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 "Hawk Eagle" (210225)

We are happy to finally announce our new release called "Hawk Eagle"!

Since our last release there are a lot of new changes such as our default browser and the terminal prompts we use. As you may have noticed, some things are getting changed quite frequently with each new release. This may continue for a while yet, as we are a relatively new distro and are still striving to find the "best fit" for everything. Some users may not agree with all of the changes, but you always have the freedom to choose what fits you best.

But lets have a closer look at all the changes!

All editions

• Browser
  Starting with changes that affect all editions (except XFCE, more on that later). We now ship  Librewolf 13, a Firefox fork which is focused on privacy as our default browser. This decision was made because Librewolf doesn't send Telemetry and has all the configs we added using our browser settings baked in already - making it a perfect fit.
• Performance- & powersave-tweaks
  Our performance-tweaks package also received needed changes as to when and how services are enabled. Prior to these changes the settings packages would all just be automatically enabled upon updating. This has now been moved to the performance-tweaks package to prevent this behavior from happening. Also auto-cpufreq, the daemon responsible for scaling CPU intelligently is now "opt-in" rather than "opt-out". The reason behind this is that some users were getting really poor performance with it active. Instead, we now use the "performance" governor as default for best performance. This is of course not ideal for laptop users but there is a solution with our "powersave-tweaks" package which can be installed instead of the performance tweaks to retain battery life. This should be the best solution for both kinds of users.
• Kernel
  The previously shipped linux-tkg-bmq caused issues on some systems. To ensure the best compatibility with the widest range of systems linux-zen will once again be the default kernel. Linux-tkg (and other kernels such as xanmod) can now be found in the setup assistant instead. The people who desire still more performance from their kernel can choose alternates easily this way. Unless you experience major issues using the Linux-tkg-bmq kernel, it is the distro's recommended kernel of choice.
• Fish/zsh
  Another change affecting all editions is having  starship.rs 7 as default prompt for both fish & zsh. Starship is compatible with a lot of shells, very customizable & feature rich while being fast. The look of the previous fish prompt has been replicated so that is how every editions shell looks like now 
• It's also notable that more editions will now use fish as the default shell (as we are very happy with it). It now features even more aliases, so be sure to check out the well commented config file to find out what they do!
• Chaotic-AUR
  Some of you might remember the outage of our repo in December - we have fully recovered and automated everything which means hourly updates are up again! That also means that packages to be added can be requested (if they are in the  AUR)  here 2 so you don't have to build them yourselves. Due to the massive increase in new users recently our download speeds were beginning to drop drastically. The new mirrors we have acquired recently, combined with a random bouncer (selecting a random mirror) as default should definitely improve the slow download speeds experienced of late. The occasional database corruptions which caused the "exceeded max file size" error is now a thing of the past as well! There is now a  Telegram channel 9 which tracks which packages are going in and out (if you are interested in that). We are still searching for new mirrors, especially in India, read more about it  here!

Edition changes

• Dr460nized
  The dr460nized editions got a lot of little visual tweaks which resulted in a generally better appearance. Konsole is now properly themed as well. Issues such as a broken Alacritty or Latte layout have been fixed. Since Plasma 5.21 is released, we now have access to the new plasma-firewall which replaces GUFW. Also Flameshot is back as screenshot utility. There are now 2 more (light) wallpapers and long keyboard presses correctly repeat the key a very needed change.
• Dr460nized-blackarch
  This edition is new in store - basically its dr460nized featuring the  BlackArch repository 10, BlackArch  tweaks 4 and a selection of the most common tools. Its made for people who want to use the tools without sacrificing the look of the system. To ensure best compatability with wifi adapters a selection of common drivers are also preinstalled. That being said, this edition is not made for use in VMs - the recently announced XFCE blackarch edition is most likely a better fit for this use case. As with the bare bones Garuda editions, the BlackArch editions are for advanced users only, (you're on your own for support).
• GNOME
  We are back to PulseAudio instead of Pipewire! It turned out that a lot of people had their volume buttons not working and needed to install PulseAudio manually. To prevent this and ensure compatibility we just reverted this change. GNOME now also uses fish as default shell. Theming also got changed and is now using Sweet/BeautyLine too (like dr460nized). Also the preset look got little visual fixes here and there.
• Qtile
  Qtile now features a CLI app & simplified scripts for easy management of wallpapers and according pywal theming (gets colors from the wallpaper). Also tela-icon-purple is back, as it was removed from the tela-icons package.
• LXQt-Kwin
  LXQt got a major design overhaul by  @RohitSingh. Its now much more colorful and blurry, featuring modified NeonIcons, dracula-purple as theme and cairo-dock as application launcher.
• XFCE
  XFCE also got overhauled - it focuses on providing a traditional desktop experience. That means it uses plain bash as shell instead of zsh and linux-lts instead of linux-zen. Also it got a general package cleanup, making it much more lightweight than before.

Application & settings

• BeautyLine
  This icon pack has a lot more themed icons making it more complete than before.
• Garuda Gamer
  All missing applications (due to the Chaotic-AUR reset) are back in repo.
• GRUB
  The selection between proprietary and open source NVIDIA drivers have been moved to the top level to make it easier to chose the right one. A new theme by  @SGS has been added as well.
• Setup assistant
  The setup-assistant now features gaming and kernel choices and automatically updates dotfiles to the latest version available after updating the system for the first time. This solves the problem of having an up-to-date settings package but "outdated" desktop configurations. It is advised to re-login after completing the setup to use the new settings.

Garuda Linux "Hawk Eagle" (210225)