Manjaro levels up as a serious Linux distribution

Great! I switched to Manjaro for my main desktop a while ago and everything (except adding other input types like Chinese) has been so much easier and faster than Ubuntu.
Though I'll also give PopOS a try at some point, see how that fares in comparison.

I tried XFCE for a while, but it lacks some very basic functionality like window previews - yeah, you can add compiz to the mix to get that, but those always seem to be at odds with each other and then you end up having various places to make changes in for layouting, etc. instead of just one centralized menu. And the alleged better performance is nothing anyone with a gaming rig would need to begin with.
Still like it better than GNOME, but that's not saying too much, as GNOME... ugh.

So for me it is definitely KDE, at least until XFCE gains some more features I want. Anything except adding Chinese input has been smooth sailing with no problems whatsoever.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 9 September 2019 at 9:23 am UTC

I'm really happy to hear that Manjaro is getting better and better. I remember installing Manjaro the first time in summer of 2017 and then was fast and stable with a few minor glitches but with every Stable Upgrade, they've fixed it one by one/ten by ten depending on the glitch or bug was hitting the door. Now with the new Kernel, 5.2.11-1 is blazingly fast and stable once I was an Arch Linux user but was way advanced for an intermediate user like me but I've managed to keep it going and learned a lot on how to update mirrors manually and maintenance plus installing the redistributable software for Steam. Now I'm using Manjaro as a Gaming OS with Steam and Wine with total confidence.


Last edited by NOX LinuX on 9 September 2019 at 10:40 am UTC

I'd like to go back to the press release, please. Who or what are Blue Systems and how does their advisory role help the devs "commit to the Linux distribution full time?"

Also, XFCE or Mate. Neither has ever broken or locked up on me. I want to like KDE, but it always borks on me. And Gnome 3 is just too locked down.

Curios if they will continue using Arch as a base or fork of it completely and go their own way.

I'd like to go back to the press release, please. Who or what are Blue Systems and how does their advisory role help the devs "commit to the Linux distribution full time?"

Never heard of them before either, but according to Wikipedia, the company has been founded by a computer scientist with too much money. :D (His uncle is very well known in German football ("soccer"), BTW.)

I don't really care about which DE they end up keeping as main as I've been running i3 for quite some time and have recently switched to dwm. As long as no DE is a hard dependency, I'm fine with it.
What I'd like to see them focus on is compatibility and stability as the last couple of times I've tried Manjaro, it has either failed to install or locked up on boot. I'm sure it's related to my MSI motherboard not playing nice, so not directly their fault, but plain arch and Antergos (R.I.P.) never failed on me.

I have Manjaro w/ Gnome running on two desktops and didn't have any installation problems, but I couldn't get it installed on a third desktop. I eventually used the "architect" ISO and was able to get through an installation still using Gnome as the DE. *shrug*

Curios if they will continue using Arch as a base or fork of it completely and go their own way.

The more and more custom packages they use from their own repo, the less I'll want to run Manjaro on some of my computers. But we'll see.

I'd like to go back to the press release, please. Who or what are Blue Systems and how does their advisory role help the devs "commit to the Linux distribution full time?"

Never heard of them before either, but according to Wikipedia, the company has been founded by a computer scientist with too much money. :D (His uncle is very well known in German football ("soccer"), BTW.)

Oh, they sound like a pretty groovy outfit, a Community member doing good through financial support. How cool is that?!

Emphasis mine:

Would be nice if they also focus on KDE as the primary supported DE, and will help speeding up its development.

Personally I would rather xfce became their primary and only de but thats because I like the fact its very memory efficent and i have plenty of ram i just dont like bloat code that comes with a vanilla kde base.

In just a handful of posts, you can see why more than one DE needs to be supported. Why would you want fewer options for the masses? I don't understand.

Secondly on your last point no there needs to be fewer options as it does tend to scare off potential windows converts. They go to say manjaro webpage they hit the download button and bam 4 options so imagine you have never used linux before at all and youve been on windows all your life. On one hand you could say oh wow look at the options on the other hand they might well go (and this seems likely as i have worked with a large number of windows users) no i just want an os i dont know what kde is or xfce i just want linux and they are done no second chances.
Why windows works for the majority is there is no choice its windows there is only feature options home prem everybody understands that now if windows started shipping windows aero windows basic windows dx12 windows dx11 then you would see message boards fill with is there just a regular windows i can download. Options are great if you know what they are if you dont its just a confusing mess.

I see your perspective but disagree with your solution. If too many options is the problem for potential Windows converts, then GNU/Linux and even OSS is not for them. I would say point them to a distro that has a more streamlined approach, like Elementary OS or Ubuntu. If that's still too much of a learning curve, get them an Android tablet and tell them it's Linux. (Although, the people you describe sound more like iOS users.)

I used to love KDE, using it all the way through v2 and v3. When they released KDE4, I promptly switched to gnome 2. Then came Gnome 3 so I switched to Mate. With Mate losing momentum in favour of Cinnamon, I switched to XFCE and I never felt the need to switch again (though I have sometimes tried other DEs, including newer versions of KDE). The worst thing about open source is that all the time people break something that is working well, and the best thing about open source is that there are always plenty of alternatives to switch to. :P

I've heard it said that one of the best things about Linux is the amount of choice the consumer has.

I've also heard it said that one of the worst things about Linux is the amount of choice the consumer has!

I gave Manjaro Gnome desktop a run the other day to see what the fuss was about, and was really impressed. Have not used Gnome for over a year, so noticed big improvements here. Also because it's based on arch it was great to have all the latest packages. Anyone that hasn't been down this path, give it a go. I'm not ready to ditch my Ubuntu distro just yet thou, as I feel more comfortable.

Would be nice if they also focus on KDE as the primary supported DE, and will help speeding up its development.

Blue Systems is one of KDE patrons and they are employing some of KDE developers if I'm not mistaken, so KDE flavor might get some more focus. Hopefully.

heh, I was about to write appraising comment here for manjaro.. as I always thought Arch-type distributions were just hard to manage... but I had been running Manjaro on my spare laptop for couple of weeks now and was quite surprised how easy and nice it was.

well, after todays normal update it broke. doesn't boot, kernel panic.

sooo.... I think I just stick with the ubuntus for now.. my main machine has been running several years without any problems.. version after version dist-upgrades, and still going strong :) I just liked the idea of rolling release, but apparently this wasn't it.

.b