Please don't dump Maui Linux

[jairlebentz]

I didn't see this announcement.  This is sad news indeed.  I actually came from a Debian based distro to Maui.  Ubuntu based distros seem to get a bad rep in Debian based forums, but I found Maui to be excellent.  It got great reviews everytime it was reviewed too.  I never understood why it didn't catch on more.  I think part of the problem was that it worked so well the forums were too quiet.  People thought nobody was using Maui so they moved on.  It will be shame to see it go.  I think there is a real need for a solid Neon based Plasma desktop.  Especially now with Mint dropping KDE.

"I think part of the problem was that it worked so well the forums were too quiet."
In another circumstances that could be a real compliment
yes, Maui is like that, installing and forget all the problems that other Linux OS have.

[chatan]

Super Bummed.
I seem to pick very good distros that go away.  Freespire >> MEPIS >> Netrunner (original) >> Maui.
I need to be more careful and think big;   Maybe Manjaro KDE.
Cheers

[wonder]

I didn't see this announcement.  This is sad news indeed.  I actually came from a Debian based distro to Maui.  Ubuntu based distros seem to get a bad rep in Debian based forums, but I found Maui to be excellent.  It got great reviews everytime it was reviewed too.  I never understood why it didn't catch on more.  I think part of the problem was that it worked so well the forums were too quiet.  People thought nobody was using Maui so they moved on.  It will be shame to see it go.  I think there is a real need for a solid Neon based Plasma desktop.  Especially now with Mint dropping KDE.

"I think part of the problem was that it worked so well the forums were too quiet."
In another circumstances that could be a real compliment
yes, Maui is like that, installing and forget all the problems that other Linux OS have.

Yes, I think the same, part of problem are this.
Work fine, work very good, the users of Maui are not newers in linux...all work fine...no need post in forum...

[rocky7x]

Super Bummed.
I seem to pick very good distros that go away.  Freespire >> MEPIS >> Netrunner (original) >> Maui.
I need to be more careful and think big;   Maybe Manjaro KDE.
Cheers

Unfortunately Manjaro KDE is nowhere near as stable and problem-free as Maui. I went through the list of all KDE distros recently and could not really pin an alternative distro to Maui when it comes to "problemfreeness"... non-DEB distros are problematic, because external software companies that do provide linux software don't provide Manjaro/Arch packages, so your only choice is to wait until someone from the maintainers has mercy and creates a package for it (or you can compile it yourself - I'm curious what would my wife tell me if I told her to compile it herself ). RPM distros are very power-user oriented (Fedora KDE, Opensuse and similar). So the only choice are DEB distros, but again, Mint KDE is stopped (from my perspective the only viable alternative) and the others are again more problem-prone than Maui was. So really sad if it goes away...

[kdemeoz]

Super Bummed.
I seem to pick very good distros that go away.  Freespire >> MEPIS >> Netrunner (original) >> Maui.
I need to be more careful and think big;   Maybe Manjaro KDE.
Cheers

Unfortunately Manjaro KDE is nowhere near as stable and problem-free as Maui. I went through the list of all KDE distros recently and could not really pin an alternative distro to Maui when it comes to "problemfreeness"... non-DEB distros are problematic, because external software companies that do provide linux software don't provide Manjaro/Arch packages, so your only choice is to wait until someone from the maintainers has mercy and creates a package for it (or you can compile it yourself - I'm curious what would my wife tell me if I told her to compile it herself ). RPM distros are very power-user oriented (Fedora KDE, Opensuse and similar). So the only choice are DEB distros, but again, Mint KDE is stopped (from my perspective the only viable alternative) and the others are again more problem-prone than Maui was. So really sad if it goes away...

I respectfully disagree with some of that. I suppose this is one of those instances where americans [i'm not one] say that your mileage may vary. I also suspect that one's view in this area might depend on each individual's current position along their specific Linux journey timeline. I know from potent personal experience that when i first began learning about Linux [as a 20 year+ Windows survivor] in 2013 that "all" of it was intimidating & hard, but that [for me] the DEB stream seemed slightly less so, & thus that's the path i chose to go down. Many months later i chose to also have a look at Manjaro, but it terrified & overwhelmed me, so i retreated back to the comfort of Mint 17 KDE. Discovering Maui last year was a blessing for me, & i happily moved both my PCs to it, once it was time for me to move up from KDE4 to Plasma5. For reasons i won't rehash here but are amply documented in other posts of mine here from earlier this year, in May/June this year i needed/wanted to move on from Maui [i had no idea back then how accidentally prescient i was, ha]. I tested [VMs] a plethora of potentially alternative P5 candidates... & by that time my own travel along my own Linux timeline was such that it was now viable for me to look not only still in the DEB stream, but also for the first time seriously in the RPM stream. That process eventually lead me to adopt openSUSE Tumbleweed KDE [something that would have totally overwhelmed & crippled me a few years earlier], which in Tower continues to provide me a tremendous P5 experience. My necessary oS learning curve was extremely steep, & i accept that alone would disqualify oS from the candidate list of some Maui'ers. For those interested in the challenge though, i suspect you might really enjoy it. Wrt Lappy, i have very recently migrated it to Manjaro KDE -- another very big learning curve for me. Whilst i would only offer this as a provisional endorsement of it at this stage [given i've only been using Manjaro 17.0.6 for less than a week], so far i am extremely impressed with it too, on multiple levels. 

