Manjaro 20.2 “Nibia” Release: Encrypted systems support without encrypted/boot partition

Manjaro Linux is designed to work "straight out of the box" with more focus on user-friendliness and accessibility, and Manjaro 20.2 “Nibia” has continued with the user-friendly-focus bringing updated GNOME, KDE and Xfce editions for the popular desktop Linux distribution.

While Manjaro 20.2 “Nibia” also comes with latest versions of Pamac 9.5.12, Kernel 5.9 and 5.4 LTS, and other new features. Among the features, it will now support encrypted systems without encrypted /boot partition.

What this means is that it will enable graphical password dialogs, with non-us keymaps for inputting passwords and takes up to 1 minute shorter boot times compared to full disk encryption, even as automatic partitioning uses full disk encryption by default.

What's New in Manjaro 20.2 “Nibia” Release?

Manjaro as an Arch Linux-based rolling distribution is available in three distinct editions, namely: GNOME, KDE and Xfce desktop environment.

The GNOME edition has several new features including the latest GNOME desktop version 3.38.2 codenamed “Orbis” and it assures of better performance, with custom App grid, parental control, share Wi-Fi Hotspot via QR Code, new Welcome Tour app, and multi-monitor support, among others.

Also, the GNOME edition now offers two automatic window tiling managers, namely: Pop Shell (keyboard-driven) and the touch-friendly Material Shell, which can be enabled in the Gnome-Layout-Switcher.

For the KDE edition, the new features include the latest Plasma 5.20 desktop environment, which offers Wayland improvements, grid-like system tray, beautiful wallpaper, new power-saving options, and touch support in dolphin, among others.

And lastly, the XFCE edition brings an integrated and leading-edge Xfce experience with Xfce 4.14. The stable Xfce is known to pair well with cutting edge rolling release such as Manjaro, ensuring reliable performance which only a few distros can claim to offer.

How to Download or Upgrade to Manjaro 20.2?

If you are new to Manjaro and want to install Manjaro 20.2 from scratch, you can download the ISO image for your desired desktop environment from the official website.

And as Manjaro is a rolling distribution, there is need to update the all packages and the package database to switch to the new version, Manjaro 20.2.

You can use the following command on your terminal to upgrade your system to the latest Manjaro release:

sudo pacman -Syu

Then, you'll also need to use the below command to enforce a full refresh of the package database and update all packages on your system.

sudo pacman -Syyu

The desktop has been trimmed so that it should now use approximately 40% less ram as before and now also, using Wayland on non-Nvidia hardware is the default option.