[manjaro-dev] more suggestions

[Jesper Larsen]

Hi Philip,

I forgot to mention that in addition to offering new Manjaro Rolling (or Manjaro Bleeding) iso images to download from your website, where I think you should just provide an updated one every 2 months - 6 times a year. I think that is sufficient so you can put you main focus on develoment of the Manjaro Stable (semi-rolling editions).  they could be named e.g. manjaro-rolling-2021.04-x86_64.iso, manjaro-rolling-2021.06-x86_64.iso (to indicate the iso is released in April and June etc..)

for the different DE's these isos might be named e.g.

manjaro-gnome-rolling-2021.04-x86_64.iso, manjaro-cinnamon-rolling-2021.04-x86_64.iso, manjaro-plasma-rolling-2021.04-x86_64.iso, manjaro-xfce-rolling-2021.04-x86_64.iso etc..to follow the order in the naming scheme that you are currently using for the stable releases e.g. manjaro-gnome-20.2-201203-linux59.iso. I don't know if I would mention the kernel editions in the name of the stable releases, I would probably name it manjaro-gnome-stable-20.2-2012.03.iso (since more or less all linux distros have switched to 64-bit versions, it might not be necessary to use x86_64 in the name).

Maybe the best naming scheme would be this

For manjaro releases in the stable, semi-rolling  (alpha, beta, release candidate (rc) and stable) branch:

manjaro-gnome-stable-2021.08.iso, manjaro-cinnamon-beta-2021.04.iso, and  manjaro-cinnamon-beta2-2021.04.iso, manjaro-cinnamon-rc2-2021.04.iso), manjaro-xfce-alpha-2021.04.iso  etc..

you might consider leaving out the 20.2, 20.3 version numbering and just use alpha, beta, rc and stable together with the release year and month just like for the rolling release iso below, but you can keep it if you want and name it something like this:

manjaro-gnome-stable-20.2-2021.08.iso or

manjaro-gnome-release-20.2-2021.08.iso (use release as an alternative to stable, but I think stable might be the best name - up to you 🙂)


For manjaro releases in the Rolling branch:

manjaro-gnome-rolling-2021.04.iso

But in addition to providing Rolling release iso's every 2 months I think you might consider adding an additional tab in Calamares with the headline:

Choose the edition of Manjaro you want to install ?

Button 1: "Install Manjaro Stable Edition (or alpha, beta, rc )" - what is mentioned here depends on the iso you booted up, if it is beta version of lets say manjaro-cinnamon-beta-2021.04.iso live OS then on the button it would say "install Manjaro Cinnamon 2021.03-beta"
to install the packages on the iso (which could be from the manjaro unstable, testing og stable repos depending on the iso status (alpha, beta, rc etc..))

"Install Manjaro Cinnamon Stable Edition (alpha2-20.2)"
"Install Manjaro Xfce Stable Edition (beta3-2021.01)
"Install Manjaro GNOME Stable Edition (rc2-2021.03)
"Install Manjaro Mate Stable Edition (stable/release-2021.04)

This additional tab/view in Calamares should of course only be present on the non-rolling edition iso's, not in the rolling edition obviously.

Button 2: "Install Manjaro Rolling (or Bleeding)"  Edition
to install the same set of software packages that are on the iso, but instead of installing the packages on the iso it downloads the latest versions of these packages from the rolling release branch (essentially from the pure Arch repos + some manjaro specific packages from the manjaro unstable repos)

You might add a few lines of text underneath each of the two buttons

Button 1: Choose this option if you want to install the stable edition of Manjaro. The software might be a bit more outdated but it will be the most stable.

Button 2: Choose this option if you want to install the pure rolling-release experience following the release schedule of Arch Linux. You will get the latest and most bleeding-edge software, however, the system might be less stable.

Instead of the 20.2 version scheme you might just indicate the year and month and status the release iso's.
Maybe I am wrong but I think it would be better to use the alpha, beta, rc and stable/release and release year and months instead of version numbers for a semi-rolling release - what do you think ?

as an example:
manjaro-gnome-alpha-2021.01
manjaro-gnome-beta2-2021.03.iso
manjaro-gnome-rc1-2021.04.iso
manjaro-gnome-stable-2021.05.iso (ormanjaro-gnome-release-2021.05.iso)

This should follow the migration route from Manjaro Unstable repos to Manjaro Testing repos and then finally to the Manjaro Stable repos, just like you do now, just with a different naming scheme.

These were my considerations - maybe you can use them somehow for inspiration 🙂.


Kind Regards

Jesper Larsen

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