I have to say, Manjaro has been great. I've been using it less than a month and it has already become my favorite distro to date.
Right now, if I were to list my favorite distro's in order, I'd say the following:
1. Manjaro
2. Fedora
3. Ubuntu
I also really like the work that the Manjaro folks team have been putting in. I know some folks might not be too content with the direction Manjaro took a little while back by becoming a bit more corporate, similar to what Ubuntu did, but honestly, if they're making the distro better, and it seems they are, I dont see that as a big deal. As long as they dont force the software on me like Windows 10 does from the a fresh install, I can't complain. If this opportunity makes the OS a better choice for the community, then I dont see that as an issue in my opinion.
I am also quite surprised by the capabilities of KDE and the large amounts of tweaks and customization you can make to it.
So if I were to rate my favorite DEs so far (from the ones I tried)
1. KDE Plasma 5.x
2. GNOME 40.x
With GNOME, I find the minimal install is great, but I think it lacks some of the customization you can do with KDE, which is too bad, for a DE that's been around longer than KDE (I think), I thjought there would be more advantages to using it over KDE, but actually, KDE is now my favorite DE. I can make a minimal build / config of KDE and it works just as great.
The next distro to test and see would be:
1.
EndeavourOS - Already dual booted with my Manjaro Install but I havent done much with it yet
2.
Arch Linux - I am playing with this right now in a VM, working on some tweaks, etc before I go down the route of installing it on my machine
3.
Debian - the unstable release version because I realized Ubuntu, and other distros are spun out from Debian so why not give it a try.
The big question, would I recommend Manjaro to a beginner, and the answer is yes, especially with the stable branch.
I also really enjoy setting up different DEs and Distros from scratch to my liking, although after a few times of doing it, I would get bored of doing the same thing over and over and also I rather have something that works well right out of the box with minimal troubles. This means that for distros like Arch, I think after a few installs/configs, I'd find it quite annoying to rebuild as there seems to be a lot more things to do. This makes me think that at some point I would probably stick to a Distro like Manjaro due to ease of use on my main machine, but still use Arch to test and learn stuff. Of course, I still need to try Arch, maybe my mind would change again
Anyways, I'll report back at the end of the 30 days of using Manjaro.