A Quick Intro

I’ve been using Garuda Hyprland for about a year now, and I’ve become quite acclimated to how much easier it has made my experiences with a keyboard-centric Window Manager. I’ve noticed the ability to maintain efficiency by organizing windows at different sizes through multiple workspaces, and I love the ability to assign touchpad gestures and keyboard hotkeys to programs and scripts. There is plenty of online discourse surrounding the unnecessary rudeness of the key developer behind Hyprland, but I’ve fallen in love with a Wayland session configured to handle Hyprland. I think it’s easy to use and alter, and it’s beautiful to look at. As long as the developers aren’t actively funding anything against my core values, I will probably keep using it, and I look forward to future integrations into BSD environments.

Garuda Linux is based off of Arch, but is far more opinionated than many seasoned developers may want or care for. The installation is graphical and mostly automated with room for customizations along the way. As far as beginner distributions go, I wouldn’t really recommend Garuda Hyprland unless you’re ready to start to start tinkering under the hood, which means you should already know some best practices for tinkering under the hood.

There is much to be said about Garuda Linux as a whole, so I will break things down into the good, the bad, and the ugly to help you, dear reader, discern whether something like Garuda would be worth your time trying out.

The Good

1. The software repos and custom config apps make installing a proper desktop environment a breeze. Garuda has access to Steam, console emulators, creative software for streaming and editing, and so much more.

2. The browser options are all good. Firedragon has a custom search engine built in. LibreWolf has excellent ad-blocking capabilities for annoying streaming services. Opera is easily the most under-rated of the Chromium derivatives.

3. Restoration from BTRFS snapshots are a breeze! You’ll be glad they’re there when the time comes to use a snapshot from just before an unsuccessful update.

4. Coming from Debian, the Garuda repos have way more current software. From Discord to Spotify to Microsoft integrations like VSCode and Teams, it’s all available if you need it (or just want it).

The Bad

1. You will want to backup your important files regularly. Part of the risk of running bleeding-edge software, like what Garuda and Arch in general offer, is instability. Part of being bleeding-edge is sacrificing vigorous, thorough testing for quick releases, often with breakable changes.

2. Sometimes it’s easier to reinstall everything than to keep tinkering with settings. There is so much to learn with configurations than we give ourselves the grace to take the time to understand. This is also why we must backup our important files. Consider it an opportunity to write a basic script and assign it through cron.

The Ugly

1. Garuda is known to use Chaotic/AUR, which hosts pre-built, community-maintained software binaries that have no guarantees of security or functionality. It would be a best practice to avoid the repository and compiling from source, even if Chaotic/AUR is enticing with the latest and greatest software ready to install.

2. This isn’t specifically a Garuda problem, but there is a ‘feature’ in the LibreWolf browser that prevents photo uploads from happening by default. It’s annoying, but you have to allow Canvas access.

3. Partial upgrades, sometimes by fault of the repo mirrors, can break your system. It’s annoying. Garuda tries to offer some apps to fix such things, but they don’t always work and a reinstallation may be required.

I Love It, I Hate It, But I Can’t Quit Garuda

I keep crawling back because some of my favorite tools and toys are here. I like the visual and functional control I have over Hyprland. If Hyprland alone is too much for you too soon, I would highly recommend the KDE or Cinnamon editions. Hyprland is, after all, for advanced users, and the learning curve is steep.

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