I Tried CachyOS, and Now It Might Be My New Main Distro

Distro hopping isn’t exactly uncommon in the Linux world, but have you ever found yourself switching distributions by accident? Because that’s exactly what happened to me when I decided to give the Arch-based CachyOS a try.

An Intro to CachyOS

At first glance, there isn’t much of a difference between CachyOS and other Linux distributions based on Arch like EndeavourOS, or especially the gaming-focused Garuda Linux. It was only a few mentions online and its sudden climb up the charts on Distrowatch that piqued my curiosity.

The distro is focused on performance, but again, this is true of any Arch-based distro. You generally don’t hear people recommending against Arch because of the system’s bloated nature, for example. Instead, you hear users boast of how effortlessly their systems seem to run everything.

Still, while gaming performance may be CachyOS’s main selling point, its performance settings and options are worth exploring even if you’ve never even seen a video game running on Linux.

How is CachyOS Different From Other Arch-based Distros?

A look at the CachyOS website gives you a lot of technical details about what exactly makes the distro so fast. I’ll be honest and say that the finer technical points of Cachy’s use of the BORE kernel scheduler are lost on me, as are the other scheduler options to choose from. That said, I can appreciate how the packages optimized for x86–64-v3, x86–64-v4, and the Zen4 instruction sets make for better performance.

Similarly to other “Arch but easier” distros, CachyOS adds both third-party and its own custom software to make common setup tasks easier. These tasks can range from simple system maintenance like updating all your installed packages, to more specialized jobs like installing Snapper support.

On a similar note, software like btrfs-assistant is included by default, making managing snapshot settings nearly as easy as it is on distributions like OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. While the graphical admin tools aren’t nearly as powerful as that system’s YaST, it’s still nice to have the option to control so many settings from a GUI.

Installing CachyOS

Speaking of the GUI, the CachyOS install process has got to be simultaneously the easiest and most option-packed Linux install I’ve encountered in a while. I had the option to select Nvidia drivers as soon as I booted from USB (using a laptop with AMD integrated graphics and a discrete Nvidia card) and booted into the live environment without trouble.

The first choice you make upon running the installer is which bootloader to use. You get several options, including the default systemd-boot and GRUB, but also more unique choices like rEFInd. I tried this one out of curiosity for one of my test installs, and it worked fine, reminding me of the MacOS boot menu. Typically, I stick with the default systemd-boot.

It isn’t long before you come to your next big choice: the filesystem. CachyOS recommends Btrfs as the default, but EXT4 is another fine choice, albeit far from your only option. You can also choose from XFS, ZFS, or the even more specialized F2FS or “Flash-Friendly File System,” which is only really useful if you’re installing CachyOS on a USB drive, for example.

Finally, while neither Endeavour nor Garuda are known for lacking desktop options, CachyOS’s installer offers up a staggering number. In addition to the default KDE Plasma and Gnome options, you get less common options like Cosmic, bspwm, UKUI, and Wayfire, among others.

Gaming on CachyOS

Gaming-focused distros are becoming increasingly common in the Linux world, but this can mean different things from distro to distro. There are emulation-focused options like Batocera to more Steam-optimized offerings like Bazzite. In the case of CachyOS, it means that you can cover a vast swath of your gaming needs with a single button.

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In the CachyOS Hello app, which launches on startup, going to “Apps/Tweaks” and clicking the “Install Gaming packages” button installs Steam, Lutris, and Heroic Games Launcher all at once. If you’re looking to emulate games, or you need other options, you may need to turn to the AUR, but these three options are ready to go out of the box.

On a dual-GPU Nvidia Optimus laptop, I had no issues installing and running newer games like Warframe and Counter-Strike 2, though the latter wasn’t much of a surprise given Valve’s history of Linux support. CachyOS includes a “prime-run” command to make it easier to use your discrete GPU for gaming, but I found in many cases, even this wasn’t necessary, at least as far as I could tell from in-game performance.

Older games could be a little trickier, but this mainly came down to trying them in Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher, then seeing which option worked better. I also used Heroic Launcher for newer games like Disco Elysium, and generally had more luck with this app than I did with Lutris. That said, for newer games I own on GOG like Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War, I stuck to Lutris.

CachyOS for Daily Use

Looking at older screenshots of CachyOS, it’s clear that the developers used to focus more on the themeing of the distro. As the distro installs now, the themeing is present, but far from overkill. For example, using the standard KDE desktop the installer offers up, the default theme is the Breeze Dark theme.

It’s still a great look, and I haven’t found myself doing much at all to change how the system looks. The distribution ships with a good number of fun wallpapers, should you want to change up the look without diving deep into “ricing” your desktop.

Similar to Garuda’s inclusion of the FireDragon browser (based on the Floorp Firefox fork), CachyOS features its own browser. Cachy Browser is based on Firefox, but with patches from the privacy-focused LibreWolf browser as well as patches rolled in from Gentoo. While Firefox may have walked back from recent controversial changes, the presence of alternative browser options here is nice. You can always install standard Firefox or Chrome if you prefer.

I’ve been using Arch-based systems on and off for years at this point, so managing packages using the pacman command has become second nature. That said, the CachyOS Hello app features an easy button to keep your packages up to date, plus another option that makes for easy graphical installation of software.

You don’t have to use any of these tools, but if you’re a newer Linux user looking to explore some of the benefits of an Arch-based system, these will make your life much easier.

Am I Here for Good?

Setting aside the BORE scheduler, the Zen 4 compiled packages, and the efforts to squeeze every drop of performance of your hardware, there’s still a lot to like about CachyOS. It’s essentially an easy-to-use Arch distribution like EndeavourOS or Garuda, but with even more desktops and plenty of boot and filesystem options. If that sounds interesting to you, it’s absolutely worth giving it a try.

As I mentioned at the start, I’d initially just been curious to see how the distro would run on actual hardware when I installed it. Once I’d given it an install or two and tried running a few different games, I’d likely either move on or back to my old standby, Fedora.

I can’t really say what’s keeping me on CachyOS, especially since I’m running the KDE Plasma version, and I’ve never been a huge KDE fan to date. Maybe it’s just the change of pace, or maybe it’s something about the quality of the experience that the CachyOS team has put together. All I know is that for now, it feels more like home than a distro has in a long while.

With the future of Linux desktops still very much in flux, I’m happy to at least know that there is another option that I can quickly get up, running, and ready to go without tinkering. That part is more fun to save for other projects anyway.

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