just a quick glance

Took a look at a live session of the Arch-based Manjaro 0.8.10 (Xfce). I downloaded manjaro-xfce-0.8.10-i686.iso, used Unetbootin to get it onto a flash drive, and ran it live on my HP G72 notebook.

Manjaro comes loaded with apps -- the download was about 1.1 GB. They include the Whisker menu, but the standard Applications menu is available via desktop right-click.

Thunar, showing the ~/Desktop directory.

Manjaro ships with Firefox.

I found 36 backgrounds in the /usr/share/backgrounds/xfce directory.

Here's a listing of what's found in the live session's Whisker menu:

Under the Accessories menu - Application Finder, Bulk Rename, Catfish File Search, Clipman, Engrampa Archive Manager, Galculator, HP Device Manager, Menu Editor, Mousepad, Notes, Orage Globaltime, Screenshot, Sensor Viewer, Task Manager, Thunar File Manager, Xfburn.

Under the Development menu - OpenJDK Policy Tool, Qt4 Assistant, Qt4 Designer, Qt4 Linquist, Qt4 QDbus Viewer.

Under the Education menu - LibreOffice Math

Under the Games menu - Steam.

Under the Graphics menu - GNU Image Manipulation Program, Viewnior.

Under the Internet menu - Avahi SSH Server Browser, Avahi VNC Server Browser, Firefox, HexChat, Pidgin Internet Messenger, Steam, Thunderbird.

Under the Multimedia menu - Audio Mixer, PulseAudio Volume Control, Qt V4L2 test Utility, VLC media player, Xfburn, Xnoise.

Under the Office menu - Dictionary, Document Viewer, LibreOffice, LibreOffice Calc, LibreOffice Impress, LibreOffice Math, LibreOffice Writer, Orage Calendar, Orage Globaltime.

Under the Settings menu - Accessibility, Adobe Flash Player, Appearance, Bluetooth Manager, Desktop, File Manager, Firewall Configuration, IceTea-Web Control Panel, Keyboard, Login Window, Majaro Settings Manager, Menu Editor, MIME Type Editor, Mouse and Touchpad, Network Connections, Notifications, Orage preferences, Panel, Preferred Applications, Print Settings, Privilege granting, Removable Drives and Media, Screensaver, Session and Startup, Settings Editor, Settings Manager, Window Manager, Window Manager Tweaks, Workspaces.

Under the System menu - Add/Remove Software, Avahi Zeroconf Browser, Bulk Rename, dconf Editor, Firewall Configuration, GParted, Install Manjaro Linux, Install Manjaro Linux (cli), Login Window, Manage Printing, Manjaro Welcome, New Login, Print Settings, Sensor Viewer, Software Update, Task Manager, Thunar File Manager, Xfce Terminal.


Looks like a nice distro, overall. They include more apps that I would ever want or need, but it's probably a good selection for their target users. I was thinking of replacing my Bridge Linux (Xfce) with Manjaro, but decided against it. Maybe I'll install Manjaro sometime in the future.

impressive

Arindam Sen likes it: Manjaro Linux 0.8.10 KDE and XFCE Review: Bang on target release after release!

Note the opening paragraph:

I have used a lot of rolling release distros in last 5 years, but, for production purpose, till recently, I mostly relied on only a few - Linux Mint, Debian and Ubuntu LTS. Primarily because the so-called "install it once only" promise hardly worked for most of the rolling release distros and they inevitably break or become unbootable after a couple of major upgrades. However, my experience with Manjaro Linux and Chakra Linux in the past 12 months have successfully changed that impression. These two Arch based distros survived 4 major upgrades and still running great, even with a whole lot of customization and niche packages that I installed.

What impresses me about this is that I've had a great experience with Arch Linux so far, and I consider it to be the best, most "stable" rolling-release distro that I've spent more than a few months with. Manjaro brings Arch packages into their (Manjaro's) own repos, so there's a bit of a buffer there that should make Manjaro even more "stable" than Arch. Makes sense, although this means (as Arch purists would say) that Manjaro is not Arch.

Sounds like a great distro. I may eventually install Manjaro here.

keeping an eye on this one

When I first started looking into Arch Linux and Arch derivatives, Manjaro wasn't as appealing to me as Bridge Linux and ArchBang. I decided to go in a different direction because Manjaro was such a new distro, combined with the fact that Manjaro's packages come via Manjaro's own dedicated repositories (although I guess many or most of those packages originate from the Arch repos). Arch Linux has been around for a long time, and I figured that the best way to benefit from that longevity (aside from installing Arch itself) would be to go with Bridge or ArchBang, where the packages come directly from the Arch repos.

Still, Manjaro is a very interesting and attractive project, and I may want to run it in the future. Manjaro appears to have a strong development team and good documentation. The Manjaro Wiki article "Manjaro: A Different Kind of Beast" explains some of the differences between Arch and Manjaro, and notes: "An important benefit brought by Manjaro's use of its own repositories is that the developers will automatically implement critical updates on your behalf, and there will therefore be no need for you to intervene manually."

So, Manjaro aims to be more "stable" and more user-friendly than Arch, or even Bridge or ArchBang. It's getting a lot of attention around the Linux world, and I'm sure that the distro will be around for awhile. I think I might wait a year or two before trying it out for myself. Perhaps that'll happen sooner if I become unhappy with Bridge and/or ArchBang.

Here's Arindam Sen's review of Manjaro 0.87 Xfce: http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/2013/09/manjaro-087-ascella-xfce-review-superb.html

Manjaro Linux at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manjaro_Linux

Manjaro's DistroWatch page: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=manjaro

And, Manjaro's home page: http://manjaro.org/