10-05-2026
Moved to Ubuntu from Manjaro
Yesterday, my computer broke. It wouldn't start. The night before, I went to sleep with a build running, and then in the morning I couldn't log in anymore. When I restarted my computer, it wouldn't boot into any OS after that. I opened up my computer and gave it a clean and rattle, and it turned on afterwards. But I couldn't boot to Manjaro anymore for some reason. The rEFInd bootloader didn't find Manjaro as a boot option. The linux disk seemed to be not bootable anymore. I very quickly gave up on salvaging the Linux installation; it's one of those thing I wasn't planning to do yesterday morning.
As much as I loved rolling updates, the always latest applications & utilities, it did not take long for me to give up on the Manjaro installation on my computer. I did not investigate why the linux installation broke. Maybe it was completely unrelated to Manjaro. But I realised why I loved my MacBook so much that I use for work. As someone who is primarily effective on a UNIX-like machine, I didn't want to spend my valuable Saturday fixing the computer so that I can get some work done after. I needed something reliable and with enough community support that the distribution doesn't go stale. So I installed Ubunbtu. I was up and running in an hour, with all my Dotfiles etc.already on Github. And with package managers such as asdf and apt, it didn't take long for me to salvage my morning. I got to work.
I don't know how stable Ubuntu desktop is, I haven't used Ubuntu Desktop in a long time, but the experience so far have been pleasant. For a moment I thought of playing around with installing NixOS; I did try it out a couple of years back before I went to Manjaro linux. But, it seemed daunting to learn an entirely new system to work with, specially when it is my secondary daily driver. Not sure if this is a reflection of me getting old, or is it maturity in realising what is important. It I was younger, I would jump to NixOS. But now I just want a simple workstation, that runs linux, has a nice desktop, so that I can actually do the things I want to do.
I am very good at "bike shedding", I do it instinctively, almost all the time; if there is anything for me to learn from Umeshisms, it is to not succumb to the lower order bits.