I have been using Mint for about six months now and while I am not going to start distro hopping, I slowly want to start exploring the rest of Linux.
Originally I was looking at Arch based distros such as Manjaro and EndeavourOS, during which I found out Manjaro is somewhat pointless because you pretty much should not use the AUR on Manjaro or else you will break the system inevitably. EndeavourOS looked solid though.
However, I got a few suggestions regarding OpenSuSE Tumbleweed as a better alternative to Arch based distros and just wanted to know what are the pros and cons of OpenSuSE compared to Arch based distros from your experience?
I think perhaps you misunderstood?
You should not use AUR packages for critical stuff like kernel, drivers or system libraries. But that’s true on all Arch-derived distros. The reason is that AUR is mostly unverified stuff and can go bad at any time.
The other thing about AUR that’s indeed specific to Manjaro is that due to their delay in publishing Arch packages sometimes an installed AUR package can go out of sync and not work anymore when you update the regular packages, and you may not be able to fix it for a couple of days.
That’s happened once or twice to me over the last 3 years and it’s annoying but, again, it depends on what exactly was that thing that you installed from AUR. It if it’s not something essential, as it should, then it will just be a minor inconvenience.
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Nothing in AUR is guaranteed in any way. It’s literally random people uploading random stuff and it’s accepted after the most minimal testing.
Ideally AUR maintainers should constantly update their packages to follow latest Arch but in practice only a fraction do it.
People who complain that AUR is not “in sync” with something are misguided. What it means is that until that moment they happened to use AUR packages that were frequently updated. It’s a happy coincidence. The illusion of “sync” could be broken when they step out to try Manjaro, but it can also be broken on Arch just as easily by using a less well-maintained AUR package.
Again, it all comes down to what AUR packages you are using. If it’s a package that’s promptly updated every time an Arch dependency moves, you’re obviously better off on Arch. If it’s not updated that frequently (which is the vast majority of them) it makes no difference if you use Arch or Manjaro/Garuda/Endeavour.