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Manjaro levels up as a serious Linux distribution

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Today, the team at Manjaro [Official Site] shared some pretty big news for the future of the Linux distribution and it sounds great.

A new company was officially formed as Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, with Manjaro developers Philip Müller and Bernhard Landauer now being able to commit to the Linux distribution full time with the help of Blue Systems in an advisory role. On top of that, they're working towards teaming up with the non-profit groups CommunityBridge and OpenCollective to handle their donation funding which can then be used towards project-related expenses.

They say this will help them do quite a lot like: protect the independence of Manjaro, provide faster security updates and a more efficient reaction to the needs of users, provide the means to act as a company on a professional level, bring in additional contributors on a paid basis and so on.

Something they made pretty clear, is that the way it's run overall won't be changing. So they will continue to interact with the community, take on suggestions and all that. This is all just formal stuff to get them on secured footing for the future. It will help them to partner with other companies of course, since they're now actually a company themselves. You can see their full post about the news on their forum.

I think it's fantastic when a project made from passion can become something serious like this. It reminds me of how we here at GamingOnLinux started off as nothing more than a little weekend project and now we're here full time.

Can't wait to see what Manjaro can achieve now, good luck to them on it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Distro News
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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33 comments
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Shmerl Sep 8, 2019
Would be nice if they also focus on KDE as the primary supported DE, and will help speeding up its development.
Whitewolfe80 Sep 8, 2019
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.
Shmerl Sep 8, 2019
I didn't really notice KDE memory bloat. I also don't run stuff like baloo file indexing though. KDE runs with 4 GB of RAM even (I'm using it in a few VMs set up that way) and uses just a small portion of it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 September 2019 at 8:50 pm UTC
keturidu Sep 8, 2019
It's a myth about KDE memory bloat. I installed Manjaro KDE and XFCE for hundreds times. Actually, KDE takes less RAM than XFCE. My daily system without any tweaks uses ~500-600 mb
https://ibb.co/Zds42LC
On more resource hunger system i managed to make it <400 mb on boot up. No XFCE system could beat that.
The bottle neck in KDE responsiveness on weak PC's is compositor, not RAM. Then it's time to shine for LXDE - it works flawlessly on any kind of system. XFCE? For me it's the same as KDE, when you talk about resourses.


Last edited by keturidu on 8 September 2019 at 7:57 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Sep 8, 2019
Eh, resources, whatever. I pick my DEs based on feel. Used to like Gnome before the great upheaval. Try KDE now and then, tried XFCE. Ended up using Mate. KDE feels like putting on a gorgeous blingy pair of dress shoes that pinch a bit. Lots of great features but there's always been something a bit "off" or some way of doing things that I'm used to and can't readily figure out how to get KDE to do it (although there's doubtless a way).
XFCE feels like I went to Budget Shoes R Us and got something that more or less fit. A bit too bare-bones-y for me.
Mate feels like slipping on my good old well-broken-in shoes. I can put my second taskbar on the side where I want it, I've got basically the model of computer interaction I've been used to for years, I can just do things the way I want.
(Gnome 3 seems to have done this process where in the name of simplicity they removed all the features that made Gnome 2 any good, and since then have been very gradually putting them back again, or something, but I just don't have the patience to try again)


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 10 September 2019 at 4:32 am UTC
14 Sep 8, 2019
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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.
pb Sep 8, 2019
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
Mountain Man Sep 8, 2019
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.
I've heard this argument before, but it makes little sense to me. As the saying goes, empty RAM is wasted RAM. I've been using KDE for years, and it has never been anything other than fast and responsive for me, even when I'm running a RAM intensive piece of software like GIMP, so I've never understood the frequent complaints I hear about KDE "bloat" and "inefficiency".
lectrode Sep 8, 2019
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.


Xfce, KDE, and Gnome are the 3 primary DE's for Manjaro. They've been more than willing to pull in the latest development packages for at least Xfce and KDE before they've been released. They've been very quick to report bugs upstream as well for many projects, not just DE's.

I'm not sure what more y'all are asking for...


