Checking out Manjaro 20 GNOME and Xfce

Manjaro 20 was released recently, and I decided to review both the GNOME and Xfce editions in this video. Not a ton of changes this time around, but this review captures some of my thoughts on Manjaro at this point in the project.

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[micaiahflores]

i was a xfce user for a year and half just dipped my toes in Gnome and i love it i have found my DE

[emjaycee]

Thanks for that, Jay. I'm glad you focused on one of the elements of Manjaro Gnome that makes it different to other distros like Ubuntu and POP, and, in my opinion anyway, makes it a bit more friendly for more users by doing so. The other thing I respect about Manjaro at the moment is that they also give you 'choice' of packaging types. You want standard packages, fine. You want to use snaps or flatpaks, or even appimages, again, it's all fine and relatively easy to do. I wish other distros would take a leaf out of Manjaro's book with those two particular ideas. About the only thing I wish Manjaro would do now is put the Vivaldi browser into their standard repos... I think it is probably now popular enough as a browser to do so :)

[korrupted]

Hi Jay, I'm a new subscriber and looking to learn more about Manjaro. I like the way you present your videos. Keep up the great work!

[DimiEG]

After your videos I fell in love with the Arch Linux distribution. The only problem with Arch - it takes a lot of time to adjust GUI. So, Xfce or Mate need much time to tweak. So, I decided to check Manjaro cause it out of the box ready graphical interface and it is based on Arch. Now it is my main distro with power of Arch Linux. Thanks for your Arch tutorials.

[Hprince]

I'm using the manjaro gnome for six months now, the flow of work on gnome is just right for me as a writer, xfce and kde for some reason just did not work for me, and I'm surprised that manjaro have been stable never broke on me once!

[scottmumford]

Just upgraded to a new laptop and spent a dozen or more hours trying to get Arch Linux to dual boot with Windows 10. (And then I had no audio under Arch.) Gave up and installed Ubuntu--which worked right out of the box. Kept thinking, "I wish there was a way to run Arch without having to slog thru the install each time.." Voila!! Will give Manjaro a try very soon! (And I agree with you about "settings" and "tweak-tools"! ) Thanks!

[ahslan]

One thing you didn’t mention was that Manjaro allows you to configure hibernation right from the installer. I love being able to hibernate my machine and Manjaro was the first distro I found that easily set this up for me (although I didn’t seem to find the option to actually use it in the gnome version lol). I’m currently using the KDE version however will likely give the xfce version a try soon. Thanks for the review!

[TheBrimurray]

Thanks Jay, enjoyed this sojourn into Manjaro.

[federico.v.mastellone]

Great review :) regarding the look of vanilla gnome, I honestly prefer it over a lot of customizations, included the one offered by Manjaro! I guess it's a matter of tastes. Also, I really like a vanilla gnome experience without (almost) any extension!

[nigel]

I use the KDE edition. My favourite edition :)

[kenpmc]

FYI, Ubuntu MATE has a very similar layouts manager, as does Feren OS. This Manjaro one is very well done too.

[paulwin]

The thing with Gnome ram usage is that if you have a lot of spare ram available, it will cache a bunch of stuff to make it more snappy. Same gnome install on my desktop and Laptop shows. 1gig while idle on the desktop(16gig of ram) 469MB on the laptop(4gig of ram).

[MarkHobbes]

If Gnome Tweaks settings were available by default on Gnome Settings, there would be no reason for Gnome Tweaks to exist, correct? But since Gnome lacks basic settings like this, that is the reason Gnome Tweaks exist, to fill this gap.
Even on "pure"/vanilla Gnome, there are extensions. Just install Fedora which is famous for having Vanilla Gnome and you'll see some extensions, it proves that there is no real Vanilla Gnome without any extensions. The extensions seem to be a way Gnome find to add more complexity to the system even though not well-done since it's quite common these extensions to break when a new shell version is launched.
PS: You have shown the Unity design twice.
The Layout Switcher is good because it can please everyone who is used to a specific Gnome layout. If you're an Ubuntu user, you'll be used to the Unity-like appearance of Gnome, if you loved the old Unity, you can get a similar experience using the switcher. If you like classic Gnome2 layout, i.e. MATE, you can get it. Very smart approach from Manjaro. Manjaro devs are think about adding a ChromeOS layout to the switcher in future versions.

[leondequadros]

The Gnome tweak tool isn't really complicated. Gnome settings doesn't really have much customisation. So anything customisation related that you want goes in the tweak tool. That's basically it.

[sharktooh]

Manjaro is a more stable Arch, easier to install and less probable to brake. The only drawback is up to two weeks before getting the very latest packages, but they have a fast release cycle for security upgrades. So, all in all, Manjaro FTW!
Also, you should give a try at the KDE edition because it is even lighter than the XFCE spin.
FYI 20.0.1 was released a couple of days ago.

[andrepessoa]

Nice video. Being a Manjaro user myself, I have to say: Manjaro devs don't like Gnome. They try to turn Gnome into a hybrid XFCE/KDE kind of thing. In my humble opinion they take out the look and feel of Gnome work flow. They don't do the same thing with XFCE nor KDE.

[animatrixSSYT]

Manjaro is best for laptops as far as Internal Temperature and Battery Life are concerned.

I've tried a few distros, but temps were off the charts and battery life was shit, about 1-1.5 hrs. I manually installed all the battery saving tools in these distros but it didn't work as efficiently, unlike Manjaro(7-8hrs).

Deepin was the worst in terms of temps and battery life. I really loved Deepin's Snappy Modern UI and the fast bootup time.

If anyone can suggest any permanent solution to the temps and battery life issue in these other distros, please do.

[ashgupta]

I don't know much about linux memory management but I think if you open an app and then close it linux will still reserve the memory it used in its cache and this will be counted in memory used. So when you were checking the RAM usage in GNOME, you had already opened and closed Settings, Tweak tool, etc. but you didn't do this with the Xfce version. Could this account for the 400MB difference in RAM usage?

[q]

I used to know how to pronounce it correctly until I started watching this video. Lol.

[marcinsola]

I'm using manjaro KDE edition right now. I have some tiling scripts runnig, but I'm really considering switching to gnome just so I can use the pop shell. It's super useful! :)