It’s been a few years now since I was a dedicated distro-hopper. For regular readers here, that simply means someone that tries out a lot of different versions (distributions, or “distros”) of Linux, for whatever reason. I used to do it for fun mainly. It was a way to keep abreast of a world that even now holds my interest. As a guy that works on Windows PC’s a lot, Linux was and is a breath of fresh air. I’m sad that it hasn’t grabbed a bigger slice of the ever dwindling home or laptop PC operating system market, but c'est la vie. Keeps me in corn dogs anyway…Anyway, my hoary old home PC behemoth runs Debian , and I’m quite happy with that, as I wrote here a while back. When I acquired a new old laptop a few months ago though, I wanted to quickly and easily throw something on there alongside Windows 7. Something that wouldn’t drive me insane with all the usual Windows stumbling blocks and invitations to malevolence from even seemingly innocent sources now. Seems like it gets harder and harder each day to install even the simplest of programs in Windows without something hijacking your browser or worse. You can’t even do the usual opt out/uncheck every tick box thing anymore and be sure that something won’t bite you. I digress.So, while Windows is useful to me on the laptop for reasons of battery life maximization, Linux is far far preferable for every other reason. At first I tried to go lazy and imaged my home PC Debian installation to the Compaq CQ-61 laptop. It worked, mostly. Had some minor issues with hardware recognition, mainly the touchpad. Understandable given the fact that this was a setup coming off a regular PC trying to now make sense of being on a whole different beast. Surprising that it worked as well as it did actually, given different video chip brands and all. So I gave up on that, probably unnecessarily, and rather than start with a fresh Debian install from the ground up, I decided to try out a few of my old favorites.First off, I put Linux Mint on there. The KDE version of Mint 17. That worked extremely well. Boringly so. Little to play with, little to change. Exactly what I wanted really, but due to the nature of Mint and its parent, Ubuntu , it will eventually reach its end of life, no longer able to be updated. You’re expected to wipe it off and reinstall the latest version every so often, which is fine I guess, but I prefer the concept of the “rolling release”, a distro that you can install once and incrementally update, theoretically forever. I’ve had installs of Arch and Gentoo Linux which worked well in that way, but those require some intensive reading and paying attention to alerts occasionally to really keep things rolling.Enter Manjaro Linux . This was one of the last distros I’d tried during my hopping days that I really thought had some potential. Based on Arch, which has a lot going for it to begin with, and with extremely well written and maintained documentation and helpful forums, Manjaro is an attractive option, maybe even for the Linux neophyte. I liken it to what Mint does for Ubuntu, in that it polishes things up nicely, adds some useful software out of the box, and makes the installation a breeze. Arch itself can be a scary install requiring lots of reading and step by step, piece by piece building of your system. Manjaro does most of the dirty work for you, especially if you know which desktop you want from the get-go. I knew I wanted KDE, so I grabbed that and was off to the races.Talk about easy! I mean, the last time I tried Manjaro, shortly after it first appeared, it was a pretty easy install, but it’s gotten even easier. It’s almost Mint easy now, at least using the GUI installer, one of a few different options they offer to get it onto your hard drive. Options! Linux is all about options, and that’s a great thing. You don’t like KDE? Grab the XFCE (main), Gnome (just released) or another version (close to a dozen different desktops total, if you include community contributions), or if you want more control, the net-install thing from which you can, I would imagine, tailor your system down to individual packages. Anyway, the install couldn’t have been easier. Easier than installing Windows, and orders of magnitude faster too. Plus you have a reasonably up to date system right off the bat. No hours of grabbing and installing updates, rebooting, then more updates, ad infinitum. Thing of beauty!So, within a few short minutes of booting into the live image I’d put on a flash drive, I had this shiny new operating system installed and rarin’ to go. Took just a little while to get acclimated to the newer version of KDE than I’m used to, coming from Debian stable, but I like it! Everything’s a bit more streamlined, a little prettier, slightly less scattered in terms of where and how to configure things to your liking. And not even much to do there really. I used to have to spend a good half hour or so taming KDE to my preferences, and now it’s pretty much the way I like it anyway, at least as presented by Manjaro.I didn’t even have to mess around with getting desktop effects working. Had that fabulous desktop cube thing going within a few clicks! Wobbly