Manjaro 20.2 Brings Arch-Based Linux 5.9 Experience, GNOME Version Defaults To Wayland

[skeevy420]

The kernels in Manjaro are already quite recent (5.10 rc5 being the latest right now, just one rc late). My 9 yo laptop has mature components so I'm good with standard kernels. In Ubuntu, I usually dpkg the latest mainline kernels from https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
The last time I used custom kernels was between 2017-2018 when amdgpu/DC latest progress needed to be backported.

Sometimes I use kernels from tk-glitch. Been into building them with built-in ZFS lately -- can't get that from upstream anywhere.

I stick to ext4 with just /boot, / and /home.
I'm a power user (but not an extreme one), but there's always the balance of spending too much time for little benefits (from my point of view) as I'm not really a geek and I'd rather go outdoors when I can.

I almost always go with the defaults. One of the few times I stray from them and I accidentally wiped a bootloader...

Pamac doesn't handle AUR packages just as well. Or doesn't find any updates while yay does.
And sometimes it's just faster to yay -Syyu than to open Pamac and go for updates or some install. I always use both (same with apt and synaptic).

About all I use Pamac for is for searching for things...same way I use Synaptic on Debian, too...then I install and update from a terminal. There's something about verbose output and knowing what's happening that I like.

Now, I understand what you mean. I actually have build issues sometimes. I just get around it somehow by installing a more stable version or by the issue being solved at at a later point.

It's almost always more annoying than anything, usually easily fixable, and always solved at a later point, but if it hits you at the wrong time it can really, really suck. For me, GCC 8.4 to 9 really, really sucked in regards to the freeze.

And that's why I see Budgie as a grower. It has a real potential, because when they see demand they are willing to offer to add options in order to meet that demand. They recognize the variety of workflows and use cases. It's not the "do it as we unilaterally designed it" Gnome state of mind. More like "let's sit down and see what we could do about what users want". That's how it should be in my perspective.
It's not as mature as Gnome is (more recent, smaller user base) and the multi-monitor support is not good enough for it becoming my daily driver yet, but the vanilla setup can already be tweaked in several different ways and customized with a lot of options without making it too heavy. If Gnome devs had that state of mind with their means, it would be a killer desktop instead of feeling so restrictive and lacklustre (with 10-20 extensions, it's bearable though). Anyway, this is another discussion, and it stems from the fact that the new release is kind of a big news (as for any DE new release) but didn't get covered here, sadly.

That's basically my biggest problem with GNOME. They want you to work within their limited constraints. If you don't like that, tough titty, go develop a plugin or hope it exists and stays maintained. No matter what improvements come along, that problem stays. I'm hoping their "We're not gonna be such dicks about stuff" initiative turns it into a better GNOME experience.

[creative]

On 20.2, been using the same install since late 2018 and I have been through a full hardware platform upgrade on it. Just recently added a 1TB EVO 970 drive to stack up more steam games on. It just keeps on ticking, few things I have had to re-edit and update as far as system setting configs like grubs graphical resolution but fairly low maintenance.

It just works. Not had a huge need to do much to it, except btchslp pipewire off my system.

Used the XFCE install but just can't seem to stay away from i3WM

No version of Windows on my system at all, no desire or need for it, I have every single thing I want on Manjaro. I have yet to find a game I can't run on it or eventually pull a hack-job at getting going.

Creativity, video gaming, it's all here.

Could I go to Arch? Yes, but I don't want to. The way I have stuff setup is so minimalist anyway.

Could something go seriously wacky eventually? Yes it could, I have yet to see it though. Been using Linux since 2001 and this is the only distribution that feels like it could withstand a nuclear blast compared to everything else I have used.

Interesting enough, I am not the only one who feels the same way, I know some people who have been running the same install as early as 2016 as their daily driver. For a rolling release, I think that says something.

I always update mirrors and upgrade my system from the command line.

[kylew77]

I'm glad you're happy on FreeBSD, but, did you have to abandon Linux itself because you used a broken distro based off another distro? Why didn't you just use Arch proper or any of it's forks?

I still run Xubuntu on a few boxes and with its ZFS support getting better and better might go back to that on my main rig. I had been wanting to tryout FreeBSD full time for awhile and this gave me the chance.

[stiiixy]

On 20.2, been using the same install since late 2018 and I have been through a full hardwar......

I always update mirrors and upgrade my system from the command line.

I'm pretty much in the same boat. Long install times, small issues, excepting the upgrade to 20.1 which stalled somewhat on both my KDE desktop and a mate's XFCE, which took a little bit of nerding, but nothing showstopping.

Manjaro is about a little bit of sanity on a fairly fast moving train. Like a Volvo racecar 😃

[polarathene]

Like I said above, the best part about vanilla Arch is being able to setup the file systems to do things like replicate OpenSUSE's BTRFS setup.

While I want that BTRFS setup, there's still extras OpenSUSE adds with default install that I've got to figure out. Beyond snapper, there's routine maintenance systemd units related to it IIRC, and while I believe we can get a modified GRUB for the snapper integration, I'd like similar with systemd-boot, not sure if that's available, been a while since I last looked. I'm not sure if all those extras are documented, or if you just have to become aware of them (at which point it gets easier to reproduce on another distro).

