These Minor changes for better user experience

I recently installed GARUDA-DRAGINIZED(KDE,GAMING) on my main machine and installed gnome version on my old laptop.

I wanted to point out that making fish default shell in other desktop environments of garuda linux (currently zsh) would be appreciated as it would compliment the fast experience in alacritty.

Also since garuda is a performance focused distro and also visually appealing with the beautiful blur, I would prefer setting my integrated gpu with garuda for desktop environment rendering and use nvidia gpu/amd gpu(dedicated gpu) for running other apps. I mean this would highly improve the battery life and also reduce fan noises among many computers. Currently I am facing issues like overheating and extremely loud fan noise. I don't blame the distro but rather blame the load distribution manner out of the box regarding the gpu. Using bumblebee or simply xrandr or any other way of switching GPUs, or using both GPUs together but integrated for rendering and dedicated gpu for heavy apps,(inspired by pop os), a good graphical load balancing can be achieved. For example system76 power management is a GNOME extension which exactly does the same thing. Many people install Garuda for gaming, so such a feature prepared out of the box will be appreciated. In case of issues caused by nvidia cards, usually common during booting (usually with gnome) can be avoided by using Integrated gpu for desktop environment and dedicated for apps although I am aware of timeshift backups.

Also in case we had an option of 'run app using dedicated graphics card' on the right click context menu would be great beacuse users could run steam using dedicated gpu while run dolphin or other basic apps using Integrated gpu. This will improve battery life as dedicated gpu can be manually used for certain apps while the basic load of rendering desktop environment and firefox can be put on integrated gpu. Usually the community appreciates this type of gpu integration out of the box. Such an option in the panel would be very handy.

Also from one thread I heard that you guys are reworking again on gnome with gnome 40 release. I would advice adding some useful extension out of the box like tiling etc,

Also I would advice you to rework on the gnome top panel especially with its color scheme. It is very transparent and It's hard to see with such a bright wallpaper. Maybe changing the panel transperency using one such gnome extension could be a work around.

In the garuda tools, you.may provide a localisation option. This can free upto 1 gb on a fresh installation. This is a native feature in bleeachbit which asks users to select their local language, usually English, and then removes all other unnecessary language packs and fonts for each app. This significantly improves performance of the system.

Also I feel garuda should natively allow users to manually overclock cpu. Users can set presets for battery and charging conditions. There are many such scrips and apps available.

Regardless I am loving the preconfigured settings of garuda linux and also shocked by how useful the timeshift backups are!

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Thanks for the suggestions perhaps when the Garuda Devs have some spare time they'll get around to implementing those suggestions.

Then again maybe not, as they really don't have much in the way of spare time as the distro is constantly in need of revision being a rolling update model.

Also, if you weren't aware it's very difficult to ship many extensions by default with Gnome as they are very prone to breakage when Gnome is updated.

The official Gnome policy is they don't support extensions and are unconcerned if they break upon update. This has nothing to do with Garuda and if you wish to see changes with regards to supporting extensions you'd really be best to take that up directly with Gnome (good luck with that).

Aside from that, what you think may be essential other users may deem undesirable or bloat. Every user wants a different set of features implemented. If the devs changed everything to please one user the next day there would be an even bigger list from other users to undo or modify things again.

You are free to implement any features you wish on your own system, but the devs only implement features that fit with their vision for the distro. Even then that only happens when they have time to do so.

Garuda has already dropped several editions because they were problematic. Gnome could possibly end up in that category as well because Gnomes policy regarding extensions makes it very hard to avoid breakages with Gnome. At a certain point Gnome may just not be worth the effort to maintain with a small dev team and its ongoing issues.

You are free to implement whatever you wish on your own system. If you document all your work thoroughly so it can be easily implemented, then perhaps that may make it more attractive to integrate by default. If you merely expect all your wish list will be implemented because you desire it, you could have a bit of a wait (I'm guessing).

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Hi, I just installed GNOME, and it works like a charm
I don’t know what is the issue with nvidia users, so can’t comment on that.
But it works great for me.

:heart_eyes:

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I think Gnome has definitely become somewhat less problematic with more recent releases.