windows too. It sure is pretty, and sure to impress the easily amused. Like me! In fairness, I find the cube, at least, genuinely useful. One face (or workspace) for web browsing, one for writing, one for media playing, one for anything else. Useful! Not just eye candy, but honest to goodness useful! How Windows users get by with just one workspace is beyond me. But then, I don’t even own a smartphone, so don’t go by me…The KDE version of Manjaro comes with a nice array of software, but there are a few things I had to add immediately. Primarily the Firefox web browser, still my favorite after all these years. Took literally less than a minute to download and install that using the GUI package manager, Octopi. I also added LibreOffice, as this flavor of Manjaro opts to include the Calligra office suite, which is more tightly bound to KDE but less predictably useful, for me at least. Also added the GIMP image manipulation program, on which I’ve come to rely heavily for photo and picture editing of a minor nature. It can do a lot of what PhotoShop does (and more), but I never get near that kind of usage. Other than that, you have pretty much everything you need. VLC for media playback, all the video and audio codecs there out of the box, built in tools for viewing PDF files, the great Dolphin file manager, etc… My needs are simple I suppose, but they’re well met by what Manjaro offers once you add what I added.You want more? It’s easy. Octopi isn’t the greatest software management tool I’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly good enough, and light years better than scrounging through random web sites of questionable merit for Windows programs that may or may not install without making your PC unusable until you call me to fix it. It’s one stop shopping for updates to everything too, which is true of any version of Linux pretty much. Things install quickly and easily, without the need to reboot. Ever. Unless you upgrade the brains of the beast, the kernel. Manjaro makes that unusually easy too, though they do separate it from normal updates, which I think is smart. I’ve now updated the kernel a few times with zero trouble, but occasionally that can play havoc with hardware support. Or so I’ve heard. Never have had that issue myself, but then all my PC’s are ancient anyway.That leads me to a point I should have mentioned up in the install part: Manjaro apparently plays quite well with non-ancient systems that use UEFI rather than the old BIOS for booting. It’s a complicated topic, beyond the scope of this here cursory “review”, but suffice it to say that this could be important if you try to install Manjaro or any Linux to a newer PC. Older ones like mine have no issues with any of this. There’s plenty of documentation on Manjaro’s very helpful web pages that’ll answer any questions you might have there, or on any related topic.I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite aspect of Manjaro, and any Arch based distro really, and that’s the sheer speed of the package management. Pacman (which is what’s working under the hood even if you use Octopi) is insanely quick and reliable, especially if you’re used to Debian or RPM based systems like Fedora or openSUSE. I just today did a fair sized update, some 150 MB’s of stuff, around 70-80 packages total, including the kernel. It took around 3 minutes, including download time. That might have taken 5-10 minutes on Debian, hours of innumerable reboots and check agains in Windows. It’s simply butter smooth and free of glitches or gotchas, not that Debian has those. Pacman is just really really speedy is all. In fact, I prefer to do my updating from the command line, just to see it do its thing so quickly! Octopi works fine though, for those that choose not to learn all the little command line switches necessary for efficient pacman use. Only one you really need actually: pacman -Syu.So, to sum up, I really really like Manjaro. It’s come a long way since I first used it, and it was pretty great even then. It’s now a lot like what I hoped it would become, an easy way to use an Arch/pacman based system. What Mint is to Ubuntu, Manjaro is to Arch. They’ve made it shiny, smooth, elegant, easy as pie to install and maintain, and everything works out of the box. Try that with Windows some time! A Windows install and subsequent rounds of updating can take an entire afternoon or more, and you’ll still be scurrying around gathering up software to get anything actually done. An install and update of Manjaro can be done in maybe a half hour and you’ll have most of what you’ll ever need right there waiting. Plus you’re more secure, less vulnerable to malevolence in various forms, and in theory will never have to install again. Think of it as starting with Windows 3.1 and lots of your needed programs, and having it all seamlessly update itself right through every version all the way up to now (8.1) and beyond. That’s the rolling release model anyway. We’ll see how it goes, but for now, after a month or so of using it, I’m quite pleased. Not a single problem. Kudos to the developers of Manjaro!