Free and open-source.
Receives regular software and kernel updates.
Avoids X11.
The notable exception is Qubes, but the isolation issues which X11 typically has are avoided by virtualization. This isolation only applies to apps running in different qubes (virtual machines), apps running in the same qube are not protected from each other.
Supports full-disk encryption during installation.
Doesn’t freeze regular releases for more than 1 year.
We recommend against “Long Term Support” or “stable” distro releases for desktop usage.
Supports a wide variety of hardware.
Preference towards larger projects.
Edit: I’m new to linux
Thanks for answering!
Just to be clear; the ‘metrics’ on how popular Manjaro is compared to Arch and other Arch-based distros reveal to us that Manjaro has been going strong for quite some time. While the numbers of its adoption during its heyday were IMO completely justifiable. I think that -currently- it continues to stay more relevant than it otherwise would have any right of based on its merits. Which has been something that has caught my attention and made me curious to find out why that was the case.
Thus, if you had been a relatively newer user, then I would have loved to know what made you gravitate towards Manjaro in the first place. But, as you’ve been using it since before the controversies and
archinstall, I think your reasons to start using Manjaro were completely legit and the continued use of Manjaro is at least justifiable.Don’t get me wrong; I’m not in the “Manjaro is blatantly bad”-camp, I just think that it attracts more newer users than is desirable.
Interesting… I saw that there were some controversies but honestly if I avoided everything in my life over every little bit of bad press or disagreement I would have nothing left to eat and nowhere to live.
I am not sure why any distro that attracts new users is an issue considering we want Linux as a desktop to keep growing as it improves the lives of all having both more users, contributors, and devs building software.
The main reason I have stuck with Manjaro is that for the most part I dont have to mess with it. I have other computers I mess around with my main PC is where I go when I just want to surf the web, game, and just decompress.
The choices we make and the actions we take mostly come with compromises anyway; just because it’s on topic: Manjaro probably continued to function as you were used to and thus you didn’t see any reason to change that which “just works”. Which, I somewhat alluded to in my earlier comment with:
Moving on.
That’s not what I said, nor what I implied. What you just said assumes/implies that people start using Linux because they want to try Manjaro, which is just simply not the case. You might have mistaken Manjaro for Valve’s Steam Deck. Perhaps this chart does a better job at conveying my thoughts. As you can see, the search “install Manjaro” has for a considerable period in the last 5 years been more than half times as often searched as “install Arch”. By comparison, it just dwarfs the hits for “install EndeavourOS” and “install Garuda”. That’s the problem. To put it onto perspective, I’ll follow it up with charts for Ubuntu with its popular derivatives and Debian with its popular derivatives. I tried doing the same for Fedora and openSUSE, but their respective graphs just showed me why their derivates aren’t talked about that often 😅. Even Nobara is absolutely dwarfed compared to Fedora.