Manjaro 1.8.3 Review : The “Noob Friendlier” ArchLinux

First of all, I want to introduce myself about my involvement in Linux world. I've been using Linux based OS for more than a year, so I'm definitely not a pro in here but I think my one year of experience is enough for this small review. My first distro was Ubuntu 11.10 and moved to Ubuntu 12.04, and then I started to get attracted by the user-friendliness of Linux Mint and ended up with LM 13 and 14 for more than half of my year in Linux. And then I started to get bored with that “friendly” OS and thinking of getting something more fun to learn more in this world, so I decided to change my OS.

The first distro caught in my eye was LMDE (the Debian based of Linux Mint) because of the rolling release system (means we don't have to reinstall the distro to get the most updated softwares), so I visited the community's forum and found that the ISO image of LMDE is not updated for almost 8 months and they answered my question and asked me to wait for someday in this month (January 2013) as they planned, so I waited and waited for some days (a week maybe) and still got no improvement. While my desire of testing a new distro is so uncontrollable (lol), so I decided to turn my direction to another distro. Surfing the net for a day and found out the fastest distro (ArchLinux) based user friendlier Manjaro from distrowatch.com and first thing came in my mind was “This it is what I want for my older spec laptop”. So I downloaded the MATE version of the ISO image because I'm bored with Xfce desktop as I used it in LM for too long and the other version is just too heavy for my “old friend”. The ISO image is 1.2GB, downloaded it for quite a time because of my slow internet connection (this is the reason I didn't install the un-updated LMDE). So, this is where my introductions finished and where this review begin.

Installation Process

Before continuing any further, this is my laptop spec:

Processor : Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU T5870 @ 2.00GHz × 2

Graphic: Intel® 965GME/GLE x86/MMX/SSE2

OS type: 32-bit

RAM: 1 GB

I wrote the image into my 8GB USB flashdisk and booted it perfectly in my system, it displayed me the MATE desktop with a green background desktop which is not so attractive to me. The good things are it recognized my Wireless driver and touchpad immediately which I had to do it manually in both Ubuntu and Linux Mint. This is because of the manjaro-firmware package which is added by Manjaro developers which you can't find in ArchLinux (as I read it somewhere). And the next thing I did is clicking on the install Manjaro icon in the desktop to continue to installation process. The GUI is uglier than I thought, but as I saw it in the community's forum they are building a better GUI installer now which is good. I installed it with manual partitioning and directed it to mount 5 partitions (/boot, /home, /root, /media/data, and swap) and it did it without any problem. After finished the installation, I booted up the laptop and first thing in my mind was “This is so f**king awesome!” because it took for less than 10 seconds to get me into the login screen. The display manager is LXDM and everything was running without any problem.

Out of Box Softwares

The packages included in the MATE version of Manjaro are as follow:

Accessories: Calculator, Pluma, XTerm

Internet: Midori, Xchat, Avahi Server Browser, Pidgin, Sylpheed

Graphic: Gimp 2.8

Sound & Video: Xnoise

Office: Libreoffice installer

System: Gparted, Pacman-Gui, PkgBrowser, etc

Flash is included, so you can watch Youtube out of the box. There are something I find it missing is they don't include VLC media player which is included in other distros, but we can download it from the pacman-gui so this isn't a problem.

Software Management

The software management in Manjaro pacman, the same with ArchLinux as it is based on it. The difference is Manjaro provided it with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) using Pacman-GUI and PkgBrowser, but I find it very “unfriendly” and “ugly”. I think they should include a better one, for example gnome-packagekit, pacmanXG (which I'm using now), etc or make their own one. But after surfing at their forum I found out they are in the process of making it, the name of the software is pamac which is nice. Manjaro provided softwares from their own repositories which is enough for me, but some packages which isn't available in the repositories can be installed from AUR (Arch User Repository) by installing base-devel and yaourt. So you don't have to worry about anything about softwares here.

Conclusion

After using it for two days without any problem, I think this is going to be my daily use distro before I get bored with it (lol). There are a few pros and cons about this distro for me:

Pros:

- It's fast, I used MATE before in my Linux Mint and changed it immediately because it was too heavy, but Manjaro gives me a different effect of it.

- You don't have to re-install your OS to upgrade it. As it is based on Arch which is a rolling release distro, you will be given the most up-to-date packages from the repositories which means you don't have to re-install it unless you break it (this is also the con of rolling release distro).

- It detects your hardware automatically, unlike its “father” ArchLinux.

Cons:

- Hasn't got any good installer and package management GUI. “Professional and user friendly Linux at its best” is the motto of Manjaro, but their GUI is really ugly right now. And I believe they can do it better in the future as they promised, I hope :)

- As it is a new distro, so the artworks are still not so much like Ubuntu and Linux Mint have.

