I’m reporting on my first experiments with Garuda Linux (Arch-based), the latest release, “Temeraire” (260819), in the Mokka edition. I’m testing that in a virtual machine.

I can anticipate that I love the aesthetic of this distro, especially in this Mokka edition, which is more sober than the “dragonized” version.

The installation

The installation is rather smooth, especially if you’re used to Calamares-based installers.

Let’s start the installation.

One thing I also noted in the past is that the black font is not easily readable in the combo boxes during the installation dialog. It turns white when selected, then returns to black.

The installer did not detect my location (Italy), which is strange because other Calamares-based installers have never had this issue.

I had to adjust that manually:

Similarly, for the keyboard layout (which I had already configured as Italian in the live environment), I had to set it manually.

Since this is a virtual machine, I go with “Erase disk”, and also enable swap with hibernation. Note that it only supports BTRFS! As expected, it also supports system encryption.

After inserting the user information, we’re ready to start:

Let’s enjoy a few slides during the installation, telling us what Garuda provides.

The installation took only a couple of minutes. I seem to understand that it does not download anything else from the Internet. After all, unlike EndeavourOS and CachyOS, you have an ISO for each edition (DE or WM).

The installed system

Let’s reboot.

I love the aesthetic look of Garuda from the very beginning 🙂

Note that the setup assistant needs to update the system (as I said above, the installer doesn’t seem to download from the Internet). The time you saved during the installation has to be paid during the update 😉

By the way, Garuda provides Chaotic-AUR! (i.e., “Semi-automated binary repository for AUR packages”). One thing I personally haven’t tried yet.

Global menu like in macOS: if you’re not used to that, it’ll take some time. You might get the feeling that applications have no menu bar at all 😉

Similarly, window controls are on the left rather than the right (though this can be changed in KDE settings).

We can also see that snapper and automatic snapshots are already configured by looking at the end of the update output:

Pressing ENTER leads us to the Setup Assistant:

I’m not planning to install anything at this stage, but it’s interesting to have such a tool.

Then, we get to the Garuda Toolbox, which also tells us to reboot.

Note that the kernel is “linux-garuda”, which is based on the CachyOS one.

There are many interesting tools in the Garuda Toolbox.

Even having all the configuration files available in one place, ready to edit, is really helpful.

I won’t talk more about the Garuda Toolbox, but it’s a very useful tool! I suggest you explore that.

Let’s see a few other things and configurations.

Krunner is configured to appear in the center of the screen (I like it, though I typically leave it on the top, its default position):

Desktop effects everywhere: blur, wobbly windows, a magic lamp for minimizing a window, cover flow for the task switcher, etc. I love these effects!

Note that the background is blurred when a window is focused.

I’ve already noted the use of Snapper; the “Snapper Tool” in the dock is not Btrfs Assistant, as I thought, but a simpler one. However, Btrfs Assistant is also installed by default, together with Btrfs maintenance.

Let’s open Konsole, and we get the glorious fastfetch, also telling us that the default shell is fish (I’ll have to try fish someday):

Nice icons, theme, and fonts!

The partitioning, especially from the BTRFS point of view, is the standard one:

It’s nice to have zram configured by default as well.

That’s all for the moment!

I’m planning to try to drive Garuda daily.

Have I already said I find it beautiful 😉