Good for them! A second TLS problem after what happened last time is unacceptable. I hope the ‘mutiny’ succeeds.
Manjaro Linux Team Goes on Strike, Threatens to Fork the Project
Submitted 3 weeks ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://itsfoss.com/news/manjaro-team-strike/
Comments
spez@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
somehacker@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pretty sure this wasn’t the second
Eldritch@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
And even that was only the most visible yet surface level one of their problems.
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It wasn’t.
arsCynic@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Just fork already. EndeavourOS exists, an awesome distro, so this threat is a triviality.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If I were a Manjaro dev, I would just jump ship to EndeavourOS, Cachy, or Garuda.
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Is Garuda a serious distro? Last I heard it was basically a few people’s hobby project. Not to say one shouldn’t use it, but I don’t know if it’s on par with EOS and Cachy.
redsand@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
No. Let Manjaro die. It has no reason to exist in any form. Go contribute to something useful.
rhubarbe@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 2 weeks ago
Except that I want the same release cycle as Manjaro. The only equivalent I have found so far seems to be OpenSuse Slowroll, in beta for the past 2 years.
redsand@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Picking Manjaro for stability 🤣 that’s a new one.
atomicStan@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
If I may, would you seriously consider switching to openSUSE Slowroll if Manjaro’s situation doesn’t improve? Or, are there reasons beyond its beta status that hold you back?
mlg@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The fact that CachyOS more or less successfully replaced Manjaro’s purpose I guess is evidence of Manjaro’s issues.
I forgot but I think Bazzite had similar complaints (due to its use of silverblue) in which case it was just more straightforward to use Fedora or OpenSUSE if you don’t want to work with the read only root system.
Downstream distros need to bring additional value to the table to be worth using, otherwise there’s really no need if you can make a package group that accomplishes the same thing in one go.
Burninator05@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I had been using Pop-os for about a year but wasn’t completely happy with it. A friend suggested Bazzite and, to me, it was a lot better in some ways and worse in others. I’ve since switched to Fedora and don’t really have any complaints. I don’t plan on switching again baring something I don’t see coming.
end_stage_ligma@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is Kalpa still kickin?
org@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
Just quit and move to CatchyOS
Joelk111@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Distros? Gotta catch them all.
ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Damn what a catchy name snaps fingers
Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world [bot] 2 weeks ago
I don’t game on my laptop, so the benefits of CachyOS over my EndeavourOS are moot.
kayohtie@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I had to check boxes for gaming packages specifically to get installed. It’s an extremely fast Arch fork first and foremost, with gaming features second.
I thought it’d be gaming first too but it was clear during install that’s more of an “oh also”.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As others suggest, why stay attached to Manjaro at all?
CachyOS is very close “in spirit” if they want to develop modified/custom packages, but there are plenty Arch downstream distros with less toxic communities.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
EndeavorOS too, which is even closer to “vanilla” Arch than CachyOS.
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are assuming that the cachy devs want the help of folks who have not demonstrated competence in their own project or want to do stuff how manjaro does
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Social status alone is a reason to try and keep it alive. You might have had an influential and powerful role as a Manjaro forum mod, package maintainer, server admin, etc. Switching to a different distro means you will have to start at zero and work your way up.
1984@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Aragorn writes that Philip Müller (the project lead) has been running Manjaro as his own personal venture rather than a community effort, keeping a tight hold on access to both the codebase and the infrastructure.
These weasels never care about the actual thing that is being built, its just a way to make money for them.
Hope they kick that Philip guy out and stop making this thing a business.
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I started using Manjaro long before all this crap started going down, and I’ve been holding on hoping this all gets sorted because I hate distto hopping.
But sadly I don’t think its going to happen. I’ve got a new PSU coming to fix a burnt out one that has left my desktop turned off and unupdated for two months. Might be time for an install of something new rather than updating afterwards.
taiyang@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s indeed the time. I found Cachy was a good pivot, similar feel but seems to work better overall. Manjaro is still based on Arch after all, technically.
RipLemmDotEE@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I along started with Manjaro, but it’s broken mess. I moved to Garuda and it has been completely solid and stable for over a year.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Garuda is pretty great if you want a nice experience out of the box. Can recommend.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I moved to endeavour. With the same de it feels very similar.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
A significant portion of the Manjaro team has signed a manifesto demanding the project split from its parent company and restructure as a non-profit.
