I’m considering a switch from CachyOS, but wanted some feedback, i.e., advantages/disadvantages.
I’m generally pleased with CachyOS, but having so much customized items, seems to rub me the wrong way - I’m not trying to be some sort of Arch purist, but rather the risk of running into more headaches and instabilities due to the additions/subtractions/patches applied to the kernel, and core libraries, all in the name of performance.
I’m running on an older zen 2 processor AMD 3700X and a AMD 7800XT GPU, I’m probably not even able to take much advantage of that tweaking anyways.
Another reason, is while I’ve had success installing/using CachyOS, if something goes wrong, I have no idea how to fix it. Basically, I’m not learning a lot of the stuff that makes Linux run. I have some experience but I do think maybe starting off on a blank slate (not completely blank thanks to what EOS provides) and going from there.
Thoughts/opinions? I realize I may get a pro EndeavorOS perspective, and that’s fine, but I’m looking to see what folks have to offer.
I think if you want to learn, do a arch-install the purist way. And don’t follow a script, give thought to what you’re doing and why.
I personally don’t think EOS is going to be more than .1% different than Cachy. Ie, you’re moving sideways and really not going anywhere.
I’ve ran both EOS and Cachy as my main for over a year each, and the experience is very similar.
I tried Cachy out a while back and this was sort of how I felt, things I can normally work out where harder to due the the customisation. I would just suggest to try and see if it suits you as everyone is differnt. Perhaps even try in a VM first just to see if this is for you. BTW welcome to the forum.
Yes and no, I found the issues I had on Cachy where harder to find answers for. But that is your experience and a reason why I said to try in a VM as everyone has differnet levels of knowlege, machines and what-not.
Hi @maflynn and welcome to the -Forum!
Personally, I have never installed CachyOS. On no computer. But there are definitely a few other users who are familiar with it.
EDIT: Running EOS since years. I only broke it once through my own fault. Otherwise, EOS runs without any issues
I use EndeavourOS on my PC and CachyOS on my laptop. They both work extremely well for me. EOS is my daily driver. But I like CachyOS a lot as well. Never had issues with either that couldn’t be addressed by visiting their forums. And the communities for both a very active. But the EOS community has a more “fun” vibe to it. And there are quite a few forum members here that are eager to help newer users. You’re gonna love it here. And more importantly, I think you’ll love EndeavourOS itself.
The following is my personnal experience and opinion about CachyOS.
I tried it and found it too bleeding edge for my tastes. The devs are quick to pull beta stuff or even alpha stuff in their libraries and packages which in my opinion is liking living on the edge of stability. I find it heavily dependant on the original devs to make the os work properly. The days these guys get tired of this alot of people will end with a heavily package dependant OS without update. At least with EOS the OS is closer to arch than Cachy.
I had mostly instabilities issues (plasmashell) and racing conditions (pipewire) with CachyOS on my setup and I don’t have any particular hardware. X870E Ace Max, 9800X3D and 64 GB of ram on a 4090, EOS works better and is stable for me and is not worth a few percentage point if any to run Cachy. I also run EOS on my surface (yes Microsoft Surface). I even installed it on my mother old computer and it’s flawless. Like many distros YMMV.
Again don’t take this as an attack against CachyOS it’s simply somes stuff I find important for people to know and understand and my experience with it. Maybe it would work properly now since it’S been half a year but since my current setup is stable and working very well, I don’t feel like distro hopping at the moment.
Thanks for the reply, and in all honesty that’s one of the items that has me concerned, aggressive patching and having their own repos that have caused headaches in the past.
I want to game on my desktop, but I also do other stuff (not heavy lifting) and CachyOS’s claim to fame is not fully realized on my older cpu
Why be on or closer to the bleeding edge without many upsides to that edge?
I feel more comfortable with the administration of the EOS board. I would best describe the other referenced board as closer to ‘abandonware’. Problems that no one is able/willing to fix,etc.
It’s the usual tradeoff between performance and stability. But sometimes Cachy patches things even faster than the upstream repos, so that isn’t a black and white situation either.
Cachy isn’t going away in the near future, and I wouldn’t make a choice on an abstract risk, but only your actual experience of things breaking because of CachyOS.
If you have a strong preference for stability over performance I would recommend Arch (EOS) over Cachy. Arch usually waiting for x.y.1 updates for kernel and mesa provides more stability. You e.g. have to know that a big new kwin update without anything else means “wait an hour”, because the other plasma packages are still churning through the build server. Sometimes the optimized packages show a weird behavior that is only caught after some time.
Not that Cachy is bad, otherwise it wouldn’t have exploded in popularity. I have no problem recommending it to other people. But in my experience there are also some edge cases where Arch is “more stable”.
My personal conclusion having used both for some years: If the system has to work and I’m not in the “enthusiast” mode then I switch to Arch (EOS). It’s a peaceful life. - If there is some fancy new feature I want to test (which of course Cachy pulls in fast) then I switch to Cachy. But it’s a little bit more stressful to keep up with the news - e.g. reading their Discord about recent changes I have to be aware of.
On the question of learning more about Linux basics with EOS compared to Cachy: I don’t believe that to be true. A few config files tweaking performance settings aren’t a blank slate, the installer in both make most of the important decisions. After the installation you have the same agency. A real learning experience is manually installing Arch - and fully understanding the impact of each decision.
I tried CachyOS once and decided that I will stick with EOS. I don’t have any negative experiences with CachyOS, but I don’t feel any significant performance advantages over Arch/EOS.
I like the idea of being closer to the original with EOS, while having a much more relaxed community around me compared to the Arch forums. For me, EOS put an end to years of distro hopping. Small experiments here and there—on other devices, of course—are still possible, though!
-Forum!
