When comparing Lakka vs Garuda Linux, the Slant community recommends Garuda Linux for most people. In the question“What is the best OS for gaming?” Garuda Linux is ranked 9th while Lakka is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Garuda Linux is:
Uses vram, and a zen kernel.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Good support for controllers
Most controllers are configured automatically.
Pro Built on top of RetroArch
It's based on RetroArch OS
Pro Cores (emulator support) can be downloaded via interface
It's easy to add new emulators, even if you compile them yourself.
Pro First to get new Retroarch features implemented directly
Because they're part of the RA team, of course. :)
Pro Highly configurable
A lot of customizations and advanced options available.
Pro Supports different frontends
Lakka has different frontends in case your IoT is too slow for the default one.
Pro Different interfaces for different scenarios
Some interfaces like rgui makes the OS possible to run fine even in the Raspberry Pi 1st gen.
Pro Super-fast
Uses vram, and a zen kernel.
Pro Themes
The dr460nized KDE theme is awesome.
Pro Easy entrance to Arch Linux
Filled to the brim with lots of quality-of-life changes and optimizations that are simple enough for long-time Windows, long-time Mac users, and Arch newbies to understand. Though, it also leads to bloat or not necessarily helpful extra software. If you're not into the "bloat" added in, try checking out the barebones version, you'll need to know a lot of things bout Arch to fully use barebones.
Pro Highly customized interface
You already have most of the customization done for you out of the box.
Pro Unused RAM is wasted RAM
It takes just a bit more RAM than Manjaro. Edit: This statement is only true if it helps the user and since this could be running on a low end machine this will not.
Cons
Con Terrible User-Interface
The interface includes various submenus which makes it very hard to use
Con Needs the whole Disk
There is no option to install the system in dual-boot with another OS on one hard disk drive.
Con Adding new games and scans can be difficult if you don't have some knowledge
You need some knowledge if you want to add a different rom (lakka, like retroarch, supports only no-intro naming, there's no generic scan like emulationstation).
Con No built-in GUI to manage Bluetooth devices
It needs to be done over the CLI.
Con Uses RetroArch
A multi-emulator needs to make compromises.
Con No persistent BlueTooth pairing
Every time you restart Lakka it will lose all of its BlueTooth devices.
Con Needs a lot of RAM
Minimum is 4GB, for most Linux distributions it's 2GB or less.