Is it possible to install Garuda apps like the assistant/themes on another distro? Does it have to be an Arch distro? What if I want it on Gentoo? In love with Garuda(I have it on my laptop), but conflicted on switching off Gentoo. If I wanted, could I download the chaotic-AUR files and convert them to a Gentoo package? Really like the mokka theme and really enjoy the system assistant, but really addicted to Gentoo’s portage. Any input would be appreciated.
themes, just copy and paste between machines does it usually. /usr/share/themes or /usr/share/icons etc (from arco to void to devuan etc etc over the years).
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I think you have run into the self learn self customization phase, meaning there won’t be one easy way to fix all your interests. You have to figure out that on your own every tiny detail that has to be changed.
If you wanna keep it Garuda and maybe mimick portage, idk… you could use paru, it supports building from source most of the things. I know you can also achieve this with pacman.
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Nope. Designed for Garuda, and no intention of external support: Applications · GitLab
If you put in some effort to apply and want to manually reapply as things change: Themes and Settings · GitLab
Absolutely not. Chaotic-AUR only supports Arch-based distros.
What is not to your liking about the package building process?
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What is not to your liking about the package building process?
It’s really just my love of portage, I’ve used arch extensively. I love the idea of minimal installation with configuration with USE flags. If there was a minimal installation with just Garuda apps on KDE-plasma, I’d download that to use the portage package from AUR and just configure everything from there, but this is really niche and basically only my use case. Realistically, something like a custom installation template for Garuda would be a better option. Other distros that are preconfigured offer this like, I.e., Bazzite.
If you put in some effort to apply and want to manually reapply as things change: Themes and Settings · GitLab
Thank you for letting me know this with the link, I will do that immediately.
Nope. Designed for Garuda, and no intention of external support: Applications · GitLab
That makes sense, Garuda is a beautiful arch based distro that JUST works. I greatly appreciate everything the team has done while my time using it on my NVIDIA laptop.
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If you wanna keep it Garuda and maybe mimick portage , idk… you could use paru, it supports building from source most of the things. I know you can also achieve this with pacman.
I will have to read more on this to see if pacman/paru has something to USE flags, that’s really the main thing with portage I like.
Garuda KDE Lite exists
That would not be something I could encourage. It’s possible to have a Gentoo Prefix on Arch, but it’s not easy, nor is it something I would want to try and give support for. It’s important to internalize that it would ONLY work in the context of a Prefix. You cannot replace Pacman entirely, nor should you want to.
What are you meaning by this? If you wish to customize, you can get KDE Lite and be as creative as you wish.
I don’t want to carrot-and-stick you toward Arch if you are already comfortable in a Gentoo environment. There is no 1:1 equivalent, and package management is not done the same way (in multiple senses of the phrase). Really, the best answer would probably be to stay with Gentoo, because those demands just can’t be met. If you really want to switch, you’ll need to also switch your mindset a bit, and at least make some sacrifice.
If your goal is just hyper-optimization in the build process, and you are willing to make the changes for Arch, then CachyOS might be an appropriate choice.
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As an aside: CachyOS’s own browser is no longer maintained and is outdated.
Fortunately, there’s the precompiled Firedragon 
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Thank you once again for all your responses.
Garuda KDE Lite exists
Can’t believe I overlooked this, my apologies.
That would not be something I could encourage. It’s possible to have a Gentoo Prefix on Arch, but it’s not easy, nor is it something I would want to try and give support for. It’s important to internalize that it would ONLY work in the context of a Prefix. You cannot replace Pacman entirely, nor should you want to.
I see… yeah, that makes sense, I couldn’t even get portage from AUR anyway didn’t build right and didn’t really want to spend the time to fix it. I love Garuda and I love Gentoo, but honestly Garuda works better for my laptop, so I will keep it as is, most likely.
What are you meaning by this? If you wish to customize, you can get KDE Lite and be as creative as you wish.
I mean yeah I can see how you could customize as you wish maybe with themes and what not but besides the editions offered you cannot import your own DE of choice if it’s not an option by default you cannot disable grub you cannot use something other than btrfs in the installer. The custom installation ISO would allow you to have full control of how It’s installed by default with a recipe.yaml like file, if that makes sense.
I don’t want to carrot-and-stick you toward Arch if you are already comfortable in a Gentoo environment. There is no 1:1 equivalent, and package management is not done the same way (in multiple senses of the phrase). Really, the best answer would probably be to stay with Gentoo, because those demands just can’t be met. If you really want to switch, you’ll need to also switch your mindset a bit, and at least make some sacrifice.
If your goal is just hyper-optimization in the build process, and you are willing to make the changes for Arch, then CachyOS might be an appropriate choice.
Tried cachyos, honestly like Garuda better besides the kernel and I can get that on any arch distro. In fact, I was using it on my Gentoo install. Like I said, Garuda is just better for my laptop, so I will keep it there, and thank you for all the responses.