Lot of people hating on Garuda here, but I have loved it. Hopefully it goes as smoothly for you as it has for me - it’s been an absolute breath of fresh air. :)
Garuda is the OS I’ve been using as my main since 2021 when I switched from Ubuntu. While I love it, and Garuda is aimed at making Arch easier to use, it is still Arch. I would say if this is your first time installing Linux, Garuda probably isn’t the best choice, rather it’s something to move up to when you’re more familiar with the OS. For a first time user I’d suggest Ubuntu, It’s not the flashiest, and some people will doubtless deride it for this or that, but when it comes to being user friendly it’s pretty hard to beat. Then once you feel confident with that, aim for something more advanced like Garuda if you still want to do so. Good luck in moving over to Linux!
I’ve tried to install garuda last night, it didn’t go so well. It’s ironic that a debian ISO (bookworm) booted alright but the fancy arch-based garuda didn’t… Downloaded the MATE edition, put it on a USB stick, booted the machine aaaaand… no GUI with the nouveau driver, black screen/reboot with the proprietary driver. Nouveau couldn’t get my GPU to work, it’s an RTX 4600. After an hour or so of fiddling with elinks and duckduckgo I gave up, guess that I should wait for a ISO with the new nvidia 535 driver.
I am sorry for your trouble. Yeah linux sometimes is very tricky. I am still learning my way through, it is way harder than people advertise, but the results are very cool (while they are working).
Valeu irmão! To com linux em 2 notebooks aqui, uma pra trampo e outro pra game. Pra game ta dando trabalho, minha placa é nvidia 1060. até o youtube no firefox engasga.
If you haven’t used Linux before, just know that Garuda might not be the most stable. It wasn’t for me at least, I had to rescue it often. But that might have been because I didn’t use/update it regularly enough.
The experience with the live image was most worse versus installed. I don’t know why, but the live USB didn’t recognized my 2nd monitor, so I went ahead and installed it and everything worked great so far.
Well, You hopping directly to arch based distro but why? I know Garuda is stable than arch and made for gaming stuff but still. If you already made your mind to install Garuda then never mind whenever got a problem just post here.
I tried to use Garuda on Ventoy with a Nvidia 1080 and AMD CPU and it wouldn’t even boot. Mint, Debian, Manjaro, Open Suse, and many others, all booted via Ventoy on my Nvidia 1080 but Garuda failed to do so. It waited 30 seconds for the GUI to start and said “well you are on your own, cya.” and ditched me to a root console. Not the experience I want from my computer.
I would personally go for Nobara. It’s also a gaming-oriented distro but it’s made by the guy that does ProtonGE and WineGE, some of the best tools for gaming.
I used garuda for about a year and a half and loved it…mostly. I use a bluetooth headset and controller for gaming and it seems like after every single update, bluetooth broke and i either had to stuggle for hours to try and fix it, or just not use it till another update. Also, a lot of multiplayer games that use anticheat won’t work on linux. I just recently switch back to windows because of those hassles.
If those things aren’t comcerns for you then you should love your experience! Best of luck!
Occasionally a bad package gets pushed out, part of the nature of rolling distros. What I’ll give them credit for is their forums, seems to be the primary support spot and a quick search points you to recent threads on any fuck ups that occur. Someone usually figures out which package is the issue and mentions it, then you can downgrade it pretty easily.
Probably I will start to have problems but I would like to hear yours opinions.
The only problem you probably will have is the unfamiliarity.
Steam runs flawlessly with proton (check protondb to see compability and guides to your games).
Lutris allows to install non steam games with installation scripts you get from lutris.net
Wine can be a bit tricky at times but the community is very helpful.
Try to be open regarding the applications you will now have to deal with as most propiertary applications you know from Windows won’t easily work (but can be ported via wine if you really really need to)
The Software Center is your friend and gives you a huge variety of applications to download and try out.
I convinced my brother to move from Win10 to Fedora and he had a mostly seamless experience.
Only problems he encountered were with GTA V online play, offline worked but he could not go online, and with game modding. On Windows he used vortex mod manager which did not work for him with the Lutris install script.
I use Garuda, haven’t really had any issues with it so far. This is on a relatively high-spec desktop though, so can’t speak with confidence of laptop performance. It is arch based with a light install, and you can easily install/uninstall many popular packages by checking them on/off on a selection screen, so I’d imagine it’d still be good performance.
Only issue I’ve had was the time it became unbootable after I tried to change the system font so, uh, I recommend avoiding that.
Lot of people hating on Garuda here, but I have loved it. Hopefully it goes as smoothly for you as it has for me - it’s been an absolute breath of fresh air. :)
Me too, I am using and it is great! The Garuda team do a superb work.
Garuda is the OS I’ve been using as my main since 2021 when I switched from Ubuntu. While I love it, and Garuda is aimed at making Arch easier to use, it is still Arch. I would say if this is your first time installing Linux, Garuda probably isn’t the best choice, rather it’s something to move up to when you’re more familiar with the OS. For a first time user I’d suggest Ubuntu, It’s not the flashiest, and some people will doubtless deride it for this or that, but when it comes to being user friendly it’s pretty hard to beat. Then once you feel confident with that, aim for something more advanced like Garuda if you still want to do so. Good luck in moving over to Linux!
