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Garuda Linux “Raptor” 230305 Release Drops Latte Dock, Brings Key Changes
Garuda Linux, the popular Arch-based Linux distribution, has released a new version, “Raptor” 200305, with new features and updates.
Garuda Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution that has become increasingly popular among Arch Linux enthusiasts due to its out-of-the-box experience, gaming support and user-friendly interface. Garuda Linux is known for its focus on performance, speed, and stability.
Recently, Garuda Linux released a new version, “Raptor” 200305, packed with new features and updates. In this article, we’ll explore the latest release of Garuda Linux and what’s new in this version.
Garuda “Raptor” 200305: What’s New
Garuda’s main flagship edition was the “dr460nized” edition featuring the KDE Plasma desktop environment. But it was heavily customized with Latte-dock, icon themes, etc.
Since the Latte dock is now out of support, the Garuda team completely removed the Latte dock and replaced it with standard Plasma panels. As per the team, it “takes away somewhat from the dr460nized edition’s eye candy appeal factor by losing features like top bar colors/transparency”.
Which is indeed true. But there’s no other dock like Latte dock. I mean, there are, but none of them comes closer to the features and flexibility that Latte dock used to provide. But the advantage is that KDE Plasma may become more stable in Garuda since it now uses a native dock and panels. And it’s looks great also!
So, what if you are already running an earlier version of Garuda with Latte dock?
To trap that use case, the team tweaked “Garuda System Maintenance” application to detect that you are already running the Latte dock and offer you step-by-step migration to new panels. It also backs up your configurations once you confirm migration from Latte dock, in case something goes wrong during migration. More information on this can be found in this guide.
In addition to the above change, Garuda Linux “Raptor” 230305 also brings a rewritten set-up assistance with an improved tabbed interface and the ability to detect NVIDIA hardware.
One critical update on this version is that Garuda now uses Dracut to create the initramfs instead of mkiniticpio which is common for the majority of Arch distros, including the vanilla Arch install.
That’s not all. Starting from this release, a new repo, “garuda”, is created for packages exclusive to Garuda Linux and moved away from the current Chaotic-AUR repo. This is one of the biggest changes and it happens automatically via garuda-update. Learn more about this here.
At the core, this version comes with the latest KDE Plasma 5.27.2 desktop and Linux Kernel 6.2.2. So, you get all the latest packages, thanks to rolling releases.
You can read the entire changelog here, if you want to explore more updates.
To download, visit the following page and choose your variant.
If you are already running Garuda Linux, then launch Gaurda Assistance from the welcome app and hit system update.
Conclusion
It’s a significant Garuda release which touches all the main components of its flagship KDE edition. The core updates to pacman preferences and Dracut impact all the flavours.
However, all the changes aim to make it a more stable system than before. I hope it continues to bring in such updates to be relevant as one of the best Arch Linux distros out there.
Via announcement
via: https://debugpointnews.com/garuda-linux-raptor-230305/