Hi,
I have been using EndeavorOS for my computer for 6 months but honestly need a bit of a siwtch. I’m planning to hop to CachyOS but I don’t know how smooth it’ll be. How can I keep all of my applications? Will I also be able to keep my /home just by swapping?
Wouldn’t recommend to change distros like that but ymmv
Can I just add the repo first and then maybe a stock installation?
I dont recommend changing like that either. Best bet would be to do a fresh install.
Okay, got it. Could I maybe then copy some of my programs onto a USB drive and do it that way?
the issue is cachyos has optimized versions of several apps/packages for which 
runs standard versions. I would also recommend a fresh install. Most times switching OS’ like that breaks things which need fixing later on. Here is a recent example
Depends. With some reading and solid pacman knowledge it is pretty trivial to hop between Endeavour, Cachy, Arch, ALHP etc. Without you can easily wreck your system.
I actually think it would be quite easy to switch from EndeavourOS to CachyOS, as EndeavourOS is very lean.. Just make a backup with timeshift and switch to CachyOS repos. Then sudo pacman -Syu and see what happens.
I came from Manjaro, EndeavourOS worked with mkinitcpio and grub, but I wanted to go all the way so I also switched mkinitcpio for dracut and after that grub for bootctl 
I must also say, I have dualboot with windows (and bitlocker), bootctl didnt catch windows so it was quite a challenge to put windows back in the bootctl boot menu.
People are rightfully scaring you to say don’t distrohop like that because it can break things. But it’s actually a lot of fun and with linux you can fix everything again. it does not really matter. and if everything goes wrong, just go back with timeshift.
Honestly, why would i want to help someone move from EOS? 
yolo 
who has time for fun?
Backup you /home directory, that one is usually transferable. I have switched to ALHP, theoretically you can switch the same way to the cachy repos, keep your current configs and have some frankenstein endeavourous. I’m not sure you will get the full cachyos experience this way. You will have different system configs for sure, also probably there will be some tools missing.
Ah yes, the distro thats almost a closed environment. Be prepared to replace a lot of packets and libs that the cachy devs rewrote and that wont function. Imho what they are doing does not really align with the open source philosophy anymore.
I’ve tried their kernel with the bore sceduler on EOS and i had to install a lot of dependencies for it. cachy-nvidia , cachy-python, cachy-blablabla … and thats wanted by them, because when i got the kernel to run it was unstable as hell and i needed to install the whole distro. With what they are doing, the are practically forcing you to use it as a whole. Couldn’t even run minecraft with prism launcher on it btw… had to replace a .lib, something they don’t advise in their troubleshooting forums. Had to spent days figuring this stuff out… i’ve tested it on my thinkpad x230 with lxqt and that actually got a nice speed boost. So any old(er) machine benefits as long as you don’t plan to actually use it for intensive stuff that requires actual tinkering.
I don’t understand the hype around it. But someone using that over windows is still better i guess.
That’s because you would need to install their forked pacman.
With all respect, it seems you haven’t fully grasped what it would imply to switch to their optimized repos, how the inter-dependency between packages work and why all those packages needed to be installed on your system.
If you know how to check, check for example what pacman would need to run in your EOS or an Arch system.
I’m afraid your assessment above is erroneous (to put it mildly) and based on not fully have understood the process and implications of switching the repos.
I used their repos for a month or so on my Arch installation, didn’t have any issues and all my games ran the same but with no performance gain as I would have thought. “cachy-nvidia’“ is the same as the “nvidia” package on Arch/EndeavourOS, it’s the module needed to make the nvidia driver work for the linux kernel package. You could can also nvidia-dkms (or nvidia-dkms-open) which works all the kernel you install.
python-cachy is also a package in the Arch Linux repos and it’s not a package specific to CachyOS.
They also have their own customized proton version, which is fine since there ore more customized proton versions around.
Most of the cachyos packages you are talking about are either pre-compiled kernels with specific kernel modules and for several different architectures in different repos.
I do for people that want to use Arch without it being minimal like EndeavourOS and provides some extra graphical tools. However I thought I would have gotten a performance gain which optimized packages which wasn’t the case. Could still be that other people with lower spec hardware do.
It is possible but with some “caveats”.
I agree fully to this statement by @Schlaefer
If you are not comfortable with managing your system from the commandline, using TTY or live usb to repair a broken system, I would think you are better off doing a fresh install.
You should also know that EOS comes with its own repos, set of packages and customization, specially those related to the generation of initramfs by way of automization. These may not be compatible when switching to Cachy.
Looking at that person’s response they don’t seem to know a whole lot on how Arch Linux works by the desciption of the packages they mentioned that gave problems and one even being a package in the Arch repos with the name “python-cachy”.
How about you start talking with me instead of about me? That first.
Then in return i don’t think you and the other person who went off on me didn’t understand the sentiment of my post at all. Since this was 17 days ago and i simply have other stuff to do than frequent internet forums to be talked down upon instead of showing me in detail where my though process is/was wrong. I’m really having to search for any respect that i can give you and the other person after that. I was not joining the arch forums for this exact reason, i did not want to meet people like you. Guess i will leave this forum as well, since people like you frequent this here as well.
My search for a friendly, unbiased and not arrogant linux community continues…
I explained the points I was talking about in my first reply to you where I quoted you. The reply you responded to me was me talking with @cactux about how you didn’t understand a few things correctly. I was not trying to avoid you or or talk you down or else I wouldn’t have responded to your first reply and taken the time to explain things, which I quoted again below. Sorry if that came across that way.
I replied to what you were not understanding correctly concerning package names.
looks like the discussion start joining south side of the friendly inclusive communications? I do not think @Bodhi_Bag post was meant to cause such… may someone can be wrong, but we should not start augmenting and fall into self-defense mode too much?
You all can pull back and simply say sorry if i was may a bit too harsh, it was not meant like so… that’s helping already a lot in case.