This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Friends don't let friends use Manjaro
Use EndeavourOS or another Arch derivative instead.
I'm usually a defender of opt-out telemetry in Linux, what with it usually being trivial to untick in the installer, the telemetry not being invasive, the telemetry being private and not being able to identify people, it being used to actually benefit Linux rather than make money, and because opt-in telemetry is useless (as repeatedly stated by multiple Linux projects that I trust, such as KDE and Gnome)...
That said, holy shit this telemetry collects stuff it really should not be collecting. This is not what Linux telemetry should be. Doubly so from a distro with a troubled past in terms of management and security. This is a red flag.
Manjaro manages to do just about everything wrong for one reason or another. They're trying to be the Canonical of the Arch ecosystem and they're not even close to competent enough to pull it off.
I'm sure they'll find some way to DDOS something with their own telemetry sooner or later.
Yeah, I don't understand why people use it, it's just more buggy Arch. If you really don't want to deal with the installer, use an installer like Endeavor OS.
Or if you think Arch is unstable, use a different distro, because Manjaro is worse. I like openSUSE Tumbleweed (also rolling, but much more reliable), and there are tons of other great distros (Fedora/Garuda, Debian/Mint, etc). Use pretty much anything but Manjaro...
For gaming rigs, check out Garuda, imo a pretty nice Arch distro without telemetry and easy installation.
Oh, you can vote whether it should be opt-in or opt-out.
Oh, voting requires "Trust level 1".
Anyway, I may stop donating to Manjaro due to this. Now I just go with Arch anyway. archinstall even makes it quick to setup a VM.
I had a forum account from long ago that I barely use and even I was able to vote ... so if you had an account there, give it a try and vote!
The only thing archinstall script misses for me is option for flatpak setup from the get go
Oh boy looks like my weekend will be spend learning and trying to install Arch without a graphical installer. To be fair Manjaro on my laptop was my first try at Arch. I never thought how much I will come to like AUR.
EndevaourOS is already on my gaming rig so plain Arch for my laptop seems like a good challenge. Farewell Manjaro, I learned a lot
the archinstall script is officially supported and very straightforward. like, almost Calamares-but-in-TUI straightforward.
Going to second other comments. Even without archinstall. It feels like it will be harder than it is. Umm, just save yourself a bit of time and configure the network and install a console editor (nano/vim whatever) while in the chroot (if going full manual). It was a minor pain to work around that for me.
There are pages discussing how to do everything (helps to have a laptop with browser, or a phone to look them up). At the end, you generally know exactly what you installed (OK no-one watches all the dependencies), and I've found any borks that happen easy to fix because I know what I installed.
It's not that hard, just read the install guides and instructions. My first Arch install was like 8y ago and I expected it to be difficult - it wasn't.
Meanwhile my first Gentoo system... I was expecting to be not so bad.... Holy f I was wrong
After you figure out how to properly partition your disk, you learn how the entire setup is actually quite simple Basically, Mount partitions, pacstrap to install the base system, generate fstab, chroot in, create a unprivileged user and add it to sudo, setup grub, configure internet, exit chroot and unmount, reboot into the newly installed system, configure X11/Wayland to your liking
Installing Arch is a lot easier than fixing a bad Manjaro update. I get that it's intimidating, but it's really quite easy if you can follow instructions, but budget a couple hours your first time because you'll probably second-guess everything. The second time should be more like 30 min.
'Till you figure out that, on Arch, if you missed/broke anything, you can boot into the Arch USB, mount your root into /mnt, and arch-chroot in to fix whatever is broken
Yup, a live image works in a pinch. IMO, just use BTRFS on root and install something like snapper to handle snapshots and you shouldn't need the live USB (unless you bork your bootloader somehow).
I highly recommend BTRFS as your root filesystem, and then configure snapshots. This way if an update goes sideways (pretty rare), you can roll back and wait for fixes.
I haven't used Arch for a few years, but my openSUSE Tumbleweed install came with it by default, and it has saved me a few times in the 7 or so years I've used it. Maybe the new instructions include that, idk, but you'll be glad you have it.
Opt out telemetry is annoying. There's no guarantee it doesn't send before I've had a chance to disable.
If I were using Manjaro right now, at the first opportunity, I would be switching to something else. Too much enshitification happening everywhere, and people need to start voting with their "wallets" to stop these greedy fucks.
Finally time to update manjarno.snorlax.sh again -_-
I was just getting used to using Manjaro for my dev machines due to rolling release. Gotta find new flavor now.
OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Reliable and up to date.
Haven't touched suse ecosystem since they were suse. Now I just feel comfortable with Debian or arch.
Great...Right now, when I was thinking about finally installing Manjaro (I saw its for noobs, pretty well designed, i'm tired of "power users" distros). What else then? I used EOS, it was buggy sometimes errors etc., I use cachyOS and all the time errors and problems, but i just don't care anymore, Ubuntu is corporate's shit, maybe Mint or Fedora? Actually, I kinda liked flatpak recently, maybe I could live without AUR he? But on the other hand I need this rolling release cycle, thats why I hoped Manjaro is such "stable arch", I'm nvidia user...
EndeavorOS is what you want, fits the same niche but without being fucking Manjaro. :-)
What is your preferred desktop environment from below?
Based on your choice I can recommend you a one.
Also do you prefer stability or getting the latest updates?
KDE only, I would prefer stability (as I'm tired of things breaking up), but I need latest updates (thats why i liked flatpak, cuz it partially replaces need of AUR).
Let me warn you first, your GPU might cause some issues with the distro.
Based on all the info you told me about the distro you want, I would recommend Opensuse Tumbleweed.
After installing you would just need to install Nvidia drivers and the codecs and you will be ready to go.
If you plan to use flatpacks for your media playing software and browser then you won't need codecs as it's included in the flatpacks.
Just don't forget to configure auto update and when you start installing at the final screen before clicking install make sure that ssh is disabled and selinux is enabled for extra security.
Extra notes:
The default browser is firefox, but it can be replaced with any other browser.
If you want a working office suite and you don't have high requirements, you can choose between Libre Office, Free office[Prop] or WPS office [Prop].
I hope you enjoy your time on linux.
I have to admit its interesting pick, I will try that out first in VM, thanks for suggestion :)
since a third of manjaro is coming form austria, i apologize ⅓ times for its existence
