I will make my case clear of what I meant earlier:

Me:

• Doesn't understand by everything that has already been mentioned under this post why one is considering Manjaro.
• But, I am glad to hear that it has been working lovely for some people.
• Doesn't accuse those who've enjoyed using Manjaro for lying, being not genuine or misrepresenting reality.

You:

• Argue why Manjaro should be considered.
• Mention how your experiences don't quite align to the ones others are experiencing.
• Your reception to concerns:

That page is not legit criticism, it’s a bunch of nonsense. It misrepresents what Manjaro does, outright lying in some cases, it fails to understand how package updates and AUR work, it glosses over the fact that Manjaro helped the AUR infrastructure. It’s prejudiced information made out specifically to make it look bad.

There is not one pertinent criticism in there. It’s all meaningless drivel presented as legit concerns.

I suppose I don't need to spell it out for ya. How about, instead of taking the subject to other places, you address the following elephant in the room:

All of that is cool and all, but trust is what it’s all about.

• Do you aknowledge that trust is the end all be all for considering a distro?
• Do you outright deny every single thing mentioned in the infamous Manjarno?
• If so, are you aware of any place where (with facts) a rebuttal (or something similar) can be found?
• If not, could you write up one yourself? So that we may benefit from that as a community.

I like for the truth to prevail. And for injustice to be stopped. If Manjaro is actually accused of crimes they've not committed and if (therefore) misinformation is spread, then I'd desire that the world is ridden of that fake news.

Windows ->

Fedora Kinoite: A relatively mature atomic/immutable distro combined with excellent security standards and that resembles Windows' workflow. Unfortunately, it broke almost immediately. Though, to be fair, it was a known issue with the ISO back then. As a newb, however, I couldn't be bothered with it. ->

Fedora Silverblue: Well..., I didn't have much of a choice 😜. Or I had to forego Fedora Atomic altogether. However, I actually really enjoyed GNOME's workflow. I used this as my main system for about year. Until I found a related project... ->

Arch: The memes got me 😅. In all honesty, though, it was mostly curiosity. Still, I didn't intend to throw away my working Silverblue installation for the sake of quenching my thirst for experiencing Arch. So, as dual boot, I tried to install it. This was pre archinstall, so it took a couple of tries before I booted into GNOME. However, I guess I did mess up something as I don't recall ever booting back into that system 😅. So, what if I want Arch, but don't want to spend more time with the installation... ->

EndeavourOS: Yup. I actually enjoyed it. I also took the opportunity to install another DE; KDE. Tried out the hardened kernel. Was able to make Davinci Resolve work, which just caused a lot of trouble on Silverblue. Access to AUR. It was cool, really. And, for some time, I was actually pondering to dismiss Silverblue altogether in favor of EndeavourOS. But, I started to miss the 'stability' that I was used to from Silverblue. Though, I don't exactly recall if it was the fault of being based on Arch, or rather linked/attributed to KDE instead. Regardless, I noticed that (over time) I spend more and more time on Silverblue. At some point, booting into EndeavourOS didn't work any more. It had broken. I did engage in some troubleshooting efforts, but to no avail... ->

Zorin OS lite: On backup laptop; the poor thing couldn't run Windows but (even today) it's still kicking on Linux ->

Nobara: So, I guess I did miss some of the functionality provided by EndeavourOS; running Davinci Resolve being the primary one. But, I didn't want to pass out of the opportunity to try something else. Back then, Nobara was released relatively recently and was received very positively by the community. And had even a special guide/tutorial to make Davinci Resolve work on AMD devices. Nobara was cool. But, it didn't feel very special. I actually enjoyed EndeavourOS a lot more. It was mostly utilized for Davinci Resolve and for gaming if Silverblue wasn't fit for the job (for whatever reason). Unfortunately, even this one broke at some point 😅. I could still boot into it. But, the system just didn't do what it's supposed to do. I tried troubleshooting. But, once again, to no avail. ->

uBlue; Silverblue image: Through all that was previously mentioned, I had stability in Fedora Silverblue. It was reliable. I could trust it. Well..., most of the time 😅. Decisions related to mesa or video acceleration in browsers definitely felt more like misses rather than hits. I can't blame Fedora as they're legally restricted. But, shouldn't we be able to do better? Enter uBlue. It seemed like some black magic shenanigans. The earlier issues would have never occurred (nor did they occur) on uBlue. This 'managed' aspect of uBlue was clearly, at least for me, the reason to consider it over regular Silverblue. And so, I parted with regular Silverblue and started using the Silverblue image provided by uBlue. Not long after, I even had my own (hardened) custom image. But, eventually (to be more precise; about half a year after switching to uBlue), keeping up with hardening took up too much effort for me to bear. But, thankfully, I had already found the perfect solution... ->

secureblue (based on the Silverblue image): This was Silverblue hardened by someone that actually knows their shit. And, thankfully, I didn't have to maintain this myself. I used this for a couple of months until the next best thing... ->

secureblue (based on the Bluefin image): Currently on this for I think half a year now. It has just been a lovely experience through and through. Everything I could have asked is provided.

I'm glad to hear that it has been working out for ya.

But, you see, I don't dismiss the fact that you and others like you are still using and enjoying Manjaro. In fact, as I just stated already, I'm happy for y'all. However, why do you dismiss/belie/behave like an ostrich that burry their head in the sand when so many others voice their concerns?

Thank you for contributing so that people don't misunderstand!

I didnt know they have testing images, but makesbsense in their flagship variants.

You can verify it yourself from here.

Though, with all that's mentioned above; do you still think Pop!_OS is better than Bazzite for Nvidia?

