There seems to be much misinformation about Garuda? What exactly is the 'bloat' ? Can this perception be fixed?

If you search about this distro online its always the same things - its for gaming, its bloated, and its just eye candy.

I don't think thats correct and I want to understand why its so and if anything can be done to fix this.

Gaming - isn't only the gaming edition meant for gamers? All the other editions have the option to install game software and also to tweak it for perf/powersave, that doesn't mean its for gamers

Eye candy - only the default dr4gonized KDE has the sweet theme + icons, is that all thats meant?

Bloat - this is the serious one. Besides the gaming edition which has a lot of emulators etc installed, where is the extra bloat? e.g. if you compared e.g a plain arch+kde install or e.g. Kubuntu, what does the default KDE iso have thats extra?

e.g. one review said that in Garuda they saw 5 kwin instances but in normal arch+KDE there was only 1. Is this because each instance of Latte uses its own kwin? or was this incorrect?

does the 'bloat' only come from zram usage, which is working as intended?

Then of course there is the lite edition which I know is unsupported, and Garuda is not really meant for low end pc's but I want to understand what exactly would be the difference in following 2 cases - Garuda KDE lite vs default dragonized with powersave + default theme. Would there really be a huge difference in resource usage?

IMO the things Garuda does right - btrfs, snapshots, a good set of tweaks, btrfs-assistant used by others now, and useful gui tools, is too imp for the distro to be marginalized as a gaming/eye candy distro. I believe it will help if this is made clear on the website.

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Often so-called reviews are nothing more than clickbates for YouTubers who want to make a living from it.

You can often tell by the headlines.
The more controversial, the better.

These people are neither objective nor do they read what’s on the homepage.

They also just pick out what they think can be done the best bad.
Never a hint to the light versions.

I think everything is already on our homepage.

Our experience shows that even the text on the download page is not read by everyone. :slight_smile:

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I agree with this but there has to be a way to improve the perception of this distro. I don't care about content creators who know very little, but about serious people, new users and power users alike who may be turned off by the impressions.

In any case, didn't mean to imply something is missing, its just an idea.

Could you or someone please answer the qns about bloat above, if there is any? e.g is KDE on Garuda really heavier than others?

Maybe for some, but I never (got a red shrimp) for my videos on Youtube. I only do it to get others interested in Linux.

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Why is that?
We are of course pleased when our distribution impresses many, but we are not a performance or profit driven company.
We are making an Arch Linux based operating system here that we personally like. Everyone is free not to like it the way it is right now.
Constructive criticism will be discussed and integrated in the best possible way. I have written it here in the forum several times, you can never ever please everyone. :slight_smile:

“Next!” (emphatically friendly): “to the crucifixion?” - “yes” - "through the door, down the corridor… each only one cross!

Uppss, better deal with only one “problem” per thread. Facilitates the search in the forum :slight_smile:


Heavier than who?
As Garuda-Xfce? Yes.
Heavier than Linux-Mint Cinnamon? No.

Heavier in terms of what?

Regarding the size of the download?

If it is too heavy for you, then you are too weak. :smiley:

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Sources please, or it is B.S. :poop:

Spend a bit more time here in the forum, learn how the developers have built Garuda, what their intentions were then and are now. Discern the differences and reasons behind each version, DE & WM that the owners and developers have created. There are reasons they exist. Try to grok the one you use. Try your best.

Goto the Downloads page and each Garuda edition is adequately described and has a screenshot image. Take each ISO for a spin.

Then tell us your own informed comments. Those are the only ones that count.

As far as general Linux news and opinion pieces, they are just opinions. And, finally, there will always be bad along with the good. Neither can exist without the other.

Once upon a time I ran half of a listed, published, Debian-based Xfce distribution I won’t name because it still exists. One of my jobs was to handle all of the online publicity, (including print). I found that it is very easy to influence most online Linux “journalists.” They all need a continuous feed of Linux-related news to justify their existence as “opinion makers.” Some know what they are doing. Some of them don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.

But that’s all beside the point. It’s your own opinion that matters.

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If you want to disrupt this narrative, then do it. Leave comments on the video reviews you are watching, or make your own reviews. Put a review on DistroWatch.

At the end of the day, haters will hate. A lot of the negative rhetoric is just reverberations from the echo chamber of content creators struggling to be perceived as relevant. Maybe the “bloated” criticism doesn’t hold a lot of water–but it doesn’t have to, that was never the point, that’s not why people say it.

“Bloat” is just a condescending way to refer to software you don’t need–it is completely a matter of opinion. As an example, I often remove Plymouth and the display manager on my installations, because I prefer to not have them. Does that mean the Plymouth splash screen is bloat, or SDDM/greetd/LightDM are all bloat? If I took that stance, I think most people would disagree with my opinion.

I also think a lot of the bloat criticism is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how some of the “showy” features KDE has work. They boot into a dr460nized installation, and they see the bright colors and the wobbly windows and transparency and act like a bunch of extra crap was added on to make it like that, and they are so hip and minimal that they would never install all that stuff for their own desktop. To which I say: what are you going to do…uninstall KDE? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

The reviews from people who load up the distro and poke around for a few hours to make a video with no interest in actually keeping it on their box don’t matter–they never have. What matters are the opinions of the folks who actually use the distro, and get familiar with the tools and interact with the community and understand what Garuda offers and why it is special. As long as those more meaningful opinions tend to be positive, who cares what some hack on YouTube trying to generate a few clicks says?

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Can this perception be fixed?

IMO the answer is no without a rebrand. Even if it is fixed, it takes years. This opinion is not specific to Garuda.

This :point_up_2:

Bloat is a condescending term used to denigrate any distro the reviewer deems inferior to… (fill in the blank with the reviewers so called superior favorites). This is a losing battle that cannot possibly be won as negative reviews get more attention and anyone with an axe to grind can create click bait far easier than actually posting an in-depth impartial review. The Lite edition was created to offset the “bloat” critismsm, but it made zero difference. The haters and click bait computer cowboys still insist on shouting from it from the mountain tops how bloated Garuda is while completely ignoring the fact that users wanting a sparse Garuda install have the Lite option to choose from.

Again, this is a no win situation because…

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