hey everyone this is Nick and if you
came here expecting me to bash Manjaro
as a distro you came to the wrong place
I used Manjaro for the better part of a
year and a half or two years and I used
the gnome version the caddy version the
budgie version on two different
computers and I like it but Manjaro has
a problem not a distro problem but a
management and image problem that is
slowly making more and more people wary
of them as a distribution and it's
giving them an image that is not all
that good all things considered so let's
talk about this right after this segue
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begin with a quick recap of how Manjaro
works and how it's structured Manjaro as
a distro is an arch-based Linux
operating system it's not Arch though
and it has moved far from it to the
point where it's closer to a traditional
distro like Ubuntu or Fedora it is a
rolling release which means you don't
need to upgrade to a major version to
get feature updates but they maintain
their own packages and don't necessarily
ship the latest versions of everything
with three repos stable testing and
unstable to have some amount of quality
control before releasing something to
everyone while Manjaro has access to the
arch user repository it's not enabled by
default and installing packages from it
is more likely to result in breakages
and issues than in traditional Arch as
your mixing and matching packages with
widely different versions and very
different requirements they offer
basically all the desktop and buy
elements you might want with officially
supported ones with plasma xfc and gnome
and the community maintains all the
other they also have versions for
arm-based CPUs and release their distro
for some mobile phones like the pine
phone the distro is backed by a company
since 2019 called Manjaro gmbhn Co which
is based in Germany because they need to
structure to manage all the projects and
handle donations and revenue from the
distro and Manjaro is a competent
distribution in my opinion if you use it
correctly and don't install stuff from
the Aur all over the place to replace
everything that you have installed
through native Manjaro packages you're
gonna have a stable and nice experience
the problems only come when you try to
mix and match stuff that isn't
officially enabled so what's the issue
well it's issues plural the first
problem which might seem small is in how
the company handles very basic stuff
like security certificates Manjaro has
led their certificates expire four times
now this certificate is the thing that
lets users know their website is secure
and allows them to trust that they're
really downloading an ISO from Manjaro
and not any other website that passes
for the real one when you're downloading
an operating system that you are going
to install on real Hardware it's kinda
crucial to be sure that the image you're
downloading is actually from the
manufacturer you're expecting it to be
and if your security certificate is
expired or invalid you can't be sure of
that not 100 it might seem like a very
small issue but it's extremely basic
renewing certificates is extremely easy
and can be automated if you don't want
to automate it you can at least set a
reminder to renew it it's one of the
simplest tasks when maintaining a server
and manjaro's inability to anticipate
this or automate it isn't a good sign in
terms of how seriously they take their
security and when Manjaro tells you to
either add a security exception to your
browser for the website or they tell you
to rewind your computer's clock a few
days to ignore the fact that the
certificate is past its due date
instead of actually renewing the
certificate which takes five minutes
stops you get the feeling that they
might not be extremely tourist worthy or
don't really know what they're doing but
there are other issues Manjaro also has
the weird habits of trying to release
things that aren't ready to the general
public without checking with the
developers first one example is with the
azahi Linux project where Manjaro
decided that having Apple silicon
support early would be cool which it is
and so they shipped a broken kernel to
end users had they talked to the
developers of the project they would
have known that the branch they grabbed
was not stable not ready for production
and that they shouldn't have shipped it
to I don't know hundreds of thousands
millions of users that could have their
systems completely broken by this weird
decision and it also gave a bad
impression of the azahi project because
it makes their work look broken when in
fact it was not stable and clearly
stated that it wasn't and it's still not
stay ball as of today and Manjaro also
does that for various applications where
they will grab unmerged patches and ship
them in their stable packages which
means their shipping code that hasn't
even been validated by the applications
developers themselves and isn't even
certain to be included in the final
application if it's still unclear an apt
comparison would be a car manufacturer
updating your onboard GPS on your car
that you already bought with new streets
that don't exist yet and haven't been
validated and replace old streets you
don't want that this is what led to the
don't ship it Manifesto from various
developers specifically in the mobile
Linux distro space and probably what led
the bottles developer to also ask
distros to not repackage their software
without talking to them first because
shipping unstable software or broken
software or untested software only has a
bad reflection on the application
themselves not on the distribution and
it also generates tons of support
requests for the developers which have
no responsibility on this issue
whatsoever because they never wanted
this software to be released in this
state another problem that arose was the
use of the Aur in Manjaro this Arch user
repository is one of the greatest
strength of archbase distributions it
contains virtually everything you might
ever want to install a lot of it is
contributed by users and not necessarily
tested but it's still the most complete
repo of Linux apps and libraries and
Manjaro has it although it's disabled by
default now to be fair Manjaro doesn't
officially promote using the Aur but
