Are you happy with Garuda overall

Garuda Community
1

Hi there fellow Garudians.

I was just curious as to how most users would rate their experiences with Garuda in comparisson to other distros you’ve used in the past. Keep in mind that Garuda is not recommended for low spec PC’s, or for use in a VM.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your experience with Garuda?

Generally, I try to avoid going to Distrowatch too often as I believe their distro rankings are completely unscientific. What I do however like to keep tabs on is the feedback on how Linux users rate their Garuda experience.

Sadly, as Garuda gains more notoriety we also start to be targeted by haters for whatever reason. Here are two disturbing examples of recent ratings of Garuda by vocal haters on Distrowatch recently:

Version: 220101
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-03-24
Votes: 0
Garuda Linux is a very pointless and noticeably heavy operating system, as well as with unreasonably high requirements for the target computer. This distribution contains many unnecessary components that end users will never need. After installing Garuda Linux on a computer, which I haven’t used before (and which fully complies with the system requirements of Garuda Linux), my impressions of the said distribution are very sad. However, in order to spend your time completely meaninglessly, Garuda Linux is very suitable.

Version: 220101
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-03-22
Votes: 0 First off, the community has been unhelpful and rude. When opening applications, they respond slowly and crash often. A lot of system resources of used just sitting there with no applications open. Way too many applications are installed by default which I’ll never use and it seems like a random pick of the hat what is included. I also had issues trying to get other packages from the repository installed. When I finally was able to get updates installed, it asked me to restart and I did, and wow, the boot loader was broken when restarting- that is unacceptable. This is just an overall resource intensive, bloated, slow and buggy distro with an unhelpful and rude community. Stay far away from this.

When Garuda was relatively unknown we used to have great reviews and ratings on Distrowatch. Experienced Linux users that understood how Arch works usually left stellar reviews of Garuda there in the past. These days our ratings from reviews on DW has started to slide quite considerably from what they once were. Whether this is a targeted campaign against Garuda, or simply a result of clueless users testing out Garuda who have no understanding of how Arch, (or Linux in general) works is debatable.

If you feel reviews such as I posted above are unfair and would like to add some counterbalance please feel free to leave your honest assessment and review of Garuda at Distrowatch.

Thank you for your time, and consideration on this issue.

10 Likes
2

You know my answer, at least 11.

8 Likes
3

I would also give Garuda 11.
I was a early adopter of Garuda It can never be my No1 Distro users that know me Know i'm a Arch user,
They also know I criticise all the 99% Arch distros The Manjaros, EndevourOS, and the look we make a better Arch we change the wallpaper Arches,
Garuda has that magic feeling just like Arch its a work of art It does what it says on the box.
I could rant on all night but I'll spare you all my dyslexic writing and leave you with this you have never heard and never will hear me criticise Garuda its my number 2 Distro its a distro in its own right and its ideas are poorly copied by other so called Arch distros

9 Likes
4

I can not give it a number as it would not be fair so only admin,s can see it!
I give garuda a 12.5
Whoops not hidden :smiley:
I started using garuda a year ago and never stopped :smiley:

7 Likes
5

My favourite distribution hands down and likely always will be thanks to the unique features. I do understand the points made about bloat however. Like are 3 terminal emulators necessary for example? I do wish there was something between barebones and dragonised with a normal level of applications instead of so much that feels unnecessary to many people. But that can always be debloated after all anyway. I just feel that providing so many applications out of the box isn't the best idea because of heavy resource usage seemingly as KDE uses around 3gb on this Distro out of the box as opposed to other distributions where it can be like 700-800mb. And people that want these applications, wouldn't it be easier to just let them install manually or through the setup assistant instead of bundling them? This would also reduce the size of the ISO too I guess. Anyway those are my thoughts as the system sometimes feels a little sluggish when opening the web browser but I definitely need to spend some time debloating and checking system resources.