Last edited by lectrode on 8 September 2019 at 11:28 pm UTC
Cybolic Sep 8, 2019
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.
NotSoQT Sep 8, 2019
Oh boy. And I was wondering, few days ago, about the fate of Manjaro since I noticed it was taking way too long to receive stable updates (and now I see DeaDBeeF jumping from 0.8 to 1.8).

Glad I'm not going back to distro hopping anytime soon.
Shmerl Sep 9, 2019
For some reason KDE doesn't like my Dell laptop with an integrated AMD card. Love the DE but it works very slowly and laggy. So XFCE is the one. I just wish they made the multiple monitor configuring a little more like KDE and implemented an overview mode as well.

Did you enable compositing and OpenGL 3.x in the system settings? KDE really should switch to Vulkan for the desktop already.
oldrocker99 Sep 9, 2019
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After 11 years of Ubuntu, I got royally p*ssed at Canonical for removing great apps from the repos over the years.

I need to run Aqualung for a radio show. In the last few years, I've been able to compile it. The last time, I couldn't even compile GTK2, a requirement for Aqualung.

Finding it is in the AUR, I installed Manjaro MATE. I found it to be close to Ubuntu in terms of user-friendliness.

I enabled the AUR, and found Aqualung-git, and I clicked "Build," then "Apply." Then I watched with delight as it downloaded the source, installed all the dependencies, and compiled it in no time, with two clicks.

I've been able to get several apps that went bye-bye from $<$#÷$ Canonical. I'll still support Ubuntu MATE, because Martin Wimpress leads MATE development, and I adore MATE.

I'm staying with Arch Made Easy. I'd even recommend it for a n00b, which is a high compliment, and I would never say that about Arch, and neither would you!


Last edited by oldrocker99 on 9 September 2019 at 1:38 am UTC
Shmerl Sep 9, 2019
Did you enable compositing and OpenGL 3.x in the system settings? KDE really should switch to Vulkan for the desktop already.

Yes, but it improved very little...

Did you open a KDE bug? Would be interesting to follow.
lucinos Sep 9, 2019
about the DE.
a) KDE is not "bloated" and slow at least not the way many people think it is. I really think that should should be the main one. But it is not very reliable. There was a time for me that it was unusable from the bugs, and its behavior may vary from machine to machine. Also you have pretty big upgrades.
b) Xfce is not as light as many people think it is, but it is a very reliable and conservative. It is solid and very good for what it is needed it as an option.
c) I hate GNOME.

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.
I agree that DE should really not be a hard dependency for anyone. This can be really catastrophic. But the main DE is very important, it is the face of the distro.

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.
TheRiddick Sep 9, 2019
Plasma5 for me runs games better then GNOME or XFCE, and seems to have less UI issues (even has fractional scaling now).

What I would like Manjaro to do is allow for extra nvidia driver (or AMD) options such as Beta/testing drivers to be selectable in its hwd installer. You can compile your own but its just confusing extra steps, I don't really see why it should be a thing.
ikiruto Sep 9, 2019
I do not like KDE, I use the Manjaro Gnome.
Whitewolfe80 Sep 9, 2019
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.

Okay first it was the original poster that said he wanted kde only my counter point was if there was only going to be one flavour of manjaro i would rather it was xfce. 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.


Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 9 September 2019 at 6:55 am UTC
Eike Sep 9, 2019
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Would be nice if they also focus on KDE as the primary supported DE, and will help speeding up its development.

Okay first it was the original poster that said he wanted kde only

That's wrong. You even cited it. (Emphasis mine.)

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.

You don't need different "flavours" or downloads. Have a single default download (maybe others are hidden somewhere, maybe not, John Win Doe won't see and won't care) and install a default DE. You don't need to download a new installation image to install anything else, you just install the right packages. The Linux user will know and can do it if she wants to, the Windows user won't and won't be irritated.


Last edited by Eike on 9 September 2019 at 10:09 am UTC
Tchey Sep 9, 2019
I was on Ubuntu XFCE for several years, and before that on dual boot with different distros, not knowing well what i was doing.

I'm on Manjaro XFCE for about 2 years now i think, and i don't regret. As a gamer, it may be the best option, it's the Linux with the very close to none issues, at least for me. Updated often, and stable at the same time.
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