they do ship it natively in the distro
and you can enable it with just one
switch
and everyone knows that Manjaro is
arch-based and expects the Aur to work
on it so it's still a core part of the
distro except the Aur doesn't really
work well on Manjaro because the Aur
assumes you're using the latest Arch
software with the latest versions Arch
releases
which Manjaro doesn't because they hold
back packages for testing which means
that installing stuff from the Aur can
seriously break your Manjaro system if
you're not careful
and then there's the whole DDOS
situation manjaro's Aur helper the
little software that lets Manjaro users
connect to the Aur had a bug in it which
sent thousands of requests per user to
the Aur involuntarily causing a
distributed denial of service or as I
like to call it death by denial of
service because it basically killed the
Aur for everyone not just Manjaro users
now mistakes happen of course
but such a mistake shouldn't happen
twice which it did and this denotes a
clear lack of focus on testing or
communication with Upstream with
consequences for the Upstream projects
and all their users not just manjaros
again human error this can happen but
twice this means that no process was
ever put in place after the first time
to check if you could again detox the
Aur which shows a lack of respect for
the work of others and the fact that
manjaru still lets users access the Aur
even though there's a 90 chance it's
going to turn your distro into a buggy
mess doesn't show the greatest
responsibility either and then there are
a few other issues the Project Lead
wanted to buy a new laptop using Manjaro
fonts for about 2 000 Euros for a
developer Treasurer refused the expense
because it went against manjaro's policy
which states the funds are to be used
for the Manjaro Community like hosting
development hardware and software stuff
of that ilk and that these expenses
should be discussed openly now this led
to an argument with the project lead and
surfaced other expenses that had not
been discussed according to manjaro's
policy and so the treasurer left the
company leaving the project lead in full
control of all the communities funds now
that's not an issue if you trust them to
do the right thing and use the funds
correctly and responsibly but seeing all
the other issues that we already
mentioned doesn't paint the best picture
of how the company is handled and so
this is kind of a problem in my opinion
then there was the office suites debacle
Manjaro announced out of the blue that
they would be shipping soft maker office
by default instead of Library office
a software change isn't a problem except
that soft maker office or free office as
it's now called isn't open source
replacing an open source component with
a proprietary one isn't something you
would expect from a Linux distribution
eventually the community uproar LED them
to add a ballot screen which led Manjaro
users pick the office suite that they
want to pick which is actually a very
good solution but it's unfortunate that
it had to be a real uproar and a real
issue before they thought about this
solution Manjaro has also often been
accused of not contributing much to
Upstream especially on the mobile front
someone involved in the pine64 community
points out that the fact that most
mobile Pine 64 projects are starting to
falter in terms of contributions is due
to the fact that only Manjaro is an
officially supported distribution for
the pine phone for example where before
there were a myriad of community
editions and that Manjaro doesn't really
contribute to supporting this Hardware
which in turn leads to these devices not
being worked on much anymore as the
other community projects lost motivation
when support for them was dropped and
sure that's more of a pine 64 problem
for picking Manjaro who doesn't seem to
contribute all that much to the hardware
Support over other distributions like
Ubuntu touch which apparently did
contribute a lot to the hardware support
and there is nothing wrong with just
having a distro that packages and
doesn't contribute development efforts
but in that case why would you have a
deal with Manjaro which will not help
your Hardware Community instead of
additional that would actually have
helped so if you put all of these
problems side by side they don't look
too bad a few mistakes a few intested
things and a few behaviors that might be
attributed to communication problems
nothing too scary everyone makes
mistakes it's normal
but a company that lets their Treasurer
go because they don't want to discuss
expenses openly a company that fails to
renew the most basic of things their
security certificates and offers
workarounds instead of actually fixing
the issue or a company that does deals
with proprietary companies instead of
discussing them in the open and giving
you their choices
all of this does give an image of
something shady and untrustworthy that
doesn't really care about what the
community wants and Manjaro as a distro
well you might like it or not personally
I stopped using it because I installed a
lot of stuff from the Aur and it kept
breaking but I also got tons of comments
telling me that Manjaro could be very
stable and is a great experience so I do
not have anything against the Manjaro
Community or the distribution itself
it's on the management and the
communication side of things that I
think the issue lies there needs to be
better processes in place to test things
to communicate with the community and
the Upstream projects and to not be
perceived as a distro that doesn't
contribute and ships broken things on
top of that basically the image that
this conveys is of a company that forges
ahead and builds their business on top
of Upstream projects but without really
caring about what users Upstream teams
developers or basically everyone else
wants this might not be an accurate
reflection of Manjaro as a company or as
a distribution but it's the image it's
starting to have in the Linux community
and I think it could be avoided with a
little bit more communication so let me
know what you think about menjaro down
in the comments and I will let you know
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[Music]
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