How to choose perfect Garuda version?

Hello everyone,
I am primarily using Windows 10 on my laptop but now I want to migrate to Garuda Linux as I've came to know about it's beauty, power and speed. But since there are so many versions out there I don't have even basic understanding about Linux OSs, it's a bit confusing for a newbie like me to chose the best edition for my system.
To be more specific here, I have 4 GBs of DDR4 RAM, 1 TB of HDD, intel core i3 5th gen processor and 1 GBs of integrated Intel's graphic card. I'll be doing app development using flutter, VS Code and Android SDK along with an emulator. So I expect good performance from Garuda as compared to Windows.

The best way to choose is: "Temet nosce."

That said, start at the beginning:

Dr460nized is the all-around winner, as it's the basic Garuda itself. The Zen kernel provides good performance on desktop apps, including IDEs and emulators and virtual machines. Plasma is a complete desktop that usually suits those coming from Windows.

Has the fun!

6 Likes

Hi Sangam,
It sounds like you have not yet tried any Linux distro yet. Arch, Garuda or in general any rolling distro requires some knowledge and you need to be ready to face problems like some app won't start, etc. with or sometimes with the OS itself. To get started with your first Linux distro, I recommend Mint, as I did, or any fixed release distro, as it gives you easy start and more stable experience.

If you are ready to learn commands to use and for manual interventions, in other words, to use Garuda, I recommend Dr460nized edition, as Carta said above.

9 Likes

Upping your RAM, considering all that you wish to accomplish, wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Your rig meets the minimum requirements. Don’t expect bells-n-whistles from a 2015 machine with a minimal amount of RAM. Not that you can’t achieve it , but no, not a beginner and most definitely not on this finely-tuned race machine of a distribution.

You could use Xfce, or one of the Window Managers, but the latter I don’t really recommend to a beginner, either.

Try running the dr4gonized KDE or the Xfce or Lxqt live ISOs and see what you see for yourself. Everyone has a different definition of fast or good performance but not very damned many of them seem able to quantify it. :wink:

I personally don’t recommend Garuda for beginners because, unless they’re real self-starters, they’re likely to burden these help forums with an unduly amount of help requests.

regards

8 Likes

Thanks everyone for your valuable time. I highly appreciate your suggestions and will follow them😊

1 Like

Hello. I started with, and recommend, Manjaro Xfce. I think there is a real benefit to arch based and I will always be grateful that someone saved me from making Mint my 1st distro, because so many people get comfortable with the apt (Ubuntu and Mint's package manager) repositories and never know how much better it is over here. They are really missing out in my opinion, and they never even know it. Manjaro Xfce is more than suitable for a beginner and you will be learning and growing comfortable with the best Linux has to offer. They also have a beginner friendly forum without as many noobs pretending to know something and offering you useless help that might make things worse.

I also started with a 1TB hard drive, 4GB RAM, and a Core i3, btw.

My second recommendation would be Mint. While learning to build Android, I had to follow and adapt many tutorials meant for Ubuntu-based users (Mint is Ubuntu-based). That was years ago, but I bet that's still the case today. Mint is a great distribution, in my opinion, and you can still begin without being the cliche Ubuntu beginner.

No matter what, enjoy the journey you are about to begin. It will be tough at first, but it's been one of the most rewarding journeys of my life.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.