I’d already reviewed the Xfce version of Manjaro six months ago or so and was very impressed by it - so much that it still reigns as the best distro I’ve reviewed. Now, I’m going to take a look at the KDE edition - the other official version - and draw some comparisons.
1. First Impressions and ease of use
The live ISO is 1.7 GB in size and can be downloaded from http://manjaro.github.io/download. Sadly, it’s hosted using Sourceforge, which I hope they’ll change soon.
It includes KDE Plasma 5.4.0, the shiny new desktop that was the reason I started using Linux in the first place (I’ve since switched to Cinnamon). KDE is one of the most Windows-like desktop environments, and Manjaro’s taken the defaults even futher switching to an icons-only taskbar. It’s very familiar and intuitive to anyone who has used Windows before, or any other traditional desktop.
Ease of use score: 10/10
2. Installer
Manjaro has switched from using the Thus installer, which was in the 0.8.12 Xfce version I reviewed earlier, to the new distro-independent Calamares framework, which is used in the KaOS and Sabayon distributions, among others. It works very well, although it’s somewhat slower than the old installer.
Release date
|
ISO size (GB)
|
Distribution base
|
Install time
|
Boot time
|
Size of install
|
Desktop RAM use
|
Kernel Version
| |
KaOS 2015.02
|
2/24/2015
|
1.4
|
Independent
|
18:03
|
0:36
|
4.6
|
415
|
3.18.7
|
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
|
2/25/2015
|
1.1
|
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04 Beta 1)
|
12:57
|
0:27
|
4.2
|
457
|
3.18.1
|
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
|
2/6/2015
|
1.4
|
Arch
|
11:33
|
0:27
|
4.7
|
351
|
3.16.7
|
Netrunner 15
|
2/16/2015
|
1.9
|
Ubuntu Utopic (14.10)
|
16:20
|
0:41
|
6.4
|
714
|
3.16.0
|
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
|
11/4/2014
|
4.4
|
openSUSE Harlequin (13.2)
|
15:29
|
0:39
|
4.4
|
422
|
3.16.6
|
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
|
2/17/2015
|
0.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
5:50
|
0:34
|
2.2
|
348
|
3.16.0
|
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
|
11/29/2014
|
1.4
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
8:45
|
0:42
|
4.5
|
343
|
3.13.0
|
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
|
3/22/2015
|
2.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
20:54
|
0:47
|
7.4
|
745
|
3.13.0
|
Korora 21 Cinnamon
|
2/6/2015
|
1.7
|
Fedora 21
|
13:24
|
1:04
|
5.0
|
602
|
3.18.3
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
4/21/2015
|
1.3
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
10:10
|
0:46
|
4.2
|
843
|
4.0.0
|
Lubuntu 15.04
|
4/24/2015
|
0.7
|
Ubuntu Vivid (15.04)
|
11:55
|
0:22
|
2.4
|
216
|
3.19.0
|
elementary OS 0.3
|
4/11/2015
|
0.9
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
11:20
|
0:26
|
2.6
|
392
|
3.16.0
|
Linux Lite 2.4
|
4/1/2015
|
0.8
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
4:31
|
0:23
|
3.5
|
416
|
3.13.0
|
Linux Mint 17.2 MATE RC
|
6/16/2015
|
1.6
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
12:37
|
0:38
|
4.8
|
303
|
3.16.0
|
Crunchbang++ 1.0
|
4/29/2015
|
0.6
|
Debian Jessie (8.0)
|
17:25
|
0:17
|
2.3
|
187
|
3.16.0
|
Mageia 5 KDE
|
6/20/2015
|
1.7
|
Independent
|
7:55
|
0:26
|
4.1
|
421
|
3.19.8
|
Solus 0.201529.4.0
|
7/16/2015
|
0.7
|
Independent
|
4:13
|
0:14
|
2.4
|
182
|
4.1.2
|
LXLE 14.04.3
|
8/31/2015
|
1.4
|
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04 LTS)
|
8:41
|
0:34
|
4.5
|
231
|
3.13.0
|
Manjaro 15.09-rc2 KDE
|
9/9/2015
|
1.7
|
Arch
|
12:33
|
0:28
|
5.7
|
442
|
4.1.6
|
Average of all distros
|
1.5
|
11:49
|
0:33
|
4.2
|
423
|
Post-install specifications are quite average, and somehow the Manjaro team (or the Plasma 5 team) was able to squish the memory footprint to a tight 442 MB. Props to them.