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That is indeed true. The step from 3.34 to 3.36 also brought somewhat good performance improvements, at least for me. Things felt smoother. What I truly miss though is system native blur.. So used to it these days :smiley:

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Maybe a GPU switcher like POP!_OS?

i know i am late but please check this -

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1251/blyr/

not like kde but kind of native blur, actually transperency to be precise for GNOME, not sure about arch but works on ubuntu vm after running

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-gst-3.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0

mostly works on xorg but probably broken on wayland.

with 3.40 extensions will be improved, popular extensions like gsconnect, caffiene etc will now be tested before the major gnome releases and updated to work with next release before the public release. so very soon this issue is likely to be solved.

other than that bumblebee or any other GUI way of grapics card switching could be appreciated by the linux gaming community. also there has been few issues with my computer fans with garuda, like if i simply open up the dolphin file manager then my fan go louder than hell. i need to mess with many power settings to sort it out. i did not had this issue with manjaro or arch earlier. a simple overclocking gui could solve my issue. it can be added in garuda gamer. also could you add the web apps application present in gnome version to kde dragonised version, i found it pretty helpful. also bpytop is an excellent alternative to htop and supports mouse in alacritty and konsole, etc and i feel it matches the garuda vibe more than htop. should be included out of the box as otherwise it has to be manually installed or by pip3. you could use an icon and make a desktop entry for bpytop in /usr/share/applications. this will make it available in the menu. otherwise so far so good with garuda. thanks

yes, here it is
system-76-power

also one last thing i wanted to mention, since there are so many versions of garuda, some very large, it is usually a challange for new users to verify the sha256 of the iso on their own. please see this

https://tails.boum.org/news/verification_extension_deprecation/index.en.html

tails came out with this new way of verifying iso easily from the browser with one click after their iso is downloaded, could be useful to many if garuda downloads page also had it.

Bubblebee was specifically not chosen to be used with Garuda because of the massive amounts of support issues it caused on the most popular Arch based distro.

Then write one, or install a preexisting one yourself.

Garuda already has more GUI tools than any other Arch based distro I can think of. Arch isn’t exactly known for providing GUI tools. Perhaps you need to ween yourself from being so reliant on a GUI as many things using an Arch based system still require knowledge of terminal use. If you are completely opposed to that, then again perhaps an Arch based distro is not for you.

I will give you my own personal thoughts on installing a GUI overclocking utility by default. Knowledgeable users overclock their system and they still encounter instability. Putting a GUI overclocking utility in a distro that many Windows refugees are running as their first Linux distro is like putting a loaded automatic hand gun in a babies crib. We already have enough support problems on the forum from unknowledgable Windows users messing up their systems.

The worst thing about installing a GUI overclocking utility by default is that users never create a help request that states “I overclocked my system way past the level any sane person would do, and now my system is totally unstable”. They create some post along the lines of “Sysztem brokez - Garuda Garbage”.

After dozens of responses trying to help the newbz with with their garbage system the information is finally pried out of the user that he had overclocked his machine to insanity level. This is a total support nightmare just waiting to happen if installed by default IMO.

This is why some things are better left to the user to install themselves.

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well i was refering to something like cpupower-gui, a gui frontend to cpupower utility but it is available on debian, i found it in the aur but it was messed up. cpupower idetifies the overclocking range for the processor, allows expert users to manually overclock while for newbies, it has powersave and performance presets. Seeing this officially from garuda developers would be great as it could work well with garuda, and you guys are aware of what sort of issues the community/ from-windows users are facing in regards of overclocking, after all anybody would like out of the box overclocking gui in a gaming/performance oriented distro, which just works. in order to avoid such instability issue with the new users, you might create such a gui overclocking frontend, with presets, intelligent monitoring and switching which could be integrated with timeshift and the timeshift backup for most recent overclocking could be there in grub! the only thing you need to find out is how to find safe overclocking limits that arent insane. i will work on such a program in my free time, will take some time though, i might provide a cli program sometime in future, coz i know you guys are really good at the gui work.

and about the nvidia thing, maybe its hard but necessary anyways.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/hybrid_graphics
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-gpu-switch/

have you tried these?

or even why dont you compile system76 gpu switching menu natively on garuda? i dont know much of this stuff but in case you could make it possible would be great. i am not sure if garuda does/doesnt promote proprietary drivers, but still.
is there anything you developers of garuda have been working on in this regard?

i feel gui fro some stuff is handy, things like cpu oveclocking and gpu support should be taken care by the devs as different users use different ways of doing these and many times messing up. a gui could be good for both the sides. Anyways this was just a feedback / opinion. but seeing such stuff like cpu gui / gpu switching directly from devs is very helpful for newbies as well as for many experts.