Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Arch Linux Derivatives

Arch Linux’s philosophy is appealing but the installation process is famously daunting. Several distributions have taken Arch’s rolling-release core and added graphical installers, sensible defaults, and pre-configured desktop environments to make it more approachable.

Manjaro

Manjaro is the most popular Arch derivative. It offers:

  • A full graphical installer (no command-line required to get a working desktop)
  • Pre-configured desktop environments (GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce are the official editions)
  • A slightly delayed update cycle relative to Arch — packages are held for testing before being pushed to users, which catches breaking updates before they hit you

Manjaro uses its own package repositories that mirror Arch but typically lag by 1-2 weeks. This gives the team time to catch and fix issues before they reach users.

# Manjaro's package manager is still pacman, but also comes with pamac (graphical)
sudo pacman -Syu          # update everything
pamac update              # same thing via pamac
pamac install <package>   # install via pamac

Manjaro Hardware Detection (MHWD) is a tool unique to Manjaro that automates driver installation including Nvidia:

# List available drivers for your hardware
mhwd -l

# Install a driver (e.g., Nvidia proprietary)
sudo mhwd -i pci video-nvidia

EndeavourOS

EndeavourOS is much closer to “real” Arch than Manjaro — it uses the actual Arch repositories directly (so you get packages the same day Arch does), adds a graphical installer, and includes a small set of helpful utilities and a welcoming community.

If Arch is the deep end and Manjaro is the shallow end, EndeavourOS is the middle of the pool. Users learn and are expected to understand what they’re doing.

The package manager is standard Arch pacman and the yay AUR helper comes pre-installed.

Garuda Linux

Garuda is an Arch-based distribution with a heavy focus on gaming and aesthetics. It comes pre-configured with:

  • Performance tweaks (including the Zen kernel by default)
  • gamemode and mangohud for gaming optimizations pre-installed
  • A visually striking KDE Plasma setup out of the box
  • Their own graphical system maintenance tool (Garuda Assistant)

It uses the Arch repos directly (like EndeavourOS) and comes with paru as the AUR helper.

Common Note for All Arch Derivatives

Because these all use Arch as their foundation, the Arch Wiki applies to all of them. When you hit a problem, search the Arch Wiki first — the answer is almost certainly there.

The main exception is Manjaro: because of its delayed repos and custom tooling (like MHWD), check the Manjaro Wiki for Manjaro-specific issues.