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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Bazzite is atomic and it turns off a lot of people since installing something is a little bit more involved.
Atomic distro might not have as much pull
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.