Manjaro 0.8.5 review - Sacrifice the goats!

As I read this review I can't help but think this author is doing something wrong and doesn't know as much about Linux as he pretends to. I come with the unique perspective of being a long-time Sabayon user who recently tried Manjaro 0.85 in a virtual machine. Let's start with his pathetic Sabayon review which he referenced in the Manjaro review.

I have used Sabayon exclusively since 2010; in fact I only recently re-installed the system after rolling upgrades for three years. I have also installed Sabayon for several clients and friends who wanted something cutting edge that they'd wouldn't have to reinstall every six months. I have never encountered any of the problems this author claims he encountered and there's nothing wrong with Sabayon's Anaconda based installer. It's clean, simple and yet powerful enough to slice and dice any drive or setup any boot configuration with ease. Maybe he wasn't paying attention to the options. I have never had any trouble with GRUB whether other distros are installed or Windows. It always picks up the other OSs and creates menu entries automatically. Even UEFI works for the love of Pete. Once installed, Magneto and package management work perfectly either from the excellent GUI tools (Rigo or Sulfur) or from the command line using equo. Networking also worked flawlessly as did MP3 and flash. Check your hardware dude! Not only are connections to SAMBA servers fast and reliable but I actually use Sabayon as an enterprise class domain controller which services clients from a LAN, acts as a dlna server via Mediatomb and hosts multiple network printers for a bustling office. As for printers, come on! Griping about having to configure CUPS from its browser interface which is cleaner and fully featured versus any of the DE's graphical tools. And, for the record, the graphical DE printer admin tools are easily installed from the repos. Bellyache about nothing much? Finally, wake up and smell reality buddy. Why would anyone use the cumbersome Vi when we have nano and a host of GUI text editors that are FAR SIMPLER? Stop trying to pretend to be L33t.

As for the issues this author claims to have with Manjaro, I just never saw them. Both the graphical and command line package managers worked well and without issues. I never had a problem with repos or slow transfers. Multimedia played out of the box. Networking was fast and simple.

Before writing a diatribe that denigrates two very good distributions that take two Juggernaut uber geek distributions like Gentoo and Arch and place them into the hands of beginners in the form of Sabayon and Manjaro, check your hardware first to ensure it is fully Linux compliant. Also take a look at the distro's forums, release notes and installation guides to ensure you are aware of any issues from the get go.