2013-12-01

Switch from Fedora to Manjaro

Lately I had several accidents with my Linux/NetBSD partitions. Because of this I decided to try Fedora Linux 20 beta at first, Crux Linux later and finally Manjaro.

Fedora Linux was my main distribution since 2005. I bought my first AMD64 in 2004 and slowly switched to 64 bit systems. Fedora Linux was one of the earliest and well maintained 64 bit distributions at that time. Though I was using Windows at time more often than not, open source systems like Linux and NetBSD took more and more of my time every year. Currently I rarely use Windows. My main operating system is Linux (Fedora was until now) and the second one is NetBSD.

Fedora is quite good project with very big user base (even Linus Torvalds use it if I am not wrong) and constant stable releases about every 6 months. It means that you can find lots of information on it, software repositories are regularly updated and they have full of software. What is more, I am a GNOME user (even after GNOME3 was released) and Fedora is one of the strongest GNOME supporters. So it was a natural choice for me. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that every new release was going into different direction than I wanted to in last 4-5 releases. Distribution was focusing on users without technical knowledge and it oversimplified various user cases. I consider myself a power user and I didn't liked that at all. Starting from new installer, "Windows like" software update process, various configuration utilities and UX decisions, upgrade process to new software manager (in 20 beta release), everything became just unpleasant for me. Some of them are not distribution related though. I remember that the first Gnome 3 version were terrible to use. Currently they fixed a lot of issues and it became quite pleasant one. Some configuration changed because of Linux itself (or some of its subsystems and services). However, the feeling that I can't control anything became very widespread in every aspect of Fedora daily usage.

After I tried 20 beta for a several weeks and I accidentally deleted it. So I saw it as an opportunity to try some other distributions. Crux was the first on the list as it retains more older BSD style configuration and init scripts, absolutely archaic and simple (no, it doesn't mean user friendly) installation process, ports system (similar to pkgsrc in NetBSD) and they finally switched to x86_64 architecture since 3.0 release. It is probably the Linux I would like to use the most right now. Unfortunately, I was looking for Linux distribution which you can use easily on the desktop. Crux ports repositories were very poor (I think even NetBSD may have more software in theirs), user base is small so you can't find almost any information (Crux is meant for users who like to spend hours on something for themselves) and community is not that friendly (though it may be just a first impression). Finally no official way to install Gnome3 (it is probably because of quite strong systemd requirement but I am not sure. I hate systemd but Linux distributions increasingly uses it.). MATE and Cinnamon also are missing. I tried Enlightenment and it is quite good but I just missed a lot of software for daily usage and couldn't find alternatives for them in Crux (probably I could try to switch to KDE4 but I decided to go elsewhere).

Other distributions were Arch and Gentoo on my list. However, I ended up on Manjaro Linux (I downloaded it on 0.8.8 release day). It is based on Arch Linux but has different goals and their own repositories. Goals are defined to be user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system. And its popularity grows at rapid rate (see distrowatch). Installation process is not my favorite (it boots into live cd and you start install process manually) but it is easy, intuitive to use, partition manager is more pleasant and understandable than Fedora one, and does everything as it should. The dumbest thing that when you choose region you can only select the official language from that region (for example, if you choose Lithuania, you have Lithuanian language in the list only). I needed to change it to US after installation. It uses XFCE or openbox WMs by default (depending on ISO you downloaded) but GNOME installation is very easy using pacman (Manjaro and Arch uses systemd by default currently). Repositories are quite ok. You will find a lot of software in Manjaro repositories, plus you can use Arch user repositories (AUR) too. I missed some packages (fossil, dxx-rebirth) but I was also surprised to find some too (simutrans game one of them). What is more, this distribution repositories is not strictly bounded to open source software (you can find flash plugin right away for example). Application aren't categorized on GNOME menu but I hope that it will be possible to do so. More or less I had fully usable system in several hours maybe even faster. Package manager is very good and simple to use. It is rolling-release distribution so upgrade or software update process should be easy too (pacman). Software seems to bleeding-edge. I always liked that in Fedora so do I in Manjaro too. So currently I am quite happy with this distribution, its custom tools, software repository, flexibility, simplicity and user community. Of course, it is difficult to say that it will become my main distribution for years but certainly I'll stick with for some time.

It is always difficult to make such decisions for me but sometimes you just need to go the different path. Fedora served me very well for almost 10 years but right now it doesn't fit into my vision anymore.