Welp, I made a similar thread yesterday regarding Manjaro but I decided to swap to Fedora as my daily driver for stability purposes. Unfortunately since fedora is yet another non Debian distro I need help finding a Syncterm replacement.
I’m my previous thread it was pointed out to me that syncterm has a docker option which I can run on Fedora, but I’d prefer running an app locally if possible.
I tried the Syncterm snap package which boots inside bash, but it doesn’t have ANSI support (which is the entire point of using Syncterm) since I assume it’s simply piggy backing off of bash- hence the 1.5* review on the snap store.
Looking for options… if anyone can help a Linux noob I’m all ears. I tried Alien to convert deb to rpm and fell on my face.
If you are looking for something a little more stable than Manjaro but still Arch based and beginner friendly EndeavorOS is a good option.
Not an answer to your question or suggesting you jump from Fedora just putting it out there.
These days, there is also the official guided installer for arch that may be worth a try. I had similar issues with Manjaro, but since this has been around I’ve never had a reason to try any arch derivative.
My brother had that OS. It worked fine until it got a bug that the computer froze when he enabled the wifi, and the only way to stop it was pressing the power button. I couldn’t figure out the cause, and there was many unnecessary things coming with the OS, so I helped him to install Arch instead. Now, it works well and feels clean.
I get it but that sounds like a bit of a niche problem and I don’t know if OP, as a beginner, would have much luck setting up Arch on their own without running into some weird issue of a similar caliber.
EndeavourOS is probably what you are looking for. Almost vanilla arch with a desktop capable package base, calameres GUI installer, no delayed updates, and some neet build hooks
You can get any software from any distro with distrobox.
Consider building it from source. A quick websearch for Syncterm Fedora and Syncterm Build had a few tutorials.
Or try taking a look at the AUR pkgbuild file, it’s basically an install script, might give you clues on how to build it yourself if you want to experiment and learn :)
That might be what I have to do. Back when I was on Kubuntu I built it from source using a tutorial for deb based machines. I searched for a similar guide with Fedora’s RPM as the focus but couldn’t find anything. Most Linux guides I see posted are for some flavor of Ubuntu.
Why didn’t you install Arch OP?
You can just install Arch in a distrobox if you want or a debian + children in a distrobox, install the app and it should launch from your launcher like any other app you use. Distrobox is fantastic.
When I need to install something from the AUR, I just enter my Arch distrobox and do it, same for Ubuntu and stuff.
Edit:
I forgot to mention that you’ll need to use the distrobox-export command to make it so you can launch an app like any other easily from your launcher.
Why do people use the aur on manjaro? I thought they specifically say that the aur is not supported on manjaro.
AUR is also not supported on Arch, so support has nothing to do with it.
On Arch the AUR is made specifically for arch users so while not supported by the distro Arch is supported by the aur.
Have you considered using Arch on which Manjaro is based?
This way you won’t have issues with AUR. It’s not hard to install, you can use
archinstallhelper if you want, it’s available in the default installation media.If they want a full-fledged system running Arch, then EndeavourOS might be the best bet. Archinstall is great for quickly installing Arch but there’s still quite a lot of set-up required after that, and for some people, they don’t really want to do that. EndeavourOS is based on Arch’s repos but has its own extra repo for its own software, while Manjaro holds the packages back for two weeks (which creates sync problems with, say, the AUR)
there’s also Endeavour which I’m pretty sure uses the Arch repos
i too am a satisfied endevouros user. its great if you want something like manjaro, that doesnt break, or something like arch, but easier to get started.
Uses exactly the Arch repos and kernel. EndeavourOS is more like an opinionated Arch install than a stand-alone distro. This is not a negative comment as I am an enthusiastic EndeavourOS user.
why is Manjaro bad?
These two pages outlines the reasons pretty well:
The latter seems to be dead, so here’s a copy on the WayBack Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230304010442/manjarno.snorlax.sh
I wanted to add a summary to this comment, but I’m too sleepy to do that right now. Maybe I’ll come back to add it tomorrow.
Try to avoid flatpak; snap too. It’s got horrible validation and by ruining single source of truth on your installation state it actually craters that validation. It’s bad, and bad for you.
Don’t convert packages to packages: there’s too many literals in there that will cause problems. I sat on the FHS committee and I had such high hopes; but no.
Also, Manjaro’s fine. Maybe look at magaeia. Its polluted with systemd fridge art, but it’s maintained and fresh. It may have what you want.
Your recommending Mageaia? Seriously?
I would go with Linux mint, Fedora or something a little more mainstream
I’ve been using Manjaro for 5+ years with no problem. Manjaro is a rolling distro, and unfortunately there is not enough volunteers in open source community to maintain a bleeding edge rolling distribution that is completely bug free. It is just a matter of personal preference how close to bleeding edge do you want your system to be between Arch, Manjaro, Endeavor, and OpenSUSE. I found that Manjaro is quite useful to have because I run non-FOSS programs like Dropbox, Zotero, MegaSYNC, and MATLAB.
One tips I have is that don’t bother to update every other week. There are plenty literal supercomputers running on outdated Linux OS or stable distro releases like Fedora. Linux by default is already more secure. Just because there are updates available doesn’t mean one should do it, unless you need the bleeding edge updates due to your line of work. I thought we install Linux to run away from annoying Windows updates. If you update Manjaro like every 6 months or so, it is pretty unlikely (statistically) that you get a bad update.
Not upgrading your system for like 6 months is a really bad practice that should not be recommended ever. If you don’t want to upgrade your system all that often, then why not install something like Debian instead of a rolling distro?
