I've observed a lot of recent Manjaro adoption lately (I don't know what the real numbers are). Anecdotal, but in my social circles I'm seeing people moving from Ubuntu to either Manjaro or Arch.

Don't be surprised when all the mainstream distros switch to sandboxed app model as the preferred one. Distro-based packaging of the entire world is hiting the not enough manpower problem today and eventually will be eventually relegated to super fans distro only, with similar status as Amiga has today.

What is Manjaro?

Best way to describe it is: a user-friendly version of Arch that is based on the AUR (Arch User Repository).

As Arch Linux user I am completely confused. Looks like there is no official comparison page like [1]. Web search first entries [2], [3] gives another picture — more stable, graphical installer, graphical package manager, hardware detection, prepackaged desktop environments — that I can relate to.

Nothing about "based on the AUR". Because it is liability. It is insecure, have to check PKGBUILD each install and update.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_compared_to_other_...

[2] https://linuxconfig.org/manjaro-linux-vs-arch-linux

[3] https://itsfoss.com/manjaro-vs-arch-linux/

I should have been more clear. In terms of package management Manjaro has access to the AUR, but it's unsupported. Manjaro does not have access to official Arch repositories. Sorry, I should have said "based on Arch" not "based on the AUR." https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository

Ok, I would not recommend Arch as a first Linux distro, Arch based and easy to start is a plus. That said I've seen troubled Manjaro user on xmonad IRC, we tracked problem to AUR package, it worked fine on Arch.

Yeah, Arch Linux is definitely not for beginners. The install process alone is hands-on and requires users to be experienced with command line configuration. Arch is for power users who want a ports-based Linux with great package management (pacman).