1y ago

Trying out the different Arch based distros for fun and science - Why does Garuda perform so bad?

Other Arch Flavors I've tried (some are no longer with us) include:

ArchBang
EndeavourOS
Manjaro
Chakra

So with that out of the way, I've found my Garuda experience incredibly painful. From messy repositories (Chaotic-AUR plus their own stuff), to an overly involved upgrade process (when using the helper) - the distro screams of a team that has no freakin' clue how to maintain an actual distribution.

It's basically Arch on hard mode with so many settings rolled into their own packages which need to be removed before customization.

Then we get to the purported performance enhancements and, honestly, this is the worst performing distro I've ever used, by multiple miles. I'm not sure if its the scheduler settings, or something with the zram settings - but this distro hitches and hangs constantly. (5950x, 64GB of Ram, Samsung 980 Pro drives, NVIDIA RTX 3080Ti - NOT a weak machine by any standards)

I'd normally chalk it up to compositor issues on Wayland (yes, I prefer Wayland and it works fine for most Arch derivitaves even with Nvidia). However the performance issues even crop up on basic terminal commands on a TTY with lots of weird hangs and lags.

The ONLY thing that was easier on this distro was installing the various Proton GE builds and other specialty stuff found in the Chaotic-AUR. But given the above, it's definitely not worth it when one can configure an Arch box to do the same things without all of the problems.

Perhaps I'm not doing something right? Given all the praise for this distro, perhaps it shouldn't perform like this?

To be completely and utterly clear - I'm an advanced user trying out these distros for fun and discovery. I can indeed "just use a different distro" but wanted to give this one a fair shake before moving on.

20 comments

the distro screams of a team that has no freakin' clue how to maintain an actual distribution.
That's basically how a whole bunch of those "easy" and "gamer" distros are because people have no standards, they just want the "easy" part not the "runs well" part.
Manjaro is big and still we have no shortage of content for manjarno. In its earlier days Mint was also extremely sketchy, you couldn't even dist-upgrade it.
Those distros are for the most part just the regular base distro with a bunch of stuff bolted on that is not necessarily properly integrated. Some of them straight up copy the author's dotfiles into your home folder because their customizations depend on it and they didn't bother figuring out how to put it in /etc and /usr for a more system-wide experience. Not even using custom packages to automate it, just copied manually as postinstall scripts.
Making a proper, well integrated and reliable distro is art that few get right.
They're probably okay for most users, especially the gamer kind. But the value goes down fast especially when you're used to plain vanilla Arch.
- They’re probably okay for most users, especially the gamer kind.
  Eh, IDK - the amount of breakage I got simply trying to upgrade the system after a few days would probably be incredibly hostile to a less technical user/gamer.
  Sure, if most things worked out-of-the-box and upgrades were seamless, I'd agree - but as it stands, it seems like you need to know Arch and Linux itself fairly well to get the most out of Garuda Linux.
  
  You missed the subtext here. Gamers will gladly accept broken ass things as long as there's a perceived way that it's easier and better, even when it's really not or leads to more convoluted troubleshooting.
  See: every AAA big game releases lately. Even on Windows, having to nuke your graphics drivers and install a specific version from some random forum is generally accepted as fine like it's just how PC gaming is.

It's very likely some drivers are not up to date or compatible with your system.
- I really doubt that. Again - advanced user here - with numerous comparison points to other arch based distros. I also maintain large distributed DB clusters for Fortune 100 companies.
  If it was something not on the latest version - it's not due to my lack of effort or knowledge, but instead due to the terrible way Garuda is managed.
  What, am I supposed to compile kernel modules from scratch myself? Never needed to do that with Endeavour, Manjaro, or just Arch.
  If Garuda's install (and subsequent upgrade) doesn't fetch the latest from the Arch repos, that's on them.
  EDIT: Also, these non-answers are tiresome, low effort, and provide zero guidance on any matter. I know every single kernel change since 5.0 that impacted my hardware. I have rss feeds for each of the hardware components I have, and if Linux or a distro ships an enhancement to my hardware - I'm usually aware well before it is released. If you were to point to any bit of my hardware I can tell you, for certain, what functionalities are supported, which has bugs, and common workarounds.
  If you want this type of feedback to be valuable, then let me know if a new issue/regression has arisen given the list of hardware I've supplied.
  Valuable: "Perhaps it was the latest kernel X which shipped some regressions for Nvidia drivers that causes compositor hitching on KWin"
  Utterly Useless: "It’s very likely some drivers are not up to date or compatible with your system."
  
