Manjaro has released Manjaro 25, codenamed “Zetar,” bringing a number of important changes, including a new default filesystem.

Manjaro is a popular Arch-based Linux distribution that aims to give users a reliable and easy-to-use Ar𝓡ch-b🥃ased experience. Like Arch, Manjaro is a rolling release distro, meaning it delivers updates continuously, rather than in major point releases like Ubuntu or Debian. Unlike Arch, however, Manjaro holds back most packages for a few weeks ,for additional testing, in an effort to smooth some of the rough edges off of the rolling release model.

Despite being a rolling release, Manjaro does 💟still have codenamed release targets. While long-time users of the distro will receive the same updates via their regular update process, the major releases give the team the chance to release new ISO images. As a result, users can begin their Manjaro experience with🃏 the latest changes, rather than installing from an older image and having to immediately do a bunch of updates.

New Desktop Environments

Manjaro 25 comes꧂ with the latest versions of the three major desktop environments (DE): KDE Plas♋ma 6.3, Gnome 48, and Xfce 4.20.

Plasma 6.3 brings a number of improvements and bug fixes to the latest version of KDE’s DE. Plasma is already the most powerful DE on any platform, giving users a plethora of features and options. Version 6 moved Plasma to the latest Qt framework, and version 6.3 brings a slew of improvements, along with a few new features.

48 brings dynamic triple buffering, a feature designed to improve graphics perform🧔ance on older or low-end hardware.

This change has undergone significant review and testing over a period of five years and improves the perceived smoothness of changes on screen, with fewer skipped frames and more fluid animations.﷽ This has been achieved by enhancing the concurrency cap♏abilities of Mutter, the GNOME display manager, and is particularly effective at handling sudden bursts of activity.

Xfce 4.20 brings a number of improvements, with the most notable being experimental Wayland support. Wayland is the successor to the X11 window system, offering better performance and security. Currently, Plasma and Gnome are♈ the only two DEs offering full Wayland support, but ꧙Xfce is making significant progress, which is good news for fans of the lightweight DE.

A New Default Filesystem

While Manjaro’s codenames usually don’t have any features or improvements that long-time users won’t receive via regular updates, Manjaro 25 is slightly different because of the change to the default filesystem.

Manjaro 25 changes the default filesystem from the venerable EXT4 to Btrfs. Btrfs was already an opജtion, but u🌌sers had to manually choose it. In contrast, while EXT4 is still an option, Btrfs will be the default choice moving forward.

Btrfs, is a copy-on-write (COW) filesystem that brings a number of advanced features that EXT4 doesn’t have, chief among them being snapshots. When properly configured, a snapshot is taken before and after each update, providing a restore point in the event anything goes wrong.

Until now, openSUSE Tumbleweed was one of the preeminent example of Btrfs integration, but Manjaro’s implementation appears poised to give openSUSE a run for its money. Manjaro’s Btrfs implementation will similarly take automatic snapshots and make those available from the boot menu.

Because it’s nearly impossible to easily swap the filesystem from one to the other on a running install, Manjaro 25 provides a good opportunity for users to start fresh with Btrfs, if its features appeal to them.

Conclusion

All-in-all, Manjaro 25꧃ is a solid continuation of the rolling release distro, offering solid improvements and updates🦩 to its flagship DEs.

For most users, simply updating their existing instal🌞l will give them all the new features and benefits. Users interested in migrating from EXT4 to Btrfs would benefit from downloading the Manjaro 25 ISO and do a fresh install.