14 DAY TRIAL // Manjaro Xfce 0.9.0 Pre2, a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch, has been released. The devs have made quite a few improvements to it and users have been asked to test it.
The 0.9.0 branch of Manjaro is highly anticipated by the community and many users are itching to try all the new stuff that's being implemented right now. It's still a pre-Alpha release and it will take a while to get into shape, but it's already showing great promise despite the fact that Xfce is the default desktop for Manjaro and the community takes care of flavors that are using all kinds of other desktops.
Moreover, Xfce is known to be rather lightweight and it's usually implemented in its default form, with very few modifications. Manjaro devs go a little bit further and they customize the desktop quite a lot. The end result is a unique experience that immediately indicates, with a single look, what the distro being used is.
More fixes and improvements land for Manjaro 0.9.x
Even if everyone is waiting to see a nice 1.0 version attached to their Manjaro installation, users mustn't be too hopeful about this. It's quite possible to get version 0.9.1 after this one becomes stable.
"Another week, another preview of our next stable release 0.9.0. Hopefully we will release Manjaro 0.9.0 by end of February. Next week you can use 0.8.12 as your install media until we have ironed out all issues you may find in this release. This build feels more feature complete and reflects almost the look and feel we will ship with our final release when ready," wrote the developers on their blog.
A number of tools have been fixed, the Calamares installer has been improved, and a couple of pacmac (package manager) problems have been fixed.
More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download Manjaro Xfce 0.9.0 Pre2 right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that the OS is far from complete and that it's recommended not to use a production machine for testing.