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by Enginerrrd 1954 days ago
Honestly, it's weird that Ubuntu has the reputation that it does. I still conceive of it as a "user-friendly" distro in the back of my mind, but my experience is that it constantly finds new and interesting ways to break. Compare that to Arch, which was a PITA to setup once, but since I have, I've had one minor thing break on an AUR package and that's it. But Arch has the reputation as the one that breaks on updates.

My experience is definitely contrary to my conception of, and the reputation of these distros.

1 comments

Yeah. PPAs are such a user-unfriendly alternative to the AUR, which just has everything.

Also, Ubuntu (with GNOME), Kubuntu, and Xubuntu (but not Lubuntu...) recently switched to some new crypto greeter (the thing you put your password into to unlock your encrypted drive at boot) which glitches out very badly. On every other boot, it flickers between its graphical facade and the underlying CLI prompt, and single keypresses are interpreted as multiple ones. Lubuntu, however, uses the same crypto greeter as Manjaro seems to, which still works.

Also, a funny thing: my keyboard (a Code V3)'s Num/Caps Lock LED keys don't illuminate at all in any of the *buntus, though they do in Debian, Manjaro, and Arch (on both newer and older kernels than Ubuntu 20.04 currently uses).

It's pretty disappointing.

On the other hand, after around 2 years of using Manjaro without problems, kernel 5.10 got me recently. :D It has big problems. Same problems in Arch. But, unlike in Arch, a kernel rollback in Manjaro is an in-OS GUI and/or a GRUB selection away. Manjaro's been the sweet spot for me, and it looks like it'll continue to be.

On the other hand², some software I recently had to build explicitly refuses to run on any unsupported *nix systems, and it doesn't support Arch or Arch-flavored distros. :c (Hence my recent adventures in Ubuntu.)

So there's definite downsides to straying off of the Ubuntu-flavored Linux reservation, but Ubuntu's always been surprisingly buggy for me compared to Arch and Manjaro.

Sticking with an LTS/Recommended kernel has served me well in Manjaro. Currently I'm running 5.4.95-1.

Last year I was running a 4.x kernel but I began having an issue with some piece of software (I forget) that, when I researched it found everybody recommending a switch to a 5.x kernel which fixed it immediately for me.

Switching kernels indeed is extremely easy!

Yep, rolling back to 5.4 saved me. :p

Just watch out for 5.10. Happily, 5.11 seems okay, but it's still experimental.

Sticking to the LTS is a great idea, though part of me wants to go "Well then why not just run Ubuntu?! ;w;", despite having some answers. (Funnily, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS actually updates from 5.4 to 5.8. Apparently, the Ubuntu LTS doesn't stick to the LTS kernel now! Unless it never really did.)

>Also, Ubuntu (with GNOME), Kubuntu, and Xubuntu (but not Lubuntu...) recently switched to some new crypto greeter (the thing you put your password into to unlock your encrypted drive at boot) which glitches out very badly. On every other boot, it flickers between its graphical facade and the underlying CLI prompt, and single keypresses are interpreted as multiple ones. Lubuntu, however, uses the same crypto greeter as Manjaro seems to, which still works.

EDIT: it turns out that the falling back to the underlying CLI is the greeter's response to arrow key input (e.g., the up arrow key is "^[[A", which is multiple characters[0]). XD And, with Num Lock turned off, the numpad keys work as arrow keys.

0: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/103608