I have been using Linux for a few years, usually some flavor of Debian. But recently I acquired an older Thinkpad and thought it would behoove me to use something more... involved.
So I chose to dive into Manjaro and only broke pacman once. So now the question... can I say I'm using Arch btw or is that a faux pas?
Don't update any arch based distro for long enough and your life will be plenty exciting when you do. Bonus points if you use a non-lts kernel that can blip out of existence at any moment along with all the graphics drivers
Arch is relatively unstable just by being rolling, but manjaro is another level of unstable lol. if wish to use it, im not gonna stop you, but I'd advise you not to rely on the computer you install it on.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Manjaro, is in fact, Arch/Manjaro, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Arch plus Manjaro. Manjaro is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Arch system made useful by pacman, yay and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
I can see future archeologists (god forbid, Ai archeologists) digging up old posts like this and going, "tf, this was upvoted? Interjecting with too much tangential information? The tone came off rude though?" and not get the reference if they weren't versed in linux community culture already
Well, jokes aside, people who install Arch usually want maximum flexibility out of their system (I have no idea why you would torture yourself like that otherwise). And after some time spent with Manjaro, I can confidently say that it greatly sacrifices your ability to tinker with the system in the name of user friendliness.
A great distro to start with, but if you still like it after a couple of months, you probably didn't need Arch in the first place.
Install Arch, it's not that difficult if you use Archinstall. Even the "manual" method isn't hard, just make the partitions and pacstrap all of the packages.
I've been a big fan of Manjaro for exactly that reason. Something breaks occasionally and gives my skills a run for their money but a lot of the difficulty of running a rolling release gets nullified by the testing Manjaro does for you. It's a great compromise, you get almost bleeding edge for much less work than an arch installation can take.
I love me some Debian for their stability and security, I run Debian or Debian based servers mostly. But I wanted something closer to the bleeding edge for my desktop so I could make use of newer features, run newer packages etc...