Did you just discover Garuda Linux and wonder if it works as well as it looks? Are you looking for someone with real-life experience using the distro to know if it's worth your time? Well, I have been using Garuda Linux as my daily driver for four years now, and here's why it's my favorite distro!
I started using Linux back in 2016, and the first time I installed Garuda was back in 2021. I have tested tons of distros before and after my encounter with Garuda Linux, and every single time I return to it as my daily driver. Here are seven things about the Arch-based distro that make it absolutely amazing, and in my honest opinion, the best Linux distro ever!
A Unique and Bold Design
The first thing about Garuda Linux that'll catch your eye is the design. It's possibly the most flamboyant distro out there with a bold and in-your-face look that's bound to get attention. At the time of writing, there are two main editions of Garuda Linux: Dragonized and Mokka, each dazzling in its own right. However, when I first used Garuda—i.e., four years ago—there was only the Dragonized edition, and truth be told, I wasn't a fan of the noisy neon-cyberpunk design. What I was a fan of, though, was the layout.
The Dragonized edition offered a customized take on my favorite desktop environment: KDE Plasma . By default, Plasma follows a Windows-like layout, but Garuda morphs it to look and function more like macOS with a bottom dock and top panel—that too, with App Menu-like functionality. Not only that, but it also includes tons of desktop effects and animations which, prior to using Garuda, I had no idea were possible on Plasma. It showed me just how customizable KDE Plasma really is!
My main qualms with the Dragonized edition are the wallpaper and the icon pack, which I always change to something more subdued, and Garuda becomes flawless within minutes. That said, this year, Garuda released the new Mokka edition, and it's just perfect—perfect! You get the same macOS-style layout but with a completely redesigned aesthetic. The neon-funk colors are replaced with softer, more muted pastel colors. It looks surprisingly elegant and futuristic at the same time. It definitely wins the award for the best-looking Linux distro in my books!
Installs Everything I Need During the Set-Up Process
One of the first things that impressed me about Garuda Linux was the post-installation setup process. Unlike most distros that drop you into a basic desktop with generic apps, Garuda initiates a comprehensive setup process that gives you a personalized system with all the apps you want.
After the first reboot following the installation process, Garuda will ask you to run a system update—which is just best practice following a fresh distro installation—and then present a graphical app showcasing multiple categories of apps. You can choose from productivity tools to media players and development environments. Simply browse through the categories, check the apps you want, hit OK, and everything gets installed automatically. Just like that, you have a working system tailored to your needs!
The thing I love most is how this setup process can function like a discovery engine, exposing you to various Linux apps you had probably never heard of. In fact, this is how I discovered Mailspring , my favorite email client, which I probably would have never discovered if I had been casually browsing through the distro's repository.
Also, looking back at my distro-hopping days , this streamlined setup process made returning to Garuda incredibly easy. While other distributions left me manually hunting down applications one by one—not a huge hassle, but time-consuming nonetheless—Garuda had me back up and running with all my preferred apps in minutes. It's just one of the reasons why I love Garuda Linux so much and recommend it to all my friends and family.
Has the Best System Maintenance App
Garuda Linux, being an Arch-based rolling release distro, requires routine maintenance in the form of system updates, removing orphaned packages, and occasional troubleshooting if something goes wrong. Now, Arch and most Arch-based distros will require you to use the terminal for these workloads, but Garuda offers really powerful graphical tools that'll handle these tasks for you.
If you have used Garuda before, you might be familiar with Garuda Assistant. At the time of writing, that tool has evolved into a unified system management hub— Garuda Rani , short for Reliable Assistant for Native Installations. It gives you a modern graphical interface where you can just point and click to run basic tools for all the major system maintenance tasks.
With a single click, you can update your system, refresh mirrors, clear cache and orphaned packages, edit repositories, enable or disable specific system components, manage your Btrfs system snapshots (more on that later), and much more. You even get powerful troubleshooting features like resetting app settings to their system defaults when something breaks and one-click access to system logs so you can share them on Garuda's community forums when you ask for assistance.
Overall, Garuda Rani represents exactly the kind of thoughtful system administration approach that keeps me loyal to the distro. It offers automation and simplification without sacrificing control!
Gaming-Ready Out of the Box
Linux gaming is better than ever and Garuda is one of the best distros to game on. Now, technically, you can game on any and all Linux distros, but some of them will require you to do additional work like installing proprietary drivers and tweaking certain configuration files. Garuda eliminates most of that friction, especially with its Dragonized Gaming edition. It comes with NVIDIA drivers preinstalled, Wine and Proton helpers to run Windows games, and all the staple Linux gaming apps like Steam , Lutris , Heroic Game Launcher , and multiple emulators.
