I just tried the new Manjaro Plasma dev image and it’s amazing. I love how minimal the desktop feels now and am grateful that Manjaro dialled back their tweaks and let plasma really shine with its intended defaults (as seen in this tweet). The application selection too feels less cluttered, although I may be imagining it as I don’t have the older iso to compare. (that being said having konsole and yakuake both present in the minimal image still doesn’t seem right but that’s just my personal preference) What do you all think of this? Do you like having the vanilla plasma or did you rather the Manjaro theming on top?
Also if anyone in the Manjaro team is reading this do you know how any of this might carry over to existing installs? will it switch over to the new theme if the user hasn’t changed it themselves, or does this only come with the iso and users will only get it if they reinstall or do it all manually (which is a bit of a pain and kinda defeats the point imo).
Thanks for making such a wonderful distro, keep up the good work!
When I first installed Manjaro, I really loved the theming - and I still love it, but I veered away from it somewhat now having a light (buff/green) and a not so dark plasma config saved… I did stick with breeze, but with ‘lightly’ and ‘Material’ decorations that can hold my menu’s.
I dumped the panel, opting for a systray/event calendar to the bottom right, a ‘dodging dock’ for running apps, and an on-demand panel at the top for extras that don’t get seen often… so my desktop looks more minimal, but the incredible shortcuts/gestures and krohnkite along with the slightly wobbly windows and ‘yet another magic lamp’ to slide minimising windows to the dock just make it a dream to use.
If I were installing again, I would definitely go with a more minimal desktop install, though I appreciate having the extra options available (snap/flatpak/steam) and yes, I used guake so although yakuake impressed me for a week, I ended up just going with Konsole because it’s awesome enough for anyone not wanting to fight the config options in Alacritty (Konsole manages to blend in nicely, matching the menu’s with a perfect subtle 85% blur).