💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › stack › 14158 captured on 2024-05-12 at 19:08:35. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-10)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
@gamma: thanks. I am also curious about Manjaro - although it's a rolling distro, the strength of the Arch community is tempting...
Jan 20 · 4 months ago
Manjaro is a solid distro if you want things to "just work" but I wouldn't call it lightweight. Generally speaking, distros that are built on top of others (like Manjaro or Ubuntu) are going to include "extras" that distinguish them from the base distro. These "extras" often end up being unnecessary bloat.
🚀 stack [OP] · Jan 21 at 03:33:
@gamma, when you say bloat do you mean just extra software taking up disk space (not a dealbreaker) or running processes, polluted file system, and impossible-to-reason-about initialization?
Both. Manjaro uses systemd (same as Arch). The default install also includes a lot of stuff that you might want to remove. In my opinion the installer should ask before installing things like cups, audio servers, avahi, etc. I understand the "user friendly" argument behind including that stuff by default, but I get tired of uninstalling things after a fresh install.
I do want to emphasize that I'm an atypical user though in terms of minimalism. Manjaro is a decent distro, especially for beginners who want to experiment with an Arch-based distro or people who just need a functioning distro to quickly slap onto some supported hardware for whatever reason.
Ubuntu Pro: WTF? — I've been using XUbuntu for over a decade now, I think... Mostly OK, my main complaint was that it's getting bigger than I am comfortable with - way too many processes running that I cannot explain, etc... But it appears that it is hoding back released updates of opensource software unless I pay them, or at least register (why?) as an individual. I think it's time for me to go to a simpler distro that is not collecting personal information.