this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Is cachyos the best distro for gaming support? (all amd) (is.hardlywork.ing)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/linux_gaming
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Was looking into Nobara, realized its a solo dev, wondering if cachy is the best pick for compatibility. I play a lot of different stuff , use blender, controllers, flightsticks, etc. Not really into flightsims rnow and im dualbooting for now so its not a major issue on that front. Just want most steam games and controllers, drivers, etc. to work and get the best performance.

Update: Went with Cachyos for now, but first sign of any issues and I'll switch to bazzite since it seems to be safer and more reliable. Havent had any issues so far.

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[–] stuner 32 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It sounds like this will be your fist time running Linux. In that case I would recommend against using CachyOS or Arch. Those distros are meant for experienced users that are willing to solve problems on their. In the words of the Arch wiki:

Whereas many GNU/Linux distributions attempt to be more user-friendly, Arch Linux has always been, and shall always remain user-centric. The distribution is intended to fill the needs of those contributing to it, rather than trying to appeal to as many users as possible. It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.

In general, you can have a good gaming experience on almost any distro. The main limitation is probably running brand-new hardware, which can be a bit difficult on some of the slower distros (Debian, Ubuntu LTS, Mint, ...). There are only very minor performance differences between distros.

If you're a new user that wants to use a fast-moving distro with many options for customization, I'd recommend Fedora (e.g. Fedora KDE).

[–] JustAnotherKay 7 points 5 days ago

There are only very minor...

And most of the things that impact it can be changed (relatively) easily once you know enough about poking around in config files, so if you like how Cachy or Arch or whatever does it's presets you can definitely model your own machine after them. Just be careful, cause you're talking about kernel-space for a lot of that

[–] mrcleanup 4 points 4 days ago

I think it's important to realize that these old stereotypes aren't necessarily as true as they used to be. I started on Bazzite and it was great, but I didn't like immutability so I switched to Garuda. It's an Arch distro and is dead easy and super beginner friendly.

[–] warmaster 11 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I tried Cachy, settled on Bazzite. Best decision ever.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

BazziteOS for the win. I used ChimeraOS for a year but Bazzite has been much better. It comes out of the box with most everything you need.

With that being said for gaming, Nvidia driver is very early days and is considered experimental under Bazzite. I have several Nvidia GPUs and I regularly test Linux with a 2070+Intel tiger lake machine to see what works and what doesn't.

I purchased a Radeon 7800xt for Bazzite and it's extremely stable. This will probably be my recommendation going forward.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just curious, could you point me to where Bazzite says Nvidia is experimental still? I run it on a 1080+Intel Ivy Bridge EP desktop and it has decent performance, at least on par with Win10 since the 560 driver. (/gen)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sure. When selecting Nvidia GPU under Bazzite you will see this message "Steam Gaming Mode support is available for your hardware in beta, but multiple known issues exist in these builds. Please note that the majority of bugs cannot be fixed except by your GPU manufacturer."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Ah yeah, you're right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What didn't you like about cachy? I like it rnow, curious why you switched, are you gaming primarily?

[–] warmaster 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Cachy is just another distro for power users / enthusiasts. For people that want to tweak everything. Universal Blue spins are made for people that want their PCs to work for the user, not the other way around. They are unbrickable. Arch is a rolling distro, and thus it requires more maintenance than any other distro. If the user doesn't want to learn everything there is to know about a Linux system, Arch based distros aren't a good fit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Well whats the point of swapping to linux if not to learn random shit, I get good performance on windows I mostly just want a lot of customization over my UI and any performance boost is a bonus, if it breaks I always have my windows partition, don't think I'll ever fully commit, I like having the windows option at most ill shrink the windows ssd down to like 256gb-500gb but always have it there just in case I need something that just works (with software meant for it). I want the most custom visuals and app stores for plugins, widgets, themes, etc. whatever desktop environment and distro has the most support for that. It seems like they all pretty much support the same stuff tho.

I want to tweak visuals but idrc about tweaking internal settings.

[–] just_another_person 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They're all pretty much the same now as far as distributions go. Kernel and driver versions paired with whatever versions of wine/proton are what will get you better performance now.

If you want to stay more towards the bleeding edge of things, go with a faster releasing rolling distro. Fedora or Arch, but the former unless you're really familiar with what you're doing.

