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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.
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29 comments
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Mountain Man 18 hours ago
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I've been happily using Manjaro without issue for several years, but this latest news is disheartening, and I think it's probably time to distro hop. I've heard lots of good things about Fedora.
Scytale 17 hours ago
Quoting: TheLinuxPlebWould 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.
Manjaro is/was no stable Arch branch, Manjaro did nothing to the held back packages to stabilize them; they only tested their own tools with those packet versions. You even increased the risk of breakage as AUR packages are often build against newer packages Manjaro was still holding back.

If you think of Manjaro as stable, thats Arch Linux's stability there and not Manjaros.
s01itude 14 hours ago
It always surprises me seeing so many people talking about how stable manjaro is, then I remember it's arch based.
No offense to anyone, and nor am I hear to tell you what distro to use or not use, but I'm fairly certain how stable your manjaro install has been has nothing to do with manjaro.

In fact I'd wager if you could compile reliable data of people having major breakages with updates Manjaro would be a leader in arch based distros.
Now frankly there are some things that have become common grounds where you'll expect breakage: AUR packages, KDE, and Nvidia hardware.

As someone that hits all three of those, I assure you Manjaro is neither stable nor reliable (I haven't used it in quite some time, so perhaps it has improved!); and the issues I had on manjaro have not been present in ANY other arch based distro I've used.

For me though, many of the reasons people have abandoned Manjaro over the years aren't the reason I'll never (unless some sort of massive organization change happens) use it on ANY machine. That special rule of mine comes from the messy world of the Pine64-Manjaro relationship. It's hard telling what exactly was going on outside of blog posts from various people, and from that info I just can't in good conscience click the download button for Manjaro anymore.
DryPapHmrBro 13 hours ago
Quoting: scaineI 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.
Pamac is in the AUR, just pick your flavor and install it
armageddon51 11 hours ago
After trying multiples distros for a few years, I have been using Manjaro KDE (XFCE before) and I never had any major issue with it. I am currently on the KDE "unstable" branch to get all the new Linux development stuff immediately and it hasn't been "unstable" at all. So I am on the latest Kernel, latest Plasma version, latest MESA drivers with no problems and all my games rock on it. I wasn't aware of the issues mentioned but it has been totally mute for me.
furaxhornyx 8 hours ago
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Manjaro made me finally switch from Windows 7 to Linux, when windows 7 was EOL. I am still using it as a daily driver, and I am really happy with it. It would be a shame if it disappeared.

My main "update issues" with it were mostly either due to Nvidia drivers (things were much smoother once I switched to AMD), and when not performing updates for months on my secondary laptop (which is, well, "the Arch way" it seems).
TheSHEEEP 6 hours ago
I used Manjaro for years without major issues (well, except those certificate ones, which were bonkers).

But I saw the writing on the wall for the distro, so I hopped before it became an urgent issue.
Well done, me.
Frawo 6 hours ago
Quoting: fenglengshunWhat 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.
Yes, that codec drama made me stop using Manjaro, too. Not only they removed these codecs (H264), they also made it very hard to reinstall them, whereas other distros like openSUSE provided an easy workaround for it.
LungDrago 2 hours ago
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPI used Manjaro for years without major issues (well, except those certificate ones, which were bonkers).

But I saw the writing on the wall for the distro, so I hopped before it became an urgent issue.
Well done, me.
I think I'm looking into a mirror.
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