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 "Spotted Eagle" (210507)

Hey guys! Today is the day of another major iso release As usual, we got a bunch of changes and improvements for your favourite distro. Apart from the usual bug fixes there are some changes regarding default browsers, iso offerings, minimal system requirements & packages. Lets dive in!

All editions:

• Some of you might remember that we chose Librewolf as default browser for the last release. As the browser is a central application for everyone, we still strive to find the best fit for this part of the system. As a result, a quite new browser called "FireDragon" (in fact a Librewolf fork) will be the default browser for every edition except XFCE from now on. The reasoning behind this is quite simple: created with feedback of our forum members in mind it was easy to customize the default settings to be attractive for regular users as well. Logins & history are saved by default for example, also some issues such as not working addon search or homepage shortcuts have been resolved while the relevant parts of privacy respecting defaults are still present. Further feedback is welcome in the FireDragons forum thread.
• Downloading isos is now easier than ever using our new "Garuda Downloader" 55 created by @TNE. Since its distributed as Appimage and Windows application its usable on every system! Its attractive especially for people with limited bandwidth as it is able to use existing isos as source - thanks to Zsync2 only different parts of the new iso have to be downloaded (similar to delta-updates) which potentially saves a lot of data. Try it now to download this new release
• Restoring snapshots has been made easier - when booted into a snapshot Timeshift will automatically open and prompt to restore the snapshot.
• To prevent issues caused by lower end systems there is now a requirement check happening before the installation can be started - 2.5GB of RAM & 30GB storage space is needed at least. This step has been taken in order to help people who chose to ignore our download page notes (which are apparently quite a lot of people).
• People using hybrid graphics laptops now profit from Optimus-manager-qt being used by default. This makes switching the currently active graphics card really easy without having to use the command line.
• Most of our packages have been transitioned to fixed releases. Previously, all the packages were built directly from the master branch in case of detected changes. As the general goal is to make the distribution as whole more stable we decided to adopt fixed releases. This increases the possibility of finding errors more quickly, also partly pushed updates will no longer produce possibly broken packages due to automatically happening rebuilds.
• Our boot animations got an overhaul, making them more unique than before. Additionally, they have been disabled in Live boot to make spotting & reporting eventual boot issues easier.
• Linux-zen 5.12.1 is used as kernel.

Edition changes:

• Dr460nized:
  The dr460nized editions received some QoL changes & bug fixes: some of the preset desktop effects such as translucency were causing confusion for a lot of people so they have been disabled. Sweet themes & Latte dock presets have been updated. Also, the new default audio engine is Pipewire instead of PulseAudio as its now a viable drop-in replacement 8. KDE has been updated to version 5.21.5.
• Dr460nized-dev:
  This new edition is basically dr460nized plus experimental extras made for people who want to help testing new, possibly unstable features. Differences include KwinFT 6 instead of Kwin, linux-cacule as kernel & zram-generator 1 instead of systemd-swap. Please provide feedback in the forum if using this edition!
• GNOME:
  As the new major GNOME version 40 got released recently this edition got a major overhaul: it doesn't feature any extensions anymore as our experiences with major version upgrades of GNOME has been pretty bad. With each of those, all of the used extensions broke reliably, making the upgrade a frustrating thing to deal with for most end users who aren't used to this process as the desktop experience changes completely until the extensions are updated for the new release. The new audio engine got changed to Pipewire as well.
• LXQt-Kwin:
  LXQt-Kwin now uses BeautyLine icons for a more attractive and unified look & features Pipewire as audio engine.
• Qtile:
  Qtile got updated to the latest release and now features blur thanks to picom-ibhagwan. Following dr460nized & GNOME, Pipewire is featured here as well! There is now a minimize/maximize function using tabs implemented. Also, the colours of bar & window colors got changed.
• Sway:
  Being maintained by @OdiousImp, our new Garuda Sway edition ships with a completed configuration with easy to use keybindings and a cheat-sheet to help you get started. Following the Nord color scheme it is both good to look at and just as fast utilising the best of Wayland native alternatives to offer a seamless transition to the Wayland Compositor. It features Waybar 1, Wofi 1 / nwg-launchers 1 & azote for easy usage. (please note that this edition only supports open source video drivers)
• Wayfire:
  Wayfire features greetd-qtgreet as display manager and has blur & fire effects enabled by default now. Its GRUB & Plymouth theme is now following the looks of the dr460nized editions.
• Removed isos:
  KDE-Multimedia, Cinnamon, Mate & Recbox have been removed from our official iso list for now due to missing maintainers. Cinnamon will return at a later as official version. KDE-Multimedia & MATE however will be continued as "Community editions" and will be released once ready.

Application & settings:

• BeautyLine icons:
  Once again, more icons have been added and a lot of broken symlinks & empty icons have been fixed.
• Garuda Assistant:
  Due to newly added signing keys in the repository a lot of people have been getting signature errors which prevented system updates. To make fixing this easier for end users, the assistant now features options to refresh keyrings. Also, switching shells is an option now.
• Garuda-fish-config:
  We are back to using neofetch-git instead of paleofetch as it works more reliably. Also, a new "helpme" alias can be used to get a cheatsheet for almost all commands using cht.sh 5 - make try it the next time instead of whoogling how to use a specific command!
• Garuda-zsh-config:
  Following the fish-config, paleofetch is also replaced by neofetch-git.

Servers & infrastructure:

• A lot of new repository mirrors for our repository have been added in (sorted by the date added):
  • Los Angeles, US - by @sorcerer420
  • Bulgaria - by @sudoman
  • Canada - by @freebird54
  • Texas - by XStefen 2
  • Netherlands - by @easylee
  • Germany - by @ptr1337
• A new iso download / repository mirror 6 provided by Fosshost which has its own CDN (Fastly)

Garuda Linux "Spotted Eagle" (210507)