Liya Linux proves high performance doesn’t require a command line
Liya Linux proves high performance doesn’t require a command line
https://thenewstack.io/liya-linux-proves-high-performance-doesnt-require-a-command-line/
Publish Date: 2026-02-01 10:03:00
Source Domain: thenewstack.io
Any Linux distribution claiming that it wants to make Linux easy and accessible to the general public, as well as to establish itself as a new industry standard for home computing, is bold.
But I like it. When a Linux distribution can make such a bold claim, it means they are trying to do something honorable and important: making Linux possible for everyone.
The problem is that a lot of distributions make that claim; while some of them succeed, some also fail.
The big question here is, does Liya Linux make good on that claim? Knowing that this distribution is based on Arch Linux, that’s a fairly risky claim. And since Liya Linux is new to me (which is rare these days), I installed it as a virtual machine (VM) to see what it had to offer.
As soon as the installation started, I knew immediately that the developers took the claim seriously. Like many modern Linux distributions, Liya Linux offers a user-friendly, point-and-click installation.
It wasn’t until I logged in for the first time that I was able to see what the developers had done.
Before I get into that, it’s important to know that Liya uses the Btrfs file system, complete with snapshots, as well as Samba shares enabled by default, and a clean app selection that might not be as familiar as some distributions, but I found all of the preinstalled apps to be viable options for everyday users.
Even before I got to the app selection, the thing that immediately struck me was that Liya fooled me. Before I decided to give this distribution a try, I decided not to read up on it first because I wanted to be surprised. Right out of the gate, I was definitely taken by surprise.
When I first logged in, I assumed I was working with the KDE Plasma desktop. It was an easy assumption because it looked very much like KDE Plasma (with a few distribution-specific tweaks). The desktop was beautiful and carried the typical hallmarks of KDE Plasma.
Little did I know that the desktop was actually a customized…
