A while back, I read on a Linux subreddit that someone added Garuda and CachyOS repos to their EndeavourOS install. If I remember correctly (I can’t find the subreddit) it involved enabling chaotic aur along with adding the Garuda and Cachy repos.
Curious as to why anyone would do this. Is the resulting OS just a one-of-a-kind “Frankenstein” Arch-based mega-distro? What would be the benefits, if any? Or is was that EndeavourOS user just an adventurous experimenalist?
I’d say primarily the later, though there is the benefit of access to stuff existing only on the new repositories. Both have some unique compiled stuff…but esp Garuda kinda likes it’s own space ;0
Arch/pacman supports custom repos. The wiki lists a lot of them: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unofficial_user_repositories If the user has a good reason to use a certain repo, they got the power and the responsibility.
Just because you can add a custom repo doesn’t mean what’s in it is going to work. I’m personally not interested in doing this. If i was i would use Garuda or CachyOS.
I am not sure how well that may work to add CachyOS repo to EOS and swap to packages that are available in Cachy’s repo since EOS makes its own configuration.
However, adding it to a vanilla Arch install shouldn’t cause any insurmountable issues and considering their optimized package builds and the plethora of kernels they offer, I can understand why it appeals to some users depending on their use case and what they want to get out of their systems.
As long as it doesn’t turn my desktop computer into a super computer as how people seem to advertise optimized compiled packages then it’s a no for me. 
With that kind of exigence , the only way to go is to have a system capable of Quantum Computing
I think everyone using optimized packages or distributions like CachyOS seems to over advertise it, as I’ve never seen stats for it and the only thing you can find about it is people arguing over it on Reddit.
They publish some benchmarks if you look at the link I posted above (Optimized Repositories). Maybe that would be interesting to have a look at. I haven’t yet but I will when I find some time.
I use chaotic and archlinuxcn repos, saves having to compile a lot of stuff I use:
yyl | grep -i chaotic 19:57:21
chaotic-aur/kwin-scripts-krohnkite-git 0.9.9.0.r8.gec28736-1 (53.2 KiB 346.8 KiB) (Installed: 0.9.8.5.r4.g52f0d57-1)
chaotic-aur/google-chrome 135.0.7049.84-1 (150.7 MiB 359.3 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/chaotic-keyring 20230616-1 (28.7 KiB 32.9 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/maestral-qt 1.9.4-1.5 (1.0 MiB 2.0 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/heroic-games-launcher-bin 2.16.1-1 (152.4 MiB 403.5 MiB) (Installed: 3:2.16.1-1)
chaotic-aur/reflector-simple 3.3-1 (16.9 KiB 36.5 KiB) (Installed: 2024.8.1-1)
chaotic-aur/qbittorrent-git 5.0.4.r410.g795889c4-1 (8.3 MiB 12.6 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/yay 12.4.2-1.1 (3.6 MiB 8.9 MiB) (Installed: 12.4.2-1)
chaotic-aur/python-pyro5 5.15-1.2 (202.7 KiB 966.4 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/firefox-nightly 139.0a1+20250407.09+h25644b9f4-1 (495.0 MiB 2.1 GiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/rustup-git 1.28.1.r47.g3cd156c4-1 (4.1 MiB 11.0 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/vscodium-marketplace 1.97.0-1 (4.6 KiB 1.3 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/ipscan 3.9.1-3 (1.7 MiB 1.8 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/profile-sync-daemon-brave 2022.08.18-1 (2.8 KiB 158.0 B) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/pingu 0.0.5-2 (1.1 MiB 2.6 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/paru 2.0.4-1.1 (3.4 MiB 8.3 MiB) (Installed: 2.0.4-1)
