Dilema! Manjaro VS Raspbian

[Giga_Pi]

Hello all.

I've been using Manjaro ARM for a while, but I'm starting to have second thoughts. Here's the thing:

Manjaro ARM: Good, uses KDE Plasma, but does not have good graphical support

Raspbian: Extremely fast and streamlined, and with a few online themes installed, can look nice. However, many times I've found the audio to suddenly break after a while (this has happened on a number of occasions)

I'm currently thinking of doing a SD card boot SSD root setup, so wanted use an OS I would use for a while.

Thoughts?

Giga_Pi

[trejan]

Raspbian: Extremely fast and streamlined, and with a few online themes installed, can look nice. However, many times I've found the audio to suddenly break after a while (this has happened on a number of occasions)

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

[Giga_Pi]

Raspbian: Extremely fast and streamlined, and with a few online themes installed, can look nice. However, many times I've found the audio to suddenly break after a while (this has happened on a number of occasions)

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Whether or not that's the case, makes no difference. I could sort it, but I generally find it slightly above me.

Edit: Just realise what you meant (duh!), and I'll try that. Thanks!

[fruitoftheloom]

Raspbian: Extremely fast and streamlined, and with a few online themes installed, can look nice. However, many times I've found the audio to suddenly break after a while (this has happened on a number of occasions)

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Whether or not that's the case, makes no difference. I could sort it, but I generally find it slightly above me.

Edit: Just realise what you meant (duh!), and I'll try that. Thanks!

PulseAudio was removed when Stretch was released, though it can be installed, there are numerous posts regarding incompatibilities.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-stretch/

[dickon]

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Something by Lennart Poettering breaking systems? Heavens forfend...

[LTolledo]

never had audio breaking on Raspbian, even from Jessie (used for about 1 year on RPi3B)
whether its audio from:
TRRS (J,S,B)
HDMI (J,S,B)
USB dongle (J,S,B)
DAC-HAT, includes DAC-Amp HATs (S, B)

[Giga_Pi]

never had audio breaking on Raspbian, even from Jessie (used for about 1 year on RPi3B)
whether its audio from:
TRRS (J,S,B)
HDMI (J,S,B)
USB dongle (J,S,B)
DAC-HAT, includes DAC-Amp HATs (S, B)

Confused me as well as to how the most supported OS for the Raspberry Pi could have such a basic problem. Must be a depnedency for something...

[hippy]

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Probably ALSA which seems to have been badly broken on a Pi since Raspbian Stretch.

[jamesh]

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Probably ALSA which seems to have been badly broken on a Pi since Raspbian Stretch.

ALSA should be fine - it's Pulseaudio that sucks.

[hippy]

Audio breaking is usually because something installed PulseAudio.

Probably ALSA which seems to have been badly broken on a Pi since Raspbian Stretch.

ALSA should be fine - it's Pulseaudio that sucks.

Thanks. It does seem ALSA is now fixed; aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav and espeak "hello" now working -

viewtopic.php?t=242374

Time to check USB DisplayLink in case that's been fixed and is something else I've not noticed.

[smilenkovski]

Back on a subject.
Manjaro vs Raspbian. I'm using Manjaro on other desktops and it was normal for me to try it on Rpi 4 . Manjaro is one of the best looking Linux distributions (matter of taste) for me. KDE flavor has some hardware support for DE for RPI 4 (xfce not yet, at least two weeks ago) and is acting very nice and smooth. But, If you are like me Kodi user, the only way to watch movies with hw acc (Hevc etc) is Raspbian-Kodi. you can't have that
in Manjaro straight forward like in raspbian. So, Chromium for Raspbian is tweeked for video, Firefox for Manjaro not, but is running very smooth.
A.bout Raspbian look. First impression is time machine if you were using modern dekstop environments last years, but, after some tweeking it can look very modern. Using conky, themes and different icon sets, better wallpapers it can look nice. Even witohut docky and plank you can simulate them with the existing pannel (transparency) and yet without compsitor enabled. So Raspbian is fastest for sure, it can be customized and finally support is fantastic and focused on raspberry. I've had same dilemma a month ago and decided to go with raspbian.
P/S Manjaro was my third solution, Gento64 was second.

[Moonmarch]

How would you know the operating system is the cause of the sound problems? If you installed dependencies that are causing problems for your computer, you should install the OS all over again. This actually means using BalenaEtcher or equivalent to flash the OS image to a SD card. I flashed a Raspbian image to a SD card recently. I flashed, and finished updating the computer within 1 hour. I consider installing the OS image to be relatively trouble free. You would need access to all of the computer accessories that you would need to complete these actions successfully. If you don't have audio problems with Manjaro OS. then what you are saying is true about Raspbian.

I use a plain audio setup. I have computer speakers connected to the audio jack on the computer monitor. My computer monitor does have built in speakers, I do not have a controller to control the speaker volume. If I need to adjust the volume of the monitor speakers, I need use the monitor menu button every time. My monitor is mounted on a wall, which is why adjusting the volume using the monitor menu button is repetitive. I do not have any audio problems to report with Raspbian. I admit I do not have audio on certain websites if I use Bluetooth headphones, which I do not use very often.

[Giga_Pi]

How would you know the operating system is the cause of the sound problems? If you installed dependencies that are causing problems for your computer, you should install the OS all over again. This actually means using BalenaEtcher or equivalent to flash the OS image to a SD card. I flashed a Raspbian image to a SD card recently. I flashed, and finished updating the computer within 1 hour. I consider installing the OS image to be relatively trouble free. You would need access to all of the computer accessories that you would need to complete these actions successfully. If you don't have audio problems with Manjaro OS. then what you are saying is true about Raspbian.

I use a plain audio setup. I have computer speakers connected to the audio jack on the computer monitor. My computer monitor does have built in speakers, I do not have a controller to control the speaker volume. If I need to adjust the volume of the monitor speakers, I need use the monitor menu button every time. My monitor is mounted on a wall, which is why adjusting the volume using the monitor menu button is repetitive. I do not have any audio problems to report with Raspbian. I admit I do not have audio on certain websites if I use Bluetooth headphones, which I do not use very often.

I'm just saying, this is what happens to me on Raspbian, and therefore I have grown a little distrust to it. Anyway, I found that putting the root partition on an SSD a pain, so planning on something more complex...

I think I'll be excited when ubuntu MATE (an official image) 20.04 comes out for the Pi4. From my experience, it has been the best OS for the Pi. It has the compatibility and hardware acceleration for the Pi, and has a nice desktop experience. For now, I use Manjaro for my desktop use and Raspbian for everything else.

JamesH, you can lock this thread if you want. There's nothing else to be gained in my opinion.