external software companies that do provide linux software don't provide Manjaro/Arch packages

Yes, that's been part of my necessary learning curve with Manjaro. However [& it's a big however] i have been simply stunned at the "hugeness" of the available software packages range available even just in the stable Manjaro repo alone, but once supplemented with the AUR & yaourt [via Konsole or in the Octopi GUI] the choice is staggeringly good. I have a very long list of pgms [happy to provide it for comparison if anyone would be interested to check against their own needs] that i like to have available in each distro i use. In Mint, & then later in Maui, many of those required extensive use of PPAs, & in some cases i needed to compile them myself from source-code. Conversely in oS TW [+ OBS], & in Manjaro [+ AUR] i have been able to find them all in their repos [+ "extras" as i indicated]. Wrt Manjaro, being freshest in my mind, lots of pgms that previously i had to download from their individual Devs' sites, are included in the repos -- easy! So far the only pgm for which i have no Manjaro solution is NetActivityViewer [but as stated, i'm less than 1 week into my Manjaro journey, so i remain hopeful... even if just by self-compiling].

I completely totally utterly recognise & respect that for some [/many?] Maui'ers maybe both oS & Manjaro might be an impossible [or otherwise simply undesirable] leap. However i just wished to post this alternative perspective here, simply to encourage people that if you happen to despair [for good reason btw] at the sad imminent demise of Maui, & worry that [maybe] no other DEB-based P5 offering would meet your needs, pls don't reflexively rule out either oS or Manjaro. They might, just might, put as big a smile on your faces as they did to me. 

Good luck, happy journeys. 

[rocky7x]

Hi kdemeoz,

I respect your opinion and also I respect those distributions. But, my comment was from a perspective of a user wanting to have a no-fuss no-admin-needed system that just works. And none of those distros are even close to what Maui could offer. I know you had some tough times with Maui, but as you concluded, all was just because of 1 effect, so it was essentially 1 bug. Anyway, to cut this short, as you rightfully stated, Manjaro, Opensuse, Fedora KDE etc. are all excellent distros, but with a very steep learning curve and a lot of time investment - and time is of essence. I, for instance, don't have that time to sit in front of a Linux distro and try to find out how to make something work or how to get some app. Indeed Manjaro has AURs, but as I stated, with AURs, you are at the mercy of the maintainer. An example: NixNote2, was at beta 6 or 7 (don't remember), which had big problems, and we already had beta 12, which worked fine, but the maintainer dropped it into AUR more than half a year later. Your only solution was to compile it on your own. In Ubuntu, you would just download the DEB from sourceforge that was provided by the author. So, from the perspective of user-friendliness, I cannot agree with you that Manjaro, Opensuse etc. are comparable with Maui.

[jairlebentz]

Hi kdemeoz,

I respect your opinion and also I respect those distributions. But, my comment was from a perspective of a user wanting to have a no-fuss no-admin-needed system that just works. And none of those distros are even close to what Maui could offer. I know you had some tough times with Maui, but as you concluded, all was just because of 1 effect, so it was essentially 1 bug. Anyway, to cut this short, as you rightfully stated, Manjaro, Opensuse, Fedora KDE etc. are all excellent distros, but with a very steep learning curve and a lot of time investment - and time is of essence. I, for instance, don't have that time to sit in front of a Linux distro and try to find out how to make something work or how to get some app. Indeed Manjaro has AURs, but as I stated, with AURs, you are at the mercy of the maintainer. An example: NixNote2, was at beta 6 or 7 (don't remember), which had big problems, and we already had beta 12, which worked fine, but the maintainer dropped it into AUR more than half a year later. Your only solution was to compile it on your own. In Ubuntu, you would just download the DEB from sourceforge that was provided by the author. So, from the perspective of user-friendliness, I cannot agree with you that Manjaro, Opensuse etc. are comparable with Maui.

I agree with you too. I have nothing agains Opensuse or Manjaro.
I am just bored of investing lots of time in a Linux OS. I have nowadays new interesse and do not have much time for a OS. But I love Linux and I do not consider to going back to Windows or change to MacOS.
I think the only one Distro that could keep this philosophy is Netrunner but like I said, I have both of them in the same computer installed and the performance of this one is worst than the performance of Maui.

[kdemeoz]

Yep, no argument from me... individual circumstances will necessarily play a large role in Maui'ers' decisions as to "where to from here?". I'm in the fortunate position of being retired, with oodles of time on my hands, & a persistent intellectual curiosity to keep fiddling & learning [apparently you can take the girl out of engineering, but not so easily the engineer out of the girl]. As i inferred, i merely hoped to throw some more info onto the pile for people's awareness. But isn't it just brilliant that we have such a richness of distros to even consider? Linux is fab.

[PinStripe]

I really don't understand HOW this distro has took a major dive to 99 on the Distrowatch list!

[rocky7x]

People who use these kind of distros don't go to distrowatch