Garuda Linux "Bird of Prey" (240428)

Hello, dear community! :hugs:

It is a pleasure to announce another release of Garuda Linux :partying_face: This release is named Bird of Prey and it is the first release of the year 2024. We planned to introduce this one much earlier - shortly after KDE 6 was released back in February - but due to real life keeping some of us busy and a nasty bug causing some machines to not boot up during testing, we needed a little extra time to get everything ready. Nevertheless, pushing the ISO release wasn’t necessary to have our old ISO still working thanks to Garuda System Maintenance being able to automatically migrate the newly installed systems to Plasma 6 :wrench:

The main focus of this release is certainly the already mentioned Plasma 6 upgrade which already arrived in the Dr460nized edition. Meanwhile, Sway and Hyprland received some major improvements to their respective editions as well. Also, FireDragon was rebased to Floorp, meaning we now profit from its interesting feature set. Lastly, our build system for the garuda repository received major updates, and the pilot phase for Chaotic-AUR infra 4.0 is supposed to start soon :crossed_fingers:

Dr460nized and KDE 6 :dragon:

As KDE 6 was released in February, the Dr460nized edition underwent some minor changes to how we create our desktop layout. Multiple plasmoids needed to be ported to KDE 6, which also caused some of them to be replaced with updated forks (eg. the original Latte dock window-{title, appmenu, buttons} are no longer maintained and were ported or forked by other people). Before the initial release of KDE 6 in Archlinux repositories, a lot of community members participated in testing the configurations via the dedicated chaotic-aur-kde repository (building master branch packages). Meanwhile, our Garuda System Maintenance tool got updated with the ability to migrate KDE 5 Dr460nized editions to KDE 6. As soon as KDE 6 was released in Arch’s repos, the migration was automatically triggered for everyone using non-customized Dr460nized themes, also linking to our Wiki article to provide information for everyone who didn’t keep up to date with those ongoings. The overall appearance stayed pretty much the same apart from some aspects like the system tray, which now uses the current theme’s icons instead of hardcoded ones. Other KDE 6 goodies like a much improved (and now default!) Wayland session, partial HDR support, and enhanced touchpad gestures can all be attributed to the great work of the KDE developers. They have done a great job and many of the bugs present in the first release version were fixed very quickly. There was also an actively discussed announcement in our forum, in which many members participated.

Sway :tada:

Sway underwent some nice changes as well! We took a closer look at some of the major changes in this topic back in February. This will be the first release featuring these changes in the main ISO on the downloads page.

The Greetd greeter has been changed to ReGreet for a simple, clean login experience. SwayFX has been added to enhance the visual effects of the desktop. Waybar has been reworked to update the appearance and add funtionality, and nwg-drawer has received a facelift as well. The screenshot tool has been changed to Swappy and the clipboard manager has been changed to Cliphist, with new bindings for both. Speaking of bindings, the cheat sheet has been completely overhauled to help new users get their bearings. New to this release, the default terminal has been changed to Foot and the launcher to Fuzzel (both Daniel Eklöf projects). Finally, this release features a new SGS Wallpaper. :star_struck:

Hyprland :dizzy:

Our Hyprland maintainers decided to provide a video to showcase the current status of Hyprland :movie_camera:

The rest of the changes can be read in changelog format :yum:

List of changes

Feat

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: switch G-Hyprland script to tiled mode instead…

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: resolve themeing issues related to qt6 apps

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: fix hyprlang error logs on monitor

  • Add-garuda-boot-repair-to-float-rules: Adding garuda-boot-repair to float rules to ensure seamlessness between garuda tools

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: rm copyQ and add cliphist

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: comment epic mouse

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add new waybar themes

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add variable frame rates for better performance

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: update previous theme and add new waybar theme

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: rm timezone from waybar

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add new wallpapers by TilliDie

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add new login wallpaper and new wallpapers created add by TilliDie

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: update keybindings

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add icons to mako notify

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: make G-Hyprland an optional feature

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: load an image before animated wallpaper to prevent crashing

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add variant for kb layout

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: remove weather from waybar

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: rm floorp add firedragon

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: fix swww animated wallpaper changing glitch

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: update garuda-locale.sh

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: adjust monitor setting to default

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add garuda-welcome

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: update mon.sh according to new implementation

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: adjust foot font size for new implelementation

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add experimental gum implementation

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add waybar interval for custom-update

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add waybar-module-pacman-updates

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: shortening the length of the network ads on waybar

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add unique autostart garuda-welcome

  • update: update keyhints

  • vim like keybindings: extra keybindings-hyprland-settings**: add swappy for SS

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add alt shortcuts to nwgbar

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: new launcher icon waybar

  • add screen width to waybar

  • add information, ci checking commit message and remove PKGBUILD

Fix

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: add execute garuda-local.sh, add only one time garuda-locale.sh

