Garuda Review | Arch Linux Gaming Made EASY?

This distro is a roller coaster of emotions!
The Bazzite review: • Bazzite Review | Futur...

[@Maple-Circuit]

I was WRONG about ZRAM: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hXfSZnmGqZx-j6M Quick summary, ZRAM was configured in an optimal way and i'm a dummy (; The vid is an extensive explanation of the inner workings of ZRAM!

[@rkadowns]

Garuda is fantastic. I’m happy to see coverage for this amazing distro. When I think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, I have always come back to this.

[@AndrewErwin73]

vanilla Arch is great for gaming...

[@Maple-Circuit]

True!

[@GraniteFaun]

I mean dude, it's enough to install the drivers, steam, lutris and lets go

[@CompuB1t]

I recommend Garuda KDE lite or EndeavourOS without eos-tools to have a great functional Arch with KDE system. I have installed Arch full manually, with archinstall, with scripts, and even creating my own ISO with calamares (arksys-os). And I don't recommend anymore archinstall or scripts or not big mantained Arch-based distros because it needs extra configuration to works good (populate pacman, edit grub, add parallels download, deals with problems if you have installed Discover, etc.), while EndeavourOS o Garuda have live ISO and works by default. My system is right now EndeavourOS with vanilla KDE, and is pretty fast to install under 7 min and you can install via online, which means you have the latest packages.

[@adamk.7177]

If I can make an analogy: If using Garuda is like buying a prebuilt PC, Arch is like building a PC from scratch. That's the main thing about using Arch Linux; it's not supposed to be easy. Garuda is a great OS, and is actually one of my very first distros -- but I quickly found problems with it. I later found that those problems were with me and my lack of understanding how to use Linux, but it took a few years. That said -- if ANY distribution of Linux is easy for you, use it, bud. Glad to have another Linux user, ultimately.

[@Maple-Circuit]

100% True!

[@supertigerroadtrip5193]

My big thing is, all the tweaks I make to Arch are included in Garuda anyway, so it's just a time sync for me to install arch instead of Garuda. I love using base arch, and for specific use cases I just install arch from scratch (usually using arch install now) But for my main machine, I just install Garuda and am done with it.

[@ScottTempler]

It's a larger problem in all linux distros. Fedora BTRFS Volumes are kinda sketchy

[@Zu94ll4k]

I'm on Arch btw

[@anthonymacgregor9790]

Garuda i have had issues with where after making options it asked me to do in terminal I keep on getting a warning appear

[@erwynnipegerwynnipeg8455]

I loved your video, it was super informative! I appreciate your neutral tone. You have a great voice to listen to while studying, very intelligent, soft spoken and without overdramaticism or yelling. I have come to appreciate that greatly as some of the popular Linux commentators have great videos, but they are geared towards really sitting down with your popcorn rather than learning on the go and having moments of 'oh, huh, really? wow!' which is something I could do with your content. You also said things while explaining what they were, as someone who only recently switched to Ubuntu from 11 given the state of ... Copilot and Recall ... I didn't find that I felt left out or confused, because you always explained what you meant (such as your gripe with ZRAM, what it was, and how it impacted your decision-making process). You sound like you have a lot of low-level knowledge on the kernel / driver side and I'll be interested to watch your past videos. Cheers from SC!

[@Maple-Circuit]

Thanks, I'm really happy that you like my videos (;

[@glenni83]

Test CachyOs Maple. For me, that was my best experience ive had of any distro. Performance knocks every distro out of the park. not even close. Ive benhmarked 20 distros since last october

[@Maple-Circuit]

already on it! coming UP!

[@glenni83]

@@Maple-Circuit Be aware, that right now. There are some steam issues. Not sure whats going on. Seen it both on linux and windows. Think steam broke something. Started 3-4 days ago, windows is okay today. But it does not look like linux side of things are fixed. Not seen it so unstable to date right now. Where proton breaks, store screen breaks, you get error messages around compatibility tools etc. It also might break your kwin when gaming. I have tried to fix, but when not even a fresh install even works. Its time to wait a bit. Tested CachyOs with 6.1 beta, with kwin patch. Best experience ive had ever on linux side.

[@Clanps]

what are the 20 distros you've tried because you shouldn't be getting any difference in performance? If it's just lighter weight you were probably using really bloated distros?

