Manjaro Moving Ahead With Snap Support, Bundling Proprietary FreeOffice

Arch-based Linux distribution Manjaro has issued their newest testing update with some controversial changes.

Manjaro is moving ahead with their support of Snap packages spearheaded by Ubuntu/Canonical. Xfce, GNOME, and KDE spins of Manjaro will ship with fpakman for managing of both Snaps and Flatpaks on the system. Fpakman is a GUI for Flatpak/Snap management as an alternative to GNOME Software or KDE Discover.

On Majaro 18.1 this will allow accessing the Snap Store for easier access to more software, like the Spotify music player.

As another controversial move announced yesterday, Manjaro will begin shipping with FreeOffice by default as their office suite. They are bundling the proprietary Softmaker FreeOffice suite with Manjaro in order to provide "the best compatibility" to Microsoft Office.

In other news, Manjaro testing has moved to the Xfce 4.14-pre3 release, many Haskell updates have landed, and they are moving to the latest Linux kernel.

More details in the Manjaro Forums.