I don't mind doing all that extra work, and I kinda like learning them for a better understanding, it's just not always clear (unless Arch Wiki covers it), or there's multiple choices (ZRAM/ZSWAP I think had several similar options beyond direct configuration). Then there's stuff becoming out of date, infinality font package I think no longer has relevance?

FWIW, Manjaro uses AppArmour and Arch and be configured to use either.

Oh? When did that happen? Last I knew Arch didn't play well with AppArmour or SELinux and I don't think Manjaro bothered with either as a result, but this was back in 2016. I've not noticed any issues, although I've only heard of SELinux getting in the way rather than AppArmour.

[polarathene]

Could something go seriously wacky eventually? Yes it could, I have yet to see it though. Been using Linux since 2001 and this is the only distribution that feels like it could withstand a nuclear blast compared to everything else I have used.

I've used Manjaro since 2016, ran into several issues. Two notable ones that come to mind was 4.9 LTS kernel and XFS filesystem, was previously on 4.8 kernel, and some regression/bug was introduced, whenever waking from suspend or midnight logrotate was scheduled to run caused a kernel panic. It may have had something to do with the default (on manjaro) BFQ at the time too. Took months before that was resolved (I did contribute to kernel bug report along with others).

2nd one was I updated too early (which is a bit ironic with Manjaro) and some KDE lib was packaged badly, kauth or something. Prevented booting into the DE and package manager was having troubles working properly as it relied on that IIRC, had to read up on pacman and do something there I think. If I had waited a day or two later I'd not have been hit by that.

Regarding game compatibility, I hear it's mainly an issue with online competitive ones that have anticheat bundled. I don't play those, so had no issues with games beyond needing to lookup some launch flag to add in steam for certain titles, but that's rare. Windows proprietary software on the other hand (when no suitable open-source alternative available), usually less great. Sometimes software is functional mostly, but fails at some stuff or just UI rendering issues (oddly one was with a Qt based interface).

[polarathene]

I see a lot of complaints about Manjaro package freeze and AUR leading to brocken packages. I'm not sure I understand what it is all about. I'm crossing my finger this won't happen to me. It hasn't yet although I'm using both pacman and yay (for AUR access).

The more you rely on AUR packages, the higher the chance of that happening. But in my experience it happens maybe once every year on average? Often only if there's something falling out of sync with dependencies on the core repo packages vs Manjaro's equivalent.

One in particular that I remember was an update to OpenSSL caused problems. Arch held back the update until that issue was resolved months later, while Manjaro with their bad reputation in the past about security practices opted to push forward with the latest release. So AUR packages depended on the older version which had ABI breakage, preventing compatibility. This affected plenty of packages that would want to access the internet I think.

Another was earlier than that, Xorg was being held back an entire version due to driver support for some older AMD cards not being ready. Some AUR packages depended on the newer Xorg package, so that wouldn't work either.

[skeevy420]

While I want that BTRFS setup, there's still extras OpenSUSE adds with default install that I've got to figure out. Beyond snapper, there's routine maintenance systemd units related to it IIRC, and while I believe we can get a modified GRUB for the snapper integration, I'd like similar with systemd-boot, not sure if that's available, been a while since I last looked. I'm not sure if all those extras are documented, or if you just have to become aware of them (at which point it gets easier to reproduce on another distro).

I don't mind doing all that extra work, and I kinda like learning them for a better understanding, it's just not always clear (unless Arch Wiki covers it), or there's multiple choices (ZRAM/ZSWAP I think had several similar options beyond direct configuration). Then there's stuff becoming out of date, infinality font package I think no longer has relevance?

If you search hard enough, SUSE has their BTRFS partition and Snapper setup documented and from there it's just combining what they do with the Arch Wiki. I was thinking about replicating SUSE's BTRFS setup on Arch back around January, but thinking is as far as I got before I got the distro hop bug. Now that I've got the hop bug out of my system I'm gonna get around to making the most hardcore ZFS on Root setup I can imagine because why not?

I'm not sure of an Arch/systemd method either aside from this snippet in the Arch Wiki. ZFS and systemd-boot is in the same boat. I feel like not many people are bothering with systemd-boot since GRUB and /boot are still used in so many places. IMHO, systemd-boot should have considered adopting something like Clover so they could emulate a UEFI and be used on more systems.

I don't think infinality fonts are needed anymore, but there is infinality-remix which is going strong. I'd be nice if they'd provide before and after screenshots. I say that but I'm posing from a 55" 4K TV. Font aliasing isn't an issue on my setup.

Oh? When did that happen? Last I knew Arch didn't play well with AppArmour or SELinux and I don't think Manjaro bothered with either as a result, but this was back in 2016. I've not noticed any issues, although I've only heard of SELinux getting in the way rather than AppArmour.

Not sure. Just happened to notice the AppArmour kernel command lines in Manjaro's mkinitcpio.conf day before yesterday.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Well, I updated. Shiny new kernel time!

CUDA is still broken on 5.9. Some curious errors in my work applications (closed source, sadly) which appear to imply issues with things other than CUDA (like bitching about "unknown version" in libtiff) but no... the problem is CUDA. Go back to 5.8, everything works fine.

Back to 5.8 I go... again...

[stiiixy]

Yeah, 5.9 was real funky for me a month ago as well. Tried with same result during RC as well. I'm running simple AMD 3200G on classy mini-itx Asus and Gigabyte motherboards and keen to see how some more updates work since I last tried.