The Distrowatch review - thoughts?

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21

While that may not be a great review of Garuda, I feel you are spot on @mandog. Garuda is definitely far more suited to faster drives and rigs with more RAM to utilize all its optimization features. Slow drives and low ram, or running in a VM are not going to showcase Garuda in a very positive light.

On the bright side, almost all the other reviews on Distrowatch are very flattering towards Garuda. I think the overall rating for Garuda on Distrowatch is currently around 8.8/10. That is a very high rating. Especially considering Linux Mint (one of the most highly regarded distros) doesn't even have that high an overall rating.

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22

Hello @tbg I usually have problems with 90% of distros to have full screen and worst, to share folders with host in VBox VM, and Garuda handled all of this out of the box, I did not have to adjust anything, all these worked the first time I installed Garuda KDE Lite in a Virtualbox VM, it was awesome to me.

Testing Garuda on the VM helped me to decide to test it on bootable USB and then to install it in my host, and I was delaying this change since 2 years ago, I was using an old Debian derivative, and I have not had find a convenient replacement until I found Garuda.
Regards

8 Likes
23

Hello @librewish I would suggest to submit Garuda KDE Lite to Dedoimedo to see if he makes a review. Since years ago, when I am going to test a distro I do 3 things:

  1. first I check the position of the distro in Distrowatch and
  2. second I look for a review, my first choice is to look if Dedoimedo made a review and I read it, and then
  3. I decide if I test or not the distro.

But before you submit the request please check if Garuda works smoothly in a Lenovo G50 which is the computer Dedoimedo is using lately. He use to make long reviews but now they are short, have a look to a recent example review:

Hope this help, because an adverse review can cause damage to the image and reputation of a distro, and prevent people from trying it.
Regards

3 Likes
24

Hm. This entity has come up a few times and Iā€™m not really sure how reliable they are. From what Iā€™ve seen in the past, their reviews tend to be hyperbolic and miss the point of a distro.

I donā€™t think thereā€™s any need to go chasing people for reviews. Garuda is off to a good start as it is, ā€œlittle by little, step by stepā€.

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25

I tend to agree about Dedoimedo. I usually enjoy reading his reviews, but I think his technical understanding is a little on the shallow side.

I've read some stuff he's written that from a technical standpoint showed little comprehension of the subject. I'd say he's good entertainment, but personally I wouldn't rely on his opinion for the technical aspects of Linux.

If find his stuff a fun read, but he oftentimes doesn't have a clue what he's talking about IMO.

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26

Unfortunately, non technical users pay attention to his reviews.
Regards

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27

All the more reason not to request a review then?

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28

I understand, then Garuda Linux is aimed to the highly technical users, so I guess the rest of the users, including me, are out of the scope of Garuda. So I was really lucky that I got the kind help of Garuda staff to solve my trivial issues.
Regards

29

Not at all. Iā€™d rather Garuda was protected against adverse reviews for as long as possible - this goes back to what you said before:

Garuda Linux is still a young and developing distro, so letā€™s not over-promote it. It doesnā€™t really need that anyway.

9 Likes
30

I would not say Garuda is aimed at highly technical users. However, what I would say is Archā€™s rolling nature makes it an OS that you must do some learning to prevent breakages. You will need to learn how to manage and merge pacnew files if you intend to use any Arch based distro in the long term. Arch requires hands on maintenance for long term stability. You could get away without merging pacnew files for years possibly, but sooner or later it must be done. I would also say learning some knowledge of pacman commands is essential. Do not expect to update from the GUI indefinitely or you will experience breakages. Learn to do your updates from the terminal (or the TTY if important core components are being updated).

Using an Arch based OS does require some learning if you donā€™t want problems. Any Arch based OS is not set and forget. Itā€™s rolling nature makes it more prone to breakages. The great thing about Garuda is that BTRFS snapshots are integrated with timeshifft to make recovering from a breakage easier than on any other Arch based distro.

So, in reality you are probably far better of using Garuda than any other Arch based distro because of its built in recovery features. I did an install yesterday, and already used the built in boot recovery (and it works spectacularly well). Props to @librewish for having the technical chops to pull this off, as few other distros in the Linux world have attempted this. Well done guys.

PS.

In my opinion you solved your own issues, others were simply kind enough to point you in the right direction. You will do just fine using Garuda, as you seem to not mind doing the work required to fix your problems. That is all it takes, a little dedication and persistence goes an awful long ways in the Linux world.

6 Likes
31

Thanks for the clarification and warning @tbg I will keep it very present. So, if I understand correctly, the right way to update the system is via command line with the instruction:

sudo pacman -Syu

and to be prepared to use a rescue disk in case I can not use the Timeshift snapshots because the system got broken in the middle of an update, uff :cold_sweat: So I have to study :face_with_monocle: a lot to be prepared :thinking: That reminds me the sword of Damocles. :worried: And backups everyday.
Regards

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32

There is no ā€œrightā€ way, but GUI methods are inherently more prone to breakages. Using the terminal is less likely to cause a problem when key components of the OS are updated.

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33

Hello, I just did: sudo pacman -Syu
And I got:

    ... (19/23) Orphaned package notification
    boost 1.72.0-2
    cpio 2.13-2
    cpupower 5.7-1
    dpkg 1.20.5-1
    intltool 0.51.0-6
    lib32-libva1-intel-driver 1.8.3-1
    linux 5.8.10.arch1-1
    po-debconf 1.0.21-1
    po4a 0.61-2
    preload 0.6.4-7
    python-html2text 2019.8.11-4
    rpm-tools 4.15.1-3
    (20/23) Checking for .pacnew and .pacsave files...
    .pac* files found:
    /etc/locale.gen.pacnew
    /etc/default/grub-btrfs/config.pacnew
    /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.pacnew
    Please check and merge
    (21/23) Updating the info directory file...
    (22/23) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...
    (23/23) Updating the MIME type database...

Arch documentation is extensive, where I can find the correct actions for:

Orphaned package ...
Please check and merge ...

Regards

34

An orphaned package is no big deal, you can leave it, or uninstall it if no other packages use it as an optional dependency.

Pacnew files are a whole different kettle of fish. Do not attempt merging pacnew files unless you get very familiar with how it works first. There are some files you never want to merge such as shadow and a few others. I would suggest researching further and open a request if still confused.

It is a process that takes a while to learn.The good news is a few pacnew files is no big deal. You just don't want to let them pile up for ages.

2 Likes