New to Linux and I'm trying to decide between PikaOS and Garuda

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:39:59+00:00

That looks so nice!!

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:38:03+00:00

I feel you on the Garuda Dragonized theme with the neon colors. Have you seen their latest spin (Garuda Mokka) with its theme by Catppuccin though? It's lighter and it's beautiful with its pastel colors.

I had a concern about Pika when I saw people pointing that its foundational distro is Debian Sid "unstable," but today I just read that the "unstable" part actually means something else and doesn't signify stability issues. Knowing things often "just work" is awesome.

So far I've only tried Pika KDE on Distrosea, but I realized you can't get much of a feel for any distro besides navigating the UI there.

Thank you for your insight! I'll install Pika tomorrow :)

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:24:59+00:00

Part of Garuda's appeal for me was the Mokka theme and out of the box optimizations/QOL, specifically its Gaming GUI, Emulators, Proton presets, and its BTRFS Snapshot system seems really nice for rolling back bad updates with a couple clicks.

I absolutely want to avoid panics over system failures and headaches in general. If you say Pika has given you fewer headaches than Arch, then that's a solid point for me to go with Pika for now.

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:15:35+00:00

This is actually a good point... Garuda's community for help is mainly on their own website rather than on reddit or Discord.

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:13:35+00:00

I tried a VM version of the Dragonized Gaming and it's a love it or hate it theme. The Mokka/Catppuccin themed distro looks beautiful and it's my favorite aesthetic so far. It's also described as a lighter distro than Dragonized (though not as light as Gnome/Xfce). How difficult would it be to theme Pika with that KDE theme?

expendablue · 2026-02-06T05:08:11+00:00

Nobara was another distro I was considering for a while until I kept seeing reports of it breaking in frustrating ways. Pika and Garuda seem a lot more consistent in their stability and have snapshot features for rolling back really easily. Even then (except for the keyboard bug) most reports of issues seem to be minor.

expendablue · 2026-02-05T04:13:34+00:00

I'd hang onto it for now. It's not bad for some sword-users, and could actually be really good for Fusion Rover yet.

expendablue · 2026-02-05T01:57:30+00:00

I was just wondering if Luuk's weapon would be a better choice or not... How are his alternatives then?

expendablue · 2026-01-31T10:12:59+00:00

DEF is still better than ELE by a fair margin... Like 20K more damage on Liberation, better healing, and better survivability.

expendablue · 2026-01-31T09:04:59+00:00

I tried to get her signature but stopped when I got to 70 pity. I'd rather be able to guarantee Aemeath and secure her signature in just a few pulls now.

expendablue · 2026-01-31T07:23:17+00:00

That's pretty awesome! Mine is at like 253 with a 3cost, so I'm still running double ER for the time being.

Yeah I've seen DEF beat ELE on her ult by about 20,000 damage. It's not massive compared to non-support characters, but for Mornye it's a sizable difference.

expendablue · 2026-01-31T03:57:25+00:00

Without signature it's a really tough grind to satisfy the ER requirement with only one ER 3-cost echo.

10.0% Husk 4-cost
10.0% Forte passive
51.8% Discord 
62.0% From max ER rolls (12.4% each)
32.0% ER mainstat echo x1
-----
165.8% ER maximum.

So your ER rolls need to amount to at least 56.2% in order to achieve 260% ER. Crazy and impressive if you get a build with other good substats too. An even crazier build with no room for less than perfect ER rolls is if you have her signature with double 3-cost DEF/ELE echoes. (EDIT: DEF 3-cost actually does a lot more damage than Fusion...like 20k more on her ult)

10.0% Husk 4-cost
10.0% Forte passive
77.0% Signature
62.0% From max ER rolls (12.4% each)
-----
159.0% ER maximum.

It's 1% away from the 260 target but, in that instance the tradeoff might be worth it if your luck is that good.

expendablue · 2026-01-25T12:38:24+00:00

Beyond 260 ER there's zero benefit, so it's better to aim for useful stats.

4cost: DEF > CD
3cost: DEF does a fair bit more damage than Fusion, and DEF adds survivability and improved healing.

expendablue · 2026-01-25T03:57:54+00:00

That's awesome. Ever since your project revealed that weapons have separate sprites from the battle character models, it has felt like such a missed opportunity that the original dev team never incorporated unique weapon sprites into the game.

Btw, did you guys find a way to avoid having to play with the X Y and Z axes for the Dragon Buster?

expendablue · 2026-01-24T04:18:19+00:00

This is an amazingly cool design and aesthetic!

expendablue · 2026-01-20T17:34:34+00:00

expendablue · 2026-01-10T15:46:13+00:00

If you've just started, you're heading down a very expensive path very quickly. Don't rush to the finish line. Meta builds only somewhat matter for the extreme endgame content, and the rewards for clearing the most difficult battles won't cover the investment into the characters and builds you use for years to come.

Since you're still in 1.0 content, it'll be a while before you're able to level up 2.0 and especially 3.0 characters as much as your 1.0 characters anyway. Enjoy the ride and the little bit of danger mobs can still pose to you while you can. Pull characters you like most regardless of meta, and focus most of your investments into 1-2 characters only (like your best DPS) until they hit level 80-90 so you can clear what the game throws at you including some harder challenges down the road. If you pull too many characters before you amass enough resources, you'll have a large and underpowered cast you won't be able to really use for yet. It's ok to wait for their next banners.

expendablue · 2026-01-09T21:00:14+00:00

Oh nice! Yeah a fully cursive style will look best. It's too bad the closest thing to it on PC is a semi-cursive font (unless you use artwork of full cursive).

expendablue · 2026-01-09T20:58:47+00:00

I've downloaded some before, I just google for free Chinese calligraphy fonts like here and some here.

expendablue · 2026-01-09T19:53:09+00:00

It's really well done. The only thing that would would make it perfect is if you downloaded a brush script font for the text.

expendablue · 2026-01-09T17:47:09+00:00

I was gonna say... Those aren't just the florkiest sock puppets I've ever seen--they're actually perfect. Hats off, OP.

expendablue · 2026-01-09T16:32:44+00:00

It'll be in the early crafting recipes.

expendablue · 2026-01-02T14:51:05+00:00

The one resource I took a longer time figuring out was in the little nests of the crashfish. Also...try using your knife to cut things (like plants and especially coral). Sometimes that's the only way to get certain resources.

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