So that's my review about this distro, and I'm sorry if something I wrote here is wrong or anything but I really don't mean it. I just want to share my thought and really don't mean anything. Thanks for reading and please give me some comments if you want to share something about my article. :)

Review of My Life in 2012

Today is the first day since 2012 left us, with the joy and sorrow it brought to us. We know this will happen, because nothing is eternal in this world. 2012 left me without any parting word and 2013 came into my life without any welcoming word. Nothing really special with the change of this year, but at least I didn't encounter anything too bad, I'm still alive and kicking with such a good health, still living in this beautiful world, can still be here writing and sharing this post with all of you, I think it's enough for me, couldn't be better. Because I know as long as I'm still alive I could've do anything better than I did before. 2012 treated me real good, although it leave me some bad memories at the end. I did enjoy the joy and did manage to end all of the sorrow. I really hope the coming of 2013 will bring me something great, I also hope it will bring them to all of you too.
For me, today is not just the first day of new year like you all are celebrating right now, maybe. But today is also the day where I completely away from my DotA addictiveness for one full month. Seeing my little brother is playing it right now, doesn't even bring me any interest to see it. This is a great start for me to have my better life, I think.
Maybe my New Year eve last night is not as special like you all had. I was playing with my smartphone, made a dirty flash of the latest custom ROM from iceandfire (XenonHD 30122012); watched a couple of movie with my laptop that is currently using LinuxMint 14 Nadia Mate and running Xfce desktop; had a late supper with plate of fried rice and a glass of honey; played some games with my phone; and nothing else. Really just the same as I always do in my normal days, but as long as I'm happy with it I think nothing can be better. So why not.
And now, the day of New Year 2013 also seems the same like my normal life, only the one day off from work and college makes It difference. I'm now sitting in front of my laptop, typing this post, thinking of what should I do with my laptop after posting this. But I still think nothing can be better than doing the things I love, and this is just exactly the life I always wanted to have. No shit can be better than having this kind of life. So again, why not. As I was thinking what I should do, I decided to make a flashback of what I have did in 2012, which I think is a good idea. So, these are some big activities I did in 2012 that I want to share with you today because I just love sharing, so don't read if you don't feel like knowing and don't give me shit here :)
January, 2012
There was a big event that happened, forgot the day but definitely sure about the month. I was about having my college exam at that time and at the same time I was called to attend the final session of Sampoerna Wholesaler Apprentice 2011 (it was held in mid 2011 for the first session and ended in 2012 for final session). So I had to sacrifice my exams but managed to get the re-exam opportunity, the final session of that event involved me to present the business plan I've made for 3 months in front of my mom and some juries in that event. The event was held in Surabaya, we stayed in Taman Dayu Golf and Resorts for 3-5 days (I forgot). And I finally managed to get into the best five from 20-25 contestants (forgot again), got 10 million Rupiah, a certificate and an award.
February, 2012
Following the rules of Sampoerna Wholesaler Apprentice 2011 event, I had to implement the strategies I've made in the business plan for our store using the 10 million Rupiah budgets they gave to me as the best five. Only the five of us have to do this kind of thing. So, they don't give the money for prize, wtf. And the plans I've made in the business plan are: improving our security system, covering 62 mini-markets, improve our credit system, go computerize, improve our CSR. And as they only give us 10 million rupiah and according to our business plan we need at least 680 million rupiah (wtf can we do with that little money), so we made another proposal saying we can only implement 2 of 5 strategies in the plan. And we decided to use the money to put security system in our store and implement the strategy number 2 about covering mini-markets.
This month was a busy month for me, where I had to go around city looking for mini-markets. Finding is the easy part, but finding good customers is the hard part. Doing for a week of things planned in the plan, we realize mini-markets can't be serviced like we do in traditional and gross sellers where we are serving all the time. Their selling and ability to buy is not as big as them. So we decided to change the plan, from calling-delivering system to canvassing system. Where we bring all kind of cigarettes with a truck and sell to them on the place. I only do this once a week as I still have college to go. But the process of this activity is the greatest experience I ever have in my life. Managed to get 70+ of customers until now, but now we selected the best of them and smaller the sum into 48 until now. It's because I can't cover them all in a day and can't give them the best service in that hurry state. So I hope they understand it. :)
August, 2012
I wanna say this month brought me the greatest, the deepest memory in 2012. I had an alumni celebration with my Senior High School classmates, had pizza in the afternoon, went to Ocarina in the evening, played some cards in the night. That was a great day, how I miss that day. And in the late of the month, I went to Bangkok, Thailand with my ex and two of my friends. We had a five days stay there, doing a lot of fun things there. That was so great, maybe the greatest tour I've ever enjoyed until now. But I think I have to forget this, as me and her are separated now. And she has forgotten me completely now, what hurts me is she can does it in a mere one month. Now I realize even the greatest memory can turn into a most hurting memory in such a short time.
November, 2012
11th of this month, will remember this day forever. I finally decided to broke up with her, did this because of I can't take it anymore. We didn't text and talk for two weeks just because she doesn't like me playing with my computer and phone which is my hobby. So I thought I should take the action and I broke our almost three years relationship by myself. That was the bad part of this month, the good part is I was on Sampoerna Golden Voyage trip in this month. Read it here if you feel like to find out more about it.
December, 2012
I made the boldest decision in my life and decided to stop playing DotA, the game where I already played for up to 7 years. As I stop playing that game and I'm single this month, I did a lot at computer stuffs, especially Linux. Learned so much, like some terminal commands, modifying some codes, etc. I also made my first Tumblr account in this month, and started to learn some HTML and CSS codes to modify something on my blogs. I'm so sure this is the kind of life I always wanted to have, so I hope I can make a lot of better things in the future if my life stays like this, I hope. I think there's not a woman in this world that can endure me if I stay like this. But I believe if someone truly love you, nothing can be a problem. Or am I wrong?

That's all about me, once again don't hate me if you don't want to read this. I know, haters gonna hate but I really hope I don't invite any hater here :) Lastly, Happy New Year 2013 and may God bless all of us, I meant it. :) Just had a dinner at seafood restaurant with my family, I think this is the closing of my New Year.