Any other Linux users here? And has anyone fully migrated?

[Leon]

Whoa, Garuda is more robust than I thought O_o I hadn't touched an install for 2 months until today. I know this is bad for a rolling release distro, but it's a desktop I have at work (I take long vacations and was too lazy to set up ssh lol). There were many error messages during the update (expected), but the garuda assistant powered through, fixed everything and was able to complete the update. I didn't need to do anything O_o I was fully expecting the updater to just give up like when I had manjaro installed on this workstation, after a vacation pamac ended up taking a pacman shit

Garuda

Guessing you mean a update for 2 months?
Garuda is robust, but it's not the only rolling release that can be installed for years and not have too many problems, it's actually manjaro that is the outlier here, not arch based distros, manjaro isn't technically a full rolling release like most arch distros are, it updates it's kernel i think a week after arch, garuda etc does, but this only applies to the kernel and it's own aur's, normal aur's update for arch bleeding edge asap, this means manjaro has a tendency to break things and causes headaches for arch users in general, it's one of the many things that people hate manjaro for, it tends to break things that aren't broken for arch users, and causes false positives to aur maintainers.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Guessing you mean a update for 2 months?
Garuda is robust, but it's not the only rolling release that can be installed for years and not have too many problems, it's actually manjaro that is the outlier here, not arch based distros, manjaro isn't technically a full rolling release like most arch distros are, it updates it's kernel i think a week after arch, garuda etc does, but this only applies to the kernel and it's own aur's, normal aur's update for arch bleeding edge asap, this means manjaro has a tendency to break things and causes headaches for arch users in general, it's one of the many things that people hate manjaro for, it tends to break things that aren't broken for arch users, and causes false positives to aur maintainers.

So generally avoid Manjaro?

 

[Leon]

So generally avoid Manjaro?

Manjaro is fine to use as long as you know what your getting yourself into, but generally i only suggest manjaro for newbies who don't know what they are doing and are only looking for a alternative to mint or ubuntu, as those are the closest comparison, manjaro also has telemetry, which as linux users is the last thing most of us want, even though you can turn it off easily.

If you want a arch distro, cachy os, garuda and to a extent, endeavor are all easy to install arch distros that are new user friendly, garuda being made more towards gaming, endeavor being basically vanilla arch with some extras added to make it work better and cachy os being the middle ground, all are easy-ish to easy to use.

 

[diapered]

Guessing you mean a update for 2 months?
Garuda is robust, but it's not the only rolling release that can be installed for years and not have too many problems, it's actually manjaro that is the outlier here, not arch based distros, manjaro isn't technically a full rolling release like most arch distros are, it updates it's kernel i think a week after arch, garuda etc does, but this only applies to the kernel and it's own aur's, normal aur's update for arch bleeding edge asap, this means manjaro has a tendency to break things and causes headaches for arch users in general, it's one of the many things that people hate manjaro for, it tends to break things that aren't broken for arch users, and causes false positives to aur maintainers.

Yes meant an update, my bad. Yea, I knew manjaro "holds back" packages, and knew that can cause problems, and now I fully appreciate that. That's why I like garuda's philosophy where the curation is via the chaotic-aur, otherwise garuda is pretty much arch with helpers which is perfect for me ^_^

So generally avoid Manjaro?

Yes. Manjaro is only for total newbies, and imo that is ONLY for how easy/integrated pamac is to the distro. Otherwise, all the distro does is piggy back on the stability of the arch core repositories, but I think that gives it the edge over mint/ubuntu. Manjaro is very stable/easy to use, just make sure you update...

I wish Rani (garuda's gui software/update center) was as sleek/simple as pamac is for manjaro That would make manjaro completely obsolete imo.

 

[aquova]

I typically just use vanilla Arch myself, but if I didn't I would probably use EndeavourOS. I took a look at how they handle things, and they really just define an extra repository with a few extra installed packages on top of Arch. I think that's really the way a distro should go about doing it. Not to throw shade on Manjaro, but like others have said, they try to take the rolling release out of the rolling release distro, which I think somewhat defeats the purpose and is more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Leon]

Yes meant an update, my bad. Yea, I knew manjaro "holds back" packages, and knew that can cause problems, and now I fully appreciate that. That's why I like garuda's philosophy where the curation is via the chaotic-aur, otherwise garuda is pretty much arch with helpers which is perfect for me ^_^

Yes. Manjaro is only for total newbies, and imo that is ONLY for how easy/integrated pamac is to the distro. Otherwise, all the distro does is piggy back on the stability of the arch core repositories, but I think that gives it the edge over mint/ubuntu. Manjaro is very stable/easy to use, just make sure you update...

