A new version of Garuda Linux has been released. Garuda Linux is an Arch based rolling release distro that focus on performance and ease of use.

Garuda Linux "Harpy Eagle" (210926)

What's up fellow Garudians!

Unusually little time has passed since our last release, but we think it's a good idea to go for another one right now as it brings a few changes which we are really excited about!

Migration to Snapper

After the call for testers earlier this month, this release focuses mainly on our Garuda Assistant rework, which basically enables employing  Snapper  as snapshot solution instead of the well known Timeshift application. For those who don't you Snapper yet, its a well known tool developed by OpenSUSE as solution for managing snapshots. You might ask yourself why would anyone opt for Snapper instead of Timeshift, which already works well enough? Let's have a look at the advantages:

• Snapper supports taking snapshots of any mounted subvolume, not only @ or @home.
• Snapper allows you to name your subvolumes however you like
• Snapper supports both flat and nested subvolume layouts
• Snapper creates read-only snapshots
• Tools have been created for snapper which allow snapshot replication to external hosts/devices to allow snapshots to be used as part of a backup strategy
• Snapper doesn't require the root of the BTRFS partition to be mounted

Thanks to  @dalto, the Garuda Assistant now contains a Snapper & Snapper settings tab. This allows creating, deleting & restoring snapshots as well as adjusting settings like how many snapshots to take after updates from within the application. Having this as "in-house" solution is a really awesome thing to happen to Garuda! 

GNOME edition

While following the development of GNOME, it became obvious that GNOME does not want users to customize their desktop. Shipping custom themes will be a lot harder which is why we are cutting down on that as well starting with this release. In order, GNOME Barebones will no longer be part of the collection as no real customisation to the regular edition by us happens anymore. However, we enabled the installation to use  Tela-circle as default icon pack as the default Adwaita icon pack feels very incomplete.

Translating Garuda Assistant

As mentioned earlier already, our Garuda Assistant received a lot of new features, among them being able to translate the application. A rudimentary german translation has already been added as example. Having one of the most important system applications translated is surely a big step towards making it accessible to users, who do not use the english language. That is why we would like you, the community, for help in this matter! 
We will follow up with a comprehensible, easy to follow tutorial on how to add the translations soon.

Other changes

Apart from that, there haven't been as many changes as usual. Still, we have some nice quality of life changes in store

• Dr460nized editions Latte layout got adjusted and  Octopi  is shipped instead of Pamac as default package manager
• The update command got some enhancements such as updating Micro plugins
• Qtile got a lot of cleanups & fixes
• The Pacman lock, which would usually be in place after restoring a snapshot is automatically cleaned when booting
• Sways config got updated & uses  nwg-drawer now
• Added  mcfly  to ZSH & Fish configs - this enables the Ctrl + r shortcut which lets you search the history very easily

Made all packages output less spammy messages (eg. the ones in most metapackages) Brought back Ananicy in form of  Ananicy-Cpp, which is a Cpp rewrite of this application made by  @aviallon. It uses close to 0 ressource compared to the previously used one. All remaining editions which still used Connman moved to NetworkManager. This will get rid of the constant issues which people experienced with Connman and also helps keeping support consistant Fish/ZSH configs feature  find-the-command, which proposes to install packages, when a command put into the console results in an error due to a missing binary The MATE community edition got its display manager theming updated to be more immersive & also uses Octopi as package manager A bug which prevented the installation of packages selected in the setup assistant has been fixed Our Chaotic-AUR geo-mirror is now an actual geo-mirror and redirects to the closest available mirror using a database while dead mirrors are now detected and automatically rerouted to a working one for more reliable downloads thanks to  @TNE.

Garuda Linux "Harpy Eagle" (210926)