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: automatically comment out monitor settings

  • garuda-hyprland-settings: wofi crash if monitor scale factor ≠ 1

  • update depedency for sweet theme

FireDragon is now based on Floorp :fox_face:

Another major change to one of our applications is the rebase of FireDragon to make use of the excellent Floorp as a base to build upon. Floorp can roughly be described as the Vivaldi of Firefox’s because it introduces a lot of customization options not present in any other fork. During a testing phase, in which a lot of community members participated, a lot of bugs could be ironed out. The official release of the new version already happened back in February. Things have been working very well since then. Thanks for all the feedback you people provided! Apart from being able to use Floorp’s feature set, the overall browsing experience feels much quicker than before thanks to some of the tweaks included.

Chaotic Repository Template/infra 4.0 :man_technologist:

While we announced the initial changes to our repository structure back in November 2023, a set of very cool new features was introduced lately. As some might have noticed, the package builds of the garuda repository have been happening exclusively via our PKGBUILDs repository since the announcement of these changes. In the meantime, the CI setup and scripts were moved to the dedicated chaotic-repository-template and are working both via GitLab CI and GitHub Actions (with slightly different feature sets). The actual logic behind the build process and scheduling is handled by the Chaotic Manager. Those in tandem provide a pretty neat solution for efficiently managing Pacman Repositories. Repositories derived from the CI template will automatically sync any changes done to the base files, making it easy to maintain a handful of such repositories. While the scripts themselves were massively improved and behave much more efficiently than before, new features like automatic build order resolution, AUR package management, custom update hooks, on-demand/daily builds, insanely fancy logs, and the possibility of running local builds via the same code to debug builds got introduced. At the same time, the entire repo process is now more transparent to the public. Thanks to all these features, contributing is now easier than ever. The issues and merge request list are a lot more actively maintained and we hope it will help you make the changes you always wanted to make to Garuda Linux! See you at the repos!

Community wallpaper contest :framed_picture:

Vote for our next release's artwork - (contest is now over) has concluded and selected the top three pieces of community art to be included in the Bird of Prey default wallpaper pack. The team felt the winner of the contest was of such high quality that it should indeed be selected as the default wallpaper for the Bird of Prey release.

So without further ado, the winner of the artwork contest and the honour of being selected as the default desktop wallpaper for the Bird of Prey release goes to @Mior_D_Miro and his piece titled Rave :tada:

Congratulations to @Mior_D_Miro and the two other contenders @mr_maniac_2k and @elite for being voted by the Garuda community as producing the top 3 pieces of artwork to be included in our new Bird of prey release. Additionally, all pieces are available in the new garuda-wallpapers-contest-2024 package :blush:

Other notable happenings :tropical_drink:

Other noteworthy changes are happening to different parts of Garuda Linux and/or infrastructure:

  • Retirement of the Piped instance: the maintenance overhead introduced by having to rotate IPv6 addresses from our available /64 subnet proved as way too high to be able to reliably support this service. As our infra is close to 100% declarative, rotating IPv6 is a manual action that also requires a server reboot. This is why we leave this job to people with more fitting infrastructure setups. The instance will continue being up for a while so people can export their settings, if they want to.
  • Linux-tkg kernels are no longer provided in the Chaotic-AUR repository
  • The ISO images are now automatically verified during the boot process and will refuse to boot in case its broken.
  • The Calamares slides were updated to have a more modern look and feel.
  • The Garuda project became 4 years old! :partying_face:
  • The Qtile edition has been dropped. Its maintainer @RohitSingh will need the time to focus on his work life, so we wish him good luck with his endeavours! All packages will stay around though, so existing setups continue functioning.

Looking for downloads? :eyes:

We got you covered! Click on the DE name to download the respective ISO:

Lengthy release notes :ledger:

These can be found in our changelogs repository starting with this release. Since we introduced conventional commit messages a while ago, we are now able to generate the changelogs mostly automated - which is also why they have a slightly different structure. Click me to read them! :man_detective:

57 Likes

This release has been a lot of fun to work on the last few months and I think it turned out really great! Excited to see how things will go!

13 Likes

Congratulations on the new release! :eagle:

6 Likes

So cool, good job devs!

4 Likes

Hah so just run the update. And NVIDIA like usually again broke the booting. Had to restore via snap in terminal.

--> A problem with the NVIDIA drivers has been detected

---> Building NVIDIA DKMS module for kernel 6.8.7-AMD-znver3
Module nvidia 550.76 is not installed for kernel 6.8.7-AMD-znver3 (x86_64). Skipping...
Module nvidia 550.76 is not built for kernel 6.8.7-AMD-znver3 (x86_64). Skipping...
The kernel is built without module signing facility, modules won't be signed

Building module:
Cleaning build area...
'make' -j16 IGNORE_PREEMPT_RT_PRESENCE=1 NV_EXCLUDE_BUILD_MODULES='__EXCLUDE_MODULES' KERNEL_UNAME=6.8.7-AMD-znver3 modules......(bad exit status: 2)
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 6.8.7-AMD-znver3 (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia/550.76/build/make.log for more information.
---> Failed to build NVIDIA DKMS module for kernel 6.8.7-AMD-znver3

Oh god I cant wait to get a AMD GPU.