Sourav Rudra 18 Mar 2026
Manjaro has long been one of the more popular Arch-based Linux distributions, known for making Arch Linux more accessible to everyday users. But it has been losing ground for years, both in terms of user trust and active contributors, and the complaints about its direction have only gotten louder.
Now, things have hit a breaking point, with calls for a fork if the current leadership does not budge.
A Manjaro team member going by the handle “*Aragorn*” has published the “Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto” on the official Manjaro forum. The post lays out a detailed restructuring plan for the project that has been signed by 19 team members, including developers, community managers, moderators, and the company’s technical lead.
Is there any weight behind this?
Manjaro 2.0 Synopsis This document covers the organizational, technical, management, and other changes we (the Manjaro Team, et al) like to see applied to the Manjaro Project. The goal of this document is to serve as a point of discussion, and ultimately, once a consensus on its contents and written goals has been reached, as a guide for the organizational restructuring of the Manjaro Project. Motivation The Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues.The manifesto opens by stating that the Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade, losing trust and contributors while repeating the same mistakes without ever addressing them.
One example cited is the repeated failure to keep TLS certificates current, something volunteers had reportedly already built tooling to fix, only to be ignored.
From there, it goes after the core issue directly. Aragorn writes that Philip Müller (*the project lead*) has been running Manjaro as his own personal venture rather than a community effort, keeping a tight hold on access to both the codebase and the infrastructure.
Aragorn goes on to say that:
The priorities of the Project leadership do not align with those of the developers and community. The current leadership’s goal is to turn Manjaro into a successful business, and thus far, these attempts have mostly failed.
The money situation makes it worse. The manifesto says the company, Manjaro GmbH & Co KG, has not been funneling any of its funds back into the project and has not pursued outside funding either. *What the team wants is a clean separation, where the Manjaro Project is spun off from Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG and restructured as a registered nonprofit association under German law (e.V.).
The new structure would distribute ownership equally among members, use transparent voting for major decisions, and assign “*arbiter*” roles to experienced contributors for specific domains.
Under the proposal, the nonprofit would get full use of the Manjaro trademark through 2029. The company keeps the right to use it too, as long as the two don’t step on each other’s toes. After that initial period, the manifesto nudges the company to declare that **it is willing to hand over full trademark ownership to the nonprofit for €1.
Key assets like the GitHub organizations, the self-hosted GitLab instance, forum, CDN, and the *manjaro.org domain would all move over to the non-profit as well. *The team has also laid out what would happen if they were ignored. The “Our Resolve” section of the manifesto says that *there are three stages (*from 0-2*): waiting for a reply, striking and going public, and finally forking or leaving. Within *Stage 1*, there are three phases that control how public the document gets.
They skipped Phase 2 and jumped straight to Phase 3 a few days ago, moving the manifesto to the public *Announcements section of the forum and archiving the thread on archive.org. If things don’t improve, then a forum lockdown is on the table. Don’t think that this is some kind of witch hunt. One of the Manjaro team members, Dennis ten Hoove, has clarified that the goal of this initiative is not to kick people off the project but to change the leadership and help foster Manjaro as a healthy community-driven project.
Expect a bumpy transition
@dennis1248 had sent me a draft proposal for a possible restructuring of Manjaro project in advance via a DM and told me, that it might be formally submitted by the community to me at a later state. With this post here on the internal hub, it now seems that the community has serious intentions to actually found a non-profit association (German Verein/e.V) and push ahead with a split from the company. Before the company was founded, there had already been suggestions and discussions to establish an association or other forms of legal entity to make the Manjaro project more sustainable. Ultimately, the current corporate structure was chosen as the only legal entity, known as the Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG company. The company has already provided significant financial support to the project in the past and has also employed various Manjaro developers on a freelance basis since 2019 using company funds. I have no personal objections on the subject of founding an association to separate the project from the company. However, at this time, I will not be personally involved in any founding processes of this new legal entity. In this regard, association members should not be involved in the company in any way. Any transfers of company assets or infrastructure require close consultation with the company and yet to be established new legal entity, in order to ensure that the interests of both parties are safeguarded as amicably and smoothly as possible. Any actions that could damage the business must be ruled out. To ensure the smooth operation of the company, assets relevant to the company will remain within the company. Finally, I would like to note that any actions or comments that could damage the business or reputation of myself or the company should be refrained from in order to ensure a mutually agreeable process and avoid legal actions.Philip did break his silence on the matter, saying that **he is fine with an association being formed but wants no part in setting one up himself. He also made clear that handing over any assets would need to happen on the company’s terms and closed with a warning that public statements damaging to either himself or the business could have legal consequences.
