Garuda Linux "Raptor"
What's up, everyone? 
First of all, we wish every one of you a happy new year (yeah, we are kind of late to release this! 
). We also hope 2023 will be a good one for you and your loved ones as well. 
During the last few months, we have been preparing a new release containing quite a few changes for you. This not only brings fundamental changes to one of our editions, but it also features a much improved garuda-update, Dracut as the initramfs tool of choice as well as a clean Qt interface for our setup assistant. Apart from that, we had some major changes to our infrastructure and a lot of little enhancements to all parts of the distro which we are going to take a closer look at now 
Welcoming a new moderator and edition maintainer 
It's a pleasure to announce that @FGD recently became co-maintainer of the dr460nized edition and @Technetium part of our moderator team! We are confident that both will help making Garuda and our community a better place to be 
The dr460nized edition now features Plasma panels 
The dr460nized edition has in the past relied heavily on Latte-Dock's features. For most of us, it's not news that the development of Latte-Dock has now more or less ceased. This sadly necessitated significant changes, that required replacing Latte-Dock with more standardized Plasma panels. This change takes away somewhat from the dr460nized edition's eye candy appeal factor by losing features like top bar colors/transparency. Usability is also impacted to some degree as it will no longer be possible to drag the top bar to move windows. However, we expect these changes to make the KDE dr460nized edition's desktop experience far more stable, but also different. We feel these new required changes still provide great OOTB visual appeal worthy of being called dr460nized 
Since Latte-Dock will inevitably cause instabilities and glitches in the future, we'd highly suggest switching to Plasma panels before it's too late. Our Garuda System Maintenance application will try to detect Latte-Dock setups to offer an easy migration starting with this release. The migration won't be forced, though it is highly recommended to confirm it. Current configuration files will be backed up in case the user wants to restore them for any reason.
It is also possible to complete the migration manually: this is as easy as removing Latte from autostart and applying the complete "Dr460nized" Plasma Global Theme. This will however inevitably overwrite your customization, which you will have to recreate based on the new Theme. Also, additional monitor panels can be added by simply right-clicking the desktop -> add new panel -> Garuda default dock/panel. Further information can be found in the dedicated migration wiki article.
A clean Qt interface for the setup assistant 
For those who remember the very early days of the setup assistant, it used to be a simple bash script utilizing Yad to provide a kind of GUI to users. Lately, we had it rewritten in C++/Qt in order to improve the end user's experience, the biggest enhancement probably being the use of actual tabs instead of countless prompts. Apart from that, support for detecting NVIDIA devices has been added, and new packages to install!
Garuda Update 4.0 
Since the announcement of garuda-update, it has been used to workaround a lot of issues that arose from the unstable nature of the rolling release model Arch employs, like a GRUB update causing the device to boot to BIOS. It also received handy features like being able to show a changelog in case of applied hotfixes, being able to retry updating in case of signature errors, being able to fix common Python issues, or being able to detect common issues with the NVIDIA DKMS driver.
Dracut as initramfs generator 
Traditionally, Archlinux uses mkinitcpio to generate the initramfs, which is used to start the operating system. Originally created by Red Hat, Dracut tries to minimize hardcoding as well as the time spent switching to the real filesystem. Depending on what kind of packages are detected, it dynamically generates the initramfs without further intervention needed. Of course, overriding the included modules is also possible by adding drop-in configuration files in /etc/dracut.conf.d. Starting with this release, Garuda Linux uses Dracut to create the initramfs. We have a dedicated wiki page answering questions specific to Garuda.
A separate Garuda repository 
Most of you might know that Chaotic-AUR used to be the only custom repository used by Garuda in the past. This changed due to mainly two reasons - making Chaotic-AUR more attractive to other Arch-based distributions by not including Garuda-specific packages and having a way to overlay problematic packages of the Arch repository by moving the garuda repo in front of Arch's repositories. The rollout already happened automatically by garuda-update.
Infra now 100% NixOS & migrated away from Fosshost 
Our last release notes certainly haven't aged well judging by the fact that we announced our Ansible-managed infra back then. 
While having the setup of things mostly automated, we were missing a way to easily transition to different system states - definitely a feature NixOS provided to us. For a few months, we are running exclusively NixOS servers on our own hardware, after the EOL of Fosshost got announced. Therefore, there is no need to fear services suddenly ceasing to be. As of a few days ago, our last Fosshost-provided ISO / repo mirror now resides on blazing fast Cloudflare R2 storage (generously sponsored by our donors, thank you!)
Where to get it? 
As mentioned before, our downloads are now hosted at Cloudflare R2. Below are the download links:
- Dr460nized
- Cinnamon
- Dr460nized-gaming
- GNOME
- i3
- KDE-git
- KDE-lite
- LXQt-Kwin
- MATE
- Qtile
- Sway
- Wayfire
- XFCE
Thanks for the continued support everyone, we hope you enjoy the new release!
