Manjaro Pantheon For Linux

Manjaro Pantheon is a free distribution of GNU/Linux derived from the Manjaro Linux operating system, which in turn is based on the famous Arch Linux OS. It is a community edition of Manjaro built around the beautiful and modern Pantheon desktop environment of the elementary OS distro.

At the moment of writing this review, Pantheon is available for download as a single, bootable Live DVD ISO image that contains software packages optimized only for 64-bit (x86_64) instruction set architectures.

However, it appears that the Manjaro Pantheon developers are planning a 32-bit (i686) release shortly, when the final version of the distribution will see the light of day. The ISO images are hybrid, which means that they can be deployed on either DVD discs or USB sticks.

The Manjaro Pantheon Live DVD features the same boot menu as other Manjaro Linux editions, which means that it will be familiar to any Manjaro user. It will allow the user to start the live session with default settings or with non-free drivers.

Users can use the bootable medium to start an existing OS that is currently installed on the local disk drive of the computer, test the RAM for errors, as well as to see if the hardware components of the PC are compatible with Manjaro.

If you've used elementary OS before, you would know how the Pantheon desktop environment looks like, so you can now use it on Manjaro Linux thanks to the Manjaro Pantheon edition.

However, the Pantheon desktop is a bit customized, as it uses a different Applications Menu than the one used on the elementary OS distro. The layout has not been changed though, as it comprises of a dock (application launcher and task manager) located on the bottom edge of the screen, and a panel placed on the upper side of the screen.

Not only that Manjaro Pantheon uses elementary OS' desktop environment, but it also comes with all of its awesome applications, including the Geary email client, California calendar, Noise music player, Audience video player, Midori web browser, and Scratch text editor.

Users can find top-notch open-source apps like the GIMP image viewer and editor, the entire LibreOffice office suite, Cheese webcam viewer, Brasero CD/DVD burning software, SUSE Studio Imagewriter USB creator, and GParted partition editor.