chaotic-aur/zapzap 6.0.1.8-1 (217.5 KiB 1.2 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/wezterm-git 20250320.072107.a8735851-1 (43.0 MiB 125.4 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/ocs-url 3.1.0-7.4 (51.8 KiB 130.4 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/tuc 1.2.0-1 (428.5 KiB 1.0 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/rate-mirrors 0.19.2-1 (3.8 MiB 10.2 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/maestral 1.9.4-1.1 (615.3 KiB 2.3 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/xcp 0.24.0-1 (1.3 MiB 3.5 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/qdirstat 1.9-2.4 (762.5 KiB 1.9 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/vscodium 1.99.02289-1 (120.8 MiB 359.5 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/python-survey 5.3.0-1.2 (195.9 KiB 878.4 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/python-docopt-ng 0.9.0-1.1 (40.1 KiB 141.8 KiB) (Installed: 0.9.0-2)
chaotic-aur/python-desktop-notifier 6.0.0-2.1 (74.5 KiB 279.4 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/pup 0.4.0-3 (1.3 MiB 2.7 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/floorp 11.25.0-1 (104.5 MiB 253.1 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/sublime-text-4 4.4192-1 (20.0 MiB 49.3 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/plasma6-applets-panel-colorizer 2.4.2-1 (635.2 KiB 1.8 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/pinta 2.1.2-2 (2.4 MiB 8.7 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/firedragon 1:11.25.0_1-1 (109.0 MiB 285.9 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/dxvk-mingw-git 2.6.1.r18.g7608c26b8-1 (9.9 MiB 27.5 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/dwarfs 0.11.3-1 (4.0 MiB 11.0 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/dropbox 220.4.4126-1 (102.8 MiB 213.1 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/downgrade 11.5.1-1 (28.1 KiB 79.7 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/cheat 4.4.2-3 (4.4 MiB 11.3 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/chaotic-mirrorlist 20240724-3 (3.4 KiB 2.0 KiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/bibata-rainbow-cursor-theme 1.1.2-2 (29.1 MiB 507.3 MiB) (Installed)
chaotic-aur/brave-bin 1:1.77.95-1 (162.8 MiB 390.5 MiB) (Installed)
"Not that we needed extra repos at all for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious AUR collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
–Hunter S. Thomspon, p. 23, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Chaotic-AUR is not a distro’s repo. It is the repo of AUR built and compiled ready to install packages.
Chaotic-AUR is the courtesy of the Garuda Team for the entire Arch community.
Users of chaotic-AUR should be really grateful. Unfortunately bashing or even hating of chaotic-AUR is also noticed, perhaps these people just follow the bad vibes around them, who knows.
So why would someone use chaotic-AUR? @Xircon already gave the answer.
I’m using Chaotic-AUR no matter which Arch distribution I use. It helps spending a lot of time for me not having to wait until yay compiled packages from AUR. 
I just enabled it via instructions here. Updated, rebooted and all is well.
Giving the CachyOS kernel a spin…
❯ uname -r
6.14.2-1-cachyos
Looking forward to your feedback! Never used that kernel.
I’ll give it a couple days of my regular, daily usage and post back.
I am not sure it’s faster, but it always felt smoother to me?
Well, after only about an hour of use, smooth does come to mind. Perhaps a bit snappier? I’ll continue my testing and see where things land.
I use chaotic-aur for the convenience of getting some packages pre-compiled. I trust the maintainers.
CachyOS repo sounds nice, but they way they modify some core packages, including pacman (afaik), I’d say, using CachyOS itself would be better option. But thats my opinion, everyone can use their linux install the way they life… 
On another note, perhaps anything above and beyond Archlinux the way Gods have mandated to be installed, is to some degree “frankensteinizing” it. In this sense, EOS, Arcolinux, whatever linux based on Arch are all to some degree frankensteinized. That is, in relation to Arch.
However, the beauty of Arch is that it will provide you with the basic building block of building a minimal running system.
From the moment you get that blinking cursor at top left to login into TTY, take it anywhere you want, call it whatever you want, do with it whatever you want. As long as it works for you and you are happy with it, fine. Call it FrankensteinOS! Or whatever tickle your fancy.