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Manjaro is experimenting with **opt-out telemetry | Hacker News (More like op-out spying)
(news.ycombinator.com)
Damn. I really liked manjaro
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
207 points (94.0% liked)
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It’s like finding out your favorite YTber touches kids… feels bad man.
Great...Right now, when I was thinking about finally installing Manjaro (I saw its for noobs, pretty well designed, i'm tired of "power users" distros). What else then? I used EOS, it was buggy sometimes errors etc., I use cachyOS and all the time errors and problems, but i just don't care anymore, Ubuntu is corporate's shit, maybe Mint or Fedora? Actually, I kinda liked flatpak recently, maybe I could live without AUR he? But on the other hand I need this rolling release cycle, thats why I hoped Manjaro is such "stable arch", I'm nvidia user...
What is your preferred desktop environment from below?
Based on your choice I can recommend you a one.
Also do you prefer stability or getting the latest updates?
KDE only, I would prefer stability (as I'm tired of things breaking up), but I need latest updates (thats why i liked flatpak, cuz it partially replaces need of AUR).
Let me warn you first, your GPU might cause some issues with the distro.
Based on all the info you told me about the distro you want, I would recommend Opensuse Tumbleweed.
After installing you would just need to install Nvidia drivers and the codecs and you will be ready to go.
If you plan to use flatpacks for your media playing software and browser then you won't need codecs as it's included in the flatpacks.
Just don't forget to configure auto update and when you start installing at the final screen before clicking install make sure that ssh is disabled and selinux is enabled for extra security.
Extra notes:
-
The default browser is firefox, but it can be replaced with any other browser.
-
If you want a working office suite and you don't have high requirements, you can choose between Libre Office, Free office[Prop] or WPS office [Prop].
I hope you enjoy your time on linux.
I have to admit its interesting pick, I will try that out first in VM, thanks for suggestion :)
Could also check out openSUSE if you don't mind the lack of an AUR
Yeah not really "don't mind", but hopefully I won't need it, thanks
EndeavorOS is what you want, fits the same niche but without being fucking Manjaro. :-)
Well I tried, it was better than cachyOS now, but still it was not so for noobs, i had to fix many problems using it
I'm usually a defender of opt-out telemetry in Linux, what with it usually being trivial to untick in the installer, the telemetry not being invasive, the telemetry being private and not being able to identify people, it being used to actually benefit Linux rather than make money, and because opt-in telemetry is useless (as repeatedly stated by multiple Linux projects that I trust, such as KDE and Gnome)...
That said, holy shit this telemetry collects stuff it really should not be collecting. This is not what Linux telemetry should be. Doubly so from a distro with a troubled past in terms of management and security. This is a red flag.
Manjaro manages to do just about everything wrong for one reason or another. They're trying to be the Canonical of the Arch ecosystem and they're not even close to competent enough to pull it off.
I'm sure they'll find some way to DDOS something with their own telemetry sooner or later.
Yeah, I don't understand why people use it, it's just more buggy Arch. If you really don't want to deal with the installer, use an installer like Endeavor OS.
Or if you think Arch is unstable, use a different distro, because Manjaro is worse. I like openSUSE Tumbleweed (also rolling, but much more reliable), and there are tons of other great distros (Fedora/Garuda, Debian/Mint, etc). Use pretty much anything but Manjaro...
For gaming rigs, check out Garuda, imo a pretty nice Arch distro without telemetry and easy installation.
Friends don't let friends use Manjaro
Use EndeavourOS or another Arch derivative instead.
Or just plain arch. Installing it with archinstall isn't that hard
And it's a one-time thing, then you just pacman - Syu into the sunset. Consider setting up btrfs with snapshots, which is a life saver when an update goes bad. I use snapper on openSUSE Tumbleweed and it has saved me from bad NVIDIA updates a couple of times, which is the main reason I switched from Arch a few years ago.
since a third of manjaro is coming form austria, i apologize ⅓ times for its existence
Oh, you can vote whether it should be opt-in or opt-out.