The protesting team’s response was measured, where Aragorn pushed back, pointing out that the manifesto already lets the company continue using the infrastructure for as long as it needs to move its operations elsewhere.
Roman Gilg, who signed the manifesto despite being the company’s CTO, put a direct question to Philip, asking whether he had any specific objection to the list of assets outlined in the document. Philip went quiet again.
After days of silence on that question, Aragorn declared that Philip was stalling and announced the team was skipping Phase 2 and moving straight to Phase 3 (*where things stand as of now*).
What can you do?
There’s an active community discussion thread with over 200 replies, started specifically to accommodate talks surrounding the manifesto. If you have thoughts on what’s going wrong with the Manjaro project and what could be done better, you can head over and weigh in.
One of the Manjaro old timers, Stefano Capitani, has recently posted there, sharing his view of the situation:
I have to apologize to all of you. It seems I’ve missed some of the events here. I believe, without fear of contradiction, that I, along with @guinux , @oberon , and of course @philm, am one of the “old timers” still active, if not as much as before, but still active in Manjaro.
I have to be honest, I feel like I’m having flashbacks because we’ve already had these discussions or “storms” in the past. We’ve always come out stronger, and we’ll come out stronger this time too.
*PS: You need to be logged in to the Manjaro forum to view user profiles.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thank you for writing this up, as someone not familiar with what’s going on over there I really appreciate you taking the time.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Thanks, but I didn’t write anything – I just copy pasted the linked article – maybe it is not what the website would want, but I much prefer reading the article in the comments vs having to click the link to read the article.
Raises an interesting philosophical and operational point about how content online should be paid for.
redsand@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Just let it die. So much time and energy wasted
MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They need to cast out the person who can’t renew the ssl certificate.
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Who renews certificates these days? You automate that now, especially with 47 day certs coming.
Tablaste@linux.community 2 weeks ago
That’s the level of incompetency that needs to be booted
MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My renewals have been running in a crontab for five years without any hiccups. The fact they can’t do that is simply lazy.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Riot Games recently screwed it up
texture@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
gaurda is what manjaro should have been. its perfect for noobs with snapper in grub ootb.
i also like envdeavor anc cachy too
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Garuda and Endeavour OS btw.
BigTrout75@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Huh, that’s too bad. I used it for years to get comfortable with an rolling release arch distro. I thought it was good, but it would break from time to time. Thankfully, Arch is easy to install and maintain these days.
filister@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Manjaro was quite messy last time I tried it a couple of years ago.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Switching distros was not on my agenda. 🙃
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Me neither. The more I dwell on it, the grumpier I’m getting. Distro hopping is a young man’s sport. I’ve got work to do.
Thankfully, I learned the hard way a long time ago that my files are almost entirely on a secondary drive and my home folders are all simply symlinks to folders there, so I won’t lose any data since that drive won’t be wiped. But it’s just such a pain in the butt to set up everything the way I like it.
FG_3479@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Gnome has a Save Desktop app which backs up your desktop config, list of Flatpak apps, and the folders you choose. I use Bazzite but I’m not locked in.
forestbeasts@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Psst, you can keep your /home. Copy /home/username to a new partition before the install (just the username folder in the root of the new partition), do the install, and point it at your new partition as /home. Bam, it’s your new home.
Or you could copy out/copy back.
You’ll need to reinstall your apps, but you won’t need to redo all your settings for them.
– Frost
ranzispa@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
I like to have a separate partition for /home Whatever happens I can wipe root safely and install something else.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Ya I used to do this but didn’t for this install. I think I’m just going to make a new partition or slap in another disk for the OS and my out the manjaro disk as my home and blow away the rest of the OS.
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
You had plenty of time tbh. As a former Manjaro user myself.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Funny how you assume how much time is enough when you have no idea who I am and what I have going on lol
mosspiglet@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
I’ve been on Manjaro for years, but have been considering switching to Endeavour or CachyOS (or maybe vanilla Arch, but I’m lazy). Looks like it may be time to ditch Manjaro.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Did I just find next distro to try? :) Kudos to them anyway (yay, that’s the kind of news I want to hear)
Tortellinius@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t look like it. But the project will now go to the to-be-founded non-profit association.
