Arch-Based Manjaro 18.0 Beta 3 Available For Testing

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Xfce-Based Manjaro 18.0 Beta 3 Available For Testing

For fans of the Arch-based Manjaro Linux distribution, the third beta of their next major update is now available for evaluation...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Manjaro-18.0-Beta-3

[br_shadow]

Best distro ever

[R41N3R]

Manjaro integrated links to Microsoft office online... Why do they promote locked down services ? :-( Did they receive at least enough money for this move?

[salsadoom]

I like Manjaro for machines that I don't want to do a bunch of work/customization and maintenance on. On my main machine I run Arch, but on my laptop and other secondary machines I like Manjaro. Their KDE is especially nice. Its a very nice distro, and actually one of the most user friendly. Its probably what I would recommend to most n00bs these days -- most stuff, even things like bumblebee, just work out of the box.

[mzs.112000]

Manjaro integrated links to Microsoft office online... Why do they promote locked down services ? :-( Did they receive at least enough money for this move?

Because other than the ~5% of us who are using Linux right now, the other ~85% who are still running Windows, will not switch unless they believe it can run all of their existing programs. Obviously we already use better programs like LibreOffice or Calligra, but the average Windows user does not know about those. By providing links to Microsoft Office Online, inside of Manjaro, it gets the Windows users to take a second look and they see, "Oh look! I can get Microsoft Office on this system." and then they feel more comfortable switching because the programs that they are used to are still available. After they are used to Manjaro, and are comfortable exploring the FOSS ecosystem, then they might give Libreoffice or Calligra a try, and they might like it enough to switch.
Whereas without putting in links to certain proprietary services, potential users might get this idea that "Nothing works on Linux" or "It's not good for serious work", or be scared off by not having access to their chosen productivity applications. With the links, it just makes it a bit easier to get more people to switch to Linux.
Just like how Google has made Chromebooks so popular for schools and such, advertising that they have access to Office Online, and other major online services, just like Windows, but at a lower cost to the admins in charge of buying the devices. And now they have huge presence in schools.

[R41N3R]

Because other than the ~5% of us who are using Linux right now, the other ~85% who are still running Windows, will not switch unless they believe it can run all of their existing programs. Obviously we already use better programs like LibreOffice or Calligra, but the average Windows user does not know about those. By providing links to Microsoft Office Online, inside of Manjaro, it gets the Windows users to take a second look and they see, "Oh look! I can get Microsoft Office on this system." and then they feel more comfortable switching because the programs that they are used to are still available. After they are used to Manjaro, and are comfortable exploring the FOSS ecosystem, then they might give Libreoffice or Calligra a try, and they might like it enough to switch.
Whereas without putting in links to certain proprietary services, potential users might get this idea that "Nothing works on Linux" or "It's not good for serious work", or be scared off by not having access to their chosen productivity applications. With the links, it just makes it a bit easier to get more people to switch to Linux.
Just like how Google has made Chromebooks so popular for schools and such, advertising that they have access to Office Online, and other major online services, just like Windows, but at a lower cost to the admins in charge of buying the devices. And now they have huge presence in schools.

I understand your argument, but by this you would need to link any other web site as well... Why not adding Facebook or Google apps as well, or photoshop. You could convert the hole machine into a kiosk. It is easy to clutter the machine, just like Chinese mobile manufactures do. Just for convenience of every user. But privacy is all gone by this. Free and open source software is not there just for fun, it should make it easy for users to learn that there are alternatives that take a human being serious. If a user installs something like this in a app store, fine it is his decision. But encouraging to use proprietary services by default installs is another story. Therefore I hope Manjaro got at least enough money for this.

[Guest]

Because other than the ~5% of us who are using Linux right now, the other ~85% who are still running Windows, will not switch unless they believe it can run all of their existing programs. Obviously we already use better programs like LibreOffice or Calligra, but the average Windows user does not know about those. By providing links to Microsoft Office Online, inside of Manjaro, it gets the Windows users to take a second look and they see, "Oh look! I can get Microsoft Office on this system." and then they feel more comfortable switching because the programs that they are used to are still available. After they are used to Manjaro, and are comfortable exploring the FOSS ecosystem, then they might give Libreoffice or Calligra a try, and they might like it enough to switch.
Whereas without putting in links to certain proprietary services, potential users might get this idea that "Nothing works on Linux" or "It's not good for serious work", or be scared off by not having access to their chosen productivity applications. With the links, it just makes it a bit easier to get more people to switch to Linux.
Just like how Google has made Chromebooks so popular for schools and such, advertising that they have access to Office Online, and other major online services, just like Windows, but at a lower cost to the admins in charge of buying the devices. And now they have huge presence in schools.

Is this actually Manjaro's reason (along with some kind of official blog post/note), or just generic reasoning?

[mzs.112000]

Is this actually Manjaro's reason (along with some kind of official blog post/note), or just generic reasoning?

Oh, I don't know what Manjaro's reasoning is, that is just my thoughts as to why *any* FOSS project or Linux distro would do something like that. Manjaro's reasoning could very well be different, like R41N3R mentioned above, maybe the Manjaro team got paid for putting in the links?
As R41N3R said, it would be better to have a dummy package containing those links be added to the repositories, and have them featured in the app store/GUI software center, and then you could put in whatever ones you want, and the user just installs them that way, which AFAIK is pretty much how Ubuntu does things for Skype, Spotify and Google Earth, they are just scripts that download the full versions from the program's website.

[Vistaus]

I understand your argument, but by this you would need to link any other web site as well... Why not adding Facebook or Google apps as well, or photoshop. You could convert the hole machine into a kiosk. It is easy to clutter the machine, just like Chinese mobile manufactures do. Just for convenience of every user. But privacy is all gone by this. Free and open source software is not there just for fun, it should make it easy for users to learn that there are alternatives that take a human being serious. If a user installs something like this in a app store, fine it is his decision. But encouraging to use proprietary services by default installs is another story. Therefore I hope Manjaro got at least enough money for this.

While Office Online may not be open source, you can opt to run it on your own server to create a local Office Online server. So at least MS gives you *some* freedom.

[JeansenVaars]

the other ~85% who are still running Windows, will not switch unless they believe it can run all of their existing programs. Obviously we already use better programs like LibreOffice or Calligra, but the average Windows user does not know about those.

what world do you live in? LibreOffice / Calligra are nowhere near M$ 0ffice. Looks like you never used it before. I know many people who tried LibreOffice and no way they can get their job done there. Missing features, customization, functions, overall user interface, etc.. That, without counting with the fact that if you have a normal job, people might actually send you a docx and open source office suite will most probably break fonts, format and such if re-writing and 'responding', or huge xmxl excel files with multi-tab pages with functions and macro's doing nasty jobs big companies do (you'd be surprised the amount of work in excel which could be replaced by a 5 line python script)

As I always say, Linux is only for programmers or veeeery casual people (e.g. my grandma). Anything in between or sideways (e.g. 3D Model / artist designers, gamers, sound engineers, architects, etc) will pick the other OS's available for sure (there's nearly 0 app support for industrial designers, 3d artists and such. Only some hipster graphic artists will do fine with gimp and such though)