Other Arch Flavors I’ve tried (some are no longer with us) include:
- ArchBang
- EndeavourOS
- Manjaro
- Chakra
So with that out of the way, I’ve found my Garuda experience incredibly painful. From messy repositories (Chaotic-AUR plus their own stuff), to an overly involved upgrade process (when using the helper) - the distro screams of a team that has no freakin’ clue how to maintain an actual distribution.
It’s basically Arch on hard mode with so many settings rolled into their own packages which need to be removed before customization.
Then we get to the purported performance enhancements and, honestly, this is the worst performing distro I’ve ever used, by multiple miles. I’m not sure if its the scheduler settings, or something with the zram settings - but this distro hitches and hangs constantly. (5950x, 64GB of Ram, Samsung 980 Pro drives, NVIDIA RTX 3080Ti - NOT a weak machine by any standards)
I’d normally chalk it up to compositor issues on Wayland (yes, I prefer Wayland and it works fine for most Arch derivitaves even with Nvidia). However the performance issues even crop up on basic terminal commands on a TTY with lots of weird hangs and lags.
The ONLY thing that was easier on this distro was installing the various Proton GE builds and other specialty stuff found in the Chaotic-AUR. But given the above, it’s definitely not worth it when one can configure an Arch box to do the same things without all of the problems.
Perhaps I’m not doing something right? Given all the praise for this distro, perhaps it shouldn’t perform like this?
To be completely and utterly clear - I’m an advanced user trying out these distros for fun and discovery. I can indeed “just use a different distro” but wanted to give this one a fair shake before moving on.
I really doubt that. Again - advanced user here - with numerous comparison points to other arch based distros. I also maintain large distributed DB clusters for Fortune 100 companies.
If it was something not on the latest version - it’s not due to my lack of effort or knowledge, but instead due to the terrible way Garuda is managed.
What, am I supposed to compile kernel modules from scratch myself? Never needed to do that with Endeavour, Manjaro, or just Arch.
If Garuda’s install (and subsequent upgrade) doesn’t fetch the latest from the Arch repos, that’s on them.
EDIT: Also, these non-answers are tiresome, low effort, and provide zero guidance on any matter. I know every single kernel change since 5.0 that impacted my hardware. I have rss feeds for each of the hardware components I have, and if Linux or a distro ships an enhancement to my hardware - I’m usually aware well before it is released. If you were to point to any bit of my hardware I can tell you, for certain, what functionalities are supported, which has bugs, and common workarounds.
If you want this type of feedback to be valuable, then let me know if a new issue/regression has arisen given the list of hardware I’ve supplied.
Valuable: “Perhaps it was the latest kernel X which shipped some regressions for Nvidia drivers that causes compositor hitching on KWin”
Utterly Useless: “It’s very likely some drivers are not up to date or compatible with your system.”
I sincerely apologize for that, my comment is useless to help you. I now regret posting it after reading your reply; everything you said is valid and I hope someone here provides a solution to your question.
And I apologize in return for the rather harsh way I came across. The common (and frutrating) nature of your comment didn’t deserve the terseness of my response.
No my comment 💯% deserved it. I’ve hypocritically hated comments like the one I posted earlier and just realized the error after reading your reply.