My initial observations on Garuda

Garuda Community
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Yes, they were.

22

The least amount of included software to provide a viable working system?

Indeed. :wink:

I’ve seen the same sorts of posts on every distro forum: “If only the distro did X then it would be more popular”.

Having been heavily involved in a number of forums over the years, what most people refer to as “friendliness” is actually the enabling of the expectation of “spoon-feeding” (a.k.a. “help vampirism”).

While in the short-term this provides the illusion of activity and participation, in the longer term it leads to a noisy forum, where the same questions are asked again and again, but devoid of actual purposeful contribution.

There’s a balance between encouraging actual active participation, and enabling vampirism. For me, a quiet forum is far more preferable to an empty one.

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23

Dear @jonathon,

Please read my first post and tell me if you see any “help vampirism” or “noise” there. I simply made a few minor suggestions and the response I got was “live with it”.

Before I made this post, I checked out the website, the wiki and the forum. I even took the time to introduce myself in detail to provide some background. But all I get from the forum moderators is a defense of that kind of attitude. A simple “sorry” would have been sufficient, though @tbg’s last post is good enough for me.

In regards to actually responding to my feedback, @dr460nf1r3 clearly answered my comments and I accept that. Turns out my feedback was useful after all, letting him realize he had too much stuff in his barebones edition :wink:

But no one has answered my question about thermald in a reasonable way so far (why it’s not an “optional” dependency for performance-tweaks as it is not functional for most AMD CPUs) :slightly_smiling_face:

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24

While this may be an unpopular opinion in this day and age, it is also extremely true once a distro becomes popular. Genuinely difficult technical help requests that need expert attention invariably end up getting snowed under by an avalanch of questions such as:

How do I change my desktop wallpaper?
What is a shell?
Which desktop is the best?

Sorry, if that’s a little OT.

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25

That’s not what the point I responding to. :wink:

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26

Is Firefox installed in Barebones? I ask because I cannot remember.

If it is not, people who need to login using their ISP site may not be able to use Barebones Edition. It may sound irrelevant to most living in EU or USA, but in India ( and elsewhere ) many people use internet that does NOT have DHCP. Just something to keep in mind.

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No

Maybe tethering with smartphone /cellphone, load the browser you need?
Login with the browser.

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28

I personally used usb tethering from phone, yes.

But some people may not be able to do that. Even in this day and age, some people do not own a smart phone, incredible as it may sound.

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Maybe a basic browser should be included in barebones editions. Something like falkon for KDE and gnome web (epiphany) for Gnome (or midori for both KDE & Gnome).

Barebones shouldn't be necessarily crippled in my opinion. Otherwise, Arch is there as mentioned before :wink:

Sorry for jumping in the discussion but since it is being discussed in my topic, thought it would be OK. But, I am also ready for a "no browser in barebones, live with it" kind of response any time soon :blush: (joking)

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Please note, I am not a part of the Garuda Team, but I feel certain that serious fruitful discussion is encouraged. :slight_smile:

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31

How did you download the barebones image without an Internet connection? Normally, you can download a browser once you have the barebones image running, and pick the browser you want.

Nobloat.

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32

To me a basic browser is a textual browser. Advanced users (the target audience for the barebones) should know how to use a terminal browser such as lynx or elinks. That is definitely not bloat, and when your DE is in the process of melting down it comes in pretty handy.

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33

Actually advanced users can use Arch and build their system the way they want. When saying target audience for barebones is advanced users, is there a more specific definition somewhere?

Now here a lot of people consider things like a basic GUI browser, bluetooth support as "bloat" for barebones edition. If there is no specific definition of barebones, actually it can be anything for each different person (from pure Arch all the way to dragonized Garuda).

When I saw barebones edition on the Garuda main page advertised with KDE and Gnome, I thought they were plain vanilla KDE or Gnome install with Garuda facilities (like snapshots, performance tweaks, etc.) but without customization of the DEs. That's what attracted it to me.

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34

Hi @dr460nf1r3 ,

I wanted to try the latest KDE barebones as it is closer to what I want. So, I downloaded and tried garuda-kde-barebones-linux-xanmod-210121.iso.

When I load it from the USB (after selecting "start with free drivers option"), DE does not show up, only black screen with mouse cursor in the middle. When I try to restart X (with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace), login screen (SDDM) appears but entering garuda/garuda as login fails. I also tried to login to tty2 (Ctrl+Alt+F2), same thing, garuda/garuda doesn't work, login fails.

So, how can I try and possibly install this ISO? Is it using a different password?

Thanks in advance for your help. I really like to setup this version, package list looks just right for me.

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Hello @dr460nf1r3. Any comments on this?

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Hey, sorry for the delay it seems I overlooked this mention. Basically we do not give support for barebones but Im building another iso with Linux-zen kernel which you can try, this might have been a faulty iso since we use this for test builds as well if not officially announced :slight_smile:
It will be available Index of /iso/garuda/kde-barebones/210126/ here once ready.

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37

Thanks a lot. I understand that there is no support for barebones and I realized that garuda-kde-barebones-linux-xanmod-210121.iso might be a test build as it was not linked on the Garuda downloads page.

I will try the new build when it's ready. By the way, linux-zen kernel happens to be my current favorite kernel as it is desktop oriented and one of the officially supported Arch kernels. :slightly_smiling_face:

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It is ready since 6 min. :slight_smile:

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You guys are quicker than I write :smiley: I might have to try it tomorrow as it is getting quite late here (GMT+3). Thanks again, appreciate it.

40

Couldn't wait for tomorrow and I tried it. Unfortunately, same issue as 210121 build, i.e. can not login. See https://forum.garudalinux.org/t/my-initial-observations-on-garuda/3229/34?u=mksahin for details. Didn't have such an issue with 210107 build (which was the "bloated" barebones :slightly_smiling_face:).