Please don't dump Maui Linux

[andresimi]

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.

Which one of these two do you think it is the best for those who wants stability and easy to use? I had a recent not so good experience with OpenSuse Leap because couldn't got my printer to work. It was also sad because it's philosophy seens fantastic. However, in the real world some softwares I use are not in repositorys. Tried also Tumbleweed but I couldn't get RStudio to work. I am afraid of Manjaro because I don't want to wake up worried by a break on my sistem. And now I don't know where to go hehehe. 

[kdemeoz]

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.

Which one of these two do you think it is the best for those who wants stability and easy to use? I had a recent not so good experience with OpenSuse Leap because couldn't got my printer to work. It was also sad because it's philosophy seens fantastic. However, in the real world some softwares I use are not in repositorys. Tried also Tumbleweed but I couldn't get RStudio to work. I am afraid of Manjaro because I don't want to wake up worried by a break on my sistem. And now I don't know where to go hehehe. 

It's not clear to me who you are asking, or which "two" distros you're asking about. On the off-chance that it might have been me you were asking, i'll throw in these remarks.

Some/many people continue to rave favourably about KDE Neon [eg, https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/7m..._kde_2017/], but i found it painfully unreliable, after a very intensive couple of days working to set it up as a "full" distro rather than just a bare-bones DE, it fell over in a smoking ruinous heap & negated all my hard work; i abandoned it on the spot then. 

I used oS TW KDE for 5 months earlier this year, & for most of that time [after the very steep learning curve] i was an avid supporter of it. Progressively though i did grow weary of the ongoing maintenance effort i was performing, & then in one rotten fortnight at the end, it spectacularly failed on my Tower & later [the other end of that horror fortnight] also on Lappy. For me that crystallised my falling out of love with it [it had been a brilliant Plasma5 experience though], & propelled me to my current distro; Manjaro KDE. During my time with oS TW i also extensively tested Leap in VMs, & this educated me to know that Leap is completely unsuited to me... locked into an old Plasma version, old apps, old frameworks... philosophically kind of like Mint after a sleeping pill.

So far Manjaro continues to impress & delight me, but all previous things said on this between Rocky & me continue to apply... ie, each individual user should assess their own specific needs, wants & competencies, wrt Manjaro [or any replacement candidate post-Maui]. Whilst posters like Rocky & me post honest perspectives, they are ours not yours, & at the end of the day only your situation is important for you. To that end, i very strongly urge you if you're not already doing it, to play intensively with all potential replacement distros in multiple VMs. Eg, i first tried Manjaro in 2014/15, but back then my Linux journey was in its infancy & i simply was not ready for Manjaro, so it overwhelmed & scared me. In all subsequent years, til only ~2 months ago, i continued to feel prejudiced against Manjaro & never seriously considered it on my short-list. That was stupid of me & i'm pleased that i changed my mind & explored it in detail in a VM, coz otherwise i'd never have been able to update my opinion of it... which is now completely opposite to what i used to think.

The one thing all my distro testing has revealed though is that none is perfect, each will have strengths & weaknesses, & one's perspective on that will depend critically on their individual situation. I've also learned that it's really pointless to become fanboys & fangirls of any distro, coz sooner or later IMO they'll all do something to annoy/inconvenience us. Mint 17 KDE4 was great for me til it wasn't; Mint 18 KDE was never great for me, Kubuntu 16.04 was comprehensively horrible for me, Maui was mostly good for me but definitely not perfect, albeit its demise makes all that irrelevant now. oS TW KDE was excellent til it badly let me down. Manjaro KDE is currently great for me but inevitably sooner or later something will go wrong. At that point, it's probably time for me to revert to abacus & sliderule...

[TheMadOne]

You people think the developers care about you you are wrong, all of them do this all the time and never stop.

Just pick a distro that cares like Manjaro or mint

[rocky7x]

My 2 cents if you care Mint stopped the KDE version, so not an option for me anymore (I think cinnamon is not so great as Plasma, but if I wouldn't be using Plasma, I would be on Mint 100%). I've tried Manjaro last week, just out of curiosity (again) and found that, though initially all works fine, an arbitrary upgrade can very easily send all to burning hell very bleeding edge from my perspective. So I'll stick to Maui until Kubuntu 18.04 is out and then switch to it. As the other guy said, Netrunner/Maui/Neon team is switching all the stuff too often, to be acceptable for a production system.

[jairlebentz]

My 2 cents if you care Mint stopped the KDE version, so not an option for me anymore (I think cinnamon is not so great as Plasma, but if I wouldn't be using Plasma, I would be on Mint 100%). I've tried Manjaro last week, just out of curiosity (again) and found that, though initially all works fine, an arbitrary upgrade can very easily send all to burning hell very bleeding edge from my perspective. So I'll stick to Maui until Kubuntu 18.04 is out and then switch to it. As the other guy said, Netrunner/Maui/Neon team is switching all the stuff too often, to be acceptable for a production system.

Yes, I think I will going back to Kubuntu again once they have Kubuntu 18.04 ready to use.
Netrunner Debian is not an option for me.

[Mark Spruce]

My 2 cents if you care Mint stopped the KDE version, so not an option for me anymore (I think cinnamon is not so great as Plasma, but if I wouldn't be using Plasma, I would be on Mint 100%). I've tried Manjaro last week, just out of curiosity (again) and found that, though initially all works fine, an arbitrary upgrade can very easily send all to burning hell very bleeding edge from my perspective. So I'll stick to Maui until Kubuntu 18.04 is out and then switch to it. As the other guy said, Netrunner/Maui/Neon team is switching all the stuff too often, to be acceptable for a production system.

Yes, I think I will going back to Kubuntu again once they have Kubuntu 18.04 ready to use.
Netrunner Debian is not an option for me.

I am back on Kubuntu. Loved the Netrunner 14.04. Did not liked it when they moved to Debian based.