Manjaro 19.0 Preview Images For KDE + GNOME Available For Testing

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Manjaro 19.0 Preview Images For KDE + GNOME Available For Testing

For fans of the easy-to-use Arch-based Manjaro Linux distribution, 19.0 preview images as the first test builds have begun to surface...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Manjaro-19.0-Preview-Images

[hax0r]

Kicker menu looks nice and easy on the eyes and then there's glaring white Dolphin window, will theme makers ever learn anything and try to least make UI looks consistent and not make your eyes bleed? Messing around on top of already ugly KDE theme is pure garbage. This is why you use MacOS.

[boxie]

Kicker menu looks nice and easy on the eyes and then there's glaring white Dolphin window, will theme makers ever learn anything and try to least make UI looks consistent and not make your eyes bleed? Messing around on top of already ugly KDE theme is pure garbage. This is why you use MacOS.

-or- and here me out here - or you use the breeze dark global theme and live in pure dark happiness. #JustSaying

[polarathene]

Kicker menu looks nice and easy on the eyes and then there's glaring white Dolphin window, will theme makers ever learn anything and try to least make UI looks consistent and not make your eyes bleed? Messing around on top of already ugly KDE theme is pure garbage. This is why you use MacOS.

The theme is the sole reason to use Manjaro. The maintainers of the distro do much more than just that. Here's the thing about themes, not everyone has the same tastes and being themeable...you can change that rather easily to something you do prefer. I personally prefer the light theme with dark taskbar and kicker, over dark theme all over.

[Citan]

[S]Kicker menu looks nice and easy on the eyes and then there's glaring white Dolphin window, will theme makers ever learn anything and try to least make UI looks consistent and not make your eyes bleed? Messing around on top of already ugly KDE theme is pure garbage. This is why you use MacOS.[/S]
"I don't like the default aesthetics and I'm too much used to be on a system that makes me captive of choices made by others to remember most of the look and feel can be changed with a few clicks. As well as forgetting that my taste may not be as widely shared with other people as I'd think/like".

Fixed that for you.

Back on topic, to people who are into trying all distributions? For an upcoming new computer in mid-2020, mixing both personal and professional uses, is that kind of distro stable and reliable enough? Or would I better grab a Debian and spent as much time as needed to get a polished yet nice KDE environment?

[arsfeld]

Manjaro is very stable for a bleeding edge OS. You still get the latest packages like Arch does, but with enough tweaks and add-ons that you don't feel the pain that much. For instance, you can select which kernel version to install and stay with a series, like LTS, instead of always getting the latest one as Arch.

But you can't compare to something like Debian, they have very different objectives.

[Spooktra]

Back on topic, to people who are into trying all distributions? For an upcoming new computer in mid-2020, mixing both personal and professional uses, is that kind of distro stable and reliable enough? Or would I better grab a Debian and spent as much time as needed to get a polished yet nice KDE environment?

I like Manjaro and have it used it extensively in the past, but like all rolling release distros I have ever tried, it's prone to breaking with just an update. Arch breaks all the time, as do all the Arch derivatives I have ever tried, as does OpenSuse Tumbleweed, if it's rolling, then it's unreliable,

I also don't trust the none LTS Ubuntu variants, as I have had them break fairly easily as well.

For pure stability, which I need for my main desktop, I only use Ubuntu LTS variants, usually with MATE, but I like KDE and Budgie as well. It's the only distro I have seen that is reliable enough that I didn't have to worry that it won't boot up when I have a deadline to meet.

For my older laptops that are basically toys, I use Manjaro XFCE because it's nice and lightweight or Calculate :Linux for the same reason or when i want to test the latest Fedora or OpenSuse Leap offering.

[HaydenMk2]

Fixed that for you.

Back on topic, to people who are into trying all distributions? For an upcoming new computer in mid-2020, mixing both personal and professional uses, is that kind of distro stable and reliable enough? Or would I better grab a Debian and spent as much time as needed to get a polished yet nice KDE environment?

I use KDE Manjaro on my main machine, it's decent, but KDE still can be unstable at times. Don't even bother with Wayland yet. But the default set of applications (Dolphin, Konsole, the shell itself) is quite decent and good looking.

I also use AUR a lot, central community repo is such a good idea (for example chromium patched with vaapi support is just a git clone away). I suggest you give it a spin and see for yourself.

[Charlie68]

I like Manjaro and have it used it extensively in the past, but like all rolling release distros I have ever tried, it's prone to breaking with just an update. Arch breaks all the time, as do all the Arch derivatives I have ever tried, as does OpenSuse Tumbleweed, if it's rolling, then it's unreliable,

The rolling release versions have their advantages and disadvantages, just like the fix releases. It always depends on the user's needs to understand what is best for him.
Personally I have been using Tumbleweed for 3 years and I have never had problems, with rolling releases it is better to avoid the proprietary drivers as they always update late.
However if it happens that an update breaks my system (Tumbleweed) I would restore it with a click, thanks to the snapshots, so it would not be a problem.

[ThanosApostolou]

Back on topic, to people who are into trying all distributions? For an upcoming new computer in mid-2020, mixing both personal and professional uses, is that kind of distro stable and reliable enough? Or would I better grab a Debian and spent as much time as needed to get a polished yet nice KDE environment?

Well I distro-hopped this summer again after I was disappointed by the latest Fedora release. I tried for a while latest Kubuntu but it got really buggy (lots of segfaults of applications in default repositories). So I returned again to arch. I believe arch is the most sane distribution. The only drawback is that it breaks kinda easily and it doesn't support partial updates so sometimes you have to update your whole system even if you just want to install some packages for some specific task (e.g. if glibc has been updated and newer packages have been built against it). So, I have at my top of /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist the lines

## Latest
Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2020/01/07/$repo/os/$arch
## Previous
# Server=https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/2020/01/06/$repo/os/$arch

and so I get all my packages from the archived repositories. I update the date only when I have free time (usually weekends) and revert back to my previous date with pacman -Syyuu (all the packages will be in cache) if I find any problems. The only problem is a bit slow download speeds (at least from where I leave).

Manjaro is also good (I've used it before and I've contributed to some community editions there), but only if you stay in stable branch (testing and unstable tend to break more often than arch).