I thought the point of Manjaro was to bring an Arch based system in a user friendly way which would encourage more users. Those users would not be coming over from Arch or Gentoo but from Windows, Mint, or Ubuntu.
Many users are not advanced users as most people here are and don’t know how computers work. They simply just use them. Fact is though, they are the easiest to bring over from Windows because as point and click users they don’t really notice a difference on day to day tasks.
My wife and kids found using Mint easier than Windows and using Manjaro easier than Mint. They didn’t have to install either, they sat down and used them. I showed my wife how to install programs from the GUI in both Mint and Manjaro. She didn’t find anything on Mint so I assume she didn’t find that GUI repository very useful. On Manjaro though she explored Pamac’s GUI and found quite a few programs she was able to install, use, have helped her do tasks she wanted to do and has not had a problem with them or the installation. That is user friendliness.
I think the installer should be equally user friendly to new users, windows users and even apple users.
When I tried Mint coming over from Windows a couple years ago it explicitly stated, “Install third party software for graphics and wi-fi, mp3 and other media” in a user friendly window.
As a windows user you see that and say… 'yes I want those to work" and tick the box.
On Manjaro you get a boot screen that many might not even read that has a line that says ‘driver-free’
Which a Windows user might not understand and probably won’t understand at all. They might think ok it has a free(to pay for) driver, why would I have to pay for a driver to use my stuff anyway?
Here is the Mint screen:
and here is the Manjaro option on boot.
The first one is easy to see, not easy to miss and easy to understand. The second most new users will miss, might not understand it if they don’t miss it and probably get bad performance after installation which could lead to frustration and a return to their previous OS that they understood.
In my opinion it should have a Window that explains that it is about “Proprietary drivers from the manufacturers of your video card” versus “Drivers made by the community”
You don’t learn Linux before you use Linux you learn it after you install it after all.
I believe it should be encouraged to bring over more Windows users and the installer should have some basic explanations of what everything means.
A simple script which detects the user’s GPU and recommends a driver with language that is easy to understand and not easy to confuse the end user, would go a long way to user friendliness and general adoption of this OS over others. That is how one wins in a competitive marketplace.
It could say something to the effect of “Nvidia GTX 1070 detected Nvidia proprietary driver selected by default for better performance click here to choose open-source community driver if wanted.”
Or some variation. It does not need to be verbose.
That is my opinion anyhow.