Installer score: 9.5/10
3. Design
Manjaro builds on top of an already stellar Breeze theme and framework with its new Maia theme and icons. As stated earlier, Plasma 5 is what introduced me to Linux in the beginning, so I’m quite a fan of its design language.
One thing to note about theming a KDE desktop is that there are many, many components to tweak. Window decorations, widget styles, desktop themes, taskbar icons, widget colors, and almost anything you can imagine are controlled separately, so it’s harder to get a consistent feel compared to a GTK-based environment like Cinnamon. Nevertheless, the defaults are excellent. Props to the Manjaro team.
Webfont rendering is also very nice out of the box, although I have only tested Firefox.
The lock screen is also the best I have seen.
Design score: 10/10
4. Applications
Manjaro comes with the set of applications that most KDE desktops have - a mix of GTK and Qt based apps, depending on which toolkit offers the better quality one.
Web Browser - Firefox
File Manager - Dolphin
Email Client - KMail
Text Editor - Kate
Image Viewer - Gwenview
Terminal Emulator - Konsole
Music Player - Cantata
Office Suite - LibreOffice
Annoyingly, KMail is included, which doesn’t behave well sometimes with Google Apps accounts, et cetera. However, Thunderbird or Geary can be installed from the default repos.
Applications score: 8.5/10
5. Installing packages
Manjaro, being Arch-based, comes with pacman as the package manager, which I regard to be the best and fastest in its class. The AUR tool yaourt is also included by default. With this combination, nearly all software can be installed on your system without having to compile from source manually.
Unfortunately, there isn’t really any nice category-based software installer. There is something called Octopi, but it’s not category based and it’s not much more than a frontend search tool for a command line. As far as I know, there is nothing that can be installed of a category based nature, but if anyone here knows, I’ll update this post.
Installing packages score: 8.5/10
Final Thoughts: Manjaro KDE still has a bit of work to go in becoming fully consistent and something an average person would want to use, but it’s very close. It absolutely nails it on the design, which is one of the most important categories. The software area needs a bit of patching up - the substitution of Thunderbird for KMail would help, as would the addition of a category-based software installer. I’ll hold off on recommending this now, but it’s definitely something I’d look at in the coming months. In the meantime, it looks like the Xfce variant reigns supreme.
Final score: 46.5/50 = 93%
Distro name
|
Final Score
|
Manjaro 0.8.12 Xfce
|
99
|
LXLE 14.04.3
|
98
|
Linux Mint 17.2 MATE RC
|
98
|
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1
|
97
|
Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon
|
95
|
Fedora 22 Beta
|
94
|
Manjaro 15.09-rc2 KDE
|
93
|
openSUSE 13.2 KDE
|
93
|
Korora 21 Cinnamon
|
92
|
Solus 0.201529.4.0
|
92
|
elementary OS 0.3
|
91
|
Pinguy OS 14.04.2
|
91
|
Linux Lite 2.4
|
90
|
Netrunner 15
|
90
|
Lubuntu 15.04
|
88
|
Crunchbang++ 1.0
|
86
|
Bodhi Linux 3.0.0
|
84
|
KaOS 2015.02
|
80
|
Mageia 5 KDE
|
75
|
Average of all reviews
|
91
|
Manjaro does look very cool, but I prefer Fedora. (Remember me?)
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