I tried Manjaro for a month and had a good time.
I tried Manjaro for a month and had a good time.
I've been using Manjaro with Deepin DE for about a month now. Here are some points I want to share about its performance and some challenges.
1. Gaming has been the biggest pain point. Setting it up was tricky because I had the incorrect driver in the kernel, which prevented me from playing games for a while. Some titles like BeamNG and War Thunder would freeze my computer completely, forcing me to reset or power off. Even when it worked, I noticed the car didn’t appear in BeamNG. Performance was also noticeably worse compared to Windows.
2. Productivity isn’t my focus, but I miss some features from Windows, like quickly switching between windows using Winkey + shift + arrow keys.
3. Installing the OS and apps was smoother than on Windows. While I won’t go into details, it’s straightforward and fast. App installation mainly comes down to finding suitable alternatives on Linux or AUR.
4. Overall, it functions well for general use, though audio issues—especially with Bluetooth—are a recurring problem. I suspect these crashes might be linked to my overclocking, even though higher OC settings worked fine on Windows.
I've experienced no major problems with games since updating to the correct driver/kernel setup (latest NVIDIA and 4.20 kernel). The simplest installation process I've had is using Lutris and Wine through the package installer. 2: Avoid shortcuts; Manjaro works well overall, though I'm considering replacing the screenshot app since it doesn't function as smoothly as the snip tool in Windows. 3: Installing Manjaro was straightforward and user-friendly. The GUI for drivers and kernel is quite intuitive, which suits my preference for visual interfaces over command-line tasks. Before saving my Xserver configuration, it would sometimes lose it, an issue that didn't occur on other distributions or OSes but had an easy solution. 4: Overall experience is positive for regular use. Discord and ALSA perform well, with good window clipping and no audio problems except for occasional ALSA issues. The performance is solid, though I wish the setup on Manjaro would be smoother compared to what I had with Mint. 5: The latest kernel versions have been tested on both Mint and Manjaro, but I'm hesitant to commit to Manjaro for gaming due to the learning curve and past frustrations.
Linux drivers from nVidia remain problematic, even the "non-free" version which is claimed to be top-notch.
I have limited knowledge about software and hardware. That means I’m confident in solving the issue in one way or another.