Why I like CachyOS as my daily driver distro- and I think you might, too!

As of the writing of this post, CachyOS is my favourite Linux distro. I firmly believe that despite being Arch based, it is an excellent choice for anybody who is a moderately experienced computer user, whether you are coming from another Linux distro, Windows, maybe even OSX depending on how much of the unix-esque stuff you used. Many users shy away from Arch as a distribution, often due to the difficulty of the "build it yourself" nature that the system started off with originally. Today, there are many install scripts as well as distributions like CachyOS designed to make it far more accessible to your average user when compared to bog-standard Arch.

In the rest of this post, I'll be detailing the reasons I think CachyOS is the best Arch variant for most people, as well as things I recommend you pick when setting up the system initially for as smooth a ride as possible.

Note- CachyOS has a LOT of options. If you don't want to see all the options, just what I recommend, then scroll to the bottom of whatever list and it will have what I use or recommend using.

There are, however, some use-cases that I don't consider CachyOS a good fit for:

• A machine that you do not intend to use or update very often, as for CachyOS to run smoothly you're going to want to update it regularly.
• If you are uncomfortable entering your computer's BIOS and picking a few options
• If seeing a command prompt while a script is working scares you

In general, though, if you've never tried an Arch distro before and are interested in trying one out, CachyOS is the one I would recommend. I've tried a few variants as daily drivers such as Garuda, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, and of course CachyOS. I've distro hopped a decent amount, so I've also worked with openSUSE tumbleweed, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and a few others. Out of them all, CachyOS is the best balance for me between up to date enough that I don't have problems with drivers or out of date software when playing video games or trying out new programs, but also a system that is resilient enough that I don't feel like I am walking on eggshells trying to make sure I don't brick it and need to reinstall the OS and start from scratch.

Note if you plan to install: make sure that you install relatively soon after you download the ISO. They are updated on the cachy website often and older ISOs can cause errors and 404s when installing.

Initial Setup Options

The CachyOS installer when you are first setting up the OS has a lot of different options. While all of them are perfectly fine options, there are a few that I recommend above others if you want to have a smooth experience with as little troubleshooting as possible.

It is a good idea to make sure your machine fits the minimum requirements. CachyOS is relatively light, but it is a modern OS and comes with lots of modern conveniences, so the minimums aren't miniscule like some of the ultra light distro options. The minimum system specs are:

3GB RAM
30GB of storage (HDD/SSD)
A stable internet connection

While an unstable connection can be used, your install may fail and need to restart or take a really long time, so it is highly recommended to do this somewhere you have a stable connection.

Boot Manager

The first thing you'll be confronted with when booting into the installer is a decision on your boot manager. CachyOS has four different options:

• GRUB
• rEFInd
• systemd-boot
• limine.

All of them have some small pros and cons, and if you want a real breakdown of the features you can find them here.

As for my recommendation, I prefer Limine. It's a relatively new entry to the scene for boot managers, but CachyOS will hook it right into BTRFS for you with limine-snapper, which will handle system snapshots and give your system resiliency against system failures due to either programs you install, mistakes you make, wrong directory deleted, etc. I'll go over BTRFS snapshots and why I recommend it as the filesystem for your boot disk a little later.

Additionally, for those of you that like to LUKS encrypt your disks, I've personally found that Limine decrypts my LUKS partition significantly faster than when I was using GRUB. The only thing worth knowing is that if you absolutely need to have your /boot encrypted, Limine will not do this. You'll have to go with GRUB like usual. :(

Limine unfortunately doesn't support the diversity of theming that GRUB does, but other than that it's my #1 recommendation followed by ol faithful, GRUB.

Filesystem

CachyOS supports a lot of filesystems. Like, more than I have ever seen in an installer. The options are:

• XFS
• BTRFS
• EXT4
• ZFS
• F2FS
• BcacheFS

The breakdown of why you might choose one option over another can be found here, but the default, and the one both CachyOS wiki and I recommend if you are unsure, is BTRFS.

If you are on an SSD (and really in 2025 unless you're on a legacy machine you should really be using one as your boot disk at minimum) then it is ideal, as sometimes it can require defragmentation if you are using spinning disks due to the Copy-On-Write system that it uses.

BTRFS is a very resilient system to use for your machine, primarily due to its ability to take snapshots and then later restore them if something goes wrong, or if you do something stupid (as we all do sometimes). It also works with subvolumes well, so you can have some pretty granular control over your system and how drives are viewed by the OS.

With regard to how snapshots work, I will cover this a little bit later when I go over snapper.

