Customizing Manjaro XFCE

As like other Linux distros, Manjaro can be tweaked as you want. Many packages are preinstalled, but you can always add something new.

I would suggest following changes to the XFCE :

• Office : 'LibreOffice' comes preinstalled, you can add 'WPS-Office' from arch repo, which is great inspite in beta.

WPS Office

• Browser : eLink & Firefox comes preinstalled, you can add 'Midori' as a lightweight browser or 'Chromium'. Midori comes with Add-Ons such as AdBlocker, External Download Managers - Aria2,SteadyFlow & CommandLine, FeedPanel & more.

Midori

• Editors : Mousepad & nano comes preinstalled & I suggest to keep them, I feel it better than 'vim' editor. You have to select a Color Scheme to disappear the errors. 

Mousepad

• Music : 'Audacious' is good replacement over preinstalled 'Guayadeque'.

Audious with GTK Interface

Audacious with Winamp Classic Interface - Osmosis

• Screenshooter : 'scrot' takes single keystroke to save a screenshot over, three for 'xfce4-screenshooter' with command '$scrot -e 'mv $f ~/Screenshots/' '

• You don't have to add complete android-studio package, you can add 'android-tools' & 'android-udev' for adb & fastboot purpose.

• Boot Splash : You can add wide range of boot-splash using plymouth, you can even create your own. I would recommend 'plymouth-theme-manjaro-logo' or 'spinner'.

• Other useful preinstalled packaged : Steam for gaming, Thunar File Manager, VLC, gparted, hexchat, gimp, pidgin, Viewnior etc.

Manjaro - A Short Review

My Manjaro Xfce Workspace with 'Plank'.

My journey with Linux started with the most basic Linux distro Ubuntu. I met across many distros from Linux Mint, CentOS, openSUSE, Fedora & debian that were actually good, but always felt to switch back to OEM OS. But, after switching to Manjaro I never felt to swich. Currently, 'Manjaro' is my primary distro.

• Manjaro is derived from 'Arch Linux' which has independent base of other distros & has biggest software repo AUR (Arch User Repository), which targets more experienced users. Many of the features of Manjaro are derived from Arch itself, but Manjaro has own features including easier accessibilty.

• In contrast, Manjaro is targeted to be user-friendly even if it has Arch base. Arch is a distro for advanced users which helps to build users their own flavor of Linux from Scratch.

• Although being dependent on Arch, Manjaro has own repository, but still supports AUR for adventurous users. Manjaro has 3 sets of repositories : Unstable, Testing & Stable.

• Manjaro features preinstalled DEs(Desktop Environments). Manjaro officially supports 2 DEs : KDE, Xfce & net edition without preistalled DE. Other community DEs such as Gnome, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQT,LXDE & more are also available. Manjaro also supports multiple DEs unlike other distros (Obviously except Arch).

• Manjaro has user-friendly installers : Thus & Calamares. But, CLI can also be used by advanced users.

• Manjaro provides bleeding-edge packages & has rolling-release model, you don't have to reinstall any major upgrades.

• Manjaro has Pacman as a package manager. It doesn't only sound cool, but also feels easier than yum (Of openSUSE with rpm backend) or APT. You just have to use '$ pacman -S package_name' for synchronizing or installing a package. Pacman has CLI & frontend GUI (Octopi built on qt or pacman with GUI). Orphan packages which can clutter the HDDs can be viewed by '$pacman -Qdt'.

• '/var/cache/pacman/pkg' is maintained as a package cache to get out of risk by downgrading any recent upgrades that causes a problem.

• MHWD(Manjaro HardWare Detection) is one of the features of Manjaro which enables the automatic detection & configuration your hardware with free or non-free drivers available.

• Manjaro also supports multiple kernels to be installed. You can use beta kernels as well as LTS kernels & choose preferred kernel at the boot.

All was not well for me when I used KDE DE, as it was more bloated with KDE packages. But after installing Xfce, I could find only useful packages as one can say that as it's with minimal packages.

• In my opinion, Manjaro Linux with Xfce DE is great for a newbie or advanced user, who wants more efficient, powerful Linux distro with bleeding-edge package updates as an alternative to Arch.