Over the years, Manjaro has attracted many users by delivering an easy-to-use, intuitive user experience that’s backed by the power of Arch Linux. It features a rolling release model that means you can apply updates and upgrades without reinstalling the operating system.
Now, with their latest Pahvo update, the distro just got even more user-friendly and perfect for everyday use.
What’s New in Manjaro 21.1.0 Pahvo
The Calamares installer is as polished as ever and features major improvements, including filesystem selection for automatic partitioning and enhanced support for Btrfs. It is important to note that swapfiles on Btrfs filesystem are now supported.
On the desktop side, Manjaro 21.1 GNOME Edition has received a major rework the update to GNOME 40. The default layout has been redesigned to follow more closely upstream defaults, with some adjustments to reduce the pointer travel for users who prefer using mouse with GNOME.
For users that preferred the old vertical GNOME desktop layout, there is a Layouts app, which mimics the previous GNOME defaults.
Firefox now comes with the gnome-desktop style theme enabled by default for more consistent look with the desktop. Of course, this theme can be disabled by the user if they want the default Firefox experience.
Manjaro 21.1.0 KDE Edition ships with Plasma 5.22, KDE Frameworks 5.85 and Applications (Gear) 21.08. Plasma 5.22, as always, packs all the flexibility and tools for customization you have come to expect and love.
The devs also updated the default theme to match more upstream Breeze theming. This includes also a new wallpaper.
Manjaro 21.1.0 continues to push the Xfce edition as its flagship, so we have now Xfce 4.16. The window manager received lots of updates and improvements again in the area of compositing and GLX.
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.
Additionally this release ships with Linux Kernel 5.13, while they also offer ISO downloads with a 5.4 LTS kernel to “lder hardware if you need that.
Download
For fresh installation of Manjaro 21.1, you can download the ISO file and use a tool such as Balena Etcher to flash it on to a USB drive. Just boot from the USB and follow the on-screen instructions.
