31 August 2013

Manjaro Linux0.8.7 "Ascella " XFCE Review :- Rodar su mente con nueva montaña rusa Manjaro paseo linux .

Arch Is one of the distribution which has lot of followers but when it comes to installation for newbie friendly it will confuse you where to find archstar in oceans of stars from the sky .When I asked in some of the forums for rolling based friendly distro many of them suggested me to try Arch .Also I saw the ranking of Arch in Distrowatch is around top ten ,so decided to try it buy after several install try up something here and there mess up ,and used to take long time for novice user like me.So I just left off arch for sometime as I need ready to go linux distro for use as didn't want to waste time in installation and setting arch , Surely Arch is not for beginners but best for them who want to learn , professional , hobbist etc . 

I never thought of using an Arch based distro anymore but somewhere got to know that it has very fast ,responsive and friendly Forum .So to test it downloaded their ISO of openbox and went to their forum site to see what is said and heard about manjaro forum is true or not .Then after questioning my doubts and other related issues I got the reply very quickly as compared to other forums .So actually their vibrant community forum brought me more closer to them and also had tested some arch based distro from that onething was sure , arch distro is definitely more faster than all other distro available today . Truely speaking I was more intersted to try arch based distro but want something that dont wanna Messup with the installer like arch but want some beginner friendly esay-to-go installer and here Manjaro from Mount kilimanjaro which is  named after , comes to my rescue .






Secondly the  Naming of distro was very odd as you can see it in distro world ,I think one of the worstly name distro was Fuduntu , but afterall it was a fine distro just meet the Dead end and got converted to CLOVERLEAF  distro.Actually when I heard the name of the distro it sounds like" cat" in my language , and obiviously sometimes I refer it as caty distro, just for Fun .

Usually speaking arch is somewhat one of the popular distro in geek and developer community but in terms of user community it didnt enjoy the benefit .So by bringing manjaro linux the community has done a great job and you can just see how the popularity is rising in a short span of time even not completed one year of birth , truely a rising Brand . It shelves the hard installer process from arch and give you ready distro just for work and solves all your problem in and out .

Manjaro is something like Fashion-Pimp of the Arch based distro .With every release the distro is becoming more and more refined.Actually it philosophy differs in installer which has been taken from Linux Mint and also uses it own repository instead of Arch( AUR ) repository .Also it provides repos to maintain different graphic manager utility and also some added extra features developed by Manjaro Team . It also provides good support for multile kernel installation and to configure it .

 I downloaded the Xfce version of Manjaro and made a live usb using imagewriter to see how well it runs on my system .Now I  just tickled my boot to reboot it and pressing  boot set up button choosing usb mode and clicked to enter it and started the live mode but instead of gui all text in Green ok signal started scrolling downwards and withing some minute a graphical desktop was presented .Now the desktop layout has changed and now it is according to linux mint Xfce 15 edition has whisker panel and it somewhat resembles windows panel only shutdown and other stuff inverted .The manjaro in terms of look the default wallpaper is black with light strips and logo of it with round button like resemblance in the middle .so It can be truely said the developers has taken some effort to make the users feel that they are different from Default  Xfce photos.Thunar file manager is 1.6.3 default behaves well for file management .


Installation screenshots here


Now after booting live I started the installer where you have to choose keyboard ,language setting , timezone ,User password and user Id account , set up partitioning just like Mint system .Here two options existed to choose manual or automatic but I nstalled the system in manual mode where various partition like home/swap/boot/root/tmp where choosen by me .It installed my system within 6 minutes on  my desktop .From my experience the installer of Manjaro has become as much simpler as Linux Mint .Actually I feel for novice user manual parted wouldn't be right choice but automatic would be an better option .And thus the installation of system almost finished asking for last step whether to install bootlader or not .It comes an handy when you install multiple systems on your hard drive so bootlader choice is most genunine one .Also its recommended to watch the rolling slides of show in installer as it would be greately helpful for newcomers .

Then after installer process has finished just reboot it and  from withing some minute all the system booted up in text roller screen and glad to see iconic wallpaper same as mentioned before .


Applications available in  Manjaro Linux .

****Games:-  Steam.
****Graphics:- GIMP ,Viewnior , Document viewer.
****Internet :- Avahi SSH Server Browser ,Avahi VNC Server Browser ,Firefox ,Pidgin ,Thunderbird ,Hexchat .
****Multimedia :- Audio Mixer ,PulseAudio Volume Control ,QT V4L2 Test Utility ,VLC Media Player ,Xfburn ,Xnoise .
****Office :- Dictionary ,LibreOffice(calc, writer,Impress) ,Orage Calendar ,Orage Globaltime .