I think we're misunderstanding eachother. So perhaps consider to outline if you agree with the following:

• uBlue has some systems in place that enable it to detect some breakages.
• uBlue's pipeline is such to not ship you the detected breakages.
• After a method has been found to fix a breakage (or other issues), uBlue's maintainers implement these fixes and then, the very next update, the users will receive an image that contains both the updated package and the fixes required for it to not cause problems. Heck, the user didn't know anything was up in the first place. They didn't notice a thing*.
• uBlue's issue/problem detect systems are not absolute; things might slip through.
• However, Nvidia drivers will not cause breakage that will make you shiver in fear.
• uBlue does not fix it on your device. They fix the image and that fixed image will deliver you the fix built-in; so manual intervention are a thing of the past (except for edge cases).
• Their pipeline does not require nor does it detect (through telemetry or whatsoever) the breakage on the device of the user. Heck, as implied earlier, most breakages are detected, prevented from shipping broken, fixed, ship the fixed one before any end user is disturbed by it.
• uBlue is not a Stable system (i.e. it does not freeze packages (apart from security updates) until the next major release). So yes, you receive updates all the time.
• Not being tied to legal restrictions is cool. However, a lot of derivatives do this. So this can't be its unique selling point.
• uBlue is not entirely free. Its maintainers do pay money for providing some of their services (as has been mentioned by Jorge).
• Some of their images do have testing branch; even Bazzite has.

Hahaha. Okay, yeah you laid it out brilliantly. Thank you for that! I can't but agree with you then. I hope some Fedora employee sees this @[email protected]. Apologies for the ping*.

From the FAQ of Qubes OS (i.e. most secure desktop OS for general use):

"Why does Qubes use Xen instead of KVM or some other hypervisor?"

"In short: we believe the Xen architecture allows for the creation of more secure systems (i.e. with a much smaller TCB, which translates to a smaller attack surface). We discuss this in much greater depth in our Architecture Specification document."

I wanted to know from OP why they're considering Manjaro.

Because it’s an excellent distribution which is also in the top of the Steam Survey (alongside Arch, Ubuntu, Mint and PopOS) (and Flatpak, and Steam Deck’s SteamOS).

I'd argue it's to Arch what Ubuntu is to Debian. Do with that whatever you will.

Btw, ProtonDB's numbers show that Manjaro is losing lots of ground over the years. I won't deny that the negativity around it plays a significant role in this. However, to me, if it's already installed on your device, your experience with it is simply more important than whatever's said about it. Therefore, I'd argue that Manjaro's ever decreasing market share has to be linked to users being ever so upset of its vision, direction and mishaps.

It’s a rolling distro but mitigates the risks of bleeding edge with a curated stable branch, offers LTS kernels going back to 4.19 but you can choose LTS or newer versions or RT patches, it does not force you to switch kernel version if you don’t want to, has visual management tools for packages, kernel management and driver installation, does a great job installing drivers during install, comes with extra safety features (update rollback built-in if you use BTRFS for root), Steam works great, you can use AUR and Flatpak etc.

All of that is cool and all, but trust is what it's all about. And honestly, I think someone should get a diagnose for Stockholm syndrome if they're still putting up with Manjaro after all it has done.

Great observation on Ubuntu and drawing parallels to Red Hat.

Actually I’m going to accuse Fedora of doing this too. You kind of have to know “Fedora WorkStation” is the Gnome version which is considered the default, “Spins” are the versions with other DEs, and “Silverblue” is the immutable file system version.

I'm mixed on this. It's a fact that Fedora Workstation receives the most love from Fedora. And while it's undeniable that they also put a lot of effort into all DEs that they support, none come as polished as WorkStation. One might argue that the way different installations are found on Linux Mint's website isn't that different to what Fedora does on theirs.

If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesn’t that make arch more user friendly?

Actually my point was that point release distro seemingly implode at some point 😅. But, I'll assume that you meant point release here. Then, I'd argue, if you really dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better at that. But we don't measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric. That doesn't make sense.

I'll quote the main body in which my argument against Arch being user friendly has been laid out. I hope you'll respond this time:

I do wonder what your definition of user friendly is. Cuz I can’t fathom how you can think that a distro that subscribes to what’s quoted below can (by any stretch of the imagination) be considered user friendly.

“Note: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update.”

Which simple means that you have to check if you can update before you actually perform an update. That’s just wild.

And you know what’s most curious about this, we’ve actually solved (within Linux) issues related to updating your system. You read that correct, it’s a solved problem. And I hope that you’ll benefit from these advancements even if you continue to use Arch.

Btw, please don’t come to me with packages that automatically pop up in terminal to inform you about manual intervention. On my system, updates occur automatically in the background and with some black magic shenanigans (or just great engineering) it ‘fixes’ itself without requiring any manual intervention from me. That pop-up message in terminal can’t compete with that.

it’s package manager is just better than apt

Earlier you called it more robust. I laid out the fault in your logic. But you didn't care to react to it... Regardless, if it's only speed that makes you think that, then please just say so.

But there is no automatic repair voodoo anywhere, on any distro. That driver is proprietary, only NVIDIA can fix it.

Consider to revisit this, cuz this is basically (at least for me) most of uBlue's schtick:

"No more building drivers on your laptop, dealing with signing, akmods, third party repo conflicts, or any of that. We've fully automated it so that if there's an issue, we fix it in GitHub, for everyone."

And the way it's setup, is so that you don't get the broken update ever on your device in the first place.

So, contrary to what you might expect, this black magic (or just excellent engineering) somehow does exist.

The answer found here should give my general thoughts.

But, with embedded dev, I'd argue that both Aurora and Bluefin (with their respective DX: (i.e. development friendly) variants) should make more sense.