Philm actually replied around the time of your comment, sharing his disdain that this plan was set in motion, while as company owner he has no one to talk to legally, since the association has not been founded yet. He’s supportive of the move, and technically he’s right. The association should’ve already been founded, to be fair.
I hope this means Manjaro will thrive!
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Manjaro will become even less well maintained because the people working on it will spend their time managing this crisis instead of doing productive work on the distro.
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Looks like a decent plan. I’ll have no problem with supporting non-profit
Kazel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Burn it down
Kaput@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
awh comon I just installed it for the first time, what’s wrong with Manjaro?
kuhli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s bad, but I don’t use it because:
- The project’s had a history of failing at really basic administrative tasks like keeping their ssl certificate up to date
- I’m unconvinced they actually do the testing that justifies the delays and not just using arch. This is because security patches sometimes also get delayed and issues have gotten past the delay
- They’ve accidentally DDoSed the aur multiple times by shipping broken versions of pamac when fixed versions were available
- I’ve seen complaints about leadership and how they handle finances, though I haven’t really looked into this
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
It’s not so much that the distro is bad, but the leadership of the project, according to a lot of the community working on it, is very unresponsive, bad at administration, doesn’t make decisions that need to be made in a timely manner and not really doing their job. The community basically wants to cut them out and move on.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Don’t worry, it’s just the open-source version of the market correcting. There’s no stock, no venture capital. If the group putting in time and effort to help maintain something doesn’t like how the project is being run, they take a copy and start over with a new name. It’s happened countless times on OS, it’ll happen countless more. Often, the existing leadership is burned out, some of the more active members move on, and those left through attrition lack the skills to keep it going. The forks generally move forward faster and cleaner with more active people. Other than needing to change distros, it’s pretty much a win.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I dont know about manjaro, but manjaro for arm is dead in the water and hasnt updated its packages from upstream (arch linux arm) in ages.
I assume regular manjaro has similar issues? Dont know though, and im guessing
x0x7@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is why I’m going to argue for pure Arch or Artix. Ultimately, what a lot of these distros bring to the table is artwork. But they bite off a lot more than artwork when doing so. And in time they can start to such at that administration.
It’s not very hard to set up your system with a vanilla DE and adjust it into something good. You don’t need to get fancy. And to the extent someone else’s art work can be good and accelerate getting to a nice system, there are other ways to distribute that.
You should want your distro to be 95% administration and 5% art because in the long run that’s whats going to keep your system stable and avoid future headaches. But some artists are overly ambitious and envision creating an entire version of an operating system, including the parts they aren’t passionate about. And some people buy in on this premise and install these projects. …instead of just releasing dot files.
For it to go well requires that both the leadership and the contributors are passionate about all of the parts and passionate about them forever. Not very likely. If you want a distro that is administered well get a distro where administration is all they do, and then get your art work as a separate selection.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The only reason I went with manjaro this last time is because I had my arch Linux install adventure already and I just wanted my computer to work. is there an install script that just works now?
FireWire400@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Already thought about migrating to EndeavorOS. I hope they can manage to keep the whole thing going.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Honestly good on them. I hope they succeed and bring the project back to life.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
But at least they lost all that weight. Good for them.
signup@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
its a garbage distro
goatinspace@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
5715@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
What would happen if Kent Overstreet and Philip Müller met?
sexy_peach@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I moved back to a debian based distro and it’s basically the same. Doesn’t really matter which one you use
ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
So…. Open Manjaro?
awake@lemmy.wtf 2 weeks ago
I haven’t used Arch for quite a while but doesn’t it come with an install script now which makes the installation more automated? That should enable a lot more people to install Arch instead of e.g. Manjaro I suppose. I’m not an expert on Manjaro but are there any meaningful positives to pick Manjaro over Arch?
zewm@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Honestly the damage is done. Manjaro has been an instant no from me dog for a long time. The name carries a negative connotation. Trust has eroded.
rabber@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
What happened?
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The trust. It eroded.
Addv4@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Plenty of things, but the most obvious being the two separate instances they had issues with renewing their certs.
RipLemmDotEE@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Failing to renew TLS certificates on time multiple times is enough to never touch it again, but there’s also been a lot of other problems with Manjaro.
When I used Manjaro, it never made it more than 6 weeks before something would catastrophically break and I’d have to roll back using snapshots.