Comments on: 3 Best Arch-based Linux Distributions for Everyday Desktop Usage

By: kingbob

kingbob — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:42:24 +0000

I currently run Garuda Lite KDE which their web site warns if for experts. The expert suggestion if because they do no offer any support for the lite version. I find it very polished with easy install, useful system setup tools for things like printer, bluetooth, and popular software installs. Boot tweaking tool as well. It has an Nvidia driver manager so you can choose or switch propritary or open source. I find very enjoyable. Here are the downside for nubies. They use ZRAM with a heavy hand, it has caused me system stutter. All my laptops have 16 up to 64 GB RAM. I just remove ZRAM however it is part of a meta package which includes nice fancy prompt and a couple of other tweaks, you loose those too. You can live without or do as I and find how to work around it. Internet offers semi-automatic bash prompt generators. Another guy has nice one for Arch much like Manjaro.
Last thing I had to tweak are my sysctl.conf setting. As they are once you rip out ZRAM then you need to lower the swappiness, cache etc. This work well on my Dell 5560 i7, 64GB RAM, SSD drive.
vm.swappiness=1
vm.pagecache=30
vm.min_free_kbytes=1572864
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=100
vm.dirty_background_ratio=2
vm.dirty_ratio=4
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs=1000
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs=1500
This not only improves swappiness it also solves the long delay of RAM syncing up with a USB drive so USB can be removed right away.

By: Twaddle

Twaddle — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 06:06:21 +0000

In reply to RetiredIT. I faced a similar issue with Endeavour OS. I don't why is so much hype about this OS. My daily driver is Manjaro and it works fine. For minimal install one can always install Archlab , ArcoLinux or perhaps ArchCraft if one feels the need for a Window manager

By: Eduard

Eduard — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 00:56:32 +0000

I would like te reply about Manjaro here, because I have started using this distro as one of my installed operating systems and I kinda like it for it’s really great combination of technical qualities together with ease of use.
(although the vanilla Arch is still my favourite and stays my main system next to Windows)

“Cons”:

– “Uses a little bit older Arch linux packages in order to try and find more stability.”
This is NOT con!! Or at least not necessarily, nor it’s necessarily a pro.
It’s a characteristic and a conscious choice. It has both positive and negative aspects. So either remove it from the “Cons” or just add it to the “Pros” list too!

– “The dev team doesn’t always listen to the community.”
– “Manjaro is succumbing to the business model than focusing on the community itself.”
My fear of at least the last of these statements here is sadly that this is indeed valid.
I base this feeling on the fact that they clearly promote additional products on their website.
I hope this is not an ongoing development that is going to get worse and worse.

Personally I think this way: If you are a distro maintainer and if are successful enough together with your community, you won’t need sponsors to keep your project alive.

On the other hand, look at Canonical, the large company behind the most popular desktop Linux distro that exists, Ubuntu. They are certainly not any better if you ask me.
But tell me if I am wrong. Because companies can have slightly different mentalities, apart from being just to big and mighty only.

By: Piers

Piers — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 22:57:19 +0000

In reply to James. Absolutely agree James. It's [ArcoLinux, previously known as ArchMerge] an excellent project with ridiculous amounts of options in terms of downloadable iso's and just about any desktop environment known to man. :-) The project owner is Erik Dubois (Seems like a very nice bloke) and the community is a very pleasant one with the more experienced users being very tolerant with the newbies. Nice article by Bobby Borisov. Thanks

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 04:12:32 +0000

In reply to Shadow_Death. I use Xero Linux I love everything about it. It runs with no problems. It's not bloated and has everything working out of the box. Glad to see I'm not the only one who likes it.

By: RetiredIT

RetiredIT — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 12:15:26 +0000

I find it hard to believe that this “new” distro has moved up to the #2 spot on Distrowatch in just a few short years! I tried to install it on my Lenovo Thinkpad L430 with the following results:

First Try – Got stuck at 39%
Second Try – Error message – Could not format the selected partition

There have been other reviewers who have stated that this distro has serious problems. One reviewer stated he tried to install it 4 separate times, each of which ended in a disaster. If you must have an Arch based distro and don’t want all the work of Arch then try one of the others such as Manjaro, Artix or Arco. Endeavor is definitely the pits when it won’t even install on a very Linux compatible Thinkpad!

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 10:07:19 +0000

Tried them all, but stucked with Endeavour. Garuda is mind blowing beautiful in Terms of its GUI but at least on my Hardware not the fastest one.
With manjaro my Epson All in One Printer/Scanner is refusing to work no matter what I Install.
With Endeavour everything works fine, no “hick ups”, effortless to install apps with yay command in the terminal.
And because it’s a rolling release, always up to date.

By: Shadow_Death

Shadow_Death — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 02:16:21 +0000

XeroLinux is another arch based contender.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 22:14:08 +0000

Garuda KDE Plasma on my main system with a backup install of Manjaro in case I need to reinstall Garuda (it’s happened before, but seems stable now). Manjaro KDE on my lower spec’d laptop.

By: James

James — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 17:45:10 +0000

I like Arcolinux