You want to read the exhaustive changelog? Sure, it can be found below, as usual
Changelog
Edition changes:
- All editions (common-settings):
- Added a default TimeoutStop/-Abort of 10s
- Added automatic setup of the Garuda Logs folder in /var/logs
- Added wqy-zenhei as very small cjk font
- Backup /etc/sudoers.d options to retain settings while updating
- Updated Calamares theming & slides
- Do not block X11 compositing when using MPV
- Fixed initial user setup not being executed
- Introduced a garuda overlay repository that now provides all Garuda exclusive packages in order to make Chaotic-AUR more attrative for other Arch based distros. This also helps us providing critical fixes such as seen in recent GRUB issues and won't be used for any other purposes besides that.
- Limit journald size to 50M
- Move all autostart units to /etc/xdg/autostart but the welcome/user setup
- Updated micro aspell plugin
- Cinnamon:
- Changed power applet to show percentage
- Removed faulty extensions
- Set default applications as xed and xreader
- Dr460nized:
- Default to regular Sweet Konsole colorscheme which differentiates better between terminal colors
- Don't ship JamesDSP as it causes issues concerning audio playback for a lot of people
- Make Kwallet save SSH passwords as well
- Move remaining autostart items to /etc/xdg/autostart
- Provide environment variables via systemd
- Removed wallpaper blur plugin - it broke twice and can't be supported reliably
- Reworked the desktop layout to not use Latte dock anymore (its considered unsupported by now), instead we use Plasma panels for a more stable desktop experience. This also changes the workflow a bit as not every Latte feature could be replicated using regular panels.
- Use a new fastfetch preset showing a custom icon instead of the ASCII art
- Use portals for GTK applications to have the KDE filepicker for a more consistent desktop look
- Use sweet-theme-full-git to provide our desktop theme
- GNOME:
- Show folder path in nautilus and gtk filechooser by default
- Updated favorite apps
- Updated icons to Capitane-cursors
- Updated mimeapps
- i3:
- Add pacseek to packages
- Don't ship orca anymore
- Fixed transparency
- Set xfce4-terminal to preferred Terminal Emulator
- Ship Octopi for package management instead of Pamac
- MATE:
- Fixed Alacritty config & added Alacritty to packages
- Temporarily removed Kvantum Sweet theme
- Qtile:
- Received minor theme changes (Dracula instead of Sweet theme)
- Sway:
- Added a checkupdates script for Waybar
- Added netspeed to waybar
- Enhanced a lot of configurations like Waybar's
- Fixed Alacritty's color.footer_bar
Application & settings changes:
- BeautyLine icons:
- Add new BeautyLine icons as of 14/10
- Add new Candy icons as of today
- Bluetooth-support:
- Removed bluetooth-autoconnect
- Bootctl-dracut:
- A package designed to enable bootctl and Dracut easily. Supports signed boot images (not default)
- Calamares:
- Build off branch 3.3, added needed PRs to package
- Calamares-branding-garuda:
- Fix typos & colors
- Garuda-assistant:
- Don't use -Rc to remove packages to avoid issues
- Improve the method for changing DNS servers to allow VPNs and other applications to still work (NetworkManager exclusive)
- Fixed BTRFS Assistant launch button
- Moved snapper-tools to optdepends
- Garuda-bash-config:
- Fixed the setup .desktop file
- Update egrep and fgrep aliases for proper syntax to stop warning with use
- Garuda-boot-options:
- Improve launcher to properly on wayland
- Garuda-boot-repair:
- Added keywords to .desktop launcher to easily find the application
- Garuda-browser-settings:
- Add KillSticky bookmark to FireDragon
- Garuda-dracut-support:
- Package to easily enable the usage of Dracut instead of mkinitcpio
- The new default for generating initramfs in Garuda
- Garuda-fish-config:
- Fixed bat error occuring after a recent update
- Removed mcfly, the 3.6 update of fish features it much better natively!
- Replaced AUR fantasque font with new community package
- Update egrep and fgrep aliases for proper syntax to stop warning with use
- Garuda-gamer:
- Added keywords to .desktop launcher to easily find the application
- Fixed non-existant packages after Chaotic-AUR rebuild
- Fixed some typos
- Removed hard dependency on Alacritty in favour of using garuda-lib
- Removed redundant apps from the offerings
- Garuda-hooks:
- Added temporary support for automatically updating GRUB in order to fix non-bootable devices caused by latest GRUB updates & fixed rEFInd installations
- Fixed errors occuring when using Dracut
- Fixed mkinitcpio hook for upstream
- Removed nsswitch.conf modifications here as it was moved to overlay in iso-profiles
- Garuda-inxi:
- Fully avoid outputting color escapes when redirected
- Garuda-libraries:
- Added a binary to install software
- Added pkexec-gui to launch gui apps as root (now featuring wayland support!)