Oh, voting requires "Trust level 1".
Anyway, I may stop donating to Manjaro due to this. Now I just go with Arch anyway. archinstall even makes it quick to setup a VM.
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Oh boy looks like my weekend will be spend learning and trying to install Arch without a graphical installer. To be fair Manjaro on my laptop was my first try at Arch. I never thought how much I will come to like AUR.
EndevaourOS is already on my gaming rig so plain Arch for my laptop seems like a good challenge. Farewell Manjaro, I learned a lot
I highly recommend BTRFS as your root filesystem, and then configure snapshots. This way if an update goes sideways (pretty rare), you can roll back and wait for fixes.
I haven't used Arch for a few years, but my openSUSE Tumbleweed install came with it by default, and it has saved me a few times in the 7 or so years I've used it. Maybe the new instructions include that, idk, but you'll be glad you have it.
After you figure out how to properly partition your disk, you learn how the entire setup is actually quite simple Basically, Mount partitions, pacstrap to install the base system, generate fstab, chroot in, create a unprivileged user and add it to sudo, setup grub, configure internet, exit chroot and unmount, reboot into the newly installed system, configure X11/Wayland to your liking
Installing Arch is a lot easier than fixing a bad Manjaro update. I get that it's intimidating, but it's really quite easy if you can follow instructions, but budget a couple hours your first time because you'll probably second-guess everything. The second time should be more like 30 min.
'Till you figure out that, on Arch, if you missed/broke anything, you can boot into the Arch USB, mount your root into /mnt, and arch-chroot in to fix whatever is broken
Yup, a live image works in a pinch. IMO, just use BTRFS on root and install something like snapper to handle snapshots and you shouldn't need the live USB (unless you bork your bootloader somehow).
Be me, and bork BTRFS itself while trying to compile OpenMW from source
How did you manage that??
the archinstall script is officially supported and very straightforward. like, almost Calamares-but-in-TUI straightforward.
Going to second other comments. Even without archinstall. It feels like it will be harder than it is. Umm, just save yourself a bit of time and configure the network and install a console editor (nano/vim whatever) while in the chroot (if going full manual). It was a minor pain to work around that for me.
There are pages discussing how to do everything (helps to have a laptop with browser, or a phone to look them up). At the end, you generally know exactly what you installed (OK no-one watches all the dependencies), and I've found any borks that happen easy to fix because I know what I installed.
It's not that hard, just read the install guides and instructions. My first Arch install was like 8y ago and I expected it to be difficult - it wasn't.
Meanwhile my first Gentoo system... I was expecting to be not so bad.... Holy f I was wrong
The compile times are abusive on older hardware for sure
I got a Xeon E3-1220 V3, thought it'd handle well A whole ass day and it still wasn't done
Opt out telemetry is annoying. There's no guarantee it doesn't send before I've had a chance to disable.
If I were using Manjaro right now, at the first opportunity, I would be switching to something else. Too much enshitification happening everywhere, and people need to start voting with their "wallets" to stop these greedy fucks.
Because telemetry as implemented and spying are in fact very very different, and conflating the two is why "noone cares about privacy". When your giant conspiracy wall is "Manjaro knows a user in north America clicked on the start menu more often then typing into a quick search box" and you refer to that as spying, you hurt the actual cause you claim to support. Badly.
The same is true for Microsoft, ive been asking for years for any concrete proof of spying a normal human would care about and what I usually get is the Microsoft terms of use, a legal document that reflects reality less than the average legal document, and the average legal document is basically covering your eyes and hoping nobody sues you.
And because I think the correct way to dick swing in this community is as follows...I also use arch 🍆 (well endeavour, but I think I still get dick swinging credits)
Counterpoint; it's really none of their business to know how often I click on something, and neither do I want them to have the ability to figure that out either because there is no reason to assume that those are the only data points they can get their grubby hands on.
If there is no reasonable way for me to differentiate between spying and telemetry, I rather wish they couldn't do either.
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