Manjaro 26.1 "Bian-May"

Manjaro 26.1 “Bian-May” ships Linux kernel 7.1 with KDE Plasma 6.7 and GNOME 50. We covered the release when it went stable.

What Manjaro is trying to be

Manjaro is Arch with the sharp edges filed down. It uses Arch’s packages and pacman, but adds a graphical installer, hardware detection, kernel management tooling, and, most consequentially, a delay on package updates.

That delay is the core design decision and the main source of argument about the distribution. Manjaro holds packages back from Arch’s repositories for roughly a week or two, batching and testing them before release. Supporters call it stability; critics point out that partial delays can create dependency mismatches Arch itself never sees, particularly when you mix in AUR packages built against current Arch.

Both positions have merit. What matters practically is that you should not treat Manjaro as Arch when reading documentation or installing AUR packages.

Kernel management

Manjaro’s kernel tooling is genuinely one of its better features. Multiple kernel versions can be installed side by side and selected at boot.

# List available kernels
mhwd-kernel -l

# List installed ones
mhwd-kernel -li

# Install a specific version
sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux612

This means an LTS kernel is always a reboot away if a newer one breaks something on your hardware, which is a real advantage over distributions where changing kernel is a project.

Editions

The official editions are KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce, with community editions covering other desktops. The KDE edition is the flagship and receives the most attention.

Who it suits

Manjaro suits someone who wants Arch’s package availability and rolling model without doing the Arch installation themselves, and who is willing to accept a distribution making curation decisions on their behalf.

Someone who wants Arch specifically should install Arch. archinstall has made that considerably less daunting than its reputation suggests, and the pacman guide covers the package management either way.

Verify Your Download

SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksums plus GPG signatures are published alongside each ISO on the download page.