Manjaro Linux is getting ready for their major release, and they're looking for your help to make sure the GNOME edition for Manjaro GNOME 20.0 is as smooth as possible.
Announced here, there's a huge amount of new features coming. The thing is though, unlike other distributions like Ubuntu, Manjaro is a rolling-release where they regularly put out full upgrades for anyone who has it installed. These big new releases like Manjaro GNOME 20.0 are mainly a refresh of the download and installer for new installs. Important to do of course, just like any other Linux distributions, they need a good out of the box experience.
So what's new in Manjaro GNOME 20.0? Some of the highlights include:
- gnome 3.36 with its many improvements
- clean app drawer with applications sorted to folders by default
- new gdm theme
- pamac integration for gnome shell
- support for snaps and flatpaks in pamac
- improved gnome-layout-switcher
- evolution replaced with geary and gnome-calendar
- added deja-dup for backups integrated into gnome desktop
- removed hexchat, bijiben, empathy, java stuff and bauh
- added manjaro-zsh-config
- added modules needed for zfs installation in manjaro-architect
- based on stable branch
Have a quick look with some shots I took earlier. GNOME really does look sleek (click to open gallery):
If you want to get involved, you can see the post here which has the most up to date link for the Release Candidate download.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Woohoo Flatpak OOB incoming, that is rather nice (which has nothing todo with Gnome btw)
Manjaro is becoming better and better with every release, I have no regrets switching to it two years ago.
Manjaro is becoming better and better with every release, I have no regrets switching to it two years ago.
0 Likes
inlinuxdude Apr 21, 2020
Quoting: iiariQuoting: gradyvuckovicFlatpak out of the box?
Woohoo!
I'm loving the slow but steady adoption of Flatpak....
Great explanation, thanks. As someone who hated Snaps (and those plus unstable PPA's pushed me out of the Ubuntu ecosystem) I have a few questions for you:
1) How are Flatpaks with speed? Snaps were soooo slooooow to launch.
2) Is native theming reflected in Flatpaks?
3) If Flatpaks conquer all, what kinda is the point of different distros anymore? They really do become only theming and software selection boutiques. In the best case scenario, as with Manjaro, they develop their own unique apps and workflows.
Thanks!
If you're on Manjaro (or apparently a debian-based distro, although I haven't tried it there), you can install 'bauh' which is a frontend package manager that will let you install flatpaks (and snaps and appimages). I've installed a few and see no discernible difference in speed (and I don't think one should). Most recently I installed the 'cura' flatpak (3d printing slicer program), as I could not get any of its version in the AUR to successfully work and have data loaded for my printer. Its working great installed as a flatpak, so that has really boosted my appreciation of them.
Last edited by inlinuxdude on 21 April 2020 at 11:20 am UTC
0 Likes
gradyvuckovic Apr 21, 2020
Quoting: iiariQuoting: gradyvuckovicFlatpak out of the box?
Woohoo!
I'm loving the slow but steady adoption of Flatpak....
Great explanation, thanks. As someone who hated Snaps (and those plus unstable PPA's pushed me out of the Ubuntu ecosystem) I have a few questions for you:
1) How are Flatpaks with speed? Snaps were soooo slooooow to launch.
2) Is native theming reflected in Flatpaks?
3) If Flatpaks conquer all, what kinda is the point of different distros anymore? They really do become only theming and software selection boutiques. In the best case scenario, as with Manjaro, they develop their own unique apps and workflows.
Thanks!
1) In my experience I notice no difference in startup time or running speed. In 2018 there were reports of some overhead during the first run of a Flatpak application but that was due to a bug with the fontcache and it's been fixed ever since.
At it's core, it's the same tech as Steam's runtime compatibility mode. There's no VM, no overhead, just lightweight containers as a way of logically sandboxing an application away from the OS so it can have it's own libraries.
You could argue there's additional startup time and memory usage from loading a couple of system libraries more than once, but in many cases the libraries being loaded more than once are libraries that the developers might have had to include with the 'native' version of the application anyway if they needed to target a specific version of the library, so any startup overhead or additional memory is debatable and really minor.
In the underlying tech there's a lot of cool stuff too that makes it very efficient. For example, in addition to sharing installations of runtimes, if two Flatpak applications bundle with them the same library, the library files will be stored only once for both applications, no additional storage space usage.
2) My understanding is that Flatpak applications can be made to respect system theme. I imagine many distros will choose to set this up by default themselves with their OOTB Flatpak coofigurations, but I understand you can install a system theme to Flatpak the same way you can to your distro, and applications will respect that.
3) I think it's great for distro maintainers as it frees up huge sums of their time and allows them to focus on the user experience of their distros rather than trying to maintain vast repositories of applications written by other people.
They can compete on delivering the best user interface they can provide, compete on delivering regular high quality updates and new features to their distros. Compete on performance of their OS, etc. Compete on ease of installation.
So there's still plenty of reason for them to exist and to compete. If it means a couple of unpopular distros become irrelevant because they offer nothing special that isn't available everywhere else, that's not the end of the world either, we probably don't need all 300+ active distributions. But I imagine all the popular distros will find ways to compete on user experience which benefits us all.
