[manjaro-dev] Fwd: Manjaro vs Arch

Philip Müller philm at manjaro.org
Wed Dec 11 22:16:14 CET 2013 

On 12/11/2013 02:39 PM, Rob McCathie wrote:
> I haven't read his article yet, but in response to just the bullet 
> points made in his email:
>
> >1. Enable Manjaro setup to run out of the Arch repositories so people aren't locked in to your walled garden.
> >2. Cancel your wiki and encourage those fresh faces to further improve the Arch one and discourage learned helplessness.
> >3. Call yourself Arch so that you get better combined numbers on distrowatch, and more news articles. Any name is fine.
>
>
> 1. The clear disadvantage to operating as just a repo listed above the 
> official Arch ones in pacman.conf (like how Archbang and a few others 
> do) is that the concept of preventing or at least reducing the amount 
> of manual intervention required by users during updates goes out the 
> window. Manjaro either wants to offer this or it doesn't, if it 
> doesn't, then he's right, but my understanding is it does.
> Also I don't think it's at all accurate to refer to Manjaro as a 
> "walled garden", it utterly isn't.

There is one simple reason we clone Arch-Repositories on our own server 
framework we have built up on many locations thru the world:

- this is the only way that we are in control when and what we want to 
update.

Arch is sometimes fast in updates and it doesn't care much about 
3rd-party development groups. I had this situation with KDEmod I did 
under the Chakra Project. Our packages simply broke time to time and it 
was really frustrating to rebuild all those packages all the time. 
Manjaro isn't locked at all. We simply slow down the updates. You can do 
almost all what you do with a normal Archlinux installation.
>
> 2. This should be considered carefully. I basically agree with him 
> that any information that can be universally applied to both Arch and 
> Manjaro (which is like 98% of everything) should probably be going on 
> the Arch wiki. It's illogical and inefficient to split the information 
> across 2 wikis when the entire purpose of a wiki is to be a publicly 
> created information source.

The Arch-Wiki is filled with almost everything. The Manjaro-Wiki on the 
other hand is specific on things you need most in Manjaro and it is 
written for our distribution in mind being user friendly and easy to 
understand. We write articles for beginners, Arch wiki is understandable 
but written for more advanced users. Each wiki has its purpose.
>
> 3. I simply disagree here. Too much brand recognition and goodwill has 
> already come "Manjaro's" way. Even if Manjaro were just a repo to be 
> run in conjunction with the official Arch repos, I'd still see it as 
> advantageous to keep the Manjaro name. Plus so long as Manjaro does a 
> good job of catering to it's target user, i don't see that it does 
> Arch any damage 9if anything, only benefit). Even if it didn't do a 
> good job, Arch(ers) can just laugh and be like "yeah well, run Arch, 
> not some fork/repo/whatever".

This will never happen. Manjaro is a great brand and well known. If you 
want pure Arch you can go for Antergos, an Arch-Distrolet we work hard 
together.
For example, thus is based on cnchi and we help each other to solve 
bugs. Also we try to use the same code as much as possible.
> >One of the benefits of the above is that you will run your efforts more efficiently, so you will have more time to work on the important problems rather than all the grunt work of creating a full distro and a new brand, dealing with security bugs, keeping up with the flood of packages, needing to manage mirrors wikis, forums, etc. Do you want to make a new brand, or do you want to help Arch kick ass? Also, how much are you giving back to Arch right now?
> I think he doesn't understand the where the boundaries of Manjaro's 
> target audience frontier are, or what's required to satisfy them. 
> Though, sometimes I think I don't exactly understand those boundaries 
> either.
>
>
> PS. Please excuse my email formatting if it's shotty. When I initially 
> installed Manjaro I decided I wanted to re-evaluate my email client 
> choices and just have never got around to it, been using webmail 
> interfaces, they're generally not awesome.
>
> Regards,
> Rob.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Philip Müller <philm at manjaro.org 
> <mailto:philm at manjaro.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hmm, I got an interesting e-mail today in my inbox.
>     What do you think?
>
>     greez
>
>     Phil
>
>     -------- Original Message --------
>     Subject: 	Manjaro vs Arch
>     Date: 	Sat, 7 Dec 2013 22:38:59 -0500
>     From: 	Keith Curtis <keithcu at gmail.com> <mailto:keithcu at gmail.com>
>     To: 	philm at manjaro.org <mailto:philm at manjaro.org>
>
>
>
>     Hi;
>
>     Manjaro is an interesting project. Adding a simpler first step into
>     the Arch world is an extremely valuable idea.
>
>     However, I have some suggestions:
>
>     1. Enable Manjaro setup to run out of the Arch repositories so people
>     aren't locked in to your walled garden.
>     2. Cancel your wiki and encourage those fresh faces to further improve
>     the Arch one and discourage learned helplessness.
>     3. Call yourself Arch so that you get better combined numbers on
>     distrowatch, and more news articles. Any name is fine.
>
>     I can understand that you might not want to consider anything so
>     radical. You've probably come to love the name Manjaro, and are
>     excited by the recent success and new users, etc.
>
>     However, in general, it is best if people specialize. I'd love a
>     pretty (HiDPI) installer that did all the right things for me
>     including following the best practices from the wiki, setting up
>     Plymouth, etc. That problem is plenty big for a team of your size. I
>     can think of many ways Arch could have a better out of box experience
>     but it can entirely be done from a custom ISO from the standard
>     repositories and one extra. That gives you plenty of flexibility for
>     innovation, yet runs things more stream-lined for you.
>
>     One of the benefits of the above is that you will run your efforts
>     more efficiently, so you will have more time to work on the important
>     problems rather than all the grunt work of creating a full distro and
>     a new brand, dealing with security bugs, keeping up with the flood of
>     packages, needing to manage mirrors wikis, forums, etc. Do you want to
>     make a new brand, or do you want to help Arch kick ass? Also, how much
>     are you giving back to Arch right now?
>
>     Here is an article I wrote that discusses these ideas in more detail:
>     http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?p=3389
>
>     Great job! Please focus.
>
>     What do you think?
>
>     -Keith
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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