows it may be what finally pulls me away after 30+ years of Linux.
It depends on what “can be used” means. I really like C# and it “can be used” for that full stack C# for example can write out native machine code, can manually and precisely lay out memory, and can directly link to assembly language routines. You can write an OS in C#. Even as a fan though, I would certainly argue that it is the wrong tool for that job.
In the same vein, while I know C++ “can” be used for web dev, I would argue that anybody that tries to do so for any significant project is insane.
I am not sure I would use Rust for “everything” but I do think the claim that Rust is one of the first languages where it is reasonable or practical to choose it for any of these uses is valid. Rust code can be very high level and often does not much different than a scripting language. At the same time, it can go as low-level as you want. This article is about an OS in Rust ( and there are few ). Web dev in Rust is totally reasonable and there are a few popular frameworks available. Rust has one of the best WASM stories around.
That is definitely a “feeling”.
I realize that even $2 systems are running full Linux distros these days but Python does not map to what I think of as “embedded”. If you have a full Python interpreter, it is already a pretty rich environment.
That said, this is what computing is starting to look like. There is less and less “bare metal”. I work with people that claim to be “firmware” engineers and then, when you look, you find out they have a full Ubuntu distro running and they may as well be running on a laptop.
Rust has characteristics that basically represent a value proposition for the user. An OS that can be higher performance, better at concurrency, more robust, and more secure sounds pretty good to me. They could make those claims and I could not believe them or they could tell me it is written in Rust and I would hope for all of them.
Of course, the language is not a guarantee of anything but it does tell you something about the tailwind that this project will have.
Python implies a bunch of things as well. None of those things make it sound great for an OS and I would assume the worst if an OS project told me they were using Python ( for the core ).
Personally, I am very glad that they tell me the project is written in Rust. I am sorry it bothers you.
It sounds like a elective complaint about Rust though as most OS projects tell you the language up front including C and C++. C++ seems especially eager to announce itself as a superior choice to C. I have not done much research but can tell you what language even most commercial operating systems are written in as they are usually pretty open or even vocal about it. Sometimes they are proud of what the did not pick ( see Linus opinions of C++ for example ). Haiku and SerenityOS, in contrast, brag about C++ and have even made YouTube videos about it.
It is not just OS projects either. I mean, why does GitHub display the language used as a standard project feature after all?
“a decade after support had ended” for Windows XP is not until April next year.
I guess I should hold off on upstaging my systems. There are going to be a lot of deals.
You can do this, and I have, but there can be issues during the switch if you are not careful.
The machine I use as my Jellyfin server used to be Manjaro and is now vanilla Arch ( having migrated it from Manjaro to Arch in place ). It still has a few quirks though. The quirks do not matter for what I use it for ( it is rock solid for Jellyfin ) but anytime I have to reboot or use the desktop, I am reminded. Nothing too serious and nothing I could not fix with a little time of course. That machine is purely functional though and I do not want to spend any time on it. Since my video is all on a second drive, I will probably nuke it and do a fresh EndeavourOS install one of these days. It would be much faster to re-install Jellyfin than to fix all the little warts. The other Manjaro systems I had were replaced with fresh EndeavourOS installs.
I am trying to think of how to respond to this without being a jerk.
Let me skip to the end. Until very recently, I thought of Manjaro users as innocents that just did not understand the risk. Like islanders living next to a volcano that had never erupted in their lifetime.
I still view most Manjaro users that way. Manjaro defenders though I now think of as dog owners whose animals have bitten multiple times. When told, the owner insists that “my dog would never do that” or “if it did, you must have done something wrong”. I am done arguing with those people. All I can do is warn others that this dog has bitten several of us and you may not want to enter that yard. If you do, who knows, the dog may be friendly. Or not. Again, all I can tell you is that many of us have scars. Use that information as you will.
Most “Manjaro detractors” I have encountered have years of experience with both Manjaro and other Arch distros. Their tales come from experience. When they share their cautionary tales, there are often Manjaro defenders whose best defence is just to deny that what the “detractors” are saying ( about their own experience ) is real.
My core question for the defenders would be, if it is our fault, why do we only encounter the problems on Manjaro?
Let’s go through the bullets above one by one:
I got in a lengthy back and forth with a Manjaro fan the other day where I repeatedly related the ways that Manjaro used to break on me and how that does not happen for me on vanilla Arch or EndeavourOS. They just kept coming back telling me that it could not have happened and, if I thought it could, that I did not understand how the AUR works. It was insane. Basically, this guy could not follow what I was saying to him. His response to his inability to understand the scenario that I was describing was to insult my intelligence and expertise.
Look loser. I don’t care if you believe me that your dog bites. I will continue to warn people and they can decide if they want to risk it or not.