Linux mint here to chime in. Works flawlessly, gaming included.
But why? Isn’t it a gamer focused distribution? Are we really wanting to play games in WSL?
It’s gamer focused, but still pretty open, it’s arch based so lots of options.
On scale between bazzaite , Nobaru, and catchyos, it’s the most open imo while still offering a near seamless transition for a windows user.
amd64v3 support and larger repositories.
The link you shared is for Ubuntu. Larger repositories?
The link is benchmarks for the amd64v3 micro-architecture, not specific to Ubuntu. CachyOS repositories also have a bunch of packages that you would otherwise use the AUR for on Arch. An example: https://packages.cachyos.org/package/cachyos/x86_64/euro-office-bin
Win 12 will be Linux 👀
I tried to play Minecraft under WSL2. Nice 2FPS per second probably because of GPU.
Finally I will be able to run my Windows Games virtualized on an optimized Linux kernel that is better virtualized on a Windows OS
What is CachyOS doing so well that other distros don’t?
They don’t support really old hardware which enables to ship better optimized packages by default and other performance boosts at expense of non-gamers. I have noticed multiple times that a package I wanted was not available in classic arch repos but was in Cachy’s. As far as I know it’s not that different from EndeavourOS (not that I’ve tried it). To me it really just seems like a distro that suits ME, a bit lazy tech savvy gamer, the best and there is not any visible dirt.
It arrived at the right time with the right promises.
It came up during the SteamOS craze where a lot of people were looking to switch over to Linux, but wanted something easy.
- SteamOS was not yet released for anything but the Steam Deck
- It has an easy installer and good GUI tooling
- It comes with KDE & gaming optimizations, so it’s easy to use for people coming from Windows with no fiddling
- It’s not immutable, so you can actually use your PC for anything, not just gaming
- It has an Arch base and still uses arch repos (apart from their own custom packages), so it’s also familiar to people already using Linux
Unlike other distros, it doesn’t have anti-features, and doesn’t sacrifice anything for the sake of ease-of-use, while providing a very smooth experience (and welcoming to people who never used Linux).
And it came out at the perfect time - it wasn’t an old thing you had to persuade people was “good all along”; it’s a purpose-built distro made to answer the specific use case people were seeking when leaving Windows, at the exact time articles & youtube videos were hammering on Windows & Linux gaming was a huge topic of discussion.
Follow the money. There was a reason Omarchy got suddenly boatloads of cash: fascists.
Are you saying cachy is sponsored by fascists? Do you havd any source for that?
I never meant to imply it was funded by fascists.
But i am more weary of distros that have more and more obtuse extensibility and sponsoship from big orgs and corpos. They certainly are forces out there trying to shove open source in a certain direction. Coreutils did not need a fucking rewrite in any langauge, but it happened all the same because of its license.
The “extension” of WSL for CachyOS might be and admission of guilt by MS that windows is not the one and only OS to game on. Or maybe some other purpose, who knows?
Man, this distro really blew up. I remember around 2 years ago hearing about it for the first time, and then was like “oh maaaaan, not another arch/endeavourOS/Garuda/manjaro”. Anyway, it’s been my main distro for around 2 years now and I’m never going anywhere. lol
I still don’t get it why would I want it over Arch.
ZFS support, perhaps.
Yes vanilla arch can load dkms with zfs support but it’s a pain.
It’s a choice. You either want to make your pizza from scratch or have it delivered. I prefer mine delivered so I can kick my feet up on the couch, watch TV, and start eating right away. I don’t have time to gather all the ingredients and do all the cooking, you know?
I was on arch, had a hardware failure, reinstalled my OS as troubleshoot, but went with Cachy. I use it exactly like Arch, except for the updater which is a pacman + flatpak manager (it just runs the CLI commands sequentially)
Honestly it feels more like an arch with tweaks than a full on independent distro. It still uses pacman & arch repos, has the AUR available etc; they have additional repos & custom packages (like the kernel), but for the end user it’s about the same.
If someone didn’t know anything about Linux but wanted to switch over to it, I’d recommend Cachy just because it’s easy to install & properly sets up the OS for high performance without needing to fiddle with it. Also it has GUI update tools (I just use their CLI version instead) which may look more inviting to people scared of the terminal
I moved over from Arch to CachyOS when my OS SSD started to fail SMART tests. So far this is what I’ve liked about Cachy: Very easy to use installer. Really nice btrfs snapshot system by default. Optimized kernels and packages repos, compiled with modern CPU instructions (not that much of a difference in real use, but still a nice to have). Its Steam Proton fork (Cachy-Proton) has a lot of niceties too for FSR and stuff (Although I barely use that so I stick with GE-Proton). Its just a smooth arch experience with sane defaults. Of course, I ended up tweaking some things. I switched from the fish shell to zsh with my reliable plugins. I don’t use Shelly, Its GUI package manager, so it’s just kind of there. It really is like endeavour OS with the gaming aspect turned to eleven, and I’m very happy with it.
Same with Manjaro then that went down in flames so I switched to catchy lol
I’ve thought the same until recently. Clearly not a flavor of the week and here to stay for a long while. Which is great in Linux land.
It’s pretty damn solid. I’ve been running it on my Framework 13 AMD 7040 for years, and I recently acquired a 64GB Framework Desktop and it’s running like a dream on it. Definitely recommend it for (mostly) effortless Arch.
How does it handle the battery on that Framework? I’m considering switching from Silverblue to something else just because it’s worse than a coin flip as to if I close the lid with a decent battery charge that I’ll come back to it a few hours later and the battery is empty.
I know Linux and battery stuff is and has always been Not Good, but I’d like it to be predictably not good.
I have great experience with it when it comes to standby time. I sometimes will bring it with me to work to play around on my lunch hour, and if I don’t end up pulling it out of my backpack, it’ll drop maybe 4-5% over a ~10 hour period. Of course, actual use can be a mixed bag, but I tended to get a few hours of modded Minecraft before needing to reach for a charger.
I just did the Steam monthly hardware survey.
Linux was just shy of 4% and CachyOS was the largest Linux distro.
I thought the exact same thing as you. It went viral in the Linux community quickly.
Surprised bazzite wasn’t in there as much
It was! That’s what I use, but CachyOS beat it. Bazzite was 3rd in the list or something like that. I don’t remember exactly
Atomic distro might not have as much pull
Bazzite is atomic and it turns off a lot of people since installing something is a little bit more involved.
The hype for gaming distros started with Bazzite but Cachy quickly came up & had more hype behind it. Probably because it lets you do more with your OS since it’s not immutable, so it attracts both gamers wanting to switch over to Linux as well as Linux people looking to game.
Followers follow.
Finally looked into using CachyOS features on NixOS and it is indeed possible.
Edit: Looks like I have some haters downvoting objectively innocuous comments that I make. Lemvotes exists you know?
Woah nice! We need this to be used on more systems. I’d love to see this applied to more traditional immutable Linux - Bazzite in particular should benefit immensely.
What are the interesting kernel features?
I see zfs mentioned and custom optimisation flags, but those seem pretty easy to do in nixpkgs. I didn’t look at the patches.
I guess the binary cache is nice if you want that specific kernel config.
It depends on which one you pick. There are plenty of optimizations that aren’t offered on standard nixpkgs NixOS kernels like BORE.
Ps. Simply follow the link I posted for the actual info you were looking for.
It uses the BORE scheduler: https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler
