Garuda is infamous enough to have an independent Upanishad…quite the achievement, IMHO, ‘n now a Linux Distro with the name. Garuda is a legendary bird or bird-like creature in Hindu, ‘n this excellent Distro originates from India. ‘Garuda is described as the king of birds and a kite-like figure’ … is ‘praised as the Lord of birds’ in other descriptions. I enjoyed it so much to this point, that I call it ‘King of the Arch Lineage’ ‘n that includes Vanilla Arch itself!

Spotted its Distro Release info @ DistroWatch ‘n decided to see if it offered an opt out of the Linux ‘Pesky Passwords’ – a new direction I focus on in regards to testing Linux Distros now. During installation it offered a password option for the ‘Administrator account’, which is something I look for now as a possible clue to an opt out of ‘Pesky Passwords’; however, after installation it appeared to only offer the standard user login and the pesky password harassment every time you install software or open GParted or etc. Then, when I was about ready to give up, under settings I noticed this:

I had tried several things to be able to log in as root, with that ‘Administrator account’ password that I created during installation, but nothing was working. Decided to see where that “Login Window” icon went…it went here:

Never saw the “Hide the user list” option before, but I hadn’t been able to get past the standard user “karmi” at the login window…sometimes there is a notation of a wrong or different user that you can click, and then enter as root using the ‘Administrator account’ password. Anyway, I turned “Hide the user list” on ‘n rebooted … BINGO! Standard user “karmi” was now gone ‘n the new login window was just looking for a “Username.” In case you didn’t know, humble me is also known as “root” by all of my computers, so I entered root, the ‘Administrator account’ password, and booted into the Cinnamon DE as fulltime root. Can also login as the standard “karmi” user and I believe that area is more stable than the root area…if you don’t mind the password prompt annoying you. For example, sound works fine in “karmi” area, but no sound in the root area.

Garuda Linux doesn’t have much history (that I could find), but could possibly be only a couple months or so old…everything seemed to keep showing September of 2020. Then I saw an Aug 23, 2020 date for GARUDAM website that mentioned a “new Linux distribution called Garuda Linux” – so Garuda Linux is apparently new. Well, new or not, Garuda Linux blows every other Arch-based Distro (I’ve tested) outta ‘da wata, Vanilla Arch included! Possible exception would be Manjaro-Architect 20.0.3, but am still early into testing at this point.

BTW, Orca of Thar She Blows! has good review of Garuda Linux out already – Garuda Linux: Bound for Greatness?

 I use HughesNet as my ISP (satellite for remote area) ‘n my data plan is 10GB anytime data ‘n 50GB bonus data between 2:00 AM EST to 8:00 AM EST. I have used all that up already (which is unusual for me) plus an additional 6GB’s I purchased (@ $3 a GB)…that’s 66GB’s used since the 20th of September. Fortunately, HughesNet still allows me to use the internet, but they throttle all downloads to about 15 crawling bytes or bits (??) a second…slower than slow! So, downloading is out until after the 19th of October unless I buy more data…which I doubt. Basically, I will have used over 70GB’s this month…OOOPS!

Garuda Linux offers Ultimate and Lite editions…Ultimate is 4.8 GB’s for Cinnamon vs 2.01 GB’s for the Lite. Ultimate editions “are made for having all the right tools needed to get gaming started on Linux, out of the box.” They have about 13 DE’s, tho not all those offer Ultimate editions.

As mentioned previously, this is a new Distro, so I’m not going to do a full review on it, i.e. will give the developers more time to get everything working correctly. I tested Garuda Linux on my two main Linux Test Machines – ‘Apevia’ Ryzen™ (AMD) and ‘Rose’ (Intel) – and everything seemed to work in the Cinnamon edition, but the Gnome edition failed to boot into its DE on both machines. Orca tested MATE ‘n it worked on her machines. Gnome appeared to install fine, then rebooted into grub menu, and would get into the final boot process then just stopped.

Simply amazing what the developers have done with this Garuda Distro in such a short time! Will take more time to test it properly ‘n will do another post on it in the future. Am not a Gamer myself, but the Ultimate edition may attract potential Linux Gamers. The “Automatic Snapshots” has already been useful in my tests…couldn’t get Clonezilla to do a backup image. Anyway, Garuda Linux is loaded w/ all kinds of interesting stuff (even in Lite edition) ‘n I will add this post to the Distros w/ *NO* ‘Pesky Passwords’ page.

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