[Otek]

So I’ll transition next month to Linux because I need stronger work station and my 2019 MacBook Pro is not enough. I’m preparing myself, I live mostly in cmd anyway but I’m on the fence if I should choose Manjaro or Ubuntu. I’m okay with spending some amount of time to learn and configure my environment properly. Can anyone tell me what l, as a programmer working with containers and mostly JS tooling, should consider in my decision?

[LeFantome]

If you are new to Linux then Manjaro and Ubuntu are two good choices. I say this primarily because of documentation and repositories.

On Linux, you really want the software you use to be available as a package for your OS. Ubuntu and Manjaro ( through AUR especially ) have the largest package repositories ( something like 70 thousand ). Some distros have maybe 10 or 20 thousand. As a developer, you will for sure want stuff those distros do not provide ( eg. Distrobox — available on Manjaro ).

If you are reading instructions on the web for how to do something on Linux, it is highly likely they apply to Ubuntu. There is no doubt that the popularity of Ubuntu makes it better for a beginner.

Probably the best Linux documentation available is the Arch Wiki and all that documentation applies to Manjaro.

Manjaro is a friendly version of Arch Linux in the same way that Ubuntu is a modified Debian.

I used to use Fedora and it is a great distro. It would not be my top choice for a new user though. There are many great “friendly” distros that are very easy to get into. The problems come when you want them to do more. It can be hard to find documentation and things may be done just a bit differently. It can be harder to find software. And fighting the package manager on any distro is no fun.

[LeFantome]

Apologies, I posted this at the wrong level.

I am a Manjaro user currently but have used other distros in the past, including Ubuntu. Given that, I would obviously recommend Manjaro. There are a million reasons but, for development, I find the rolling release model far superior. On Ubuntu, especially an LTS release, you are going to find over time that the software versions on your machine are too old. This will lead to installing from source or Flatpak or what have you and then your system is a mess. Worse, it also means that when you eventually move to a newer Ubuntu release, things are likely to break ( more likely at least ). Manjaro means more software updates more frequently and more hassle keeping software at older or stable versions but always up-to-date software and no big system upgrade ever again. For developers, I find the Manjaro model superior.

I also highly recommend looking into Distrobox.

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

Distrobox is Docker but instead of heavy sandboxing, when you are in the container you can see your real home directory, your real device tree, your real process list, and your real Wayland server ( desktop GUI ). This means you can Distrobox into an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS terminal for example and be able to run any software available Ubuntu ( including graphical ) with an experience very much like Ubuntu is installed directly on your machine. Best of both worlds. Distrobox uses Docker though so you are not going to want to run containers in Distrobox. So the real distro still matters.

[nando3d1]

For me, Manjaro is not that good, they make too many mistakes that make the distro very unstable, even Arch is more stable than Manjaro. https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/

[LeFantome]

I have had a great experience and do not recall that certificate issue. I do not work for Manjaro though. Let’s give the OP the best advice possible.

I have heard good things about EndeavourOS and, as you say, it is very similar to Manjaro. I may try it for my next install.

https://itsfoss.com/endeavouros-vs-manjaro/

[incomingpain]

In my opinion manjaro vs ubuntu in that use case doesn't really make any difference.

What you really need to decide on is desktop environment.

Gnome vs KDE vs Xfce vs budgie vs cinnamon is really the decision you need to make.

If you're comfy with mac, Budgie might be the best way to go.

https://ubuntubudgie.org/ or https://manjaro.org/download/#budgie

I lean more ubuntu though.

[wdfx]

It's also about the system package manager.

In recent years I've been preferring Fedora's dnf over Ubuntu's apt.

[incomingpain]

>It's also about the system package manager.

Agreed, apt has been aging to be sure.

Manjaro's pacman not that much different.

>In recent years I've been preferring Fedora's dnf over Ubuntu's apt.

On my rpm boxes I still use yum. I do realize dnf is there but honestly haven't see any reason to change.

What do you think makes dnf better?

[wdfx]

I consider rpm/dnf/yum in the same suite of packaging.

Just in my experience using it and noticing how the packaging is done and applied to the system, I have more trust in rpm/dnf to do things properly compared to deb/apt.

Many times I've had apt repos stop working or deb installs doing weird things and leaving the system in some weird state. I've had none of these issues with rpm/dnf.

[incomingpain]

>Just in my experience using it and noticing how the packaging is done and applied to the system, I have more trust in rpm/dnf to do things properly compared to deb/apt.

Like I've kind of looked into packaging an app into a .deb before and it's rather convoluted. I never did understand why nobody has worked toward fixing these.

>Many times I've had apt repos stop working or deb installs doing weird things and leaving the system in some weird state. I've had none of these issues with rpm/dnf.

I have on both sides. Apt repos often break in annoying ways.

I still to this day don't know the difference between Centos baseos, universe, extra, elrepo, and epel. Now there's streams and next. I just don't seem to care to learn.

Anyway, I thought maybe you meant dnf had some sort of new advantage and why it's better than yum for example.

[wdfx]

dnf seems to be the default in Fedora nowadays, so that's what I used since I selected Fedora for my laptop OS (whereas I previously used kubuntu). I recall using yum some years ago on centos systems, but I'm not really up to speed on what the differences are.

[Otek]

I’m using i3 from day 1. I had on MacOS yabai that simulated this behavior

[incomingpain]

Oh ya right on. I was looking at tiling stuff gave a few of these a try.

I actually ended up with POP OS which has a much much easier tiling manager.

[mhoad]

I’m in that exact situation and am running Ubuntu for the past year after a year of PopOS and ten years of Max before that.

I’m happy with the setup for what its worth. I’ve been containerising my dev environments the past few years with a mix of VSCode devcontainers, GitHub Codespaces and recently LXD.

In short I’d recommend giving it a spin and see how you feel with it. Ubuntu is a pretty gentle transition from MacOS

[toper-centage]

> I’m okay with spending some amount of time

If this "some time around" is more than a few, stick to Ubuntu. I wouldn't use a system I just learned to build as my main workstation. You can still keep a separate distro a learn a the same time.

[wooque]

Try Ubuntu, Manjaro and Arch are not serious distros no matter what people tell you here, I tell that as ex-Arch user. Also try different flavors Kubuntu and Xubuntu are nice as well.