Скачать или смотреть Beautiful stable Arch? | Manjaro 17 Xfce Installation and First Look

Today we are taking a look at Manjaro 17, a rolling-release distribution based on Arch Linux. Xfce, KDE and minimal NET editions are available, and many community editions are available with any desktop imaginable. We will be taking a look at the Xfce release. Manjaro installer looks similar to what we have seen in many other distros and is very easy to use.

We boot into our newly installed system and the welcome screen gives us all the links we might need in our journey into Manjaro. As usual, let's look at what applications are available out-of-the-box. Flash Player catches immediate attention, Firefox, GIMP, GParted, HexChat are installed as well. Guayadeque Music Player is an interesting choice, LibreOffice is not a big surprise, Mousepad is the default text editor, and Parole is available for video playback. We also have Pidgin, and even Steam! I was not able to get Steam to run in the VirtualBox environment, but it's a big plus for many people to have it preinstalled.

Manjaro comes with a somewhat simplistic graphical package manager, acting as a basic front-end for pacman, which can be used to install and update software. While Manjaro is fully compatible with Arch Linux, it uses a completely separate set of package repositories, and does not rely on Arch to test their stability. This results in packages landing in Manjaro with a slight delay compared to Arch, hopefully reducing risk of breaking updates and making the OS more stable. Arch User Repository is fully supported, however. Yaourt package manager, familiar to Arch users, is in the default Manjaro repositories.

Manjaro developers has always been on top of their game when it comes to visual appeal. The default GTK theme looks great with the subtle green accent colors and a variety of other themes are available, including a few great-looking dark themes, and the release comes with a solid selection of Manjaro-themed wallpaper. Xfce desktop environment overall is snappy and light, as it's always been and offers a fair bit of customization. The entire OS is using 400 megabytes of RAM and feels very responsive.

I have tried Manjaro in the past, and they have come a long way in the past several years. The distribution is solid and their package repository management makes it a unique experience. With the package availability of Arch, and added stability of their release model, Manjaro may be a great choice for many users.

The only minor complaint that I have is that I would have loved to have an opportunity to choose which of the major default applications should be pre-installed, such as a choice of a web browser, whether Steam should be installed, and so on. It could be done during installation, the way Antergos does it, or after the installation is complete, similar to how Ubuntu Mate and some others do it. While it's not a problem to uninstall unwanted applications, it would be helpful for newcomers and experienced users alike.