Manjaro 20.0 Released With Its Flagship Easy-To-Use, Arch-Based Xfce Desktop Distro

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Manjaro 20.0 Released With Its Flagship Easy-To-Use, Arch-Based Xfce Desktop Distro

Manjaro 20.0 "Lysia" is out today with its flagship Xfce spin as well as its GNOME and KDE editions for this popular, desktop-minded, Arch-based Linux distribution...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Manjaro-20.0-Released

[skeevy420]

Manjaro Architect is also supporting OpenZFS-based installations with shipping the needed kernel modules.

Weird. I just had to "sudo pacman -S linux56-zfs" in order to use the ZFS portion of the Manjaro Architect from the actual Architect ISO...and then it didn't install. Setup a 2GB Ext4 /boot, a 4GB swap, and the rest to a ZoL root and it never made it past where it would normally start to installing packages. I didn't investigate further. Also haven't seen any comments about it not actually having the ZFS modules either...

Since it's somewhat on topic, the Ubuntu ZFS installer isn't w/o it's quirks either. Don't know why, but earlier today it didn't reinstall until I make new partition tables on both the disks I used as mirrors on the previous install. It would just silently error out because the final screen acted like it installed correctly. Over yesterday and today the first disk of the mirror was used for Ubuntu 20.04 ZFS, Manjaro 20 KDE Ext4, and back to Ubuntu 20.04 where the fun of an installer that left me with memcheck and Windows ......twice

[horizonbrave]

Weird.

Thanks, please would you please give us an update when you find out a bit more (both Ubuntu and Mangina)?
Cheers

[kylew77]

Weird. I just had to "sudo pacman -S linux56-zfs" in order to use the ZFS portion of the Manjaro Architect from the actual Architect ISO...and then it didn't install. Setup a 2GB Ext4 /boot, a 4GB swap, and the rest to a ZoL root and it never made it past where it would normally start to installing packages. I didn't investigate further. Also haven't seen any comments about it not actually having the ZFS modules either...

Since it's somewhat on topic, the Ubuntu ZFS installer isn't w/o it's quirks either. Don't know why, but earlier today it didn't reinstall until I make new partition tables on both the disks I used as mirrors on the previous install. It would just silently error out because the final screen acted like it installed correctly. Over yesterday and today the first disk of the mirror was used for Ubuntu 20.04 ZFS, Manjaro 20 KDE Ext4, and back to Ubuntu 20.04 where the fun of an installer that left me with memcheck and Windows ......twice

Sucks that Linux still has so many problems running on ZFS. FreeBSD might be slower, it might have less hardware support, but it's ZFS support is stellar. After switching from Manjaro in August of last year to FreeBSD 12 series Releases I've yet to look back. Everything is running like a dream.

[Spooktra]

Can someone tel me what's so special about ZFS, as in why would I want to use it over say EXT4, XFS or even NTFS, which Linux supports and I am currently using for some drives that I need Windows access to.

[EarthMind]

Can someone tel me what's so special about ZFS, as in why would I want to use it over say EXT4, XFS or even NTFS, which Linux supports and I am currently using for some drives that I need Windows access to.

ZFS gives your for example features like compression, snapshots (for rollbacks) & bitrot protection

[skeevy420]

Thanks, please would you please give us an update when you find out a bit more (both Ubuntu and Mangina)?
Cheers

Ubuntu, if I had to guess, was having issues due to how I converted my previous install from single disk to mirror and my guess is that something was going FUBAR when it was supposed to be importing the pools. Wiping the disks and running the installer fixed it. I'm just embarrassed I installed it twice before figuring out I needed to "wipefs /dev/sdb" first.

Manjaro, after reading the forums, apparently doesn't support BIOS systems with their ZFS installer. Something broke a bit back and Dalto hasn't updated the scripts since then so it only works with UEFI systems at the moment. I hope they do something similar to Ubuntu's BIOS solution.

[cynical]

I like the idea of ZFS, but I think I'll wait a few releases before trying it.

[skeevy420]

I like the idea of ZFS, but I think I'll wait a few releases before trying it.

ZFS in and of itself is just fine and pretty much every distribution is on 0.8.3 at this point in time (or a patched 0.8.3 for Linux 5.5+ support) and it offers a pretty good experience. ZFS in how well a distribution supports it greatly varies so you're better off using one that tries to support it over something else. For non-root disks/OS disks, Manjaro has always had some of the best ZFS support around.

Without being overly critical of Manjaro Architect, because it's a good tool that I've used a lot and really like, its ZFS installer isn't the most straight forward and it isn't the best one to use to get your feet wet just to play around with ZFS, especially if it's the first time using either ZFS or Manjaro Architect.

Ubuntu and what they're doing with Zsys and snapshot management is pretty nice. I recommend giving 20.04 a try before passing too much judgement on ZFS in its current state. I say that as someone who has used ZFS for the past 5 or 6 years. What 20.04 offers is one of the nicest out of the box ZFS experiences I've ever had (on Linux) and it's right up there with what SUSE offers with BTRFS and Snapper. I really don't like saying that in a release thread, especially since I've been on Manjaro for the majority for the past 5 or 6 years with ZFS on my non-root disks, and it makes me feel like a traitor.

[cynical]

What 20.04 offers is one of the nicest out of the box ZFS experiences I've ever had (on Linux) and it's right up there with what SUSE offers with BTRFS and Snapper. I really don't like saying that in a release thread, especially since I've been on Manjaro for the majority for the past 5 or 6 years with ZFS on my non-root disks, and it makes me feel like a traitor.

Wow, I’m really surprised you say that. I didn’t mean to bash ZFS, I just figured support would be experimental and rough since it is the first time it has been available for Ubuntu. I always wanted to try ZFS, guess I know what I’ll be using from now on. (I liked BTRFS and Snapper from openSUSE, but wasn’t in love with some of their other choices...)