0 Likes
heidi.wenger Apr 21, 2020
Quoting: pete910Quoting: PublicNuisanceI love Manjaro but not enough to use Gnome ;)
Gnome
Why do you attack against Gnome with such passion? So many new Linux users love it, and in my experience it is the best Linux desktop for tablet.
This Gnome-bashing does no service to Linux in all and should just stop :O
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: inlinuxdudeSo, Manjaro is actually going to sunset Bauh and now Flatpaks, the AUR, and Snaps will all go through Pamac. Do your Flatpaks respect system theming?Quoting: iiariQuoting: gradyvuckovicFlatpak out of the box?
Woohoo!
I'm loving the slow but steady adoption of Flatpak....
Great explanation, thanks. As someone who hated Snaps (and those plus unstable PPA's pushed me out of the Ubuntu ecosystem) I have a few questions for you:
1) How are Flatpaks with speed? Snaps were soooo slooooow to launch.
2) Is native theming reflected in Flatpaks?
3) If Flatpaks conquer all, what kinda is the point of different distros anymore? They really do become only theming and software selection boutiques. In the best case scenario, as with Manjaro, they develop their own unique apps and workflows.
Thanks!
If you're on Manjaro (or apparently a debian-based distro, although I haven't tried it there), you can install 'bauh' which is a frontend package manager that will let you install flatpaks (and snaps and appimages). I've installed a few and see no discernible difference in speed (and I don't think one should). Most recently I installed the 'cura' flatpak (3d printing slicer program), as I could not get any of its version in the AUR to successfully work and have data loaded for my printer. Its working great installed as a flatpak, so that has really boosted my appreciation of them.
0 Likes
Quoting: gradyvuckovic3) I think it's great for distro maintainers as it frees up huge sums of their time and allows them to focus on the user experience of their distros rather than trying to maintain vast repositories of applications written by other people.
They can compete on delivering the best user interface they can provide, compete on delivering regular high quality updates and new features to their distros. Compete on performance of their OS, etc. Compete on ease of installation.
So there's still plenty of reason for them to exist and to compete. If it means a couple of unpopular distros become irrelevant because they offer nothing special that isn't available everywhere else, that's not the end of the world either, we probably don't need all 300+ active distributions. But I imagine all the popular distros will find ways to compete on user experience which benefits us all.
Great points!
Last edited by iiari on 21 April 2020 at 2:26 pm UTC
0 Likes
Quoting: heidi.wengerI've seen far worse Gnome bashing than that :). That said, while I hugely respect their design process, they've done quite a bit to deserve some of bile aimed at them. As I said above, I think 3.36 is much improved and I think the Gnome GUI switchers that Manjaro and some other devs are using as part of their "Hello" packages have the potential to save Gnome from itself :).Quoting: pete910Quoting: PublicNuisanceI love Manjaro but not enough to use Gnome ;)
Gnome
Why do you attack against Gnome with such passion? So many new Linux users love it, and in my experience it is the best Linux desktop for tablet.
This Gnome-bashing does no service to Linux in all and should just stop :O
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: heidi.wengerQuoting: pete910Quoting: PublicNuisanceI love Manjaro but not enough to use Gnome ;)
Gnome
Why do you attack against Gnome with such passion? So many new Linux users love it, and in my experience it is the best Linux desktop for tablet.
This Gnome-bashing does no service to Linux in all and should just stop :O
Three things !
I didn't attack it
Second, I didn't make the original comment
Finally, No point in trying to defend by stating it's "the best desktop" , then state whilst using it on a tablet
Some like it , others don't , Get over it.
0 Likes
Quoting: heidi.wengerQuoting: pete910Quoting: PublicNuisanceI love Manjaro but not enough to use Gnome ;)
Gnome
Why do you attack against Gnome with such passion? So many new Linux users love it, and in my experience it is the best Linux desktop for tablet.
This Gnome-bashing does no service to Linux in all and should just stop :O
But it is cool to bash on Gnome, all the kids are doing it :D ... or so I think the people who bash Gnome think. Personaly I used xfce, budgie, unity, I still like Gnome better
Last edited by mihaib on 22 April 2020 at 8:06 am UTC
0 Likes
heidi.wenger Apr 22, 2020
Quoting: rat2000Quoting: heidi.wengerQuoting: pete910Quoting: PublicNuisanceI love Manjaro but not enough to use Gnome ;)
Gnome
Why do you attack against Gnome with such passion? So many new Linux users love it, and in my experience it is the best Linux desktop for tablet.
This Gnome-bashing does no service to Linux in all and should just stop :O
But it is cool to bash on Gnome, all the kids are doing it :D ... or so I think the people who bash Gnome think. Personaly I used xfce, budgie, unity, I still like Gnome better
Yea, it really makes no sense. Why some people can't JUST USE things they find best for themselves, and leave those that wasn't "a match", be. Gnome is the only DE which works as well on desktop and mobile. No tweaking required.
Gnome is the default in Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop_OS. Those are some distros people try when coming to Linux. And what do they find arriving on discussions, hopes up just to have found Linux: bashing of this and bashing of that and how Gnome makes some "puke". C'mon.
There was a Destination Linux episode (can't remember which) where Noah talked of this same issue spot on. Maybe it's better to not state anything if the only thing coming to mind from some certain DE for instance is some negative slur.
Here in Germany Linux has about 4% user count nowadays! (according to statcounter) ^_^
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me