P.S. bless the person who created the snapper tool system around Garuda. I own you a pack of beers by now.

Regards,
S.

2 Likes

Use lts kernel, solved the problem.

3 Likes

Very true!

I should have already swapped the kernels. As I installed Garuda and since had always Zen kernel always forgetting to change it.

Regards,
S.

2 Likes

Amazing work!

Congratulations on the new Infra, and on the Hyprland edition, should try it out! Very awesome (not awesomeWM) and dedicated work!

8 Likes

Already have the ISO on my usb flash drive. Eager to get it installed later today.

Quick question / side note: is the python 3.12 stuff included with / in this ISO?

3 Likes

Yes.

7 Likes

Grats on the release I know KDE an arch didn’t make it easy for ya.

7 Likes

Upgraded (with bated breath) from the last version. No problems at all! Very smooth upgrade. Glad to be back from a hiatus. Awesome work that everyone has done! Hope to participate more in the future.

10 Likes

Many thanks to everyone involved for all the effort and great work behind this wonderful distribution.

6 Likes
> System:
> Kernel: 6.8.7-zen1-2-zen arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.1
> clocksource: tsc avail: hpet,acpi_pm
> parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/@/boot/vmlinuz-linux-zen
> root=UUID=912594c8-56e7-4a2e-a0df-1bbc1dcf3d6a rw rootflags=subvol=@
> quiet loglevel=3 ibt=off
> Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.0.4 tk: Qt v: N/A info: frameworks v: 6.1.0
> wm: kwin_x11 vt: 2 dm: SDDM Distro: Garuda base: Arch Linux
> Machine:
> Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: N/A v: N/A serial: <superuser required>
> Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME B550-PLUS v: Rev X.0x
> serial: <superuser required> part-nu: SKU uuid: <superuser required>
> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 3002 date: 02/23/2023
> CPU:
> Info: model: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3+ gen: 4
> level: v3 note: check built: 2022 process: TSMC n6 (7nm) family: 0x19 (25)
> model-id: 0x21 (33) stepping: 2 microcode: 0xA20120A
> Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 6 tpc: 2 threads: 12 smt: enabled cache:
> L1: 384 KiB desc: d-6x32 KiB; i-6x32 KiB L2: 3 MiB desc: 6x512 KiB
> L3: 32 MiB desc: 1x32 MiB
> Speed (MHz): avg: 3691 high: 3700 min/max: 2200/4650 boost: enabled
> scaling: driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: performance cores: 1: 3700 2: 3700
> 3: 3700 4: 3700 5: 3700 6: 3700 7: 3700 8: 3593 9: 3700 10: 3700 11: 3700
> 12: 3700 bogomips: 88634
> Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
> Vulnerabilities: <filter>
> Graphics:
> Device-1: NVIDIA AD104 [GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER] vendor: Micro-Star MSI
> driver: nvidia v: 550.76 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm non-free: 550.xx+
> status: current (as of 2024-04) arch: Lovelace code: AD1xx
> process: TSMC n4 (5nm) built: 2022+ pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
> bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:2783 class-ID: 0300
> Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.13 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6
> compositor: kwin_x11 driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nouveau,nvidia
> alternate: fbdev,nv,vesa gpu: nvidia display-ID: :0 screens: 1
> Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 81 s-size: 602x331mm (23.70x13.03")
> s-diag: 687mm (27.05")
> Monitor-1: DP-0 pos: primary res: 1920x1080 dpi: 93
> size: 527x296mm (20.75x11.65") diag: 604mm (23.8") modes: N/A
> Monitor-2: None-1-1 size-res: N/A modes: N/A
> API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0 drv: nvidia device: 2
> drv: swrast gbm: drv: kms_swrast surfaceless: drv: nvidia x11: drv: nvidia
> inactive: wayland,device-1
> API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 550.76
> glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
> SUPER/PCIe/SSE2 memory: 11.71 GiB
> API: Vulkan v: 1.3.279 layers: 10 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu name: NVIDIA
> GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER driver: nvidia v: 550.76 device-ID: 10de:2783
> surfaces: xcb,xlib device: 1 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM 17.0.6 256
> bits) driver: mesa llvmpipe v: 24.0.6-arch1.2 (LLVM 17.0.6)
> device-ID: 10005:0000 surfaces: xcb,xlib
> Audio:
> Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
> pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 07:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:22bc
> class-ID: 0403
> Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK
> driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
> bus-ID: 09:00.4 chip-ID: 1022:1487 class-ID: 0403
> Device-3: Turtle Beach Recon 60P driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
> type: USB rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 bus-ID: 1-2:3
> chip-ID: 10f5:0300 class-ID: 0300
> API: ALSA v: k6.8.7-zen1-2-zen status: kernel-api with: aoss
> type: oss-emulator tools: N/A
> Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
