Arch Linux-Based Garuda Linux “Bird of Prey” Distro Lands with KDE Plasma 6

The Garuda System Maintenance tool now supports migrating of KDE Plasma 5-based Dr460nized editions to KDE Plasma 6.
Marius Nestorby Marius Nestor0
Garuda Linux Bird Prey

The Arch Linux-based Garuda Linux distro has a new major release finally shipping the latest KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment series, but also adding numerous other improvements.

As you can imagine, the biggest news of the new Garuda Linux (codenamed “Bird of Prey”) is the introduction of the KDE Plasma 6 desktop on the Dr460nized edition as the devs worked hard to upgrade from Plasma 5 porting multiple plasmoids and replacing other with updated forks.

For existing Garuda Linux users, the devs also updated the Garuda System Maintenance tool with the ability to migrate KDE Plasma 5-based Dr460nized editions to the latest KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment while keeping Garuda’s unique Plasma look and feel.

“As soon as KDE 6 was released in Arch’s repos, the migration was automatically triggered for everyone using non-customized Dr460nized themes,” reads the announcement. “The overall appearance stayed pretty much the same apart from some aspects like the system tray, which now uses the current theme’s icons instead of hardcoded ones.”

Apart from the KDE Plasma-based Dr460nized editions, the new Garuda Linux release also updates the Sway edition with the ReGreet greeter for a cleaner login experience, SwayFX for enhanced desktop visual effects, Swappy screenshot tool, Cliphist clipboard manager, Foot terminal, and Fuzzel launcher.

On top of that, the Hyprland edition received the latest upstream goodies, the FireDragon browser was rebased on the Floorp Browser, the Qtile edition has been dropped, the Calamares installer received updated slides for a more modern look and feel, and the build system for the Garuda repository received major updates.

You can download Garuda Linux “Bird of Prey” (240428) right now from the official website as Dr460nized, Dr460nized-gaming, GNOME, Xfce, Cinnamon, KDE-lite, Sway, Hyprland, and i3 editions. Of course, existing users need only to update their installations without downloading the new ISO images.

Last updated 2 weeks ago

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com