Manjaro Linux looks like it's in trouble with the release of the "Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto"

By Liam Dawe - 16 Mar 2026 at 11:42 am UTC

At one point it seemed like Manjaro Linux would be the most popular Arch-based distribution, but after many missteps it appears to be at breaking point.

By now most people in the Linux sphere will have seen the issues - like how they have repeatedly let their SSL certificate expire bringing their entire website down. Something that is easily solved, but shows how the structure behind Manjaro is not particularly stable.

On the Manjaro Linux official forum, their team have put up a "Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto" with backing from multiple developers and people on their community team. They say that the leadership behind Manjaro does not line up with the actual developers and community involved in it, noting that Manjaro has become "one individual's personal project, and everything is centralized around this single individual" (the founder, Philip Müller) and how the attempts to turn it into a business have mostly failed and so they want to see big changes.

The Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues.
Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto

What do they want? To split off Manjaro into two distinct entities: the company behind Manjaro (Manjaro GmbH & Co KG) and a new non-profit registered association (e.V.). Along with lots of the project being transferred over to the non-profit org.

Going by the latest update they say the Manjaro founder, Philip Müller, is currently stalling things and so all those in favour of the proposal appear to be going on some sort of strike. And they may be looking to lock the entire official forum down until they get Müller on board.

Manjaro has been pretty messy for years, so it's nice to see some of their team and community are attempting to rebuild things with a stronger foundation.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.

Tags: Distro News, Manjaro, Misc, Open Source

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About the author - Liam Dawe

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10 comments

pb 3 hours ago

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My son is on manjaro and his system breaks on every update. But apparently arch is "too complicated". 😆

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melkemind 2 hours ago

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That's interesting. I've been using it for over a year and haven't had any technical problems. That doesn't negate the organizational problems they clearly have though. It sounds like this change will be for the best, assuming it survives at all. Thankfully, there are plenty of Linux choices out there, and it's pretty easy to move on to another.

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TheLinuxPleb 2 hours ago

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Would suck to lose Manjaro. It's basically Arch, but with the Stable branch you can update every time when there is an update. You don't have the same sort of commodity with Arch where with updates stuff can easily break so you have to postpone updates and look info from packages a lot.

Same goes with CachyOS. There can be breakage happening on those much more easy.
Something that is Arch and postpones updates and have testing for those is much wanted IMO.

Ive been basically years with Manjaro and it has been rock solid for me. Would be sad to see it go.

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inlinuxdude 2 hours ago

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I've had the same install of Manjaro on my main PC for over 10 years (throughout a system rebuild with new motherboard). I've had a couple of breakages, but nothing insurmountable, overall its been pretty stable... (TBH, I did try to move off Manjaro a few years ago, but had some weird issue with the calamares installer which all the distros I wanted to use employed, so I just ended up staying on Manjaro)

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fenglengshun 2 hours ago

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My experience with Manjaro had been pleasant back then - there were some issues with libcrypto migration and some updates had had some issues, but never something more than a quick snapshot rollback + reupdate wouldn't fix (well, aside for an issue after 8 month of not upgrading as my PC was left at home but that's just a known Arch issue).

What made me stop was the way they removed, restored, and then removed some codecs without adequate dialogue and then not mentioning it in the updates announcement. Between that, and the various management mishaps, I just chose to move to Universal Blue, then Bazzite, and now CachyOS.

I think their community is right in wanting to break away, though I would say making a new distro without the associated branding of Manjaro that is just toxic now.

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scaine 2 hours ago

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I love the idea of Manjaro - Arch, but with milestones (stable releases). It sounds like the power of Arch, but without the constant fear that every update will bring issues. And pamac - lovely. They've actually addressed one of the biggest issues (for me) of Arch.

But now that I'm on CachyOS with its built-in Snapper/BTRFS integration, I have that comfort anyway. If I do an update and my system has issues, I just reboot and choose the snapshot before the upgrade via Grub. Easy.

I still miss Pamac though. I haven't looked to see if it's portable to a generic Arch install.

I hope Manjaro get their organisational ducks in a row. It would be great to see what they could achieve without constantly having to fight internally with each other.

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Cyril 2 hours ago

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Quoting: pbMy son is on manjaro and his system breaks on every update. But apparently arch is "too complicated". 😆

You're exaggerating, don't you? ^^
Like many others, It works pretty well for me and I'm using it for 10+ years, so pretty stable in my eyes. Usually when it breaks it's my fault, not really Manjaro's. I'm on XFCE, it seems to be the most stable of all, the KDE folks did have some issues more than once though.
I hope positivity comes out of this, I'm happy with Manjaro and don't plan to change right now.

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pb 2 hours ago

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Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: pbMy son is on manjaro and his system breaks on every update. But apparently arch is "too complicated". 😆
You're exaggerating, don't you? ^^

Maybe a bit. 😇 But he's updating 1-2 times a year and there are always some conflicts and I need to help him fix it. ;-) Last time I rebuilt the mirror list so hopefully the next update will go more smoothly.

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missingno 18 minutes ago

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Manjaro's only real selling point is that it's Arch with an installer, and I ran it for a while just for that. But I feel like much better alternatives exist for that today, including Arch itself having better installers.

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Jarmer 15 minutes ago

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Sadly this has been coming for a long while. Users have been declining, the contributors have been leaving, management has been a disaster. as @scaine said, with cachy doing what it does nowadays, I would just recommend that over Manjaro to any other user looking for arch flavorings.

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