> status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
> 4: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
> Network:
> Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
> vendor: ASUSTeK RTL8111H driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: gen: 1
> speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: f000 bus-ID: 06:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168
> class-ID: 0200
> IF: enp6s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
> Info: services: NetworkManager,systemd-timesyncd
> Bluetooth:
> Device-1: ASUSTek ASUS USB-BT500 driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 1.1
> speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 1.1 bus-ID: 1-3:4 chip-ID: 0b05:190e
> class-ID: e001 serial: <filter>
> Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.1
> lmp-v: 10 status: discoverable: no pairing: no class-ID: 6c0104
> Drives:
> Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 282.4 GiB (59.2%)
> SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
> ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 960 PRO 512GB
> size: 476.94 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s
> lanes: 4 tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 1B6QCXP7 temp: 28.9 C
> scheme: GPT
> Partition:
> ID-1: / raw-size: 476.64 GiB size: 476.64 GiB (100.00%)
> used: 282.4 GiB (59.2%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
> ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 300 MiB size: 299.4 MiB (99.80%)
> used: 584 KiB (0.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 maj-min: 259:1
> ID-3: /home raw-size: 476.64 GiB size: 476.64 GiB (100.00%)
> used: 282.4 GiB (59.2%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
> ID-4: /var/log raw-size: 476.64 GiB size: 476.64 GiB (100.00%)
> used: 282.4 GiB (59.2%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
> ID-5: /var/tmp raw-size: 476.64 GiB size: 476.64 GiB (100.00%)
> used: 282.4 GiB (59.2%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 maj-min: 259:2
> Swap:
> Kernel: swappiness: 133 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) zswap: no
> ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 31.22 GiB used: 256 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
> comp: zstd avail: lzo,lzo-rle,lz4,lz4hc,842 max-streams: 12 dev: /dev/zram0
> Sensors:
> System Temperatures: cpu: 34.8 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 35 C
> Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 0%
> Info:
> Memory: total: 32 GiB available: 31.22 GiB used: 4.52 GiB (14.5%)
> Processes: 305 Power: uptime: 2h 55m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep
> avail: s2idle wakeups: 0 hibernate: platform avail: shutdown, reboot,
> suspend, test_resume image: 12.45 GiB services: org_kde_powerdevil,
> power-profiles-daemon, upowerd Init: systemd v: 255 default: graphical
> tool: systemctl
> Packages: 1932 pm: pacman pkgs: 1920 libs: 575 tools: octopi,paru
> pm: flatpak pkgs: 12 Compilers: clang: 17.0.6 gcc: 13.2.1 Shell: garuda-inxi
> default: fish v: 3.7.1 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.34
> Garuda (2.6.26-1):
> System install date:     2024-02-21
> Last full system update: 2024-04-28
> Is partially upgraded:   No
> Relevant software:       snapper NetworkManager dracut nvidia-dkms
> Windows dual boot:       No/Undetected
> Failed units:

First let me say Garuda is the best Distro out there for me. It does everything I want it to do and it does it flawlessly. I constantly update … almost every day … and it keeps getting better and better as time goes on. It was Garuda that cured my Distro hoping since nothing else comes close. Garuda doesn’t get the recognition in the Linux community it deserves.

Having said that, do I need to upgrade to “Bird of Prey” or has doing the updates brought me up to date? My system runs so well right now I’m hesitant to change anything but between running something so stable vs FOMO, the FOMO will eventually win. Thank you in advance!

2 Likes

Don’t need to update… you should already have latest packages and updates.

FIGHT the FOMO!!!

6 Likes

As long as garuda-update has completed, you’re fully updated! :tada:

You should probably update that too.

3 Likes

I just loaded up everything seems ok until I actually login. On Login the user session is at 300% resolution I cannot do anything because every window is so huge that the buttons are not visible on the screen. It seems to be at the right resolution, but inflating everything to 300% from what I can see in settings. However I cannot tell the scaling to go to normal 100% proportions.

Using mod and left mouse click let you scale the window size?

1 Like

Thanks! The BIOS update isn’t really needed at this time. It can accept all the current CPU’s and doesn’t give me any advantage to do so. Yet. I used to keep the BIOS updated but I ended up bricking a board doing so one time so I’m wary when it comes to BIOS updates for no other reason than to update. Bricking a board is rare but until there’s a reason I’m not playing.

1 Like