By Christine Hall<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A rebellion inside the Manjaro project, a community strike, and a threatened fork raise a hard question for users and contributors alike: is it time to rescue Manjaro, or walk away?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fossforce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Execution_of_Louis_XVI.jpg\")
Execution of Louis XVI in the Place de la Concorde, facing the empty pedestal where the statue of his grandfather Louis XV previously stood. | Isidore Stanislas Helman<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nEverybody is not happy in the land of Manjaro, the popular Arch-based Linux distribution that comes out of Germany. From the looks of it, nobody is happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manjaro is one of those distros that has a business side as well as a community side. As usually happens in these kinds of arrangements, the business side owns everything valuable \u2014 including trademarks and the like \u2014 even though the Manjaro community has been around longer than Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, the official business name, and actually gave birth to the distro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long and short of it is that the community is rather perturbed at how the business side has been running things. What\u2019s the gripe? The word \u201cincompetence\u201d seems to be in play. As does \u201ccontrol,\u201d if you\u2019re willing to suspend disbelief long enough to imagine that a business entity could possibly have control issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evidently, this dissatisfaction from the community side has been brewing for a while, but things came to a head on March 9, when the community published the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto<\/a> on the project\u2019s website. The manifesto was posted by a user with the handle Aragorn, who appears not only to be a community member, but also to be a part of Manjaro\u2019s staff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\u201cThe Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That opening \u2014 actually the document\u2019s second paragraph \u2014 seems to be on point. Currently, the distro occupies the eighth spot on DistroWatch\u2019s Page Hit Ranking, the same as it did in January\u2019s FOSS Force review<\/a>, down from holding the second position<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe repeated mistakes the manifesto mentioned evidently start with the renewal of SSL certificates, not the most difficult issue to fix, but a headache when you suddenly can\u2019t reach your site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cKnown issues \u2014 such as, for instance, the TLS certificates not being renewed in time \u2014 are simply ignored, despite multiple team members taking the initiative and volunteering, or even building tooling, processes and infrastructure to address these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In other words, there seems to be a whole lotta headbanging going on from the community side of the equation, and they\u2019re starting to proclaim, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to take it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Never did, and never will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manjaro Through the Eyes of the Manifesto<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The manifesto characterizes the current leadership as centered on one individual who\u2019s focused on turning Manjaro into a business, with decisions and access highly centralized around that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![Isidore Stanislas Helman<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nEverybody is not happy in the land of Manjaro, the popular Arch-based Linux distribution that comes out of Germany. From the looks of it, nobody is happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nManjaro is one of those distros that has a business side as well as a community side. As usually happens in these kinds of arrangements, the business side owns everything valuable \u2014 including trademarks and the like \u2014 even though the Manjaro community has been around longer than Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, the official business name, and actually gave birth to the distro.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe long and short of it is that the community is rather perturbed at how the business side has been running things. What\u2019s the gripe? The word \u201cincompetence\u201d seems to be in play. As does \u201ccontrol,\u201d if you\u2019re willing to suspend disbelief long enough to imagine that a business entity could possibly have control issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEvidently, this dissatisfaction from the community side has been brewing for a while, but things came to a head on March 9, when the community published the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto<\/a> on the project\u2019s website. The manifesto was posted by a user with the handle Aragorn, who appears not only to be a community member, but also to be a part of Manjaro\u2019s staff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\u201cThe Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nThat opening \u2014 actually the document\u2019s second paragraph \u2014 seems to be on point. Currently, the distro occupies the eighth spot on DistroWatch\u2019s Page Hit Ranking, the same as it did in January\u2019s FOSS Force review<\/a>, down from holding the second position<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe repeated mistakes the manifesto mentioned evidently start with the renewal of SSL certificates, not the most difficult issue to fix, but a headache when you suddenly can\u2019t reach your site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\u201cKnown issues \u2014 such as, for instance, the TLS certificates not being renewed in time \u2014 are simply ignored, despite multiple team members taking the initiative and volunteering, or even building tooling, processes and infrastructure to address these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nIn other words, there seems to be a whole lotta headbanging going on from the community side of the equation, and they\u2019re starting to proclaim, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to take it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nNever did, and never will.<\/p>\n\n\n\nManjaro Through the Eyes of the Manifesto<\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe manifesto characterizes the current leadership as centered on one individual who\u2019s focused on turning Manjaro into a business, with decisions and access highly centralized around that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat person would be Philip M\u00fcller, who seems to be at the core of the issues associated with this palace intrigue. He\u2019s the distro\u2019s co\u2011founder and lead developer, as well as being the CEO and managing board member of Manjaro GmbH. In the discussion thread<\/a> on the distro\u2019s website about the manifesto, more than a few team members and community commentators describe the centralization and decision\u2011making problems as revolving around M\u00fcller in particular, rather than \u201cthe company\u201d as a whole.\u200b\u201cTime for Phil to let go and focus on the GmbH and let the community steer the OS,\u201d wrote community assistant Teo on the day the manifesto went live. \u201cHe can only benefit from it in the long term because if the OS dies so does the GmbH too. An idea: if it goes to the next phase, it might be good to send this to some of the media like Phoronix and even some of the YouTube talking heads (I know we don\u2019t like them, but they have a lot of followers).