Would Garuda be a good fit for me?

Hi, I'm Jeevat and I am extremely new to Linux. I had used Manjaro last year but decided to switch back to Windows because I couldn't properly use the command line. I mainly want to game on Garuda, and am wondering can I use Garuda with minimal to (I doubt) no command line usage?

Thanks in advance,
Jeevat

im no expert but i would say yes u can use it without comamand line if all works fine . But if u have problems that must fix u will find mostly only command line infos .
But i come too from windows and i like comand line more and more bec u get more information what goes on .
so for fixing problems i think its good to know how to use console . For Gaming on steam its not needed to use commandline ..
and its not so complicated to learn a few basics :wink:

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Yes you can use pamac to install apps and most terminal commands are gui in garuda-assistant.

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I mean most games are gui so yeah.

Yes all games even most emulators are all Gui .. That i mean too :wink:

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Thanks guys! I'll be sure to try it out today!

BTW here's a little advice to help you choose a desktop.

KDE dragonized - If you want a nice cool looking desktop to show off to your friends.

KDE dragonized gaming - same as above but w/ preinstalled gaming apps

KDE multimedia - If you want a bunch of preinstalled apps to start off asap.

XFCE (Recommended by me) - if you want a stable, lightweight and customizable desktop (note. if you want to use this for gaming use the setup assistant to install linux-tkg-bmq)

GNOME - if you want a polished desktop.

lxqt-kwin if you want something different.

I don't recommend the WMs if you are just starting off.

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Stick to Windows. Garuda isn’t for “gamers” who don’t want to understand how their OS works.

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I understand what you mean but I do eventually want to learn the ins and outs of this OS, but I want to make sure that I can do basic things when I am learning it. Though it probably will take a while for me to learn.

If you are not willing to put the time into learning the command line, then Archlinux isn't really for you. Not trying to be disrespectful, just stating a fact. Sooner or later you will need the command line to correct a problem.

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If you are not willing to put the time into learning the command line, then Archlinux isn’t really for you.

As stated in my reply to someone else, I do want to learn the command line eventually, however I just wanted to know how much of it is required because I don’t know what I am doing. Sorry, I probably should have stated this in my original post.

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If you are seriously considering Garuda, then some serious research would be advised.

Check https://www.protondb.com/ to see if your games are playable - this often entails some work on your part (often in command arguments in Steam) and you will still have no guarantee of playabilty.

Think hard and do some good research, beforehand.

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I would never use pamac to install apps, you are looking for trouble sooner or later.
I use pamac to search and view packages as it’s easier. Outside of that, use pacman and yay. :wink:

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So...depending on what games you want to play, they're going to work pretty well or you're going to have to do some heavy tweaking and messing with some not very well documented tools and procedures. I want to encourage you to try to learn linux if you are interested, but I don't want to give you the impression that gaming on Linux is something that is necessarily "easy" to set up only to smash your face on the reality that it can be really quite inconsistent depending on the game in question, your hardware configuration and the phases of the moon. This is also compounded by the fact that most games that do run on linux are targeting Ubuntu and their derivatives which could add some arch specific wrinkles to getting things running smoothly.

Not trying to scare you away. Trying to set expectations. Go into it with a mindset that you might have to learn and tinker and figure things out before your game works smoothly, and you'll have a better time.

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Even gaming on Steam is not necessarily 100% easy. For example, in order to run Persona 4 Golden you need to use the protontricks utility to install certain codecs or the entire thing crashes at the main cinematic.

It's A LOT better than it used to be, but...issues do happen.

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Based on your needs/wants, I think you would be better suited by another distro.

Some reasonable options for new linux users interested in gaming are:

POP_OS
Manjaro
Ubuntu
Linux Mint

There will always be some learning curve when switching to linux, but the above distros (as well as others named above) are better suited to newer users and users who prefer things to 'just work.' Additionally Ubuntu, Mint and Pop_OS have relatively large and friendly communities, the culture is more supportive and friendly towards beginners. I can't speak to the Manjaro community, as I haven't spent much time there. But in all cases the communities are much larger and more well established which is an asset when it comes to fixing things or searching for answers.

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Please explain your reasoning for this recommendation if you haven’t spent any real amount of time there. We use the same GUI tools as Manjaro and we actually provide more GUI tools than that distro. In addition we provide a system restore feature with timeshift snapshots that can be easily restored from the grub boot menu in case of any update breakages.

I would personally rate Garuda as superior to Manjaro as far as the frequency of system breakages, and the ability to recover from them. While our forum has a higher expectation that users perform their own background resarch than some distros we also have a far higher solve ratio on our forum than many other Arch based distro’s. So while other Arch based distros may have larger comunities and do far more hand holding for newbies, we actually resolve our users problems at a far higher ratio than these other distros that do far more hand holding.

I’ve compared the solve ratio for our distro compared to other Arch based distros and because of the quality of our expert helpers on our forum we solve a vastly greater percentage of our help requests than other distros with larger communities.

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I don't classify Manjaro as true Arch as they change too many things.
They have more wifi problems than any other Linux OS.

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Debian: hold my sudo

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First off, to head off any controversy, my comment is not meant to be a value judgement between Manjaro and Garuda and is only my subjective opinion on the priorities OP articulated (new user, looking for a good distro for gaming, well suited for newbies). If I didn't personally see the potential of Garuda, I wouldn't be here, but based on my experience so far (with the Distro and the forum) Its not a distro I would personally recommend to newbies that aren't specifically looking to 'get their hands dirty' and excited about the learning curve.

I am writing a fuller answer to your specific questions, but wanted to say the above clarification before things get derailed. Because I am certainly not trying to be negative about any distro including Garuda or to make any broad generalizations.