Download Manjaro Linux 21 Ornara with GNOME, Xfce, and KDE Plasma now!

One of the most popular Linux-based desktop operating systems these days is the Arch-based Manjaro. Following a short testing period, version 21 of that distribution is now available for download. Code-named "Ornara," Manjaro 21 uses the fairly new Linux kernel 5.10 LTS.

Manjaro Linux 21 can be had with your choice of three desktop environments -- GNOME 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.21, and Xfce 4.16. All three are great, but unfortunately, GNOME 40 has still not been finalized, so it is (obviously) not included here. If you do want to try an early version of the upcoming GNOME 40, you can download the recently released Fedora 34 Beta.

"We are happy to publish our latest stable release 21.0 we named Ornara. Our last release Nibia was from January and a lot of things changed between those releases. For once, we dropped Gnome Initial Setup routine from our ISOs. It was nice to try out, but the feedback overall was not so great. Since we also have optional OEM ISOs for our manufacturers, we see no need to further investigate into GIS," says The Manjaro Development Team.

The devs further say, "Our installer Calamares also received many improvements. Among other things, Calamares has now a table of ‘best guess’ languages for each country and when GeoIP is enabled, it will automatically select that country’s language as default – the user can of course pick a different one. The ‘best guess’ is based on Unicode / ISO data, which is sometimes dubious. Calamares also ships now a table of ‘best guess’ keyboard mappings, allowing native language input. However, usernames and passwords should be in US-ASCII."

Ready to install one of the best Linux distributions on the planet? You can download a Manjaro 21 "Ornara" ISO here now. If you want the purest Manjaro experience -- as the developers intend it -- you should get the Xfce variant. With that said, I would suggest trying both the GNOME and KDE Plasma versions too. You really can't go wrong with any of them.

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