Manjaro has pushed the first stable-branch update in the upcoming “Anh-Linh” cycle, serving as a preview of the 25.1 release and introducing major changes to the desktop, kernel, and system components. However, the team is issuing a warning to users: do not update yet.
The reason is that several parts of the update require manual intervention, and in some cases, applying them without preparation may break existing systems (more on this below).
The release brings major upgrades such as Plasma 6.5.3, GNOME 49.2, (eventually) COSMIC Beta 9, LXQt 2.3, updated NVIDIA drivers, Blender 5.0, LibreOffice 25.8.3, a refreshed Mesa stack, and the first build of the Manjaro Control Panel.
I used to think the problems with Manjaro stemmed from Arch. The I tied EndeavourOS and I thought that EOS was fixing the Arch problems.
Then I tried Arch and realized that all the problems are the result of Manjaro. Arch does not have them. None of the other derivatives have them either.
Arch has been very stable for me if you update regularly. Endeavour OS also has been quite good. More so than both Ubuntu and Fedora have been IME.
I haven’t tried Manjaro but I’ve only heard bad things.
My recommendation to anyone starting out: Endeavour OS is an excellent compromise between the complexity of eg Gentoo or Void and the abstraction of eg Ubuntu. The wiki on its own is good cause enough.