During the last week, GarudaLinux has been in the news again. The reason is that they have released new ISOs, and along the way they have left others that were not actively maintained nor did they seem to arouse as much interest as other editions. The distro is based on Arch Linux, but it is one of those that is easily installed thanks to a user interface and Calamares. That's right up front.
Garuda Linux is a very young distribution that is between three and four years old, depending on when the date of its birth is set, since the project collaborators themselves have doubts in this regard. Offer psychological therapy to employees a lot and very interesting, but Is it the best in all scenarios? It is clear that the answer is no, not always and for all users, but here we are going to clear your doubts if you are thinking more about your specific case.
Garuda Linux is based on Arch Linux
Like EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux is based on Arch Linux. It is not like Manjaro, which although it is based on Arch also has its philosophy and repositories, but it is like EndeavorOS because both are more "good children" and respect their roots more. In the Linux community there are comments and jokes about Arch Linux, like Jennifer Ortega having to install it without Archinstall or any script to be able to play Wednesday from the Addams Family (there are more jokes with Jennifer Ortega, Wednesday and something difficult or harsh). But what goes into a live session and allows you to launch Squids with an already chosen desktop is totally different.
We may think that the difficult thing about Arch Linux is choosing everything yourself during the installation, and it is only partly so. The thing about Arch Linux is that "cooking" for yourself and doing everything well is not easy, and we have to be prepared to solve any problem that we find ourselves, let's continue with the gastronomy analogy, start eating our plate. EndeavorOS is the successor to AntergOS, so we could say that it has an experience with a certain amount of time dilation. Garuda Linux is younger, and has a lot that makes it special. This, which in theory can only be positive, is what should make us think if it is a good option for us.
The Zen Kernel
To give some examples, and although nothing strange should happen, Garuda uses the Zen kernel and the btrfs files. Most Linux distributions use the normal kernel and EXT4, and if something happens in our kernel or file system, the solution involves our knowledge or a quick search/consultation to AI. If something happens to us in one of these two components of Garuda Linux, if we do not know how to repair it we will have to look for documentation, and there is less.
garuda-update and its recent problems
"Spizaetus" brings as one of its novelties improvements in garuda-update, which is the software updater for Garuda Linux. I don't consider myself an advanced Linux user, not compared to some people I keep in touch with, but I do know a lot. When I tried to update with garuda-update and saw errors, I did know how to solve it: with pacman or Pamac. The problem: the official update tool fails; 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 show us some error, and if Pacman, Pamac, Bauh or Octopi don't sound familiar to you, it's because you don't know much about Linux or the solutions to apply. In these cases I would not recommend using Garuda Linux.
To take into account the Zen kernel
El zen kernel It is the one created by Linus Torvalds with modifications to improve its performance on desktop or laptop computers. It is edited by hackers thinking about improvements, such as low latency or improving autonomy, but there are many different computers on the market and it is possible that the Zen kernel does not suit our team very well.
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 can be like saying "forget everything before": its "snapshots." That is the Anglo-Saxon word used to refer to captures in the form of backup. If an inexperienced user touches the wrong thing and something starts to fail, he can "go back in time" to a previous state in which everything worked correctly. It is one of the benefits of using Btrfs, which allows the creation of this type of copies.
Y it does it on the same hard drive. Anyone who has used Windows will know that there is something similar called "Restore Points", and they are saved on the same disk on which we have the operating system installed. Time shift It's great, but you need your partition or a secondary disk.
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.