There are a ton of Linux distros out there, but I usually stick with Arch-based ones — mainly because of the AUR. Pretty much any software you can think of is available there, and once you get the hang of how it works, installing stuff is super easy.
There are quite a few Arch-based distros to pick from, so which one should you go with? Personally, I’ve got two favorites: Garuda Linux and CatchyOS.
CatchyOS has been getting a lot of attention lately, mostly because of its custom kernel with a bunch of performance tweaks and optimizations. I haven’t tried it out myself yet, but it definitely looks promising.
Garuda Linux has been my go-to for a while. It comes with a bunch of custom scripts and helper commands that make things a lot more convenient. It also has Snapper pre-configured with BTRFS, which is awesome for managing system snapshots. Another thing I love is that it ships with the fish shell by default — which I’d use anyway. Fish has a great plugin ecosystem, and the autocomplete + syntax highlighting are just really nice to use.
I will be going with Garuda for the rest of the docs.
Garuda comes in a bunch of different flavors (aka desktop environments), with the main ones being KDE Mokka and Dr460nized. I used to go with the Dr460nized version because Mokka wasn’t available back then — and since I usually install Hyprland anyway, the desktop environment didn’t really matter much.
This time, I’ll be going with the Mokka version. I think it strikes a good balance — it looks clean, polished, and not overly flashy. Feels like the right choice for a more focused setup.