3 Likes
6

10's....10's....10's across the board! Speaking from the gaming end of it, Garuda is king, or Queen, or whatever. You have so many options all falling under the stellar Garuda Settings/Gaming Manager, that make gaming, the complicated monster it is, easy. I mean, it is like a toy-box of goodies. What other distro has this?

I will mirror @Grimy1928 remark about some "bloat" out of the box, yeah, definitely don't need three terminal programs. Unless there is a specific need to have all three, then maybe some edits are in order, and that goes for any program the user can install via Garuda Settings Manager themselves. No need to have the application out and on display, unless there are some specific custom settings or something that would demand such.

I wouldn't pay much attention to outside reviews. You can't appease everyone, and the Linux community is very diverse in their needs and systems. I will end with saying, thanks for all the hard work put in to make this show happen. You devs are the best!

5 Likes
7

Sampling from an engaged user forum is also pretty unscientific too, however, reading these reviews I find my experience to be totally opposite. The forums have been very helpful. There have been several "user will never need this" situations that I found myself needing -- and the solution was already implemented for me.

These biased reviewers don't get to make the determination of what I (a user) need anyway. You all do a really good job of this.

I haven't had a better experience on any other distro, although my sampling is limited. Scoring based on best personal experiences, this is a 10/10.

Feel good about the project you've all built. No software is perfect, and no software can fill every use case. Garuda does very well in its own right.

5 Likes
8

I would give it an 8 out of 10. Everything works great but I like bare bones and manually doing things. No doubt Garuda has all the bells and whistles for anyone who needs them.
Keep up the GREAT work! :+1:

6 Likes
9

8/10
it's my daily driver.
i only go over to my windoze drive to play the odd game thanks to nvidia's driver f@660try.

-1 point for the permanent TL nerf.
-1 point for the lack of ToS enforcement regarding the sociopolitical virtue signaling. Where's the Russian flag?

1 Like
10

My score for garuda is a 10/10 i refuse to give any lower as i honestly have not had any issues with it

(Besides having it crash as i try to get display brightness working)

The dragonised editions do come with alot of stuff that majority of users wont need, however its just as easy to uninstall the stuff that is not needed

I am only just starting to learn arch linux but there is no need for the negative reviews on distro watch, i feel majority of the people leaving the reviews most likely came straight from windows and had no experience with arch prior to changing

Arch linux is most definitely not a distro you can jump feet first into, it takes alot of trial and error and will test your patience if you have to get certain things working... great example is a laptop with optimus ( brightness controlls will not work out of box)

Probably my biggest issue with garuda is that it uses 3GB of ram just in a fresh install so lots of ram is Definitely required and this is actually noted on garudas download page i have no issues with it but its definitely the most ram i have ever seen a distro use

As for the community, i may be new here but i have not seen anything to suggest that the community is rude

I think rather than people looking at distro watch they should actually look at feedback on here

Garuda is something the devs should be really proud of and you have a amazing community :heart: that YOU have built

6 Likes
11

I would give my experience with Garuda a solid 10 compared to other distros I've used in the past. The KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition is simply amazing. It's the best out of the box gaming experience that doesn't lock you out of a normal desktop.

The amazing packages the flavor comes with (gaming related packages like Proton-GE, and other nice things like Latte Dock) makes it easy for me to recommend and to also set up for others to enjoy as well. I know some people might complain about "bloat", but on the other hand I do appreciate the time and effort put forth to get a nice package list going. It really reduces the time to set up new machines.

Another great thing I like about Garuda, is garuda-update. Loved what I saw in the past with it handling distro related system package conflicts. Also that BTRFS related fix in the past was super fast, and loved seeing those changes to fstab notated with the fix so I won't forget where it was originally altered from.

I have never used any one Linux distro for more than a month until Garuda. None of the other distros offered a full complete package for me to do all the things I wanted to do with it.

6 Likes
12

I'll give it 9.5 because to be fair, the distro does need some getting used to. But once I wrapped my mind around your idea, well, I gotta give it to you: it will be really really hard for anyone to make a desktop OS that tops Garuda.

