Garuda Downloader discussion

Development
1

Although I understand and appreciate the reduction in size, plus the switch to a 'native' toolkit, I think Popsticle looks out of place on most systems, due to being based on GTK, and it just doesnt adjust to the theme, plus it has no checksum verification on the usb side of things.

My personal favorite is Ventoy, and I see also value in developing an in-house solution.

Something that is integrated into the app, will always look and feel more natural.

I also have a new idea, regarding the feature set:

An installation to the disk, including GRUB/rEFInd, so the user can install Garuda without an USB stick.

This also avoids booting into UEFI and picking the right boot device in the first place.

I hope, you give this a fair chance of consideration. :slight_smile:

What are your thoughts on this?

2

If you can find a way to implement this, contributions are welcome. But this is such a massive task that I won't bother with that >.<

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No one here is going to stop you from implementing that.

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4

Including the switch to another disk imager, like Ventoy?

There are also some Qt based alternatives, and I think simply copying a file to a drive is a doable task.

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Here is one, from the distro I used before, it is integrated with Dolphin as well, so you can write and verify images from there:

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This one doesn’t even ship as an AppImage, so I’m not sure how I would implement it.

Please see:

The thing is, I can make no assumptions about any software installed on any system. So how could I unzip the ventoy zip? How could I ensure the necessary libraries to open ventoy’s gui installer are installed? How would I then proceed to detect the USB stick? Then I’d have to move the file into that directory, sync the filesystem, add various different error handling things for everything that could possibly go wrong, among other things. It’s not like I didn’t consider ventoy in the past >.>
If you can make it work, go ahead. Sorry, I just don’t have the free time to spend so much time fixing something that isn’t broken.

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One little thought - there are lots of people out here who avoid QT apps, because they don't integrate well, and don't theme properly. Depends where you are coming from! :grin:

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If they dont integrate well, thats probably an integration issue, Qt is particularly well known for integrating well, opposed to GTK.

The declared goal of GTK+ is to integrate only on Linux, while Qt is specifically developed for cross platform support.

GTK also has a bad reputation for being even unsuitable for Qt/KDE based environments.

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9

Everything worked albeit a bit sluggish on the actual writing process. Have you considered using Ventoy for an easy write solution?

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10

I only do it this way, but not everyone is able or willing to set it up and that’s where the Garuda Downloader helps.

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11

Yes:

 

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12

New Garuda user here, letting you know I did use the Linux Version of the downloader on a base Arch install, I was able to copy the ISO over to my 32GB SDHC(Ventoy) USB drive with UEFI support. Installed Garuda Dr460nized Gaming Edition ( kind of big but it was cool with me) on a split 1TB HDD and works flawlessly. Thank You for the Downloader!

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Glad you like it!

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