this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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I agree except for Manjaro. EndeavourOS is a better Arch derivative I think. There are quite a few reasons but the one that bugs me the most is I’ve had things break because they hold back packages from upstream.
I agree, also the holding back of packages just for the sake of waiting probably doesn't make it more stable, despite what the devs say; also having 300+ packages updated at the same time might make it worse for troubleshooting in case something goes wrong.
As someone who actually started with Manjaro back in 2020 before moving to EndeavourOS after 9 months, I would say that there is indeed a steeper learning curve as you don't get for example a GUI package manager (Pamac is awful and even as a newbie I used it for maybe three days before I started to use the CLI, but a Linux beginner might want one) and the fact it is a true rolling release means you need to do some more research and maintenance, so I wouldn't call Endeavour a distro for absolute beginners, unless one is determined to learn a lot about how a computer works... but again one shouldn't probably use a rolling release then; Manjaro just tricks you to believe it is easier, but it probably is only if you don't use the AUR.
Maybe Garuda is more beginner friendly than EndeavourOS while avoiding most of the problems Manjaro has? Although I've never used it as I don't see any advantage over Endeavour, and I'm not a fan of excessive out of the box theming and Chaotic AUR enabled as default...
Garuda has a Lite edition that doesn't include any of the theming, just vanilla KDE Plasma. It's been my daily driver for a year or two now, I really like it. What sets it apart are the GUI tools for system maintenance and tweaking, in which it'd be easy to mess things up, but they make doing common changes and adjustments easy. I don't know if that makes it good or bad for beginners, I guess it depends on the person.
now that arch has an actual install script, i'm not sure if there's much reason to use an arch derivative instead of just using arch
A beginner wouldn't want to use an install script. Unless it's changed since i used it a few months ago it's much less user friendly than a gui installer like the one ubuntu has
I disagree with both since it depends on how the user wishes to use the OS.
With Manjaro the package delay isn't bad if you do not intend to use AUR. Out of the box its user friendly and has a GUI for everything I needed to configure when I was using it.
But if you need software only on AUR, which is a lot. Then yeah Manjaro is bad with dependencies and updates (broked my install because of it)
Meanwhile EvdeavourOS is too reliant on the terminal for me to call it beginner friendly. If it had the same level of GUIs for configurations and a Graphical Package installer available as an optional install then I'd give it another shot.
For me a beginner is someone who knows there way around a computer (won't confuse a web broswer with a OS), but isn't familiar with a terminal or command line. So the less an distro relies on the terminal for OS functionality (installing software, updating the OS, etc.) The more beginner friendly it is.
"Sigh*. I've been using Manjaro for two years now and I haven't had problems. Everything always worked smoothly.