[–] jimmy90 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Bazzite is the best currently, based on fedora so it's up to date, atomic so it stable AF

[–] just_another_person 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Atomic has nothing to do with stability. Really wish these kids who have no idea about it would stop with that noise.

[–] jimmy90 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

it means if you break your system you can rewind to a previous working stable configuration and it makes it slightly harder to muck around with os level stuff helping prevent breakage, also many apps are containerised further limiting their side effects on the os's stability

is that the noise you were talking about?

[–] just_another_person 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Lol. I'm not asking if it is. I'm saying it has absolutely no impact on the stability of a system at all. You're also confusing stability and reliability, so there's that.

If OP isn't handing out root passwords, no standard user is going to be able to affect a normal mutable system either.

Y'all a bunch of hypequeens 😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Yes. In the last few years “stable” gets thrown around an awful lot for bleeding edge Arch, Tumbleweed, etc. Anything people feel their system didn’t crash so it counts as being stable…

[–] tomkatt 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’m not a fan. I used Cachy for several months but ran into a variety of issues. The repo tends to be a bit behind because it’s only a single maintainer handling it, but it also doesn’t seem to play nice with the standard arch repo and mixing.

It feels like the Manjaro thing all over again.

Despite its claims of speed I found it to perform no better than Endeavor OS, but it was a lot more unstable.

I’ve switched back to Endeavor with no complaints.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ill look into endeavor, I don't think performance is going to be an issue with any linux os since it idles using less resources and AMD seems to have better support consistently than amd. Whats your process in switching distros? Seems annoying to remember all the settings for customizing the de and all the apps ive downloaded, ive already forgotten. Do you just keep a list of whatevers important?

[–] tomkatt 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I keep all my important files on a NAS already, so my desktop is pretty much exchangeable, only takes maybe 20-30 mins at most to get up and running including the install time.

  1. Sync my Calibre library to NAS before making the change (I have a rsync one-liner for this)
  2. Boot to USB and install new OS
  3. Log in and run system updates (pacman -Syu in this case)
  4. Create my disk paths if needed (I make /home/$USER/Disks/ and in that path NVMe, sda, sdb, sdc, etc.)
  5. Make network share folders on home directory (NAS folders for music and general NAS share)
  6. Copy over my /etc/fstab modifications from my back up file on the NAS to automount disks and NAS shares on boot
  7. Install Calibre
  8. Pull down books from backup
  9. Launch Firefox, install uBlock Origin and Dark Reader extensions

That's pretty much it for desktop. If it's my gaming PC, the "Calibre" portions there would be swapped with installing Steam and Heroic Launcher, but otherwise the same.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I've done a decent amount of Distro hopping with an all team red PC, and CachyOS is fantastic. I recommend Bazzite for people who want no bullshit, OOTB experience. But if you don't mind minor tinkering, CachyOS is just too good at what it accomplishes. Their gaming meta package, which has custom wine & proton builds, is is such an easy way to milk out that last bit of performance. Their kernel manager and Firefox fork are also just so well done. Not to mention they're ahead of the game for things like the upcoming NTSYNC in Linux 6.14. Last but not least their default Cachy kernel is the cherry on top.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I'm convinced, going for it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You can always try it in a VM first. Works pretty well that way, and you can get a taste of what you can expect. I did that to practice my setup and make sure certain software worked.

If you want some of the CachyOS upgrades but also want something a little unique, PikaOS is Debian but custom built for gaming. It uses a lot of the same package optimizations of CachyOS, uses their kernel, but it also borrows from Nobara. It has the best helper apps and updater, IMO, and unlike Debian, it's rolling release and has up-to-date GPU drivers. It even has the same kernel picker and scheduler chooser that Cachy has.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I just used gparted in cachy to shrink and make a new partition for it, was easy enough, I tried vmware but I just didnt like that there was no easy way to reuse that install, would rather just commit to dual booting and it was easy enough (had to manually create the boot partition and format the drive, theres a yt video since the automatic process failed, did exactly what the automatic process says it does)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

It's a great distro! I have w feeling you'll love it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What does their Firefox fork do differently?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

So basically Librewolf + Gentoo patches + fire jail patches + custom theme

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Never heard of it, what's your reason for picking this one? Looks like it's an Arch derivative, but the site doesn't tell me much about what's supposed to set it apart from vanilla Arch.

