I’ve been a long time openSUSE Tumbleweed user, it’s a cool distro with a lot of ease of use. I got used to the flow of openSUSE Tumbleweed, of navigating it’s update process, and generally enjoying the speed of zypper. However, I find myself really loving the flow of Garuda Linux (an Arch-based distro) that takes the sting out of using Arch. As it has a lot of scripts and tools designed to make Arch management not as difficult. While you do learn about how Arch functions because the Garuda explains why every tool they provide is necessary and what it does in terms of managing the system. It also helps that a lot of the preinstalled wallpapers are dragon and bird related…As those tickle a part of my brain that is causing me to realize that I do have an anthrosona which is developing kinda fast (I suppose that 42 years of not thinking about it catches up with ya, ROFL).
The reason why I even did is because I was running Artix Linux on my laptop (this is based on Arch Linux and systemd free) and learning how to configure my installation there…Before learning instead of using vanilla Xorg as a fallback, it’s Xlibre (dude behind it, Enrico, he’s off his rocker). Which is a shame because I was learning about Runit, and how to configure services…It was slightly advanced for me, but the command structure was relatively easy to learn. It didn’t expect too much from the user, while still being functional as fuck.
I tried to install straight up Arch on my laptop, that failed, Garuda Linux did succeed (as a temporary measure). As I wanted to have a working laptop, until I could decide to put something that updates slower on it. It was a good thing that I discovered how painless Garuda Linux is, and it will only help me understand Arch better, in the future. I do wish that in the future Artix Linux abandons Xlibre, as it is a cool concept.
Welcome to the arch based family, btw. How does Garuda compare to openSUSE Tumbleweed for you? Is one clearly better for you or is it mostly give and takes?
I think the Garuda repos have more access to software, Octopi is really simple and fast to use. I could search package names and get the correct ones installed fairly fast. YaST has a similar functionality and worked pretty quickly. The difference is that Octopi doesn’t require a Admin password until you want to apply installations of packages. While YaST does require an initial Admin password, but lets you freely install stuff without further verification.
Updating works just as quickly (if not a little faster) on Garuda, openSUSE Tumbleweed is pretty speedy as well…Garuda is just seconds shorter. I think the best part of Garuda is that I don’t have Secure Boot enabled, and that makes kernel updates painless. With openSUSE Tumbleweed, every time a new NVIDIA driver or kernel update dropped…I’d have to do the MOK song and dance, if you miss it, it screws everything up. Not the case with Garuda, the scripts they wrote for pacman basically takes care of everything and I can read the outputs to see how it all works. It’s very nice in that respect.
During the Garuda Linux install process, you also can get proper NVIDIA drivers on openSUSE Tumbleweed. You can easily install them through YaST or the command line. Still, I prefer Garuda’s approach of installing them during the system install, as Nouveau Drivers are absolutely inferior (they don’t have the source code NVIDIA has) and often cause me problems.
I feel like Garuda on-boarding is a lot better, with their Garuda Toolbox opening up and guiding the user on the first steps of system set-up. I do find if you select too many apps for the set-up it will miss installing those packages. However, using Octopi to install those missing things is a viable solution…
Garuda, out of the box is one of the visually stunning distros (highly customized KDE Plasma DE). It could be considered a lot by some, but, my eyes appreciate the striking color. The reasonably sane desktop layout is pretty strong, a bit opinionated but I changed some things so that I could work with it.
