Garuda—a rolling-release Linux distro based on Arch, with a strong focus on performance, eye-catching visuals, and user-friendly features, has just released an ISO refresh.
As is always the case with the other point ISOs, this update isn’t a new major release but simply a refreshed snapshot. It just rolls in all the latest package updates, bug fixes, and hardware compatibility improvements. In other words, users don’t need to reinstall the system to get these changes; running a normal garuda-update is enough. Now, on to the changes.
One of the key highlights is the inclusion of Mesa 25.2.2, which comes with a fix for the random logout issue that some users were hitting on Plasma Wayland sessions, which should make things more stable.
In addition, the garuda-hardware-tool has been fixed so it can properly detect GPUs, even when the PCI ID string is longer than expected. On top of that, the team has disabled the udevadm trigger after systemd/udev file updates. That change addresses system crashes during updates that certain users were running into.
Under the hood, in the distro’s flagship Dr460nized edition, you’ll get Plasma 6.4.4, customized with Garuda’s own tweaks, the Fish 4.0 shell set as default, and the latest Linux kernel 6.16.
As usual, the ISO refresh is available across Garuda’s wide selection of editions, including Cinnamon, Dr460nized (and its gaming variant), GNOME, KDE Lite, Hyprland, i3, Mokka, Sway, and XFCE.
For more information, refer to the announcement in Garuda’s forum.
I’ve never warmed up to the excessive color pallet of Garuda. It really should be called Garish.