Jonathan's Digital Garden

I finally bit the bait and made the switch from antiX to Manjaro. antiX is great. It's fast, and it really works in older computers, but I feel there is something missing, and that something is from my usual workflow, or probably I felt I had outgrown antiX and wanted something more. Maybe along those lines.

Don't get me wrong, antiX is a wonderful distro. You can give an old laptop or PC another chance by using this operating system. It's very light on the resources that 512 MB RAM would suffice. It comes with three desktop environments out of the box, and you just pick whatever you like. I've also used this on my uncle's laptop because he can't upgrade to Windows 10, and it's not advisable to use Windows 7 because it reached its end of life in January of last year.

antiX is based on Debian Stable without systemd. The distro should be familiar to you if you're coming from Ubuntu. Installing applications should be the same with Ubuntu as well: apt or dpkg.

However, I needed a distro that works out of the box. Probably because the lack of systemd requires it to have additional steps and software. For instance, you can't unmount a drive on a user level. Instead, you need to use another application so that you can unmount. I've read you can configure it, but normal users won't have the guts to mess up configuration on your OS.

So, I've been looking at and testing other distros using their Live CD, but there's one that I've always wanted to use: Manjaro.

I'm not really sure the real reason why I prefer using this distro, but I think it's because of XFCE. I've used Xubuntu before, and it's light on the resources as well. You also get that familiar Windows feeling in XFCE because it has Trash (Recycle Bin), and you have to double-click to open documents or applications. It really fits well on the computer I'm using because it's an old Dell laptop with a Core2Duo processor.

I made the switch a few days ago. My first installation failed because I tried to encrypt the Manjaro partition, but it ran into problems. I had to reinstall it again without the encryption. After it was done, I started using Manjaro.

What I liked about Manjaro is most of the things you do involve a GUI. Installing any application or app is GUI-based. Installing a kernel is GUI-based. Most of the things I did in AntiX are CLI-based. So, I always have a terminal open in case I want to install or run something. I also liked the fact that most of the apps I was using before in AntiX are available in the Manjaro repository, namely Yarn, Hugo, and Node. Although I'm still using NVS, or Node Version Switcher, to handle multiple Node versions. NVM is in the Manjaro repository, but I find using NVS easier.

I would say my experience is not that bad. This is my first time using an Arch-based Linux distro, and it's fun to use. Pamac, Manjaro's package installer, can install from AUR out of the box. You have to enable it in the settings, as some apps are not available in Manjaro's repository. In case you encounter problems, there are plenty of resources that could help you solve your problem: Manjaro's Forum, Manjaro's Wiki Page, or the Manjaro Reddit.