The usual Manjaro Stable updates.
Manjaro Drama.
As aside note, we are aware of the drama unfolding inside the Manjaro’s teams. Frankly it proves how trade ruins pretty much everything. Very easy to predict. When you make an Operating System not simply for making an Operating System, but to also sell merch, laptops, or whatever else, then you are entangled with trade and that will make your decisions be tilted towards selling more shit basically. And less focus on the Operating System. Rinse and repeat, these things always happen. Everywhere, every time, with everyone.
Trade-Free OS:
If you make an OS and give it to the world and say: take it, that’s all we want. You can take it, or not. Do what you want with it. We want nothing from you in return for making this OS. Then this is a trade-free OS. Like TROMjaro is. Therefore your motivation is to make that OS as good as possible and be honest about it since there is no incentive to lie, deceive, exaggerate, etc..
Trade-Based OS:
But if you make an OS and give it to the world and say: take it, but also have you seen our merch? You wanna buy a tshirt with our OS? Have you seen these latest laptops that we got paid to promote? Can you give us your data so we can sell to advertisers?…. If this is your approach then OF COURSE you will lie, deceive, exaggerate, and create a dishonest and poorly made OS.
If Manjaro depends on money coming from partnerships, ads, merch, etc., then they will be incentivized to focus on those, sell more, shove them on people’s throat.
I mean look how the Manjaro updates announcement looks on their forum:
Those are ads.
I remember when Manjaro was inserting some trade-based Office Suite into their main OS just because of some partnership. Not because they considered that Office Suite to be the best for the users, but the best for their business. I had heated discussions on their forum about it…
This was one reason why I wanted to create TROMjaro, to have a trade-free OS. Take Manjaro and strip it from these trades. So that the OS is honest. Every decision we take in regards to TROMjaro is about how to make it better, easier, faster, more secure, etc.. As it should be!
Then why choose Manjaro as the base?
The simple answer is because I know how to use their tools to build a custom OS. That’s it. If I had more knowledge and resources I would have done it in a different way.
Now the drama seems to be fading out and hopefully things calm down and Manjaro can continue in whatever shape they wish to. We will continue to keep TROMjaro trade-free, because as you can see, this is damn important!
We keep on being honest and try to improve TROMjaro.
The way we get support is via donations, here. And donations are of course, well, donations. No one gets anything from that more than supporting our projects. No entanglement here.
Anyway, that’s all.