I’m considering switching to Garuda Linux from Windows and wanted to clarify a few things before making the jump.
How frequently do I need to update? Should I update daily or every time I turn on my laptop? I need stability since I’m a student, so I can’t afford random system breaks during class.
Driver & Gaming Performance: Will Garuda support the latest drivers (or at least provide good performance for gaming)? My laptop is an ASUS ExpertBook B1500CEPE with an Intel Core i5 (10th/11th Gen), NVIDIA GeForce MX330, 8GB RAM, and a 15.6” FHD display.
I’m mainly looking for a balance between performance and stability—something that won’t break on me when I least expect it. Would love to hear from anyone with experience!
Hi there, welcome to the forum!
Garuda is a rolling release distribution, so in itself it would carry some risk, I wouldn’t say in terms of “stability” (since the Arch base in my opinion is stable as hell!) but in terms of “updates”, being rolling release distros at the “bleeding edge” (always updated to the top), so there is always some risk of something going wrong, at which point you have to know how to put your hands on it…
However, Garuda offers btrfs snapshots, which make it very easy to do rollbacks.
However, in my opinion, in order to minimize those risks, you should get some practice with Garuda/Arch pacman package management, and related commands (the Arch Wiki is fantastic for this).
That said, the point of using a rolling release is to update frequently.
Of course, if you don’t do it too frequently, you have the advantage that major issues would have already been fixed. And especially stay with us in the forum, to find out if anything (major) has gone wrong.
Updating once a week in my opinion is a good compromise.
For gaming performance and performance of your laptop, I am not a gamer, but for sure performance is one of Garuda’s goals, so… To be honest I would have expected a bit more RAM for good gaming (but again, I’m not the right one to judge).
For sure at the beginning you may need to configure correctly your system, make sure you have right and updated drivers, etc… But, even here, you can count on the help of many forum users, and gamers!
Thanks for reply, as my main priority is daily usage (specially study related ), so i don’t want it to break/cause bug mid class.
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Just wanna make sure it won’t cause mal function during work. Isn’t there any method that will delay rolling release as like manjaro(I’m not sure)?
Delaying updates doesn’t really help with a rolling release distribution.
If you only update once a month, and there was a problem two weeks ago, the chances that it has already been fixed are relatively high. But who says it’s been that long since the last problem? Likewise, a problem may occur on the day of your update or 1-2 days before.
Manjaro does hold package updates, but even that is no guarantee that nothing negative will happen. On top of that it´s Manjaro…
I agree with @filo that weekly updates are a good compromise. If a problem does occur, Garuda makes it very easy to revert to the previous state of the system. So it would be a good idea to learn about snapshots and how they work in advance, so that if the worst comes to the worst, you can get your system back up and running in no time.
I would say since your a student update on Saturday/sundays when you turn the computer on. Weekly isn’t the worst model.
Since you have nvidia. If there is a driver update reboot after an check your main apps. If issues snapshot back an wait a week an re update as most of the bugs should be worked out depending on nvidia themselves.
*Note if you have finals coming up just wait tell they are done then update. No need worry.
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