Manjaro 20.2.1

fox · March 24, 2021, 05:36:56 PM

I don't think so. I found it reported elsewhere and for other distros. It may have to do with not using the default monitor resolution, which I don't.

Except for that problem, I have to say that I'm really enjoying Manjaro, and I have been using it every day since I installed it (alternating with Ubuntu 20.10). Maybe it's the novelty of using a different distro with a different desktop. One other thing I'm pleasantly surprised about is the relative infrequency of updates. After I first installed it I had a massive update, but since then, nothing. I think this distinguishes it from Arch. I think Manjaro holds back some Arch updates and issues a bunch at a time. I'll have to wait and see.

fox · April 03, 2021, 10:02:31 AM

internal wifi, sound and microphone don't work
monitor backlight keyboard control doesn't work
Microsoft Office 2010 apps installed in Crossover work, but the window sizing doesn't

Jason · April 03, 2021, 10:07:57 AM

Do you mean the backlight for the monitor or keyboard? If the former, that should be accessible via a slider by clicking on your battery power icon. Even Linux Lite lets you do that.

Thanks for bringing up Foxit Reader. I had forgotten about it and was recently trying to edit a PDF with the default one and it wasn't pretty. Weird stuff going on with font size and not able to easily remove text and other fun stuff.

fox · April 03, 2021, 04:08:06 PM

Quote from: Jason on April 03, 2021, 10:07:57 AM
Do you mean the backlight for the monitor or keyboard? If the former, that should be accessible via a slider by clicking on your battery power icon. Even Linux Lite lets you do that.
....

Backlight for the monitor. (I fixed the post to clarify.) Although there is a slider in the Display Configuration setting, moving the slider has no effect on the backlight intensity.

Jason · April 03, 2021, 06:05:54 PM

Quote from: fox on April 03, 2021, 04:08:06 PM
Backlight for the monitor. (I fixed the post to clarify.) Although there is a slider in the Display Configuration setting, moving the slider has no effect on the backlight intensity.

Interesting. I wonder why that is. I suppose it doesn't detect the hardware properly but a screen should be pretty easy stuff.

fox · April 03, 2021, 07:15:18 PM

I'm sure it has something to do with the backlight program. The monitor is definitely detected and handled properly. With one exception - modern Apple 27" iMac monitors are 5K, but all Linux and Windows OSes see them as 4K. This is the case on my 2015 and 2019 iMacs.

fox · April 18, 2021, 08:17:45 AM

Quick update. I am still using Manjaro as an alternate to Ubuntu. I boot into it every two or three days and use it for all the same things I use Ubuntu for. (With one exception - my saved local mail is on the Ubuntu partition.) It has been a month now, and it has been problem-free. Updates are not as regular as those in Arch, but when you get them, they are often huge. One this morning was over 1 gb.

I still haven't solved the four problems I have operating it on my 2019 iMac:

brightness key doesn't work
no driver for internal Broadcom wifi card (bcm 4364 rev3
no sound from internal sound card and microphone
Plasma widgets don't remember their place on the desktop after re-boot

The first three are problems on every distro and I have workarounds for them. I can't generalize about the widget problem because I don't have Plasma on any other distro.

I'm starting to have faith that Manjaro is a reliable distro for everyday use.

fox · April 26, 2021, 07:18:34 AM

DistroWatch just posted a review of Manjaro 21 KDE version here. (That's what I have installed after updates.) The review is mostly positive, with a few minor niggles. The comments are interesting. Among the problems reported were issues following updates, which was something I experienced once the last time I tried it many years ago. So far I haven't had this problem.

The other interesting thing that one person reported was a snarky forum comment to a request for assistance. I had the same happen when I first asked for assistance with Mac sound not working. (Later replies were nicer and more helpful.) I think that this is one of the things that can happen with success; you're bound to get a few less sympathetic individuals responding to newbie questions. However, I never noticed this in Ubuntu or Mint forums. I wonder about MX Linux?

Jason · April 27, 2021, 04:36:27 PM

I've come into contact with a few Arch users. What I notice that seems common among them, more than most distros is an almost religious zeal about Arch. Like some churches who think they're the only true church, many Arch users see it as the only real Linux. And it's normally advanced Linux users that are interested in and use Arch. I think when you combine those two things you can get a certain level of arrogance. Present company accepted, Codepoet.

But, it could also just be that the mods allow people to be snarky (maybe some of the mods are, too) and they can't get away with it in other Forums. The mods often set the tone of a forum.

fox · July 17, 2021, 08:02:50 AM

I ran into my first major hiccup with Manjaro, 4 months after its installation. After booting up this morning, the Update Manager informed me that I needed 1.4 gb of updates. I also received notification that my 5.11 kernel was no longer supported, and I should upgrade to the current supported kernel (5.13). The updates do not include a kernel upgrade; that had to be done separately through the Manjaro Settings Manager. After installing the 5.13 kernel, a reboot took me to a command line when the disk with Manjaro on it couldn't be found during the startup sequence. I rebooted to verify the problem and then rebooted in single user mode, which gave the same result. Fortunately, the older kernel was still installed, and available from the grub menu. Rebooting into the old kernel worked.

I don't remember what borked my Manjaro installation the last time I tried it, but recovery was not so easy. It might be unfair to blame this kind of problem on the rolling release model. I never experienced such a problem on Arch, although I didn't use it much the one time I had it installed. At any rate, I have the perception that rolling release distros are subject to this kind of problem, and that is why I would not use one as my main system. I have never experienced this level of problem in my 10 years of using Ubuntu, and its updates are fresh enough to keep me happy.

Going back to Manjaro, I will post the problem on their forums, and I will also try installing their 5.14.1 experimental kernel to see if the problem has been fixed. They also have a 5.12 kernel in their kernel repository, so I could try that. The other option would be to downgrade to the 5.10 kernel which they mark as "LTS" and "recommended"; so presumably still supported.

ssfc72 · July 17, 2021, 08:49:02 AM

Fox, does Manjaro have a Timeshift backup feature, like Mint has?

fox · July 17, 2021, 03:50:49 PM

No, but I'm sure I could install TimeShift on it if I wanted to. That would be a good safety measure if I was relying on it.

buster · July 17, 2021, 05:01:26 PM

Apparently Timeshift is available in the repositories of Manjaro.If you get your system running well, might be worth looking for. Use before updates.

fox · July 17, 2021, 05:08:19 PM

Problem solved, though I'm not sure how, exactly, I solved it. I got three helpful answers on the Manjaro forums, but none of those solved it alone, though one might have contributed to the solution. I'm sure it was a Mac thing. The Manjaro partition is on an external SSD plugged into my Mac's Thunderbolt 3 port with a USB 3.2 cable. I had to shut the computer down, unplug the external, start up the Mac OS, reinstall the Refind bootloader, run Ubuntu on the internal drive, update grub, shut down the computer, plug in the external again, and then Manjaro would boot from the upgraded kernel. I don't even know if all of these steps were necessary, but nothing else I tried worked. One of the suggested solutions from the forums might have been a necessary precursor, just to add yet another possibility.

The TimeShift backup is a good idea, but I'm not going to do it, at least not now. I don't depend on Manjaro, so if I bork it, I bork it. The important thing is that after 4 months, Manjaro continues to work well. I'll keep using it from time to time to see if I should have more faith in rolling releases.

ssfc72 · July 18, 2021, 05:53:55 AM

Nice going Fox. :-) You sure do have a complicated computer setup, dual booting a Linux Distro on a Mac, using an external drive. :-)