I’m not trying to start some distro flamewar, but manjaro is considered quite shady compared to basically all the other distros by taking arch maintainer’s work without attribution, as well as the recent HN post about them. Sure, settle on any of the distros, but the odd one.
About the shadiness: every project takes or is inspired by other projects, none have come up in a vacuum. Even with the sketchy reputation, Manjaro seems to have the support needed to actually turn into a Linux winner in the long-term.
Also, I would say that most of the Manjaro installs actually want an Arch install, they just don’t/can’t do the manual installation due to not having enough time/expertise. So these numbers are not really telling in my opinion.
Distrowatch doesn't (and can't) measure actual popularity or distro usage, only how many people clicked a link on their page.
Manjaro seems to be a rather poorly run distro.
1. They just blanket delay every package from Arch for two weeks for higher "stability". That includes security patches! [1]
2. Specifically on the Pinephone, they've shipped WIP patches to get the camera working, breaking a lot of stuff in the process and adding an additional burden on the project maintainers who now have to deal with manjaro's users in the issue tracker for something that hasn't been released officially. [2]
They've also managed to let one of their website certificates expire for the FOURTH time.
I have always been super confused about MX Linux being number one on distrowatch but have literally never heard of anyone running it in my (probably limited) circle of friends, colleagues, podcasts I listen to, etc.
I was aware that they just measured clicks on websites, but I would be super interested if there is any more info on why MX Linux is always number one on distrowatch? Do they use bots or something to generate traffic? Or do tons of people actually visit their site?