[@thanosfisherman]

BlAzInGLy fast 🚀

[@glenni83]

@@Clanps Pretty much the most popular once out of debian, fedora and arch. You can pretty much name em you self i guess. then the base distros it self. You have many opinions out there. Some where making tierlists etc. So i started around the rumors. Then checked into those who called em self gaming distros. There are a lot of forks. You could think there are not much difference in em. But there are. Some distro devs patch things. Others does not. Then you have the devs that optimize and patch.. You dont see it before you start pushing the limit of the hardware. Distros unaffected usualy is the people with bottleneck systems. like in 1080p and to some grade of the 1440p. When you start benchmarking 4k and you system gives it all. then its when you start to see a difference, where you actually need the frames for getting a good experience in 4k. 4k usually hits a wall on the hardware. I know usually where that wall is from windows and Atlas Os 4.0. What cought my eye at first was Garuda. after I was trough Nobara.. Nobara was 3 months of hell. Due the updates did break the system left and right. The further i updated, the more it broke, until i sat there with a black screen and a commando line. He fixed it after a while. Was from the 101-104. So he cut the middle part the broke the system in the end. Right now as it is from what i see. Arch seems to be the thing when it comes to gaming. They push a lot of fixes fast. Like things you dont get in fedora and debian. So no, its not only about light weight and bloat like windows is. Linux is more complex then that right now, due its changing realy fast, and its developing and evolving faster then anything ive seen.. At first i was thinking the same, until i sat down for 9 months. Digging into why its not like that. Then i was told everything is the same. Then i wanted to test different things. But i could not get the same resaults. Then i have to go around asking devs. Why do is see this and that. That made me even more confused. Thats when I started to distro jump. Then i discovered a french guy, gaming on a distro that was not a gaming distro. But had better performance then me, even i had better system. Then i started to understand, that this was getting complex.Then i had to understand, is it the kernel, is the patch, is it the proton, is it compiling, drivers, distros. I dont get all of it yet. Im acitiv monitoring activity on arch right now. It becam my main distro. But after 9 months now, im geting some kind of picture of how things look

[@lassebrustad]

I've used a few distros by now over the years, and I've landed on Pop OS, as it's based on the stable release of Ubuntu, it's maintained by System76 which makes desktops and laptops, and it's optimized for gaming, but comes with the minimal tools to get started without a lot of bloat, so that's for sure a good distro to recommend for beginners as well as experienced Linux users, tbh anyway, my experience with Garuda was from 2020, when it was very new, afaik, so I didn't expect too much, other than challenges related to the distro being Arch based. I loved the fact that it was modified a lot with customizations that I liked, but I disliked it being a heavily bloated distro, so I wasn't truely happy about it. after using it for half a year, with one format during that time because I noticed that the latest iso contained a way more updated setup, I ended up not using Linux for about a month on my dual boot (Win10 + Garuda) setup, and when I went back to it, it failed hard on updating. can't really recommend it for anyone, other than people willing to reformat 2-4 times a year, due to major changes that already installed systems won't get, or major issues that might result in the system not being easy to update my conclusion: Garuda works for playing around and messing up, but not for someone who wants something easy Pop OS is a great choice for Linux gaming, as it's simple and works really well. it won't fail after 2+ months of inactivity Windows is for the gamer that doesn't care if their privacy is owned by Microsoft, selling your data and making more spyware for the system MacOS is for those who like to pay a lot for something that works for the time Apple want's it to be usable, which might be 2-10 years, nobody knows

[@juhatalimaki6664]

I have used Garuda for two years and it has worked flawlessly, until a couple of weeks ago (after +800 updates btw) when only LTS-kernel works. the main kernel doesnt boot and freezes the computer. I guess it is something in my config since not many complains about this in their forum. But I can live with LTS. As for gaming - I installed the Heroic Games launcher that Garuda offers and it was a breeze to install and play, just install and play, Heroic Games launcher takes care of everything automatically, no need to tweak anything. Baldurs Gate 3, Divinity original sins and Fallout 4 (bought on GOG) works flawlessly, and I play all games on 4K ultra. I have yet to test Steam and the steam games I have.

[@DevJeremi]

For me Garuda few years ago was very unstable and easy to break, Now I'm using CachyOS(also Arch based, and for Gaming) and is works much better for me.

[@lexcelius6921]

As someone who started with Arch I usually just Install Garuda just because I'm going to Install Everything Garuda has if I install Arch anyway.

[@Maple-Circuit]

Make sense!

[@supertigerroadtrip5193]

Exactly my reason for using Garuda instead of Base Arch.

[@YamaK]

If you want arch, why not just use arch?

[@laylacrit1355]

Good out of the box experience and access to aur

[@YamaK]

@@laylacrit1355 You have access to AUR on arch though

[@ratofthecity6351]

just in case you dont want arch but still want to say you use arch. also unique pfetch drawing

[@Maple-Circuit]

@@ratofthecity6351 lol True

[@adamk.7177]

Hard to use for beginners. Most don't understand why to use Arch in the first place. Why chastise someone for using Linux? Don't be an elitist.