——————————-Today in Baseball History 1/101884 - At the annual meeting of the minor-league Northwest League, the first-place Toledo Blue Stockings are declared the league champion for 1883. But because Toledo has moved from the NWL to the major league American Association for 1884, the NWL pennant is awarded to the second-place Saginaw Greys. The NWL also rescinds its prohibition of Sunday baseball and the sale of beer at its ballparks, thereby aligning itself with AA policy and against the National League policy.1885 - The New York Clipper reports that Paul Hines, a Providence Grays outfielder, and resident of Washington, DC, had been challenged to catch a ball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument, a distance of “over 535 feet from the ground.” The Clipper calculates the “natural philosophy” involved, and warns Hines of the danger he would confront in attempting such a foolish stunt.1903 - At Cincinnati peace talks, the National League proposes a consolidated 12-team league, which the American League rejects. An agreement is reached to coexist peacefully if the AL promises to stay out of Pittsburgh, PA.1903 - Despite attempts by John T. Brush and Andrew Freedman to use their political influence to prevent the American League from finding suitable grounds in New York, league President Ban Johnson, aided by baseball writer Joe Vila, finds backers. Johnson also finds a ballpark site at 165th Street and Broadway. Frank Farrell and Bill Devery pay $18,000 for the Baltimore franchise and will build a wooden grandstand seating 15,000 on the highest point of Manhattan. The team, logically, will be called the New York Highlanders.1907 - The New York Giants’ John McGraw plays the role of off-the-field hero as he prevents a team of horses from injuring two women. The fiery Giants manager’s heroic deed of stopping the runaway steeds takes place in Los Angeles, CA.1938 - Before a gathering of writers, players and executives in Baltimore, Jimmie Foxx, Chuck Klein and Charlie Keller, representing the American League, National League and International League respectively, try out the balls to be used in the new season. The Sporting News reports that “… regarding the dead ball, as adopted by the National League, and the lively ball, as retained by the American and International Leagues… the NL ball has a distinctly ‘dead’ sound coming off the bat, compared to the livelier AL ball.”1991 - In one of the most unbalanced trades ever made in major league history, the Baltimore Orioles send pitchers Curt Schilling and Pete Harnisch and outfielder Steve Finley to the Houston Astros for first baseman Glenn Davis. Davis, who averaged 27 home runs in six seasons playing in the Astrodome with Houston, will hit only 24 homers in three injury-filled years as Schilling becomes one of the most dominant pitchers in the game and Harnisch and Finley develop into solid major league players.2000 - The Seattle Mariners sign free agent pitcher Aaron Sele to a two-year, $15 million contract after Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos nixes a negotiated four-year $29 million deal because of questions regarding Sele’s physical condition. Sele had been offered a four-year, $28 million deal by the Texas Rangers, but didn’t act on it. Sele will win 17 games this season, making him just one of seven pitchers to win 15 or more games in 1998, 1999 and 2000 - Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, David Wells, Dave Burba and Charles Nagy, are the others.2012 - The Orioles look to the Far East once again to improve their pitching. A month after signing Japanese hurler Tsuyoshi Wada, they ink Taiwanese lefthander Wei-Yin Chen to a three-year contract. Chen was released by the Chunichi Dragons earlier and did not have to go through the posting system.——————————–Yeah, I know. Regular readers won’t care about this one probably. Back to music, food or cartoon related inanity (with a side of baseball always) tomorrow. But hey, if you have an actual PC or laptop that’s getting long in the tooth, or if Windows is driving you even more crazy than usual, you could do much worse than to grab a Manjaro (or Mint ) ISO image, throw it on a flash drive and at least boot into it. Who knows? You may just like what you see well enough to actually install it, which can of course be done without harming your existing Windows setup in any way. You’ll be able to see and access your Windows files from Linux, but not the other way around without arcane voodoo. Linux smart, Windows dumb and proprietary. Take the plunge! It’s not nearly as hard as some of the bizarre nomenclature above might lead you to believe, and you’ll be much less vulnerable to a myriad of problems. Problems that most now take for granted as the cost of running Windows. It doesn’t have to be like that! Dare to be different! Stick it to the man! Embrace freedom! Use Linux! Manjaro ’s a pretty good one to try if you do. The link above will get you started, and remember - it’s all free, in every sense of that wonderful word.“Why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?”Link to past posts, faster than the top-right icon thingie: https://disqus.com/home/forum/claudecatsplace/recent/