Garuda Linux

Hello, for those of you that are looking for a new flavor of Linux that looks and acts a bit more like macOS without that huge price tag, I believe Garuda Linux fits the bill. I haven’t been using it for too long however the amount of time that I have had with it I have fallen in love with it.

I have been using Linux on and off for almost a decade. I have used distros such as Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu and everything in between. They are all really great and all of them have their merits however Arch Linux was one of my favorites. The only thing I wasn’t too big on was having to install every package that I would need. There was no guessing on the OS’s part as to whether or not I would need another package in order for that one to work. Well Garuda is based on Arch but has the capabilities of Ubuntu where it will help suggest certain packages/programs based on popular demand. I really enjoyed that.

If you aren’t used to the fish shell it can take some time to get used to. I haven’t installed Bash or ZShell yet. I don’t know that I will. I have come to like fish and it’s not too hard to figure out once you do a couple searches on the web for the error messages. I was trying to activate my virtual environment for Python when I realized that the bash command I was used to using wasn’t working. I did a quick search on the error and realized I needed to append .fish to the the activate command. After that it worked like a charm.

To the Arch purists out there I understand that you may not like the distro due to the fact that it has some bloatware that wouldn’t normally be there. As a fan of not having extra apps on my Windows machine or my Android phone I totally get not wanting extra programs that will take up resources. However with Garuda I didn’t feel that there were any extra apps that I didn’t want. Upon starting up the OS after installing it the OS asks you if you want to install the most popular packages that are typically installed. This ranges from Libre Office to VS Code. I liked that it asked me if I wanted to install those right out of the gate vs having to find them and install them myself manually.

The UI has a light and a dark theme that you can choose from which is really awesome. I have a macbook pro that I use for work and I like that the entire OS has the ability to have a light or dark theme and that it’s not just a dark theme for the browser or application that you have opened as long as that particular app supports the dark theme. The OS does a good job itself of changing the way the app looks based on which theme you chose. The taskbar or dock depending on what you want to call it, looks really great. As I mentioned I used a macbook for work and I have grown accustomed to the dock being in the middle of the screen so to have that option here is really great.

I believe the OS was released January 2021 so I know that I am a bit behind as far as being introduced to it as well as writing an article on it but for those of you that haven’t heard about it I wanted to try to be the one to bring it to your attention. Also for those of you Windows users that are longing for a mac or would like to see what it’s like to use a mac-like environment without shelling out the cash for one then I urge you to give it a try. You can create a bootable usb extremely easy. If you want to create a bootable USB to give it a shot on an older computer or laptop follow the steps below:

NOTE: This is for Windows, if you are on mac you will need to look up how to create one.

1. Google the program Rufus, it is an extremely easy tool for creating bootable drives to install Linux
2. Google garuda linux download and visit typically the first link that’s available which is the official website for downloading the .iso file.
3. Once the file is finished plug in your USB
4. Open Rufus which does a great job of detecting the USB drive that you will install the iso on.
5. Select the iso from your computer
6. Click the start button on the bottom and let Rufus do it’s thing.
7. After that you can unplug the USB and plug it in to the computer that you want to install Linux on.

I will be using Garuda going forward and I will try to either update this article or write a new one with any findings that I come across on either bugs, installation steps etc. Until then happy reading.