I’ve tried to install garuda last night, it didn’t go so well. It’s ironic that a debian ISO (bookworm) booted alright but the fancy arch-based garuda didn’t… Downloaded the MATE edition, put it on a USB stick, booted the machine aaaaand… no GUI with the nouveau driver, black screen/reboot with the proprietary driver. Nouveau couldn’t get my GPU to work, it’s an RTX 4600. After an hour or so of fiddling with elinks and duckduckgo I gave up, guess that I should wait for a ISO with the new nvidia 535 driver.
I am sorry for your trouble. Yeah linux sometimes is very tricky. I am still learning my way through, it is way harder than people advertise, but the results are very cool (while they are working).
continua forte no linux aí mano, vale a pena insistir :)
Valeu irmão! To com linux em 2 notebooks aqui, uma pra trampo e outro pra game. Pra game ta dando trabalho, minha placa é nvidia 1060. até o youtube no firefox engasga.
Mas tirando isso tudo é muito dahora.
Enjoy!
Thanks! So far it is been great!
If you haven’t used Linux before, just know that Garuda might not be the most stable. It wasn’t for me at least, I had to rescue it often. But that might have been because I didn’t use/update it regularly enough.
Thanks for the heads up!
From the first day using it is looking great, but yeah, many people are telling me tro try Pop OS instead, if I have any problem I might jump over.
Live image, try it first before installing.
The experience with the live image was most worse versus installed. I don’t know why, but the live USB didn’t recognized my 2nd monitor, so I went ahead and installed it and everything worked great so far.
Well, You hopping directly to arch based distro but why? I know Garuda is stable than arch and made for gaming stuff but still. If you already made your mind to install Garuda then never mind whenever got a problem just post here.
I already used Manjaro before, so I liked rolling distro (I have a server with ubuntu that I am realling postponing to update because it might break).
Although many people are telling me to go with Pop OS instead. I don’t know, I might change in the future.
I tried to use Garuda on Ventoy with a Nvidia 1080 and AMD CPU and it wouldn’t even boot. Mint, Debian, Manjaro, Open Suse, and many others, all booted via Ventoy on my Nvidia 1080 but Garuda failed to do so. It waited 30 seconds for the GUI to start and said “well you are on your own, cya.” and ditched me to a root console. Not the experience I want from my computer.
@MJBrune @caboclo These things happen and could indicate a faulty iso image on your usb stick…
I did a checksum and it was fine.
@MJBrune Maybe try an older/newer release of the Distro iso?
Eh, I think the issue is more ventoy rather than the distro or the iso. That said, I was using the latest offered, 230501.
It actually might be ventoy yeah. I had some recent issues with it but things worked fine with other software.
I would personally go for Nobara. It’s also a gaming-oriented distro but it’s made by the guy that does ProtonGE and WineGE, some of the best tools for gaming.
Honestly, I wouldn’t use a distro that’s maintained by a single person.
I say, using an Android System that’s maintained by a single person.
You know what, go ahead, Nobara looks good.
I go for the best of both and use the Nobara kernel in Garuda
wait. How?
You just have to download it from the AUR and compile it. Then Garuda makes it super easy to pick your kernel in the boot settings.
pretty cool, what are the advantages?
@caboclo @DARbarian It’s heavy game dependent: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/linux-gaming/1337111-benchmarking-the-status-of-distros-for-games
I can’t see the results :(
@caboclo This is the link to the corresponding results: https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2207269-NE-BHZSTEAM854
I used garuda for about a year and a half and loved it…mostly. I use a bluetooth headset and controller for gaming and it seems like after every single update, bluetooth broke and i either had to stuggle for hours to try and fix it, or just not use it till another update. Also, a lot of multiplayer games that use anticheat won’t work on linux. I just recently switch back to windows because of those hassles.
If those things aren’t comcerns for you then you should love your experience! Best of luck!
Occasionally a bad package gets pushed out, part of the nature of rolling distros. What I’ll give them credit for is their forums, seems to be the primary support spot and a quick search points you to recent threads on any fuck ups that occur. Someone usually figures out which package is the issue and mentions it, then you can downgrade it pretty easily.
Garuda forum is truly great!
I had to install a Virtual machine for playnite but now I’m gaming complete on Linux! Also remember you can have xbox gamepass on the browser
Lutris doesnt offer the same playnite functionality?
Good hint! thanks!
The only problem you probably will have is the unfamiliarity.
Steam runs flawlessly with proton (check protondb to see compability and guides to your games).
Lutris allows to install non steam games with installation scripts you get from lutris.net
Wine can be a bit tricky at times but the community is very helpful.
Try to be open regarding the applications you will now have to deal with as most propiertary applications you know from Windows won’t easily work (but can be ported via wine if you really really need to)
The Software Center is your friend and gives you a huge variety of applications to download and try out.
Happy journey!
Thank you very much!
All your tips were great and I am in love with my Garuda!
I convinced my brother to move from Win10 to Fedora and he had a mostly seamless experience.
Only problems he encountered were with GTA V online play, offline worked but he could not go online, and with game modding. On Windows he used vortex mod manager which did not work for him with the Lutris install script.
I use Garuda, haven’t really had any issues with it so far. This is on a relatively high-spec desktop though, so can’t speak with confidence of laptop performance. It is arch based with a light install, and you can easily install/uninstall many popular packages by checking them on/off on a selection screen, so I’d imagine it’d still be good performance.
Only issue I’ve had was the time it became unbootable after I tried to change the system font so, uh, I recommend avoiding that.
Thanks! Garuda is working great so far. Linux Zen Kernel is really great
Garuda is definitely the right choice for your use case.