I just moved from Manjaro Linux to EndeavourOS

[danie10@squeet.me]

I’ve been on Manjaro Linux for a good ten plus years now and been pretty happy with it. Not only that, but I love the rolling distro type updates as there has been no need to ever reinstall the OS. The problem with that is a mass of tweaks as well as software crud you collect over the years. So I felt that it was probably time for a change, and at the same time, for a re-installation, at least as far as the apps and the main configs go. I have long had a separate partition for my /home directory with all my user data and app config settings.

One other reason that prompted the change, and yes it was partly the Manjaro company changes that sparked this thinking, but Manjaro does hold back new packages for testing for 2 to 3 weeks. If you do not use the AUR (really does anyone not use it on an Arch based distro?), then this is great for stability. Many AUR packages are also not going to be an issue if they are stable releases, but if you have ventured into git releases for example for OBS Studio, then the Manjaro “way” can break these packages. Once I knew this I drastically pruned back on any git releases where I could. And therefore Manjaro has still worked well for me.

I’m very happy with the Arch based distros so that was where I looked at my potential successor for Manjaro. Basically I came down to EndeavourOS in the end. EndeavourOS does use the live Arch repos so it is fully in step with the latest updates there. If you use any AUR packages, this actually means BETTER stability because all dependencies are also up-to-date, and are the one’s used when testing Arch updates.

Apart from that EndeavourOS’s installer as well as Nvidia driver installation is a bit friendlier than raw Arch itself. The clincher for me was that I could in fact install and use the pamac GUI installer on EndeavourOS. That made me totally at home because I loved using that on Manjaro when searching for and selecting new applications. I generally do all my daily updates via the terminal anyway (using a push button on my Stream Deck to run them).

I spent a day noting what key apps were installed and how (native vs AppImage vs flatpak) as well as any menu settings, backing up a license fort DaVinci Resolve Studio, and prepping exactly what I needed to do. Furthermore, I also installed EndeavourOS into a VM for a day to test out the installation process, and to see if my key apps worked with their Manjaro user data. They all worked fine.

I do anyway have full daily backups to a separate drive of all my /home user data and have TimeShift running so that my boot drive data would also be accessible if I needed to restore something (I did need my Virtual Manager VM configs that I discovered were not part of the home partition data).

So yesterday I did the fresh install, and linked it to the old home partition as part of that (an error I got right at the end of the installation, related to it not being able to unmount that home partition – I realised after a second go at it, that I should just ignore that “error”). Before I restarted I also updated the fstab file to include my other drives so that they were visible after boot up. After the reboot I did replace the Nvidia open drivers with the proprietary one’s (require them for Davinci Resolve Studio).

Install process on the go – I opted to do manual partitioning

I then selectively reinstalled all the apps that I use regularly, and zero issues, actually. The only one not recognising its old user data was AnyType, but it anyway syncs to the cloud, so all was good. I had prepared for this anyway by saving most of the key commands etc in a text file on my backup drive.

I could have opted to just automatically re-install all apps, but I really don’t want all the crud back again. All apps are working well, and updates are running.

One issue I did have, and it is not EndeavourOS’s problem, was I had mounted my other drives under /run/media, so these mounts were disappearing. I should have actually mounted them under /mnt (but Manjaro had been handling it fine with whatever workaround I had forced on it from years ago). I did have to just fix that, but I should have done that a long time ago.

Ignore this “error” at end of install if it is your home partition

Something else that bugged me, but again not EndeavourOS’s own issue except that they tighten security down a bit more than Manjaro does, was my sudo access kept failing with my password being rejected. My workaround was to just use su - temporarily to become root. In the end I realised that it seems the sudoers file gives higher priority for lines lower down, and the main file does an include, to include any sub-files. I should not have tried to change my sudoer rights inside the main file, but rather in one of the sub-files. Sounds like a small thing but I needed that sudoer access as my user, to run yay install commands properly in the beginning, and it took me about 2 hours to figure all that out. After that, I got my pamac GUI going, and I was all happy!

As it is still a KDE Plasma desktop it really feels and works the same. All my old desktop settings just worked. Steam Games does feel a bit slicker now and that may be the cleaner machine, newer drivers, or possibly also the performance mode I switched the CPU to now.

It is a great feeling to have the latest of everything now as far as KDE packages and other drivers go.

EndeavourOS’s welcome window is also quite nice. It guides you on the first start-up what to do, with pages opening for additional information. They have not yet developed as many of their own packages as Manjaro did, but I’m getting by quite fine and not really missing anything from Manjaro. EndeavourOS is fully in step with Arch, so if I ever want/need to migrate to raw Arch, it should be an easy sideways move without any app reinstallations etc.

EndeavourOS welcome window

EndeavourOS could have included the pamac GUI for package easier noob installation, but it seems they prefer to be known as a terminal-centric distro. I think they could have otherwise just included a link on the welcome window to say install GUI package manager (as an option). It is a leanish distro so without packing lots of default apps like Manjaro does, this distro downloads quite quickly and installs quickly. I think it’s initial installation on the boot drive just under 20 GB.

Can manage settings around log files including saving to the web
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