If you're new to Linux, I would strongly recommend a mainstream distro popular enough that you can easily Google any issues that arise. Beyond that, distro honestly really doesn't matter all that much - at least not until you've been using Linux long enough to know that there's something specific you want from a particular distro and are interested in tinkering around for it. But starting out, just pick something Googleable, any mainstream distro will do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

Never heard of it, what’s your reason for picking this one? Looks like it’s an Arch derivative, but the site doesn’t tell me much about what’s supposed to set it apart from vanilla Arch.

It's a performance orientated distribution with a significant amount of kernel patches and other tweaks. Whether it's worth it is arguable, but using their kernel at least isn't a bad idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Its the most popular one right now for gaming on reddit/youtube and its up there on distrowach, has a lot of support built in for stuff youd otherwise have to figure out, its kept up to date for the latest games apparently, I was looking into popos since its similarly optimized for games and 3d sims/rendering, ppl that had issues with it were switching to cachyos (they are working on their de and havent updated in a while)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Can we please just all agree that if you don't know how to set up arch you shouldn't be using arch based stuff?

Just use goddamn Opensuse Tumbleweed if you need the newest packages so bad

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Like, if it was hard id get it, but it was easy af to set up? I prob spent more time tinkering with windows before my games would work lol. My gpu kept installing old drivers that couldnt update and I had tons of issues that I got used to. Relatively, cachyos has just worked with no issues, its crazy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Agree! Tumbleweed is by far the best stable rolling release distribution as of February 2025.

Nix and Guix are the only alternatives IMO. Given that you're into modern hipster distributions and want to feel special.

Arch doesn't add any value and is pretty much last season.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I dont understand what the setup issue is, I have everything I need running fine, going back and forth between hyprland (the 2nd most popular preconfiged version) and plasma. Windows is boring and I want better performance for rendering, arch (cahcyos) I seem to get great perfomance so far idling barely uses any resources and most obvious is I can open like 200 tabs without issue while any browser on windows lagged after 10.

Cachyos does have a gui for setup and its easy to use gparted from the install os or whatever the usb versions called. That was my only issue having to manually partition because auto didnt work, but i just followed the same steps, was pretty intuitve. Arch itself looks maybe annoying to setup, but through cachyos or endeavor it seems to be the move for perfomance and compatibility. Or Bazzite, I do want to be able to run games without tinkering and I ran some steam games off windows on my external ssd eithout issue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

I have been using nobara for about a year now and the solo dev thing was never much of an issue. There are many people who can and will help you with problems in the discord. You may have to wait a few months for GE to incorporate the latest Fedora Version, but otherwise the experience has been pretty great

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

openSUSE Tumbleweed is the distribution for you.

There is no reason to use Arch at all ever. It has a good wiki and thats pretty much it. If you want an advanced modern distribution you should go with Nix or Guix. Arch is very much last season and doesn't add any value over "normal" distributions.

EDIT: after doing some reading on Cachy, I change my mind. It seems like a good choice because of the kernel optimizations and the rollback support. I would still prefer Tumbleweed, but mostly because I nurture an irriational dislike for anything Arch.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Performance differences are negligible. Just go with one of the big distributions like Ubuntu or Mint.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Forget performance, im more worried about compatibility and having the right drivers, cachyos seems to take care of a lot of that grabbing programs, dependencies I wouldn't think to grab being new to linux, seems to save me from a lot of researching, i could be wrong and the implication they are giving could be throwing me off, endeavor would be the alternative I go for. I dont like ubuntus proprietary format.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago

Ubuntu‘s proprietary format? How would that even impact your intended use? Don’t get dragged into all the silly flame wars around purity of FOSS and such.

Linux distributions are more similar than different. The distribution you use matters less than online discussions by enthusiasts make you believe. Many of these ricers and tinkerers think it’s fun to fix snd troubleshoot their system all the time.

Choosing a distribution with a large user base, stability, reliability, and good support is more important than a shiny feature.

Many of the small distributions don’t support upgrading to new releases of the same distribution for example. You have to reinstall instead.