Manjaro is a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch. A new version based on the upcoming Xfce 4.12 has been released in anticipation of the actual launch.

The Manjaro developers have been working on the 0.9.0 branch of their distribution for quite some time and they have done some very interesting things so far. They are implementing a new installer called Calamares and they want to bring all the goodies from Xfce 4.12 on board. That's a little bit difficult right now because Xfce 4.12 is not ready just yet, but some of the components are usable.

This means that this current version of Manjaro is not really representative of the final OS, but it will allow users to get an idea of what they should expect from Xfce 4.12. The launch of this update for the desktop environment has been postponed a few times and it's taking the devs a while to pull off the package from the various participants.

Manjaro with Xfce 4.12 is blazing fast

Xfce was always lightweight and all the operating systems using it are usually very fast. We tested Manjaro 0.9.0, which is still under development itself, from a USB and it's incredibly fast. This would work great on an SSD.

"Early in the Xfce 4.12 development cycle there was talk of being ported to GTK3, but in the end, it will still be GTK2-based. GTK+2 is the default for Xfce 4.12 but there will be partial support for GTK+3 with Xf* programs being optionally allowed to support GTK3 in parallel (libxfce4ui already supports an optional parallel GTK3 install)," reads the announcement.

Also, the file manager has now received tabs, Thunar has received a number of new options, the xfwm4 window manager now features smart placement optimizations, and much more.

More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download Manjaro 0.9.0 Dev with Xfce 4.12 right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that the OS is far from complete and that it's recommended not to use a production machine for testing.