Desktop Environment

• KDE Plasma
• GNOME
• XFCE
• bspwm
• Budgie
• Cinnamon
• Cosmic
• i3
• Hyprland
• LXDE
• LXQt
• Mate Desktop
• Openbox
• Qtile
• Sway
• UKUI
• Wayfire
• Niri

Which, wow! That's a lot! Generally, if you are unsure of what you want to use, I recommend one of the following. Which one is right for you, however, is something only you can know, as mostly what the Desktop Environment is dictating is the "look" of your OS, as well as the user experience because many of the different DE will come with different base programs, such as text editors or screenshot utilities.

KDE Plasma: A very easy to learn desktop environment that may feel familiar if you are coming over from windows, also my personal favourite at the moment. Generally quite featureful, and is my preferred desktop environment. It does come with quite a few system apps for things like calculators and text editors, all the basics you'd expect a new windows install to have. If you don't have much storage space or you just really like keeping a system with as few programs as possible, another Desktop Environment may be a better pick for you.

Additonally, KDE comes with a lot of settings. Like, a lot. So if you're the kind of person who will be stuck looking at and configuring all of your settings forever, it may be worth considering another option.

GNOME: One of the most popular Desktop Environments on the market, will likely feel comfortable to use if you're coming over from the OSX/iOS space, and has an incredible variety of extensions to customize your system to work however you choose. Installing lots of extensions can sometimes lead to difficult to troubleshoot errors, so just be aware before you go installing 10,000 extensions to your fun new DE.

COSMIC: A new kid on the block, so to speak. Produced and maintained by System76, this is a Desktop Environment designed to be the default option on the Linux Distribution that System76 maintains, called Pop!_OS. Pop!_OS is also a very good distribution for people who do not want to update their machine very often but still want to be able to play some video games easily from time to time.

Cosmic is, however, in BETA. Only choose this DE if you're willing to be patient and troubleshoot once in a while as the kinks are ironed out. If not, pick another option.

XFCE: Similar to KDE Plasma in that it will come with tools and UI that will likely feel familiar if you come from windows, but rather than a modern windows style this will likely feel remeniscent of the Windows XP era. This DE is incredibly lightweight, and the best option if you are running an older system that might be sluggish with some of the RAM other desktop environments need.

All of the options are valid and good Window Managers, but those are a few favourites of mine and why people might like them. As said, KDE is my personal favourite, but take a look at some screenshots of each and see what looks like it may suit your needs.

Partitioning

Depending on your setup, you may want to partition disks in a certain way. For the purposes of this guide, we're going to assume you have one disk that we want to use the entirety of, and let CachyOS do the handling of setting up the partitions. If you are regularly in the habit of setting up partitions, then you can likely handle doing it by following the CachyOS Guide as it will cover the details better than I'm able to in short here.

In short, my recommendation is to pick the "Erase Disk" option as that is going to be the simplest, and select BTRFS. If you are asked if you want to install limine-snapper-sync, say yes. If you are not asked then it will have been automatically included with Limine + BTRFS.

You'll have the option to encrypt the disk as well. Feel free to do this for some extra protection on your storage when the machine is off. I recommend LUKS2 for the encryption scheme if you are given an option. Make sure you really know your password or have it in a password manager somewhere, as if you forget this there is no recovery.

Now all that's left to do is create your logins and install! Ensure you have a stable internet connection and let it do the work!

Post-install options, tips, and features worth knowing about

CachyOS Hello

Upon finishing the install and logging in, you'll be prompted by "CachyOS Hello", a helpful little app to get help get you onboarded and familiar with the new system. This is full of tools that can help you get familiar with your new OS, such as links to their wiki, a readme that I recommend you take a skim through; it has some advice regarding places you can find software, as well as good places to look for support should you run into trouble with your system.

Once you've taken a look at the links and the readme, I recommend clicking on Apps/Tweaks- youll end up seeing a whole bunch of buttons, many of which represent different scripts that Cachy can run to do some common tasks that often normally would require command line use on an Arch install.

CachyOS Tweaks/Fixes

The very first thing I recommend doing after getting to the tweaks/fixes is hit "Rank Mirrors". This does connections tests to all the different mirrors that cachy & arch packages are hosted on, and sets the order of priority on which to use based on your connection speeds to each. Doing this every once in a while can help keep your updates speedy.

The second is to quickly run the system update feature, just to make sure you've got all the latest packages. The online installer should include the newest stuff, but it's good to make sure before gaming packages are installed. After pressing the button you're prompted for your admin password, and then a command prompt window will pop up showing the progress for you. This is an easy 1-click way to update without needing to remember any commands if you prefer using GUIs.

If you're gaming, you'll want to get the gaming packages installed. This will get you a whole bunch of dependencies for various games, proton, and a number of tools around proton that are used in things like the steamdeck to help with compatibility for various games. The set of packages is roughly 4GB, but I recommend installing it if you want the most hassle-free gaming experience possible.