Firefox 23.0.1 is the default browser available but if you want an open -source chromium browser than it is available in repos which can be installed through octopi package manager just as like synaptic package manager in ubuntu/ debian based distros .you can find both arch and manjaro related apps repository here .Also internet section boast with Hexchat  so irc chat can be enabled with different community members .The default desktop email client is Thunderbird 17.0.8 . steam is preinstalled so gaming will be surely fun .Skype was  missing but I installed it and it got into my system easily with all binary needed properly installed and working fine .I think application like web app should be included like Fogger as seen in openlinux  xfce  system soon web app will be driving point an a healthy competition will sprung up among distros . One thing couldnt gel is firfox default theme it had some viewing issue with default black baground upper theme.


Multimedia section is quite rich as vlc one of the best  multimedia open source player installed it played my videos efficiently .sound section is controlled by alsa mixer .Actually Qtv4l2 utility worked well and my laptop camera snapshot buffering working fine .I was efficiently able to play all my mp3 collection well in xnoise but its not my favourite I will go for clementine though .Productivity  app for buring cd and dvd is there so no worry to burn dvd stuff .Also able to watch youtube videos flawlessly as flash pre-installed .

 Office section is quite rich with up-to-date with libreoffice 4.04.2 so naturally you get latest plugins and also theme customization possible .Also dictionary and document viewer worked fine.

NOTE-One issue I faced while taking screenshots were saved in ntfs windows directory and when I opened windows os and tried to preview it says o kb and it doesnt opened up in any picture viewer .Didn't had such issue in other linux distros while dual booting .Also some icons on default panel were looking double so really ugly , still some work needed there .


Graphic section is quite rich with Gimp 2.8.6 ,viewenoir etc.other accesories like bulk rename ,archieve manager , application finder , clipman , notes , screenshot ,sensor viewer etc .I was able to play with gimp efficiently .Actually the launcher whisker is nice one easily able to search application installed into system by just typing it .one app was missing like playon linux or wine which must be included .

 Hardware integration 

 It recognize all my hardware very well like wifi , touchpad , brightess and volume keys working fine ,etc and cpu is also cooler battery backup around 3 hrs on my laptop Cpu usage was around less than 10 percent but ram usage was considerely high around 600 mb more as compared to xfce distro on my system Dell  .Apart from it system was very fast and didn't broke anything my usage of days .

During my usage everything worked well as it since rolling release distro so you get bleeding and newer repos and since its arch based its lighter on system and fast but if you are novice user remember if during update something brokes it will befixed in next update so be careful of that otherwise use friendly system like Mint /ubuntu/ mageia /opensuse etc .

Manjaro linux doesnt have complete integrated setting manager as xfce setting panel and Manjaro are different . hope ,so developers combines both and Manjaro has brilliant wiki where you can find the releavant answers related to it or ask on its forum.

You can check kernel version by typing  as shown below ,

uname -r




Other  ,,,,,,,,,,,,,Screenshots Here .



SPECIFIC POINTS

Aesthetic : - 0+1
Performance :- 1
Hardware (bluetooth/touchpad/wifi/lan ):- 1+1+1+1
Applications(internet/office/games/multimedia/other) :- 1+1+1+0+1
cpu :- 1
Extra-software :-0+0
ram at boot up( less than 500mb/more than 500 mb) :-0+0
boot up time :-1+1
kernel ( old/recent):- 1+1
Install time (less than 15 min / more than 15m) :- 1+1
Install size (less than 5gb/ more than 5gb) :- 1+1
Package manager (gui/non-gui):-1+0
Easy of use :-1
flash :-1


0verall :- 22/30


 Time to conclusion

Overall if I think this release is quite fine and worked well on my system also performance was fine and look were beautiful and wallpaper theme elegant .
The stability and maturity of the distro has increased from its previous releases .only things like web apps missing are really necessity of todays times lets wait the developer realize it and they add some web app in line with other distros like openlinux xfce and uberstudent 3.0 xfce distros .It has some glitch here and here but its minor .but remember that if you dont have good network connectivity simply dont use it as it requires net update often as its rolling model .

Surely if I want to use a rolling release then after Pclinuxos , Manjaro is surely one of the best to go .




You can download 32 and 64 bit from here .







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