When it comes to Linux distros, people are pretty divided over their choices. Since hitting the Linux scene in 2011, the Arch Linux-based distro has experienced a phenomenal rise in popularity.
Manjaro 21.0 RC1 used Kernel 5.10 LTS. Calamares installer also received many improvements. Among other things, it has now a table of ‘best guess’ languages for each country.
Here a list of updates that comes with Manjaro 21.0 RC1:
- Thunderbird is now at 78.8.1
- LibreOffice pushed out another minor-releases: 7.0.5 2, 7.1.1 2
- Firefox is now at 86.0.1 5
- Plasma 5.21.3
- KDE Frameworks are at 5.80
- Systemd is at 247.4
Now, Let’s see what’s new in desktop environments.
Gnome
GNOME 3.38 replaces the previously split Frequent and All apps views with a single customizable and consistent view that allows you to reorder apps and organize them into custom folders.
Settings can now manage parental controls for Standard user accounts through the new Parental Controls option in the Users section.
GNOME Shell can now drive multiple monitors with different refresh rates, making sure that you get the best possible experience out of your desktop.
KDE
Now you can find, reach and run your apps faster and easier than ever with Plasmaโs new app launcher. The new launcher features two panes to make it simple to locate your programs and comes with improved keyboard, mouse, and touch input.
Plasma System Monitor is a brand new app for monitoring system resources.
Xfce
Manjaro 21.0 RC 1 comes with Xfce 4.16. The window manager received lots of updates and improvements again in the area of compositing and GLX.
Support for fractional scaling was added to the display dialog. In addition, the settings manager has improved search and filter capabilities.
Thunar file manager received a boatload of fixes and quite a few notable features, including pause for copy/move operations, support for queued file transfer, remembering view settings per directory and support for transparency in Gtk themes.
Download
If you are interested in testing or playing with Manjaro 21.0 RC1, you can download the operating system here. Keep in mind, this is pre-release software.