Garuda Linux 'Talon': Arch, but different. Dare we say it? Better

Garuda Linux brings an important feature to the Arch world: snapshots and rollback. Garuda Linux is an Arch derivative founded by Indian developer Shrinivas Vishnu Kumbhar, and named – as is the national airline of Indonesia – after the Hindu demigod who is the flying mount of Vishnu. Garuda is one of the newer distros we've …

[Arbuthnot the Magnificent]

Good for gamers

This is a decent choice for those of us who like to play the odd modern game. I always had to keep a Windows partition for such activities but this works pretty well with Proton and Nvidia straight out of the box. (Before anyone feels the urge to tell me, yes I know that in theory you can run Steam and Nvidia firmware on just about any distro but after a working day fighting with Centos the last thing I want to do is fiddle about with my home machine to relax). The only gripe would be you do end up downloading a lot of updates, so it's not so good if you have a poor internet connection - but if you're a Steam user you probably have decent bandwidth anyway.

[Ken Hagan]

"It isn't going to be the Reg FOSS desk's new OS, but we definitely have a new option to recommend to Windows-oriented techie friends."

Hmm. I'm not sure I'd recommend a rolling release distro to a Windows user. (Please insert Win11 snark here.) I'd recommend something more stable, almost fire-and-forget, even if its packages are older. But perhaps I'm missing something. What do you lot think?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...not sure I'd recommend a rolling release distro to a Windows user."

So you suggest I leave my Win10 and head ... shit sorry, I have to update, brb.

...

Rolling release... who cares? As far as windows, the NT kernel hasn't rolled when it should roll and the desktop UI rolls every 3 weeks or something crazy. To top it off, you can't control what rolls or doesn't.

I think that you think that Windows is something it isn't. Particularly, your subconscious correlation of the word 'stable' to windows is.... sorry, have to update again... bbl

[yetanotheraoc]

Rolling release... who cares?

Techies know whether it matters to them or not. But a casual user ditching Windows would very likely be doing it to escape the heinous updates. A rolling release distro would have them asking why they bothered.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Rolling release... who cares?

Disagree, as a relatively recently fled-from-Windows user. (Though one that had dabbled with linux right back to the early 2000's).

I lived with Mint for a while; notionally a "slower" release distro. It still had relatively regular updates, but the key difference is the update process is not intrusive. It doesn't stop you working or lock up your system for hours on end. Ultimately, I dropped Mint having got over the initial learning curve; while wanting something a bit more bleeding-edgy regarding software selection.

I use Manjaro now, very definitely a rolling release. The update process is still equally unintrusivel; and I get the bleeding edge versions that I wanted.

If you were going to go to the other extreme of Gentoo compile and manage your own distro, now that, while a fun learning exercise, is an absolute pain for a daily drive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Want a different feature? Roll a new distro!

I'm as guilty as anyone else for booting different distros to do different jobs because "easier". For all the criticism of it, I am starting to come round to the arguments for containerised, distro-independent packages for dealing with adding / removing functions.

If only such containers were actually transferable, and didn't also need specific distros to manage it in the first place!

[Anonymous Coward]

AppImage... not the smallest, but by far the most portable. I'm not sure which flavor doesn't support AppImage.

The general problem with a container is the assumption of all you need is in $HOME. If it doesn't abide to $HOME for everything, then it's just another package system no matter what it's named.

[nautica]

"What do you want on The Register?...let us know what you'd like to see more of on The Reg"

What I do not want to see is anything from the following list polluting and ruining a good thing.

El Reg, you need to get rid of the wunderkind, overpaid bean-counters, click-counters, and "executives" who are trying to force a change of course.

Are you not aware of how many venues, and really good technical writers---which/who used to publish exactly this same type material---are no longer to be found?

Want a list of bull-shit, nonsensical topics to start emphasizing, all you over-priced El Reg "executives", who have ZERO clues as to what your readership wants? Start with the following:

Cloud: Off-prem infrastructure, compute and services

Code: Building software, from IDEs to DevOps

No-code: Creating biz apps with no and low-code tools

Networking: The Ethernet and SDN form, not social

Applications: Big enterprise apps that power your business

Since you asked, what I would like to see is more of the same, but better; be an Ars Technica, only better; YOU get the scoops on everything technical: space, medicine/medical, paleontology, cosmology...---only faster, and in more depth.

Did you ever wonder, ever think, for even a microsecond, El Reg wunderkind. why Ars Technica let some of their---supposedly---"high-powered" "high-tech", "supremely important" writers go (at least they thought they were "high-powered", "high-tech", "supremely important" writers)? No?

Then you need to seriously think about it, and...

You need to be very careful what you wish for.

[TheRealRoland]

Re: "What do you want on The Register?...let us know what you'd like to see more of on The Reg"

Perhaps just tell us how you really feel?