Oh yes, I meant to say more about what drew me to TROMjaro. The first thing that is important to me with any project is understanding what the true motivations are that are driving it. No matter how people try to spin things, it always has a way of shining through in the end. So I very much appreciate the impression of “good people working for good reasons”. The consistent aesthetic also resonates with that same point in feeling friendly and designed for human beings, rather than that kind of cold and distant polish that comes about from aiming to look “professional” or to sell yourself in a presentation showcase.
It is for similar reasons that I had already been gravitating towards XFCE before even trying TROMjaro. It feels like there are sensible people behind it with the aesthetics built on top of the solid functionality and stability as top priorities, rather than trying to do it the other way around, or rush out updates as fast as possible to keep things feeling “fresh and exciting”.
I also very much like the default tools and ease of configuration. Apart from the layout switcher, I even more so appreciate having the XFCE panel profiles config application setup out of the box with a nice selection of different starting points already in place. I haven’t noticed this in any other XFCE implementation.
However, the most significant practical point to me is that I can actually install at least most (or possibly all) of the native software I want straight from the GUI package manager. What surprises me most about other Linux distributions is how limited their software repositories are. I don’t know how you can call something user, or even beginner friendly, if you can’t even install many of the most popular internet browsers without having to go searching on the internet and then messing around in the terminal adding custom repositories and the like.
Anyway, I’m guessing the above point was your main motivation for basing on Manjaro? Tbh, this was quite an off-putting aspect to me as a beginner Linux user (and seems to be for many others too). I never had the impression that Manjaro is the most stable or trouble-free experience, nor does it have the most open or user friendly feel to it (e.g.). And while I am really not a fan of Ubuntu nor its philosophy (surely the whole point of Linux is to escape walled-gardens…), distributions that are based on it really benefit from the depth of beginner friendly solutions and tools that are easily found on the internet (e.g. I found this tool very helpful on a couple of different occasions for rescuing non-booting systems).