The choice was born out of necessity - because a lot of users didn’t like when the default was changed - what a furore - almost like some the English parliaments.
A probable reason - as good as any - could be the quite often referred ever growth of the ISO.
It looks like a new user “to-do” list that they can go through to see if they want some packages of different categories. Looks super useful for people new to Linux. Just guessing.
If you ALREADY have Manjaro and use Mardown - then the ‘Starter’ will only be interesting to you if you install a new system to another machine…
It isn’t likely to extend too far, I also very rarely use Office - that’s irrelevant because that’s one reason I prefer to see a ‘Starter’ chooser to allow me to include (qBittorrent) and exclude (Office).
Maybe a ‘Media’ edition should be spun up with Plex server and Media players included in the chooser
I recently started using LaTeX for my documents, it is amazing once you get into it. I’m a program manager and it has really increased the quality of my documents, to the point where I believe I put everyone else to shame.
When people ask for my “word template” and I hand them a .tex file is priceless too!