I wish Rani (garuda's gui software/update center) was as sleek/simple as pamac is for manjaro That would make manjaro completely obsolete imo.

You "can" install pamac though the command line in garuda, just be careful about it, you should only use pamac when you can't find something in octopi and don't want to install it directly from the AUR in command line.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 2:00 AM

I typically just use vanilla Arch myself, but if I didn't I would probably use EndeavourOS. I took a look at how they handle things, and they really just define an extra repository with a few extra installed packages on top of Arch. I think that's really the way a distro should go about doing it. Not to throw shade on Manjaro, but like others have said, they try to take the rolling release out of the rolling release distro, which I think somewhat defeats the purpose and is more trouble than it's worth.

Arch is fine, nothing wrong with it, i'm just lazy lol.
Endeavor is probably as close to a "bare" arch that you can get and not install arch tbh.

 

[KaiserMk7]

What's the single difference that distinguishes and defines these 3? baseline linux versions on which all/most of the distros are built?

 

[diapered]

You "can" install pamac though the command line in garuda, just be careful about it, you should only use pamac when you can't find something in octopi and don't want to install it directly from the AUR in command line.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 2:00 AM

Arch is fine, nothing wrong with it, i'm just lazy lol.
Endeavor is probably as close to a "bare" arch that you can get and not install arch tbh.

True, but I always considered pamac to be the manjaro team's baby, so I never thought to use it outside manjaro. I assume pamac causes issues outside manjaro. I don't see why pamac would be able to search a package that octopi couldn't...

Anyway, yea, octopi is a little ugly/basic (on my garuda xfce version at least), but it does the job well for searching/installing software (hint to garuda Rani developers that might browse rgt, don't be afraid to steal good ideas >_>). For everything else (updates etc.), I use the garuda assistants which work perfect.

 

[Leon]

What's the single difference that distinguishes and defines these 3? baseline linux versions on which all/most of the distros are built?

Endeavor os is essentially vanilla arch with a few extra things installed for a smoother experience and no GUI app manager, you can install one but it's not installed from go like with most distros these days, probably the closest you can get to flat out arch linux without being arch.

Cachy os is more closer to something like say fedora, not difficult to use but feature rich and comes pre-installed with everything anyone would need to get started out of the box, generally speaking it's more or less the most designed around functionality, to the point it's made for more modern systems.

Garuda is a desktop distro similar to cachy os but setup for modern and classic gaming out of the box, making it easier to just jump in and game than the other 2, it also has some extra functions like garuda rani, as diapered said, while i'm personally not as bothered by it as they are.

Of the 3 i personally use garuda though i have used all 3 to varying degrees, it's easy enough for newbies to use but advanced enough for more skilled users, i'd put these 3 in the "intermediate" difficulty category, not because they are hard to use, but once in a blue moon something might happen and you'd need to use the command line, i consider any distro where you cannot 100% guarantee a full GUI experience as intermediate or advanced in difficulty, that said even vanilla arch has nothing on the difficulty scale as stuff like gentoo, slackware and linux from scratch.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Endeavor os is essentially vanilla arch with a few extra things installed for a smoother experience and no GUI app manager, you can install one but it's not installed from go like with most distros these days, probably the closest you can get to flat out arch linux without being arch.

Cachy os is more closer to something like say fedora, not difficult to use but feature rich and comes pre-installed with everything anyone would need to get started out of the box, generally speaking it's more or less the most designed around functionality, to the point it's made for more modern systems.

Garuda is a desktop distro similar to cachy os but setup for modern and classic gaming out of the box, making it easier to just jump in and game than the other 2, it also has some extra functions like garuda rani, as diapered said, while i'm personally not as bothered by it as they are.

Of the 3 i personally use garuda though i have used all 3 to varying degrees, it's easy enough for newbies to use but advanced enough for more skilled users, i'd put these 3 in the "intermediate" difficulty category, not because they are hard to use, but once in a blue moon something might happen and you'd need to use the command line, i consider any distro where you cannot 100% guarantee a full GUI experience as intermediate or advanced in difficulty, that said even vanilla arch has nothing on the difficulty scale as stuff like gentoo, slackware and linux from scratch.

I said baseline versions of Linux. Like as I understand it, Arch is considered to be a fundamental branches of the Linux ecosystem as a whole that's the backbone of a great many distros, and I asked for the defining distinctions specifically of these fundamental branches, not certain distros.

 

[Leon]

I said baseline versions of Linux. Like as I understand it, Arch is considered to be a fundamental branches of the Linux ecosystem as a whole that's the backbone of a great many distros, and I asked for the defining distinctions specifically of these fundamental branches, not certain distros.

