Linux

I used to use it on my laptop and found it to be stable and solid. I never encountered any of the theoretical issues people brandish about. The GUI app store was really good (pamac) and frankly if it was included with EndeavourOS it would be perfect and I could recommend EOS to anyone; without the GUI app store EOS really are intentionally limiting how popular they could be. The default wallpapers were a little bland.

I switched to endeavour as when wanting to move away from Ubuntu on my desktop Manjaro didn't like my multi monitor setup (and nor did anything else I tried other than EndeavourOS and Ubuntu). If that had worked I might still be using it now.

I don't understand the hate. I have been using Manjaro as my sole OS on two machines (a Thinkpad with XFCE, a Surface with Gnome) for several years, and have never had any major problem. Everything just works. The same could be said of Mint (which I used to be on before Manjaro), but I enjoy having faster updates on Manjaro. So I guess, from experience, I am very happy with it.

Flawless on my thinkpad T480, occasionaly some issues on my gaming PC usually nvidia drivers post update but not as much lately

I had more trouble in a few month of Manjaro on a secondary system than I had with Arch in over 15 years. The amount of conflicts I had to resolve during package updates was crazy. If I now want to set up a new system, I use EndeavorOS as a base. Quick install procedure but I end up with something very close to Arch.

I like it a lot. It gives you the arch experience without the hassle of installing it.

I've distro-hopped quite a bit. I used Manjaro for about 4-5 months. I really liked it actually. I did end up having some problems after an update, and even with some community help, I wasn't able to fix it. After that, I decided to try Arch and ended up loving and using it for the past 5 or so years.

If you're new to Linux and insist on using an Arch based distro, Manjaro is probably a good choice for you, but if you have used Linux for a while and are comfortable with system configuration, I really couldn't recommend Arch enough.

Both communities are very well established and responsive, but Arch is on its own level. The Arch wiki is really an amazing thing, and aside from some gatekeepers, the majority of the Arch community is happy to help.

I know you said that you don't want to be doing "crazy power user stuff" all the time, but really once you get everything set up the way you like it (it took me maybe 2-3 hours after installation), you can basically leave configuration and use it just like Manjaro and have -- in my experience -- a more stable system.

Up to you, but you seem like you might be comfortable in Linux already, so I'd recommend just going for Arch.

I've used Manjaro it went and died on me so now I just run arch

Manjaro is bullshit

It's mostly fine but has had enough issues over the years I stopped using it for my "I want arch but I'm lazy" distro. Arch itself is really not hard to install these days but if you find it too intimidating endeavor is basically just arch anyway but with an installer.

I used Manjaro on raspberry pi and it worked well however i personally havent used Manjsro in years i still wouldnt use it though because its arch and i prefer simpler distros when i first started using Linux it was Linux Mint, then Kubuntu, then Zorin, then Fedora and now OpenSuSe Tumbleweed im happy with that distro and dont want to change it

Fedora is nice, not based on Ubuntu, and it mostly "just works" out of the box. The only obnoxious part is having to manually install codecs to play videos.

Manjaro is training wheels except when it's time to take them off you realize they're super-glued in place

Its ok, but the Arch repos are very limited limited and I can't recommend using AUR much.

Better try Fedora.

it would be better as an arch installer and a couple of extra packages - not completely different repos

I've been using Manjaro (XFCE edition) as my daily driver, both on a laptop and a desktop system for more than 6 years now. I've tried many others beforehand: Ubuntu and its variations, Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed, ...

But Manjaro was what made me stop hopping around. While it's true that it has some pitfalls (e.g. cert issues, AUR incompatibility at times), to this day it's working well enough for me that I don't feel like switching away.

I'm not just browsing web on it either. Software engineering, music production, image and video processing, etc.

Then again, I don't consider myself a beginner at this point and can troubleshoot a fair amount of issues now that I simply couldn't when I started using Linux more than a decade ago.

I also try to:

• not overdo the amount of AUR stuff I use
• read the official forum post BEFORE whenever I run a system update

I also always appreciated the fact that I could get away with not doing a system update for like six weeks and then do a big one (as mentioned, in combination with reading their update announcement). That's always something that didn't quite work for me on Arch in the past (then again, I still was a beginner back then, so most "reinstall to solve this problem" situations back then were on me).

What if Manjaro really would get worse enough so I'd want to switch? I guess EndeavourOS would be an option, because it's very close to Arch, but at the same time, it seemingly offers a graphical installer that hopefully will set itself up properly on a laptop. Then again, I haven't installed Arch in quite a while now. Maybe the install experience has gotten much nicer.

I can't even play a steam game for more than 15 minutes without the wifi button disappearing from existence and never return back

Every time I use Manjaro something horribly breaks. It's odd though because I daily drive endeavour now and it's been rock solid with no issues other than my own stupidity in partitioning my drives. I would stay away from Manjaro personally and use endeavour if you're dedicated to arch. If you want a rolling release distro then rhino Linux just released their first major version and it's a rolling release Ubuntu distro. Either way my opinion is the same, Manjaro was good for it's time, but it's been overshadowed and buried by other arch distros that are way more stable.

I'm not a distro hopper, but 6 years ago I ditched Windows and chose Manjaro in the i3wm flavor.

I learned a lot initially and now "live in the terminal" whenever possible and I'm still using the same install.

If you want to learn more about linux, I can recommend it.

lDK if straight arch is better (as i've never used it) but I think I kinda prefer not having a constant flood of updates.

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I have other thoughts, but these are the most objective ones:

• The theme was integrated with all applications I tried and I didn't spot any problems with it. (I'd tell you I liked it, but that would be subjective)
• Installing via Pamac required knowing what source (repos, AUR, et cetera) you were installing from or to try multiple.
• My Brother wifi printer couldn't connect and I didn't find a guide to resolve it.
• I couldn't get audio to work correctly on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 9th Gen.
• The forums seemed to be active.
• I ran it for a week in a VM without breaking anything. Didn't run for any length of time on bare metal due to the printer and sound issues.

Compared to Fedora and EndeavorOS:

• Default GNOME theming, of course also through.
• GNOME Store will show you all available sources when you search for the package on Fedora. For EndeavorOS I have to search two places on archlinux.org and flathub.
• My printer worked with Fedora out of the box. For EndeavorOS I found a detailed guide they put together.
• No audio issues on either.
• Fedora also has a large forum. The EndeavorOS forum seems to have fewer users.
• I ran Fedora on my laptop for 6 months. When I upgraded between versions, I ended up with two versions of some applications like "Terminal" and "GNOME Terminal," which was confusing. No breakages.
• I've been running EndeavorOS for 14 months. I broke GRUB when everyone else on Arch and EndeavorOS did. I still had the live USB, and EndeavorOS provided instructions on how to fix it, although it was written for Ext4 and I had to make some educated guesses since I use BTRFS. I was successful and that was my only breakage.