Hi guys!
We are happy to announce the release of a brandnew Garuda Linux version, called "Golden Eagle"!
A lot of people have been downloading our last release and gave valuable feedback. Thanks for that
With this new release most of the reported bugs have been fixed - along with some other QoL changes to the existing presets.
As you might have noticed, we added 5 new versions to our repertoire: Mate, Cinnamon, Recbox, UKUI and BSPWM. From now on, the editions containing window managers (i3wm, BSPWM, Recbox, Wayfire), Deepin and UKUI will be available in Lite editions only.
Also we have changed the Deepin settings to be rather untouched since altered settings proved to be too buggy.
We also slimmed down our Ultimate editions and moved some more applications from Lite to Ultimate since a lot of users found them to be too bloated. We have made a compromise between "too bloated" and "not working fine out of the box" which should be fine for most people. In addition to that we provide two so called "Barebones" editions which contain only the minimum amount of DE (KDE/GNOME) to get going. Since there are no applications/theming/metapks included we wont provide support for these editions, you are on your own when you decide to install them.
Our Welcome app now got more useful settings to toggle such as en-/disabling printer or samba support to make the jumpstart easier. To help setting up the system there is now a simple setup wizard which contains several options such as setting the initial mirrorlist, upgrading Lite to Ultimate or adding Snap/Flatpak support in Lite.
We dropped preload since it seemed to cause issues during installation and improved battery life (and less fan noise!) by adding auto-cpufreq-git. Laptop users should notice a notable difference!
To take advantage of BTRFS features installs using this filesystem now create @ @home @cache @log subvolumes by default. This way the final space consumption of the snapshots is lowered.
Notable version upgrades include GNOME 3.38, Plasma 5.19.5, Firefox 81, Linux-zen 5.8.13 and Mesa 20.2.
Another change which was going on in the last few weeks was the move to fosshost.org servers. They provide VPS and other resources to FOSS projects.
We applied for resources to power our infrastructure and got approved! The guys at fosshost were really kind and helpful, shoutouts to them!
Along with this move we aquired new domains for our project. Thus our main presence resides at *.garudalinux.org (homepage was reworked as well to have a modern look) as you also might have noticed already.
We believe in open source and want to offer some of its best applications (and alternatives to proprietary services!) to the people. Thats why we added Searx, Bitwarden, BigBlueButton and Nextcloud to our offerings, found easily via start.garudalinux.org or our welcome app.
Some notes concerning the Nextcloud instance: It can be used as Matrix Client for our Matrix instance and is linked to BigBlueButton. We decided to offer every user 250MB space for now. Although it might not seem much, this can be used for backing up dotiles (aka settings), contacts & calendar or notes for example. Depending on how many users actually use this we might provide more space in the future. See it as a proof-of-concept for using an open source ecosystem as alternative to proprietary ones!
As always we encourage you to visit our forum if you are experiencing problems or having questions! (There is also Telegram but we prefer the forum since it acts like a database of questions every user can access rather than a chat, also some of our team members are only active there)
For those who enjoy reading exhaustive / complete changelogs, the following is for you
Changelog
- Moved our website and other services such as forum, wiki, startpage, CryptPad, PrivateBin etc.
to our new domain - garudalinux.org and new servers powered by fosshost.org
- Updated all apps and shortcuts to point to the new domain
- You can now use Matrix to contact us if thats what you prefer. Simply create an account at
element.garudalinux.org to join our instance. To make things even more easy and accessible
you will find a room which is bridged directly to our Telegram group for quick help.
- We decided to offer every user 250MB of space in our Nextcloud instance (cloud.garudalinux.org).
This can be used to sync dotfiles, contacts, calendar or notes. This is experimental for now,
we want to see how many of our users choose to use this service.
- Thanks to the guys at fosshost.org we are also able to provide a BigBlueButton instance,
found at meet.garudalinux.org. You can also use our Nextcloud instance to create and join rooms,
they are linked.
- Added Cinnamon edition
- Added Mate edition
- Added BSPWM edition
- Added Recbox edition
- Added UKUI edition
- Added KDE/GNOME barebones editions (no theming, metapkgs & bare minimum of DE -
also we provide no support for these editions. For advanced users only)
- All Editions:
- Now calamares creates @ @home @cache @log subvolumes by default for BTRFS installs.
This reduces the snapshot size so the space consumption is lowered
- Remove systemd-guest-user to prevent issues when logging in etc, now available via
Garuda Welcome app
- Replaced lightdm-gtk-greeter with lightdm-slick-greeter
- Remove conky from lite edition and Add conky-manager to ultimate
- Add the chaotic-keyring, chaotic-mirrorlist package to get new mirrors automatically
- Enabled DefaultLimitNOFILE=524288 needed for Wine ESYNC feature
- Decreased Default timeout to 30 sec from 90 sec to speedup shutdown
- Slimmed down Lite & Ultimate editions
- Fixed installation problem with encryption
- Added cpu-autofreq & thermald which should result in less fan noise and much better battery life
- Replaced Keepassxc browser extension with Bitwarden & Joplin in Ultimate editions
(to use with our Nextcloud & Bitwarden)
- Added garuda-common-settings and moved shared settings (eg. enabling services) to this package
- Added a simple setup assistant which automatically launches during first boot which also includes upgrading Lite to Ultimate
- Disabled annoying beep from the speakers
- Disable Intel VPRO remote access technology driver as a security precaution.
- GNOME:
- Provide WhiteSur Kvantum via package & ship non-transparent config
- Add Alacritty font size since standart was too big on resolutions <Full HD
- Updated patched WhiteSur-gtk theme & included the white one as well
- Replaced flameshot with ksnip
- Switched gdm-prime to gdm since it was causing issues during boot
- Removed GNOME 3.38 incompatible extensions. The most important ones such as Dash to Dock
or Unite are already updated, missing ones + Layout switcher will be added back once updated by
their maintainers
- KDE:
- Replaced flameshot with spectacle
- Garuda-hooks:
- Add a hook to remove systemd from nsswitch.conf to fix boot delays and fix network problems
- Added automatic fixing of Pamac icons not showing
- Garuda-browser-settings:
- Browsers now use our own startpage
- Garuda-Welcome:
- Added settings to enable printing, scanning and samba support and rightclick emulation for Lite editions
- Added links to our webservices
- Visual polishing
- Garuda-settings-manager
- Hidden the nobody user
- Change kernel name to package instead of version
- Garuda-boot-options
- Added option to set sysrq
- Added option to set mitigations=off
Notable application updates:
- GNOME 3.38
- Plasma 5.19.5
- Firefox 81
- Mesa 20.2
If you have problems downloading use wget link to get the iso.
Checksums & pkglists can be found here (for KDE its in the KDE/lite/201007 folders for example)
Download Barebones
Live user/password (if needed) is always garuda/garuda