And on the lack of memory of wether or not I gave y'all a review on dw, I'll be on my way to do it u.u

7 Likes
13

It’s fine and well to write your review of Garuda here in the thread, but don’t forget the request at hand:

Edit: I just posted mine, and it is super easy–you don’t need to sign up for an account or anything. You guys who already wrote something up can just copy and paste it over and call it a day.

5 Likes
14

TL nerf? What's that?

15

'trust level'
you can't even click 'like' on my posts.

censorship- it's what happens when leftist commies control anything.

16

People can like your posts lol. Maybe people here just don't like them enough to like your posts though

2 Likes
17

the icon doesn't exist for me.

1 Like
18

And that's censorship to you?

Anyway this is OT anyway lol

2 Likes
19

I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I didn’t like your post because this:

This is either a tasteless joke, or…well I guess I just hope you have an off-putting sense of humor.

As for this bloat stuff:

Sway only has one, but still–this is what you guys consider bloat?

Permissions Size User Date Modified Name
.rwxr-xr-x  5.7M root 20 Feb 19:56   alacritty

Its only 5.7 megs. :joy:

Also, if you really want those 5.7 megs for, I don’t know, a single wallpaper file :rofl: you can just uninstall whichever package you don’t use. :man_shrugging:

11 Likes
20

In my short time with Garuda I've been pretty impressed, for a number of reasons. One, it offers everything that draws me towards more "mainline" distributions - a sweet GUI installer, a pre-configured user environment, a good handful of editions/spins. Not only does it have these things, it does them arguably better than some other more prominent distributions I've otherwise liked (coughanacondainstallercoughcough). Two, it has everything I love about Arch - the massive and unrivaled package set offered by the AUR, the most readily tweak-able and extensible system (save maybe Gentoo? but I've never had the balls), and the general ability to do literally whatever with your system with less of a headache and more transparency than anything else. Three, it has none of the drawbacks of either - I'm not locked in to limited repos, rigid structures, obnoxious forced adoption of what's new in the mainstream, but I also don't have to spend hours configuring my system by hand or sorting out why my very common wireless card worked fine from chroot but broke upon first boot. Four, the performance, even just right out of the box, is excellent.

Sure, maybe the defaults are a little more "opinionated," but with a truly Arch-based system it has to be. With so many packages and options available, decisions have to be made. And yeah, the RAM use is a little higher, but with a relative abundance, why not use it if my system is going to play just as nice as the absurd time-sink of my 300mb idle Arch-BSPWM setup. Garuda is honest and apparent from the front page what it's focuses are, and makes no false claims about being lightweight.

As for the specific quips made here in the reviews you've quoted, my experience has been mostly the opposite. The community seems helpful and responsive, provided you've done your own legwork first, but that's not unreasonable or uncommon for the world of Arch and its derivatives. If you want or need it, there are plenty of distros that will hold your hand and provide fully end-user-ready systems, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's the case. As for bloat, I am using the GNOME edition, which might come with a bit less than the main dr460nized edition, but I've not found it unreasonable. I only pared down by maybe one or two apps, and those were cases of replacing things with equivalent solutions that I personally preferred. Plus, the comforts that Garuda provides (especially the fantastic suite of Garuda tools) are well worth a bit of personal tuning you're probably going to want to do anyway. I've already mentioned the "heaviness," but again - Garuda does not claim to be anything it's not, and I've found whatever has been done to make it that way has provided notable benefit. And, as they say, "unused RAM is wasted RAM."

I have had the occasional issue, but nothing uncharacteristic of any Arch-based distro, nor anything I couldn't troubleshoot through. It's honestly something I enjoy about Linux in general, and if it's something that you're incapable of, Arch is probably not for you.

I'm working on compiling a more extensive feedback post, but for now I'll cap things here. It's a 9/10 from me. Much love to the devs and community :heart: I look forward to spending more time here.

10 Likes