I’ve always felt that Manjaro holds an untenable position on the Arch derivative spectrum. It’s a weird mix of difficult (inherited from Arch) and fragile setup out of the box.

The best way to use it is to accept all the decisions that were put into that setup and not tinker with it… but that runs counter to everything that Arch stands for. So it keeps attracting exactly the wrong kind of user, who will tinker and get frustrated, and eventually break it, and then go around telling everybody that it sucks.

IMO it works well for two types of users:

• A person who’s desktop-savvy but not particularly Linux savvy, who doesn’t have root rights. Provided someone else handles stuff like the initial install, adding apps, and running the updates for them.
• Someone’s who’s an experienced Linux user and appreciates the “Archiness” but has grown tired of babysitting their daily driver distro and wants shit to “just work” for the most part. But can also fix it if something happens.

It’s a rather specific niche.