Over the past week, Garuda Linux has been in the news again . The reason is that they've released new ISOs, while others that weren't being actively maintained or didn't seem to generate as much interest as other editions have been discontinued. The distro is based on Arch Linux, but it's one of those that's easy to install thanks to its user interface, which is already Calamares. That's the first thing to know.
Garuda Linux is a very young distribution, only three to four years old, depending on when you define its exact age, as even the project's contributors have some doubts. It offers a lot of interesting features, but is it the best option for every situation? Clearly, the answer is no, not always and not for every user, but we're here to help you decide if you're considering your specific needs.
Garuda Linux is based on Arch Linux
Like EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux is based on Arch Linux . It's not like Manjaro, which, although based on Arch, also has its own philosophy and repositories, but it is more like EndeavourOS because both are more "good children" and respect their roots more. In the Linux community, there are comments and jokes about Arch Linux, such as the one about Jennifer Ortega having to install it without Archinstall or any scripts to be able to play Wednesday from The Addams Family (there are more jokes involving Jennifer Ortega, Wednesday, and something difficult or hard). But what actually happens in a live session, allowing you to launch Calamares with a pre-selected desktop environment, is a completely different matter.
We might think that the difficult part of Arch Linux is choosing everything ourselves during installation, and that's only partly true. The thing about Arch Linux is that "cooking" everything yourself and doing it right isn't easy, and we have to be prepared to solve any problems we encounter when, to continue the culinary analogy, we start eating our meal. EndeavourOS is the successor to AntergOS, so we could say it has a considerable amount of experience. Garuda Linux is younger, and it has many things that make it special. This, which in theory can only be positive, is what should make us consider whether it's a good option for us.
The Zen Kernel
To give a few examples, and although nothing unusual should happen, Garuda uses the Zen kernel and the Btrfs file system . Most Linux distributions use the standard kernel and EXT4, and if something goes wrong with our kernel or file system, the solution depends on our knowledge or a quick search/query to an AI. If something happens to one of these two components of Garuda Linux, and we don't know how to fix it, we'll have to look for documentation, and there's less of it.
garuda-update and its recent problems
"Spizaetus" brings, as one of its new features, improvements to garuda-update , the software updater for Garuda Linux. I don't consider myself an advanced Linux user, not compared to some of the people I'm in contact with, but I do have a basic understanding of many things. When I tried to update with garuda-update and encountered errors, I knew how to fix them: with pacman or Pamac. The problem: the official update tool is unreliable; the solution: use the alternatives I know.
For the user who uses Ubuntu for the first time, does not know that there are alternative stores and that using dual boot seems like a hacker, seeing that Garuda Linux cannot update can be a dead end.
What I mean by this and the previous point is that Garuda Linux is likely to show you some errors , and if you're unfamiliar with pacman, Pamac, Bauh, or Octopi, it's because you don't know much about Linux or the solutions to apply. In these cases, I wouldn't recommend using Garuda Linux.
To take into account the Zen kernel
The Zen kernel is the one created by Linus Torvalds with modifications to improve its performance on desktop or laptop computers. It's edited by "hackers" with improvements in mind, such as lower latency or improved battery life, but there are many different computers on the market and the Zen kernel might not be a good fit for your machine.
I noticed it on my laptop, although I have to confess that I have not installed it on the hard drive; Yes, on a non-Live USB: one moment it works very fluidly, surprising, and the next it feels heavy. Perhaps this would not have been noticed if I installed it natively and on an SSD, but I did notice it in my configuration and the autonomy went down instead of improving.
I need constant backups and I don't have a secondary disk
Garuda Linux has an ace up its sleeve that's like saying "forget everything that came before": its "snapshots." That's the English word used to refer to captured backups . If an inexperienced user touches something they shouldn't and something starts to go wrong, they can "go back in time" to a previous state where everything was working correctly. This is one of the benefits of using Btrfs, which allows the creation of these types of backups.
And it does so on the same hard drive . Anyone who has used Windows will know that there's something similar called "Restore Points," and these are saved on the same drive where the operating system is installed. Time Shift is great, but it needs its own partition or a secondary drive.
Who is Garuda Linux for?
I will end the article with a two-point summary. In this first we will say who Garuda Linux can be for:
- For those who, without being great experts in Linux, do know what is out there and how to solve basic problems.
- For those looking for good performance and the Zen kernel suits their computer well.
- Users looking for an Arch base that is quite faithful to the original philosophy.
- Those who want restore points and not worry about getting them in Linux.
- Gamers or gamers, since it has a special edition with many emulators installed by default. The Zen kernel is the best for playing on Linux.
Who Garuda Linux is not for
- Users without any experience in Linux.
- Owners of a simple Raspberry Pi type board. It's not that they can't have it on any computer, it's that there are only x86_64 images.
- Owners of a computer for which the Zen kernel, for whatever reason, does not suit them well. Or well, if we combine it with the first point, because Garuda offers any kernel, but you have to make changes with your own tool after installing from scratch.
Downloads available at this link.