[@naderz4064]

The web browser is a fork of floorp which is a fork of firefox lol "floorp" I love it

[@LocovsworldNL]

You are right, newbies should never be thrown on an arch based distrobution unless you want them run back to windows. Get newbies on a debian based systems and they will land fine most docs go installing things with apt. But i am using linux for 27 years i can fix non bootable linux installs. But your conclusion was great. Btw litle twist here i am using arch btw.

[@adamk.7177]

I've used Linux for 3 years and know how to chroot into non bootable installs to fix them too. It's not that hard. You just have to get reeeeally used to breaking stuff and eventually sick of not being able to fix it.

[@Maple-Circuit]

breaking stuff is one of the fun part of linux, having that much control over your system that you can break it is an amazing thing! But for newbies, we need a softer learning curve than nuking them with an Arch (;

[@caios3446]

Got manjaro kde plasma on the pc of my father and it worked great for him! I think I would recommend that distro for every begginer. I had problems with debian based distros.

[@Kai_Rengoku]

Garuda was my first and I still believe it’s a great starter distro esp arch based I usually build my own arch now but always includes some of their repo, however I am considering going with their hyprland version it seems great out of the box

[@purpasmart_4831]

I prefer Endeavour OS imo.

[@AdmV0rl0n]

I have a question after I watched this. While I take your point on ZRAM. Did the devs somehow make it immutable and set it so you can't change or amend it? If yes, then your comment is bang on. If not, then publish how to amend. It should not be a terminal comment against a distro if its a problem that can be reset by end user. My bigger issue with the nice looking Garuda is its rather unreliable and unstable nature, and for a deeper level on that, they chose Arch. Which I don't think I'll ever understand :)

[@Maple-Circuit]

Agree! Yes ZRAM isn't a deal breaker for me and it can indeed be change by the user... My issue is that the distro claims to be optimized, but delivers an unoptimized feature out of the box. A little counter productive (; but as i said, not a deal breaker.

[@Hurla]

I use Arch btw...😎

[@WilliamLawrence7]

Garuda is about as easy an installation as you can get, in preinstalls most gaming software you're going to need to start gamings right out the box, on top of an Arch disto. WTF did you do? Everything you're complaining about is the default behavior, for instance, right after install, you should have gotten a pop up that walks you through updating the system, and then a bunch of gaming software and platforms, as well as internet and media packages, the whole setup can be wrapped up in a single action in just a few minutes. You had a very strange, not default experience somehow and now you've got all the people who watched this thinking your borked experience, maybe chill with the adhd clicking of buttons and menus and pay attention before telling the world how bad the experience is, it's really unfair to the devs who have done a really good job here, and quite frankly your viewers, and I've tried just about every Arch based distro out there.

[@Maple-Circuit]

>Garuda is about as easy an installation as you can get Agree >WTF did you do? I belive, as i said it in the vid, i had to restart my computer BEFORE login in the session and this probably did the problem.... >You had a very strange, not default experience i mentioned that my experience was probably not default and that it wasn't an issue for me (but it should still be fixed) >you've got all the people who watched this thinking your borked experience i don't know what video you watched but i have a lot of praise for the garuda devs, i like their project and support it for arch users just not newbies (not because of garuda but because of ARCH) i will try to be good faith and say that you probably didn't view the full vid and skipped over my little disclaimer at the start. i'm trying to help and give my feedback and i have gotten some feedback and constructive criticism that i take seriously (one good example would be my missunderstanding for the ZRAM stuff for which i am making a vid ATM to explain not only what i got wrong but also how it works in detail) The Linux community is such an awsome place, please make your part to keep it as it is (;

[@underratedphonker6395]

Gaming linux distros aint shit lol Just install ubuntu based distro such as mint as a newbie or nobara

[@lexcelius6921]

Depends on What Type of Gamer you are. Ubuntu and Mint Won't have access to the Better Nvidia Drivers for 2 Years, and if You're the Type that Ultra Mod's Games it's just Easier on Arch and Fedora.

[@underratedphonker6395]

@@lexcelius6921 yea i tried it myself although ubuntu based ones aint half bad for newcoming gamers. Believe me , users WILL be disappointed if they can't navigate through the OS.

[@BrotherShield]

Can it Run Fortnite or better yet Gamepass (No Cloud Gaming) No Windows Installation

[@Maple-Circuit]

Fortnite sadly can't run on linux because of the kernel level anti-cheat. For Gamepass it works with the browser version.

