Boot the PC and press the manufacturer specific key to open your
device's setup utility. Common keys used: Esc, Delete, F1, F2, F9,
F10, F11, or F12.
Find more common keys and buttons.
Disable fastboot and secure boot. It may not be possible to
disable the latter explicitly - try clearing the secure boot keys
instead. Check the manual of your device/motherboard for further
info.
Make sure that your device's SATA controller is set to AHCI mode
in your device's setup utility. Otherwise, the Linux kernel may
not be able to detect your drive.
If your firmware supports UEFI then configure your device to use
UEFI only in its setup utility. UEFI is much preferred over BIOS
whenever possible.
Create a bootable USB using DD/Etcher/Ventoy/Rufus.
From the setup utility, boot to the usb drive: You might see
separate commands for the same device. For example, you might see
UEFI USB Drive and BIOS USB drive. Each command uses the same
device and media but boots the PC in a different firmware mode. We
recommend to boot the drive in UEFI mode if listed.
After booting the live media, start the installer and follow the
guided installation procedure.
Recommendations
Dual booting Garuda Linux may lead to unexpected issues! Be aware
that the other OS may change the EFI boot priorities on UEFI or
overwrite the bootloader on BIOS systems.
Our distro is optimized for performance on real hardware.
Installing in virtual machines is not recommended as it might
result in a bad experience! (e.g. setup assistant not working)
Try to avoid using Snapd and Flatpack whenever possible. They are
considered unsupported.
Live session login details
Username: garuda
Password: garuda
Downloads
Garuda KDE Dr460nized
The dr460nized editions of Garuda Linux offer a dark, blurry and
fully immersive Plasma experience. The workflow is mac-alike with
the appmenu baked right into the top bar.
The Gaming edition has the same tweaks and looks as the regular
dr460nized edition. It comes preinstalled with a lots of
software that a linux gamer might need.
Included software:
Launchers:
Steam, Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, Minigalaxy WINE,
Boxtron, Proton GE custom, DXVK, faudio, vkd3d GOverlay,
SteamTinkerLaunch, MangoHud, Gamemode and vkBasalt
Tools:
CoreCtrl, DisplayCAL, OBS Studio, KeyboardVisualizer,
OpenRGB, FancontrolGUI and Piper
Communication:
Discord, Mumble
Emulators:
Retroarch (with all cores)
Virtualization:
Virt-manager (a frontend for QEMU/KVM and libvirt)
Games:
kde-games and others
Download
Garuda Linux GNOME
GNOME is a modern desktop environment which is both clean and
beautiful. It is focused on ease of use.
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating
systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still
being visually appealing and user-friendly.
Xfce is well known for being a rock-solid & stable desktop
environment.
Garuda Sway edition ships with a completed configuration with easy
to use keybindings and a cheat-sheet to help you get started.
Following the Nord color scheme it is both good to look at and just
as fast utilising the best of Wayland native alternatives to offer a
seamless transition to the Wayland compositor.
i3-wm is a lightweight window manager that is operated exclusively
with the keyboard. Our version has a simple and easy configuration
with LXappearance to handle GTK themes. We do ship the configuration
with an easy cheat sheet to get you started. Due to its light
resources, it has a really small memory footprint.
Garuda Linux KDE lite is made for users who do not want extra
software and functionalities and complain about bloat. It contains
only the bare minimum of packages needed to get started. (You are on
your own, we do not provide any support for KDE lite editions!)
Garuda Linux Hyprland Edition is a dynamic tiling Wayland
compositor
based on wlroots that doesn't sacrifice on its looks.
Don't ask what Garuda Linux can do for you.
Ask what you can do for Garuda Linux.