A few years ago, Manjaro It started making waves in the Linux world. Their motto, "Enjoy simplicity," was used because they made Arch easy to use without requiring complicated configurations. They also have a stable branch where updates are only released when they believe the software is sound and free of issues. It's been my favorite distro since I first tried it 5-6 years ago, but things aren't looking too good.
According to some users on the Manjaro forum, everything was going well until they became a companyThis happened in 2019. From then on, according to these users, everything has gone downhill. Personally, I have to admit that, without appearing much (in fact, not at all) on the forums, I never imagined something like this could be happening, but the news is spreading like wildfire through the community. And that's because Manjaro It could disappear as we know it.
The Manjaro Manifesto 2.0
A week ago, moderator Aragorn published The Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto. It explains that They are looking for changes in the project.It has been declining, to the point of losing trust, contributors, and even becoming a laughingstock due to its mistakes. I'll add this: it has also disappeared from the... KDE recommended distributionswhich is significant to me.
In short, the goal is for Manjaro return to what it was, basically a project run by and for the community And with the same philosophy as always: unstable, testing, and stable branches, based on Arch, but with their own way of doing things. For more information, it's worth visiting the thread in the link above, and also this other in which a parallel debate takes place.
What will happen now?
It's unclear what will happen to Manjaro from now on. What the developers of the manifesto want is a license to continue using the Manjaro brand, among other things, which would ensure users wouldn't notice anything wrong. Another option, which they don't want to pursue, would be to create a fork or fork.
If all else fails, the community will most likely publish information on how to continue using the operating system without having to format, such as converting Manjaro to another distribution (possible, but not the best).
And what would be the best alternatives?
From my point of view, the alternative improvements would be EndeavourOS, which is even more like Arch, and CachyOS, which I've been testing these days and I quite like.
We'll have to wait and see what happens.