[@BrotherShield]

@@Maple-Circuit No Broswer version too da man needs to download da Games, on the Steam Deck and No, No Windows Installion, need to get it runnint nativaly on steam OS

[@hoyteternal]

have you seen manjaro linux? garuda looks suspiciously similar. except having a utility with few checkboxes to install gaming workload, and a different default visual theme. but regarding all those utilities you liked, manjaro has all of them as well. I used manjaro for two years, and I still like it. I moved to arch because I was bored and wanted to try something else.

[@RezaQin]

Manjaro is great until it randomly explodes after an update

[@halvarmc671]

@@RezaQin That's because they attach the info to the release info, but don't provide any sort of warning.

[@lucastonoli3256]

Based on the very limited benchmarks we have, Arch seems to have the lead in terms of gaming performance out of all Linux distros.

[@Gre3k]

I don't know man, manjaro has broken time and again for me, even tho they provide the updates a week later than Arch for testing and shit. While Garuda has been pretty stable, i just get rid of it bcoz of its overly done theming

[@hoyteternal]

@@Gre3k well, it works on my machine

[@psour33]

I don't really like those bells & whistles distros like Garuda, Catchyos, Nobara, and so on. I tend to use Debian 12 or Arch native even for gaming as performances are globally the same (2 ot 4 fps more or less).

[@skillissuehaver]

As a new linux user, I enjoyed my 3 days on garuda before my bluetooth adapter suddenly turned off and never worked again. Even after several reboots, kernel changes, and updates. So i switched to fedora 40 and that same bluetooth adapter worked immediately!

[@Maitreya3001]

I had the same issue on OpenSUSE TW a couple of times (only during some version of the kernel, don't remember which) and this fixed it for me (had to redo these commands every boot) sudo rmmod btusb sudo rmmod btintel sudo modprobe btintel sudo modprobe btusb

[@SomeRandomPersonOnTheNet]

I feel at home in Fedora 40. Who knew it would be such a good gaming experience?

[@avi2152]

Unplug and replug your wifi card it will start working again

[@skillissuehaver]

@@avi2152I'll stick with fedora since that doesn't require digging into the guts of my PC to unplug parts to make them work again

[@OrchidAlloy]

Funnily enough Fedora had some terrible bugs on my machine meanwhile Gadura worked very well out of the box and after customizing the desktop environment

[@Ren-kei]

Through research I heard nixos is the best performance wise but hard to set up, but easy of you have the config due to how it the packages work in it. I'm considering seriously switching over to linux but want the best performance I can get out of any distro, so im hoping I can either find a nixos config based around my hardware, or use Garuda until I get brave enough to dabble. Anyone else know any good os for amd hardware which benchmarks excellent for gaming?

[@Maple-Circuit]

The best thing that you can do is take one distro and stick with it, which one doesn't matter much (; my personal favorite would be ubuntu and even compared to an Arch, your performance wouldn't be that different. If you want real performance gain, you will need to stray away from the standard configuration, zram (depending on your ram), filesystem (depending on your harddrive/ssd), compiling your own kernel with custom build flag... that will give you some bigger return on your time invested (; I would argue that it is more about the journey and what you learn along the way, but that's just me (;

[@A_Mod_A_Fire]

I’ve actually played a game to show how well it plays

[@jrowen76]

any ideas what i should be using with a titan maxwell driver wise ? i see you are using a 750 gtx...

[@Maple-Circuit]

Latest still does it for you! Your gpu support will be dropped at the same time as the 900 series... not for a long time!

[@Aoitori365]

just install gparted and remove the ubuntu partitions then restart the installer problem solved

[@Maple-Circuit]

Fun fact, gparted cannot uninstalled or deactivate lvm2 partition, i tried! Gparted is one of my software of choice and it was on the install. My big issue was that it wasn't simple for newbies that would switch from Ubuntu. (;

[@Aoitori365]

@@Maple-Circuit well i have done it before maybe it was with kde's partitioning program

[@raddinox2707]

Does the BTRFS and snapper snapshots actually work? I have tested BTRFS with snapper on few different distros, like Arch Linux and Siduction (Debian Sid distro). But Grub works in a way so it will prevent Snapper restored snapshots to work as intended (grub isn't booting the way Snapper intends), works fine if I manually create and restore snapshots.

[@Maple-Circuit]

It worked in my case (tested it once, and it rolled back the update that I did) !

[@Kai_Rengoku]

It does out of the box , in the times i tested it, one of the major draws to Garuda for me, I hate setting up snapper its a pita on a good day

[@myartikool]

I don't use Garude, (I use CachyOS) but i have the setup with btrfs, snapper, btrfs-assistant and booting from snapshots from grub works with 0 issues. I've heard it also works on refind but not the systemd-boot.