Gaming on Garuda is as simple as opening Steam, installing the game you want to play (after checking Linux compatibility ), and hitting play. It's as streamlined and plug-and-play as Windows. Personally, I am a casual gamer and play games to unwind and relax. I don't want the very act of playing a game to become a troubleshooting session because I do that all week and want a break from that! Garuda gives me the luxury of just jumping into my favorite titles and knowing they will work.
If you're buying games to play exclusively on Linux, I strongly recommend that you check their compatibility by visiting ProtonDB . While nearly 80 percent of the top 100 Windows games work on Linux, some just refuse to open. So do your research before investing your money.
Optimized for Performance
Linux has long been famous for breathing new life into aging hardware, offering lightweight alternatives that can run smoothly on systems that'd struggle to run Windows . Garuda Linux takes this philosophy one step further by providing additional performance optimizations that help you squeeze even more power out of your system, whether it's old or new. This is thanks to two specific features: zRAM and the zen kernel .
For those of you who don't know, zRAM functions like a compressed swap space that lives in your RAM. So, instead of swapping data to slow storage devices when memory gets tight, zRAM compresses that data and keeps it in a dedicated portion of your RAM. This provides the benefits of extra virtual memory without the massive performance penalty of traditional disk-based swap. For systems running on HDDs, you can expect noticeable performance gains.
Even more significant is Garuda's use of the zen kernel instead of the standard Linux kernel. It incorporates desktop-focused patches and optimizations that prioritize system responsiveness and interactive performance. The zen kernel includes improvements to CPU scheduling, memory management, and I/O handling that make the entire system feel more snappy and responsive during everyday tasks like opening applications, switching between programs, or handling multimedia content.
All that said, one can argue that these performance gains are lost to all the heavy desktop effects and animations that are enabled by default—especially if you're on old and weak hardware. To that, I can only say that it's much easier to turn off the animations and effects than to configure zRAM or the zen kernel—so Garuda gets a pass in my opinion!
Access to Tons of Bleeding Edge Software
I personally love living on the bleeding edge of technology, trying out new software and features as soon as possible. So it's only natural that I'm drawn to rolling release distros like Garuda, which get new updates as soon as they're made available by the developer. You can't get more bleeding edge than that!
Furthermore, Garuda is Arch-based, which means it has access to the Arch User Repository (AUR) —a community-driven repo of nearly 100,000 packages. If any software was released on Linux, chances are you'll find it in the AUR. This means Garuda is not only home to the latest version of packages but also has one of the largest collections of packages that Linux has to offer!
But that's not all! Garuda Linux comes with the Chaotic-AUR by default. It offers a curated collection of prebuilt binaries for some of the most popular AUR packages. This allows you to install the packages directly using pacman -S package name . For comparison, when installing standard AUR packages, you first need to download the PKGBUILD and then locally build it using makepkg or helpers like yay, and even then there's a chance it might not compile or work!
The AUR is inherently dangerous as everyone can upload packages. This means someone can upload a piece of malware, and if you accidentally install it, your system becomes compromised. This is why it's important to thoroughly check AUR packages before installing them. Chaotic-AUR packages are also susceptible to the same exploit, so again, check the original AUR package that it's offering and only hit install if it's trustworthy!
Btrfs with Snapshot Support for Reliable System Recovery
This is probably the main reason I felt confident testing Garuda Linux as my daily driver and continue using it for four years! You see, one of the main reasons people fear using Arch or Arch-based distros on their main PCs is because routine updates can randomly break your system. Since you're installing bleeding edge software, they can often have bugs, and some bugs can be so severe that they render your system useless.
Garuda solves this by using the Btrfs file system paired with the Snapper tool. Without getting too technical, this setup allows you to take routine system-level snapshots. Garuda automates the process so that a new system snapshot is created before you do your routine system updates. This way, if something breaks following an update, you can easily roll back to a previous working state.
Setting up the Snapper tool is super simple thanks to the quick wizard that triggers after you install Garuda. You can manage all your system snapshots using Garuda Rani. If and when something breaks, you can access all your snapshots from the GRUB menu, pick a version you remember was stable, and boot into it. Your broken system is now fixed, and it only took a few minutes.
This safety net fundamentally changed how I interacted with my system. It encouraged experimentation and customization because I knew there was always a reliable way back if something went wrong. For someone who likes to tinker and try new things, this peace of mind is invaluable.
There you have it, my top seven reasons why Garuda Linux is my favorite distro and why I use it as my daily driver. Now, I completely understand that just because I love it doesn't mean it's the best distro for everyone. The goal of sharing this with you was to give you an idea of what Garuda has to offer, so that if you see something you like, you can give the distro a try. Head to the Garuda downloads page to pick your edition and get started.