If you selected BTRFS and Limine during the install steps, you shouldn't need to use "Install Snapper Support".

CachyOS Package Installer

In my opinion, this is the killer feature for many of the people who are wary of arch because they don't want to deal with the command line. The package installer is a very easy way to manage and install packages on your system, individually or in bulk.

Two things worth doing here though, to prevent future pain or the need to use a command line, I recommend clicking "Repo", then searching and installing the "flatpak" package, and if you picked KDE like me you will also want a package called "Discover". This is a GUI package installer that will be able to install packages from flathub, which is an excellent package source that is likely to have anything you're looking for that is not in the standard CachyOS and CachyOS-extras repositories. When using Discover, it is worth noting that there are both packages that are directly uploaded by devs, as well as flatpaks maintained by random users.

I've never seen something posted impersonating an official app, but it is regardless worth paying attention to the username of who it was uploaded by. Know that downloading random packages from random users is a risk unless you trust the source. The source can however be verified, and packages signed by the developer will have a little checkmark beside the username that signifies it was verified signed by that developer.

With these two by your side, you will likely never need to use the AUR, which typically requires use of the command line and the packages from which are far more likely to cause errors or problems because they are near-exclusively maintained by random people.

CachyOS Kernel Manager

The Kernel Manager is another slick feature that makes CachyOS stand out, you have quite a large selection of different kernels to choose from. The majority are variants of cachyOS using different schedulers. To summarize (and completely plagiarizing the Ubuntu Docs), "Schedulers are like the traffic police of the kernel. They decide which process gets to run, for how long and when.". For a breakdown of what the optimizations in many of the different kernels look like, I recommend getting it in far greater detail than I am capable from the CachyOS Wiki. If you feel like experimenting with the various optimization options that the Cachy team have configured for you to try, feel free to try out a different kernel and see how it treats you.

If you would like to have the smoothest experience possible, I recommend any of the cachyos-lts variants. The LTS version of Arch (or Arch-derived) kernels is kept slightly behind the mainline, which due to its rolling nature often includes experimentation or less-tested ideas from contributors to the Arch kernel. Staying on the LTS kernel will give you less of the experimentation and more of the tried and tested, which is ideal if you don't want to be troubleshooting a lot.

Snapper and Limine-Snapper

Snapper is our best friend when paired with BTRFS. It is a tool that manages your BTRFS snapshots, and hooks into Limine through Limine-Snapper.

By default, CachyOS will have your system set to take a snapshot both immediately before and immediately after you do a package install command (or update all packages through one of the GUIs). This comes in handy if you ever break something by uninstalling something important.

By default, the Snapper configuration set up with CachyOS will not take snapshots at regular intervals, only before and after package installations. If you would like to set up scheduled snapshots, you can do so with BTRFS Assistant, a great GUI tool for visually managing your snapshots and setting up the rules for when Snapper takes the snapshots. This comes built in with Cachy.

Note: BTRFS Assistant should only be used for viewing snapshots, monitoring the health of the filesystem, and changing snapper settings. If you are rolling back to a previous snapshot, make sure you do it the way described further below.

Here you can see an assessment of how your filesystem is doing, including if there are errors and the option to scrub and repair the filesystem if it is reading that there are errors.

By tabbing over to "Snapper Settings", you can check the box to "Enable timeline snapshots". Immediately below that you can set how many of each type of snapshot snapper keeps, and at the bottom below "Yearly" you can set a global limit.

Restoring from a Snapshot: Learn now to save your ass later

Restoring from a snapshot in Limine is incredibly easy. When you boot into Limine upon turning on the computer or a reboot, before it loads automatically into the regular kernel, scroll down, highlight "Snapshots", and select with Enter.. Any snapshots you have taken, either manually or automatically, will be available here organized from latest to oldest. Identify the snapshot right before whatever wrecked your day, and hit enter to load into it once it is highlighted.

After booting into the snapshot, you can click around to see that everything you want is there, but remember that the snapshot is read only so you can view but not edit. Any errors you see about not being able to write from an app you have installed can be ignored. Once you're certain it's the snapshot you want, just hit the "Restore now" button in the bottom right with the "Snapshot Detected" popup. You may receive a warning that all snapshots later than the one you selected will be deleted upon restoring. This is normal, and you can accept it. You have now successfuly restored to a previous point! Now you can learn from the experience and not do whatever just trashed your system.

Enjoy!

I hope it works for you as well as it works for me! My final piece of advice is that if a package ever fails to install or 404s, run a system update through CachyOS Hello under Apps/Tweaks or by running sudo pacman -Syu in a terminal and then try again. Cachy's repos don't keep older packages' URLs live for very long after they are not in use on the main update channel, so attempting to install packages when still on an older version of Cachy can lead to errors.