Manjaro Linux

Recently I've gotten fed up with having to test/install new versions of openSUSE (and/or debian), and decided to take a look at true rolling releases, but unfortunately it came down to Arch and Gentoo. Since I had a bit of experience with Gentoo, I wanted to avoid it, as nice as it would've been for the machine to run a kernel compiled for it, and so I ended up taking a look at Arch Linux. Unfortunately, Arch Linux isn't much different, and while I wouldn't mind going through all the steps, I also had to think about how many machines I would need to install on (about 6-8), and while the time it takes to install on each machine differs, it's a lot of man-hours I'm not willing to put in while I'm working full-time.

Eventually I looked around, and on a forum, someone else asked a similar question (they were looking for something Arch-like, but simpler), and I ended up checking out one of the two suggestions, which was Bridge Linux. Bridge Linux broke itself on the test hard drive after installing, so it was quickly ditched and so I checked out the other suggestion of Manjaro Linux.

Manjaro was a bit wonky when I tried to put it on a USB drive, so I ended up just writing it onto a DVD+RW instead. The initial test worked well, though during installation on the test drive, the screen turned off and locked, and something glitched out, which resulted in a broken picture. Luckily I was able to reboot and get into the system, but sometimes I'd get the "No operating system" message from BIOS, which was fixed by recycling the power (I think that drive has a faulty MBR or something, would explain why my friend had problems with it).

On the test partition of Triela's actual drive, I decided to not install GRUB2 from Majaro, seeing as that I didn't want to change the options from Manjaro if I were to ditch it, but I wasn't able to boot into Manjaro, so I had to do it anyway (without reinstalling Manjaro).

There were a lot of surprises with Manjaro, one being that I am able to use the user repository for Arch Linux (Arch User Repository or AUR for short), which allowed me to build and install Skype, FreeFileSync, and Atom (text editor) from the package manager. Another surprise was that I wasn't able to find the proper config file for the NTP hosts that Manjaro uses to update the time, so I'm not able to add a custom server (at least for the moment). I was surprised that I had used pacman before (probably for Sabayon), and after looking at the help, it seems that it's quite similar to zypper in simplicity, so it shouldn't be too hard to learn (compared with apt-get for Debian which becomes apt-cache for when you want to search for something...). A very nice surprise was that Manjaro doesn't make Triela idle hot like openSUSE does.

I tested Rhythmbox out and found that the random-crashing problem still exists, though (if I remember correctly) I don't think it had to do with cairo this time, so I decided to stick with Clementine as I have been.

After completing all the necessary tests on the test partition, I backed up all the files I needed to back up in the home folder of openSUSE before I went through with the install of Manjaro.

So far the only issue I've ran into with Manjaro on Triela is that Firefox would glitch GNOME out, but usually only for a second, but I found that it was just kernel 4.1.2-x that was causing the problem and just downgraded to 4.0.x instead.

For Lie-chan, I found that (for whatever reason) GRUB2 from Manjaro and the GPT partitioning table don't play along nicely (I wasn't able to boot into Manjaro at all), and so I had to change the partition table back to MBR (losing the copy of my music library in the process) and reinstall. So far, Lie-chan only has an initial installation (with the keyring being the only upgrade I think) and I haven't been able to test out VLC on her like I normally do (the video file I use for testing also got wiped), but I'll eventually get around to getting her up to date and fully tested. So far the only issue with Manjaro on Lie-chan is with the Sound Blaster sound card, but it might just be the fact that I haven't updated yet - we shall see.

I definitely will migrate my x64 computers (and maybe Ziggy though he's x86) eventually, but it'll be a slow processes.

As far as the 2(DrivePi) and Sae-chan goes, I'll probably sit through the Arch Linux installation with each of them, since I probably don't have much of alternative for them.

I may still test openSUSE from this point forward, but by no means will I have an installation of it that I will frequently use. As I make the transition to Manjaro, I will (figuratively) say my farewells to openSUSE. openSUSE has been good to me over these past 5-6 years, but it's time I move onto a true rolling distribution, so I'm not installing the new version of openSUSE every release cycle.

Fun fact: the distributions I've stuck with for a good amount of time all have a green theme to it (Linux Mint, openSUSE, and now Manjaro)... Maybe something trying to tell me something. (XD)