Ah misunderstood your question, ok.
First of this does not include desktop environments (aka the look and feel of the experience, that's not exclusive to a root version) and is a entirely different topic, if you want that info i can tell you as well.

The 3 big ones are debian, red hat and arch, gentoo and openmandriva off the top of my head are also baselines, the main differences between each is the preferred package manager and the speed of updates, i'll go through all 3 of the top ones and a few bits i know about the other 2 for now.
All can use applimage, which is similar to plug and play programs on windows, but there are benefits and disadvanges to applimage.

Debian-Common distros under it are Ubuntu and it's derivatives, Linux Mint and Devuan,has by far the most distros:
Most slow with it's updates, i believe the home of flatpak and uses the most common commands, generally the most stable of the 3 but for most users this mainly means slow kernel updates meaning fixes in gaming and other programs take the longest here, sometimes many months.
Generally speaking you use debian or a derivative if you want to install a linux os to a thinkpad, notebook or grandma's pc as the long term support guarantees no issues at the cost of performance in certain specialized tasks like gaming and business tools.
Ubuntu has it's own file type known as snaps, personally i consider these bloated but they must be mentioned.

Red hat-Common distros under it are fedora, nobara and red hat enterprise, has the least amount of distros:
Fedora updates more often than debian but less than arch, if debian updates every 6 months, fedora updates every 1-3, fedora uses it's own command structure for programs and functionality but like all types can be used to use flatpaks (original linux versions and derivatives can use most file systems, i think arch's AUR might be exclusive but you could probably get it working elsewhere if you wanted, bad idea though), generally speaking the red hat distros are the ones more designed around enterprise and business technologies from my experience, but you also have a few that have extra functions like nobara, which is a gaming distro made by glorious eggroll.

Arch -Common derivatives are Steam OS, Garuda and Endeavor OS, less derivatives than debian but gaining ground due to linux gaming becoming viable and more "normal" users using it:
Arch updates as soon as they become available and seem stable, usually weekly updates, while this does bear a very low risk of bugs, it also guarantees all bleeding edge updates come out immediately, making arch imo the best choice for gaming, arch uses the AUR, Chaotic-AUR (precompiled binaries) and can also install flatpak along side each, the benefits of arch are bleeding edge updates, usually faster gaming performance and versatility of program options (though all programs can be made to work on any linux distro if it has a native version).

Gentoo and openmandriva i don't know a ton about, gentoo is designed for everything to be compiled by the user, which is why this is one of the hardest branches to use, as for open mandriva i know even less, only that it is a successor to mandrake linux, a now no longer supported linux branch and that it offers both bleeding edge and stable update versions.

 

[aquova]

I said baseline versions of Linux. Like as I understand it, Arch is considered to be a fundamental branches of the Linux ecosystem as a whole that's the backbone of a great many distros, and I asked for the defining distinctions specifically of these fundamental branches, not certain distros.

Wikipedia has a very, very in-depth chart that I think makes it clear how many Linux distros are spun off of a handful. As others have said, it's basically Debian, Arch, SUSE, Gentoo, Red Hat, and Slackware that are the ancestors of the vast majority of popular distributions. Ubuntu is somewhat unique in that it's a popular forking point, but itself was based off of Debian

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

last Garuda install I had kinda self-destructed at one point with a system update or something

the only reason why I'm still on an Arch derivate nowadays is because I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of changing the OS, my main pc is on Artix and every time I have to install a new program I got to update the system which is like 2+ gigabytes every single time, and sometimes something random breaks cause the mentality is ship first test later, or sometimes they just drop support for one thing which breaks all my virtual machines

nowadays I value the peacefulness of a stable distro where the only updates you get are security fixes, there is literally no downside, if you need something to be new just get it outside of the package manager, the only downside is if you got the newest hardware as your drivers will be outdated

 

[diapered]

extra functions like garuda rani, as diapered said, while i'm personally not as bothered by it as they are.

I think it is a great tool, has cool features/layout; I do like it. I'm just curious over the current way the software management is implemented.

I'm mostly confused because there seems to be a way to search and install software with rani, but there is a lot not there for some reason? For example, I can't find obs in rani (but I actually think I did install it with the original setup assistant, but can't remember...) and it also is not a nice way to list packages, imo.

Meanwhile, with octopi I have a nice way to see what repo the software is from, I can search the entire repos, see version, click for more info etc.

This is why I joked that the rani developers shouldn't be afraid to steal good ideas If Rani brought up an interface like octopi for software, I would be perfectly happy and I think then Garuda would be the best newbie friendly distro ever. I'm sure they could care less about being newbie friendly and competing with manjaro, but imo I think the distro is pretty close to being a super easy to use distro, just missing this feature in its own software center app.