  I sincerely apologize for that, my comment is useless to help you. I now regret posting it after reading your reply; everything you said is valid and I hope someone here provides a solution to your question.

I have a hard time getting into a distro describing itself with a completely non-communicative "word" like "dragonized" but with numbers instead of letters. I thought it was cool when they provided a bunch of different desktops for live images (like wayfire), but they cut down on those.
Did you find Chakra to add anything to the Arch experience? I worry that it might be "like Arch, but maybe some non-Qt stuff won't work."
If you give CachyOS a try please report back! To me that's the most interesting Arch-topper right now.
- Not quite what you're looking for, but I use the CachyOS kernel on Arch. Mainly because it's optimized for the architecture. Not sure if there's actually any real performance benefit...
- I think Chakra has largely been abandoned these days, but when it was the newest kid on the block I actually appreciated the REALLY GOOD QT5 experience that was lacking on other distros at the time. That being said, not being able to install ANY GTK thing was definitely a deal-breaker. These days the project is very dead and the best "KDE" experience is on KDE Neon.
- I use cachyos. I mainly treat it like an easy arch installer, it has calamares, allowing me to install LUKS encrypted BTRFS, with subvolumes that are compatible with timeshift without too much hassle, tinkering, or babying.
  The first thing I do after installing is rip out many of the special changes cachyos makes. The theme makes some apps unreadable. Fish as a default shell is a really questionable choice (like I get zsh, but fish isn't compatible with bash). I prefer bash so I switch back to that. The cpu limiter, ananicy-cpp, is generally annoying and I would rather not have it. I stopped using it when I was gaming (not anymore), and I realized that you have to manually add exceptions for games that weren't in a default list consisting of mostly popular games, like the few games I used to play.
  But the other performance changes are great. It has a custom repo compiled with x86_v3 extensions, which are proven to lead to a performance increase. Zram instead of zswap is a pretty powerful choice. The custom kernel (and linux-zen, which I use)* have an option enabled that enables the use of this software, called uksmd. A complex name, but it's basically a ram deduper, and it's very powerful. Right now, with only 9 firefox tabs and a terminal window open, I'm saving 350 mb of ram. With a LOT of browser tabs open, I've been able to save 1.5 GB before. Obviously, this comes at the cost of cpu, but I haven't really noticed change to performance/battery life with it on.
  Overall, it's a very good, innovative distro (haven't found uksmd anywhere else), with some questionable aesthetic decisions.
  *the linux-zen is optimized for desktop use, linux-cachyos is optimized for gaming. I haven't felt a difference, but right tool for the job I guess.

The reason it runs so bad is because it enables a shit load of resource heavy graphical effects and background processes by default that simply aren't enabled on other distributions.
I'm not sure if its the scheduler settings, or something with the zram settings
Last I knew they used the zen kernel so it shouldn't be the scheduler.
I tried Garuda quite some time ago and even barebones was a performance nightmare.

By any chance was this in a VM?
- Nope - full fat install on hardware - as I said in the post.
  Again, just so you don't miss the crucially important context - I'm an advanced user. I typically run vanilla arch or endeavor, both of which do not have these issues. Not to mention, I know that many of these are a result of adding so many repositories on top of the base Arch ones - at least as upgrades are concerned.
  If this was in a VM I would go to great lengths to specify as such.

I'm not as advanced a user as you so clearly are. But when I looked at Garuda they insisted you use btrfs and had no option for anything else. Well fuck that shit. I'm not touching that horror show of a file system again. Why does it have to be so opinionated to force one specific file system. Nonsense.
- Fedora Workstation & OpenSUSE use BTRFS by default and it's not really problematic theses days.
  
  A default is ok as long as there are other options. On Garuda there aren't

A lot of resources wasted on superfluous eyecandy. Honestly, I found a lot of the stylized icons illegible at times. When I was a newbie wanting to try out Arch the "safe way," I resorted to the Garuda barebones version. It felt much more sane for a daily driver.

20 comments