Whenever a render distance in slider is set past 32, it reverts back to 32 after exiting the screen. Using newest version of sodium, and the only other mods are iris, sodium, cloth config and mod menu. Render distance in config file is set to 128.

this isnt a bobby specific issue, in 1.18 and earlier you could manually set the render distance higher in the config file. as of 1.18.1 any value greater than 32 is reset to 32.

And you can still do this with Bobby + Sodium by setting the max render distance in Bobby's config.

Unless the replay mod specific version of sodium changes something important (it might I am quite oblivious) when I change the max in the config to 64 for example it changes the max in the sodium setting, when I try to change it it gets reverted to 32 however

Are you using any other mods? I cannot reproduce any such thing on my machine.
Also, just to make sure your expectations aren't incorrect: What specific value are you changing (or have changed) where and at which specific point does what specific thing revert to 32? Ideally with screenshots so it's clear we're not talking about different things.

Unless the replay mod specific version of sodium changes something important

It doesn't.

I have the maximum render distance set to 64 in bobby config, when I try to change it in video settings (screenshots) it is reset to 32 as soon as I exit the video settings page.

mods:
Bobby 3.0.0
fabric api 0.44.0
iris 1.1.3
sodium (replay compatable) rc1-0.4.0-alpha5+rev.7c0c941

I will try it with normal sodium in a minute

also, I didn't notice until now but the screenshots didn't capture my cursor hopefully it is clear enough.

I just confirmed the behavior with the sodium version on curseforge.

I could try compiling it from the source, tho I feel like the cause might be something else.

There is also a likely possibility that this is an issue with either Linux (arch w/ custom xen-rog kernel) or with Multimc (needed to get my d-GPU to render the game)

edit 1: I just tested with the "official" Minecraft launcher and the behavior persists.

edit 2: It is probably worth noting that render distances > 32 worked fine in 1.18. despite not actually doing anything, I could set the render distance to 64 in the config with no mods and it would show a render distance of 64 in the in-game video settings.

edit 3: just tested with the auto-built sodium version with server render distance changes, and the problem persists. at this point, I wonder if I am making a super simple/stupid mistake somewhere or if it was a change with vanilla

edit 4: I am setting up KVM to see if it is a Linux problem

It's probably none of these things. I'm running MultiMC on Debian with a custom Sodium built from RM's source. Only thing I'm not running is a d-GPU (whatever that is) and a custom kernel.

d-GPU (whatever that is)

d-gpu = nvidia card

when I use the "official" Minecraft launcher it uses my i-GPU (AMD integrated graphics)

it could be weird arch things, arch isn't officially supported and it causes issues ( I don't use gnome so it doesn't save the Microsoft login keys as it only saves to the gnome-keyring)

I created a new 1.18 instance, installed fabric-loader 0.12.9 (latest at time, cause I forgot to hit the refresh button), added the mods you listed above, started it, while in the main menu I changed max-render-distance=32 in Bobby's config to max-render-distance=128, then I followed the exact same step as you outlined above. It didn't reset, last step still had 56 (just random value I dragged it to).
Here's the log for that: https://paste.ee/p/HG8Au
Maybe you can find a difference in there if you do the exact same thing.

Oh, this doesn't happen in 1.18. It happens in 1.18.1, and 1.18.1 only, even with the same mods.

Probably should have read your initial message more carefully, rather than just assuming it's what OP wrote.

Ok cool, I'm not imagining things.

Is there a place ** I could compare the code for 1.18 and 1.18.1 to try to find the exact change that caused this?

** or a way to extract the code for myself

Easiest way to do that is to setup a Fabric development environment for both and then look at the classes. Since I've already got that for Bobby, here's the change, idk why they felt the need to do that in a point release:

I'll fix it in a minute by also allow >32 for vanilla (didn't do that to begin with because it's basically unplayable, but there are other mods which improve it, e.g. #29 so it's on my list of things to add anyway).

ok, cool that it was that easy, ill probably set up a dev environment eventually :)