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThat is the plan,\u201d dennis1248 of the Manjaro Team replied. \u201cOur friends over on YouTube love this type of content.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Manifesto\u2019s Game Plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe manifesto, which pretty much reads like a call to action, also includes the game plan that\u2019s broken down into stages and phases.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFirst, the stages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nStage 0:<\/strong> We will await a reply within a reasonable timespan without taking any action.<\/li>\n\n\n\nStage 1:<\/strong> We will publicly release this document, and a general strike will commence. Nonessential distro and community efforts will be paused.<\/li>\n\n\n\nStage 2:<\/strong> We will consider forking and\/or leaving the Manjaro Project as it currently stands.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nNow the phases, which only apply to the first stage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nPhase 1:<\/strong> Publish the document (manifesto) in the Internal Hub only (internal staff space).<\/li>\n\n\n\nPhase 2:<\/strong> If still ignored after 48 hours, move the thread to the Member Hub (broader, still semi\u2011internal audience).<\/li>\n\n\n\nPhase 3:<\/strong> If still ignored 48 hours after Phase 2, move the thread to Announcements (fully public), lock the forum read\u2011only, and keep the strike going.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nWith all phases of the first stage now complete and M\u00fcller evidently offering what are classified as stalling tactics on the discussion boards, it appears that tentative steps are being taken into the third stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCue Thunderclap Newman.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Proles in the Machine<\/h2>\n\n\n\nSo what do these post, post-hippie revolutionaries want? Well, like the countercultural revolutionaries of my generation, they basically want back what belongs to them, which basically boils down to their distro. They\u2019ve turned what they want into something of a wish list to make sure everybody\u2019s on the same page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nThe company to acknowledge the problems and commit to fixing them.<\/li>\n\n\n\nClear separation between \u201cManjaro the project\u201d and \u201cManjaro the company,\u201d with the project not controlled by a single person.<\/li>\n\n\n\nCreation of a new legal entity (what the Germans call an eingetragener Verein or e.V., a registered association used for non\u2011profit, member\u2011driven organizations) that represents the project and community, distinct from the for\u2011profit company.<\/li>\n\n\n\nShared access to essential infrastructure (servers, TLS certs, repos, tooling) so work doesn\u2019t bottleneck on one individual.<\/li>\n\n\n\nA flatter, clearly defined governance structure with transparent decision\u2011making and voting rules for important changes.<\/li>\n\n\n\nA healthier internal culture that retains and attracts contributors instead of driving them away.<\/li>\n\n\n\nThe ability for community contributors to steer the technical direction of Manjaro as an open\u2011source project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nThe folks behind this peaceful palace coup say they\u2019d prefer to avoid a fork if possible, but a fork will happen if the business side refuses to change. The community of course, follows the fork.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMay the people prevail\u2026 uh I mean, we\u2019ll see how it turns out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I ran Manjaro for a while as one of my first Arch based distributions, and it was very good. They hold back Arch updates a bit with the intention to prevent breakage, but sometimes packages get out of sync with the latest packages causing their own breakages which was worse than base Arch. Consequently, today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16286,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16285\/revisions\/16286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Execution_of_Louis_XVI.jpg\"){kind=link}
Everybody is not happy in the land of Manjaro, the popular Arch-based Linux distribution that comes out of Germany. From the looks of it, nobody is happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Manjaro is one of those distros that has a business side as well as a community side. As usually happens in these kinds of arrangements, the business side owns everything valuable \u2014 including trademarks and the like \u2014 even though the Manjaro community has been around longer than Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, the official business name, and actually gave birth to the distro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long and short of it is that the community is rather perturbed at how the business side has been running things. What\u2019s the gripe? The word \u201cincompetence\u201d seems to be in play. As does \u201ccontrol,\u201d if you\u2019re willing to suspend disbelief long enough to imagine that a business entity could possibly have control issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evidently, this dissatisfaction from the community side has been brewing for a while, but things came to a head on March 9, when the community published the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto<\/a> on the project\u2019s website. The manifesto was posted by a user with the handle Aragorn, who appears not only to be a community member, but also to be a part of Manjaro\u2019s staff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Manjaro Project has been declining over the past decade. It managed to sustain a sizable user base, yet it stagnated, lost trust, lost almost all of its contributors, and even became a laughingstock for repeatedly making the same mistakes and never even attempting to address these known issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n That opening \u2014 actually the document\u2019s second paragraph \u2014 seems to be on point. Currently, the distro occupies the eighth spot on DistroWatch\u2019s Page Hit Ranking, the same as it did in January\u2019s FOSS Force review<\/a>, down from holding the second position<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The repeated mistakes the manifesto mentioned evidently start with the renewal of SSL certificates, not the most difficult issue to fix, but a headache when you suddenly can\u2019t reach your site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKnown issues \u2014 such as, for instance, the TLS certificates not being renewed in time \u2014 are simply ignored, despite multiple team members taking the initiative and volunteering, or even building tooling, processes and infrastructure to address these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, there seems to be a whole lotta headbanging going on from the community side of the equation, and they\u2019re starting to proclaim, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to take it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Never did, and never will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The manifesto characterizes the current leadership as centered on one individual who\u2019s focused on turning Manjaro into a business, with decisions and access highly centralized around that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
Manjaro Through the Eyes of the Manifesto<\/h2>\n\n\n\n