But yea, not really bothered (I know I'm very dramatic though >_< so I understand why people think that), I'm just curious the reason that rani has not been implemented in this way for software: I just don't understand if there is a reason (would it conflict in some way?) or if it is just a work in progress?

 

[Leon]

last Garuda install I had kinda self-destructed at one point with a system update or something

the only reason why I'm still on an Arch derivate nowadays is because I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of changing the OS, my main pc is on Artix and every time I have to install a new program I got to update the system which is like 2+ gigabytes every single time, and sometimes something random breaks cause the mentality is ship first test later, or sometimes they just drop support for one thing which breaks all my virtual machines

nowadays I value the peacefulness of a stable distro where the only updates you get are security fixes, there is literally no downside, if you need something to be new just get it outside of the package manager, the only downside is if you got the newest hardware as your drivers will be outdated

Oh there are downsides, it's just a matter of if those downsides outweigh the upsides for you.
Drivers is one example but another is program updates that effect certain software, gaming is obvious but some things such as streaming software, cad work and stuff like that benefit from those bleeding edge updates.
Truth is there is no perfect os, every os has it's flaws, just as every branch of linux has it's flaws because in the long run, what one user values another might not or even find it a hindrance.

 

[Vardalis]

Full time Linux user now, yeah. My old laptop finally died and when I bought this new one used I had the choice to either install Windows or Linux. I figured hey, if I've got a clean slate I may as well just go all in, especially since I'd been using Linux on a Raspberry Pi for a number of years before that so I wasn't going in completely cold. That was about three years ago and I've been running Pop OS happily* ever since.

* - The only issue I've got is an irritating sound thing when the GPU is under heavy load, sounding like crackling or popping in the audio stream. I've tried dozens of different suggestions and fixes and it never fully solves it.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

but another is program updates that effect certain software, gaming is obvious but some things such as streaming software, cad work and stuff like that benefit from those bleeding edge updates.

do you mean like the softwares themselves or the libraries they depend on ?

I'm becoming more and more fan of getting software out of the distro's package manager, my current browser waterfox is just a tar.bz2 file from the official site, decompress, launch the executable, everything just works, like on windows basically (unfortunately not every software give a simple tarball or appimage like that)

flatpak can be quite convenient too

 

[Leon]

do you mean like the softwares themselves or the libraries they depend on ?

I'm becoming more and more fan of getting software out of the distro's package manager, my current browser waterfox is just a tar.bz2 file from the official site, decompress, launch the executable, everything just works, like on windows basically (unfortunately not every software give a simple tarball or appimage like that)

flatpak can be quite convenient too

If your using a package manager yes, personally i'm more or less in agreement with you there on portable executable files though, saves alot of hassle and you don't need to go digging around your system folder to find it, but this was a problem even on windows so i can't knock linux for it.

 

[aquova]

do you mean like the softwares themselves or the libraries they depend on ?

I'm becoming more and more fan of getting software out of the distro's package manager, my current browser waterfox is just a tar.bz2 file from the official site, decompress, launch the executable, everything just works, like on windows basically (unfortunately not every software give a simple tarball or appimage like that)

flatpak can be quite convenient too

...why? Using the package manager is one of the great benefits of Linux to me, unless you're struggling with really old packages in your manager I'm not sure why you'd go through the trouble of installing and upgrading it all manually. Even then, I would switch to a rolling release or write some install scripts to they're at least tracked by my manager.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

...why? Using the package manager is one of the great benefits of Linux to me, unless you're struggling with really old packages in your manager I'm not sure why you'd go through the trouble of installing and upgrading it all manually. Even then, I would switch to a rolling release or write some install scripts to they're at least tracked by my manager.

it is my conclusion after years of distro hopping and linux usage that we shouldn't limit ourself with the distro package manager

It is great when my network libraries get automatically patched by Aptitude on my Debian servers, when qemu gets updated on Arch breaking all my VMs because their bios is not supported anymore it is not so great

when I'm unable to download a video because the yt-dlp in pacman is over a month old that's when I learn that I should have installed it through pip instead, when I am on obscure distros that are great but have few packages (or no package manager at all) that's when I learn the immense value of appimages, generic tarballs and flatpak

a rolling release distro is one that will constantly make you work because they will keep dropping support for how you configured it before, it is also one where random softwares will stop working one day because one lib is suddenly too old or too new

a stable distro will just work, software in the package manager will be outdated but you can cut the middleman and get your stuff straight from the source

waterfox got its own built-in updater, if my software doesn't hit the network I don't want it to be constantly updated anyway, unless I am really hyped about a new feature in that case I will think of downloading the newer version (I'm not hyped often)

ever heard of that one time when duckstation's dev crashed out because of the broken unofficial AUR packages ? that was pretty funny