The second release candidate of what will become Manjaro Linux 15.12 was released yesterday. This article offers a preview of the KDE edition with screenshots taken from a test installation.
If you’re new to Manjaro Linux, it is a desktop distribution, and one of the very few desktop distributions based on Arch Linux. Antergos is another one of those.
When the final, stable edition is released, Manjaro Linux 15.12 will be code-named Capella, and the KDE edition will ship with KDE Plasma 5.5, so the following screenshots should give you a sneak preview of that edition of KDE Plasma 5.
This, is a screenshot of the default desktop. It features the Maia theme.
Figure 1: Manjaro 15.12 KDE desktop
The desktop showing the panel calendar.
Figure 2: Manjaro 15.12 KDE desktop showing the desktop panel calendar
The default menu style is a much improved Kickoff menu.
Figure 3: Manjaro 15.12 KDE desktop showing the default menu
The latest KDE Plasma 5 desktop offers four menu styles to choose from. Unlike previous editions of KDE, however, switching from one style to the other is as simple as selecting one from the context menu of the menu’s icon itself.
Figure 4: Menu choices on Manjaro 15.12 KDE
Of the four menu styles, my favorite is the fullscreen Application Dashboard, shown here in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Full screen applications dashboard of KDE on Manjaro 15.12
The default application set features the Steam client, but no other game application.
Figure 6: Steam client is the lone game installed on Manjaro 15.12 KDE
Adding widgets to the panel.
Figure 7: Widget management view of the KDE desktop on Manjaro 15.12
The Dolphin file manager.
Figure 8: Dolphin file manager on Manjaro 15.12 KDE
The Kernel module of System Settings makes it easy to manage available kernel.
Figure 9: Kernel manager module of KDE System Settings on Manjaro 15.12
And the Filelight application lets you see disk usage across the file system in a visually-appealing manner.
Figure 10: Filelight disk usage tool on Manjaro 15.12 KDE
The Systemd module takes the pain out of managing system services.
Figure 11: Systemd module of KDE’s System Settings on Manjaro 15.12
With the Storage Service Manager, cloud storage platforms can be integrated into the system. Supported platforms include Box, Dropbox and Google Drive.
Figure 12: Storage Service Manager on Manjaro 15.12 KDE
Manjaro 15.12 should be released soon, but if you’ll like to test drive it before then, download links and the complete Release Notes are available from here.
Hey LinuxBSDos,
Great post on Manjaro Linux. I haven’t used it yet but I was hoping to integrate it with my VoIP system. Thanks to your screenshots, I have a good idea of what I would be working with.
Thanks,
Dennis