- Added support for MATE terminal
- Added support for KGX
- Fix support for $LAUNCH_TERMINAL_SHELL
- Fix LXQt not being able to launch terminals, shellformat
- Garuda-migrations:
- Added support for reinstalling GRUB automatically if a broken version has been detected (fixes latest GRUB booting to UEFI)
- Enable GRUB recovery option
- Redo ibt=off for compatibility reasons until a new ISO rolls out
- Refactoring
- Garuda-network-assistant:
- Removed Windows tab
- Garuda-reducy-verbosity:
- Update symlinks for pacman hooks to run last
- Garuda-setup-assistant:
- Added current stable kernel offerings
- Fixed non-existant packages after Chaotic-AUR rebuild
- Fixed startmenu shortcut Text & logo
- Fixed typos & irregularities with texts
- Major version bump, (2.0 featuring Tabs and generally much better UI), version 3.0 features a clean Qt interface
- Re-added NVIDIA detection support
- Garuda-settings-manager:
- Fixed DKMS not compiling correctly
- Garuda-system-maintenance:
- Added notification about old snapshots & restoring backups
- Added support for the current dr460nized migration
- Fixed pkexec executing file in /usr/bin
- Improved code
- Garuda-update:
- Actively prevent empty mirrorlists from being created
- Added autoconfirm for pipewire-media-session & wireplumber conflict
- Added automatic detection of DKMS problems with NVIDIA DKMS driver
- Automatically downgrade GRUB to the last working version, sourced from our new garuda repo - this is the cleanest solution to the current issue of GRUB booting to BIOS on UEFI installations
- Conflict and autoremove some old firmware packages that were removed from Arch repos & added to the kernel
- Default to libpipewire instead of pipewire-common-git
- Don't disregard self update checking just because you updated yourself already (fixes migration from chaotic-aur version to garuda repo one)
- Enhanced visual output
- Fix timeout on user input
- "Fix" Transport endpoint is not connected error while updating
- Ignore package replacement of networkmanager-l2tp-gtk4
- Run the micro plugin update process in the background
- Various little fixes
- Started logging everything
- Switch to dynamic remote-update URL with support for unlimited paramaters
- Garuda-wallpapers:
- Add new release wallpapers
- Garuda-wallpapers-honeycomb:
- New wallpaper package by @SGS
- Garuda-welcome:
- Fixed chroot not opening
- Fixed support for Wayland applications that have to run as root
- Usability improvements
- Use garuda-libs to determine the correct terminal based on DE
- Garuda-zsh-config:
- Update egrep/fgrep aliases to stop warning with use
- Input-devices-support:
- Added lirc to depends
- Mhwd-db-garuda:
- Auto-start spice-vdagent via systemd
- Decreased optimus-manager priority to 0, its not the recommended way to handle NVIDIA settings
- Reliability improvements for NVIDIA Prime power management
- Networkmanager-support:
- Removed dhclient as it is actually redundant
- Performance-tweaks:
- Depend on the well-maintained CachyOS version of ananicy-rules
- Pipewire-support:
- Added pipewire-x11-bell to depends
- Switched to wireplumber officially
- Printer-support:
- Moved hplib to optdepends
- Samba-support:
- Added backup for smb.conf to not clobber
- Removed nsswitch.conf modifications here as it's moved to overlay in iso-profiles
- Updated protocol defaults to SMB2 minimum per upstream
- Snapper-support:
- Improvements to install script
- Improvements to cleanup while removing the package
- Improvements to compatibility with other Distros
- Snapper-tools:
- Added polkit policies
- Code enhancements
- Make it clear to Qt that we are dealing with UTC time
- {Virtualbox,libretro,wine,gstreamer,virt-manager}-meta:
- Fixed changed pkgnames in Arch repos
- Improved PKGBUILDs
Server & infrastructure changes:
- Buildiso-docker:
- Added support for our garuda overlay repo
- Do a full system update when building the container
- Don't init iso-profiles if already initialized, don't chmod /dev/null on the host
- Garuda-repo:
- Added a new garuda repo, integrating it with existing Chaotic-AUR mirrors
- Garuda-tools:
- Add iso timestamp and codename at build time to a permanent file location
- Added a new http seed for torrents
- Set use_dracut default to true (new default)
- Ship garuda overlay repo by default
- Ship ibt=off by default
- Stopped uploading some useless directories
- Mirrors:
- Added a map to show the location & status of mirrors at the Chaotic-AUR statuspage
- A lot of new mirrors got provided by community members, thank you! <3
- General infrastructure:
- Optimized the location of VMs and services (eg. Element/Matrix/Wiki moved from Fosshost to our dedicated server, speeding it up by A LOT!)
- Rewrote the whole Ansible configuration to Nix language & migrated all Servers to NixOS - declarative management of servers is definitely the way to go
- Switched back to puppeting Matrix bridges (from Matterbridge) to have a better connected experience
- Startpage:
- Added our new web services
- Changed iso build links to Fosshost mirror
- Switched to SVG icons
- Web services:
- Added instances of Libreddit, Nitter, Invidious, Lingva, Teddit and Piped (more information can be found in the announcement)
- Added a new Mastodon instance
- Removed Bibliogram due to its EOL
- Website:
- Added USA download links
- Removed unnecessary things
- Updated lots of links
Notable version updates:
- Plasma 5.27.2
- GNOME 43.0
- Linux 6.2.2
- Actually a lot of others, check out the package lists
, thank you for your efforts and dedication 
and