[HN Gopher] Linux Distros for Gaming: CachyOS Takes Over, Accord...
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Linux Distros for Gaming: CachyOS Takes Over, According to ProtonDB
Author : ekianjo
Score : 65 points
Date : 2025-07-21 10:58 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (boilingsteam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boilingsteam.com)
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| I'm using it, having migrated from EndeavourOS. If one wants an
| easy mode Arch to play games it's a great choice.
| ekianjo wrote:
| were you unsatisfied with EndeavourOS?
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| I mostly switched because I had a motherboard failure and
| while dealing with that took the opportunity to install it
| and try it out. I've found that most of the custom tools
| they've built are better, the default choices are smarter
| (particularly their kitted-out kernel) and documentation is
| more detailed, it was a breeze to install. Performance
| doesn't seem any worse, though I haven't run benchmarks or
| anything like that.
|
| EndeavourOS isn't bad, but I struggle to think of anything it
| does better.
| ekianjo wrote:
| thanks for sharing!
| constantcrying wrote:
| Arch derivatives have to be one of the worst monkey paws for the
| Linux desktop.
|
| A person who can not install Arch Linux should not be managing
| their own Arch installation. _Inevitably_ something will not work
| right and confusion and disappointment will set in as that person
| is completely unprepared to help themselves.
|
| Arch derivatives themselves are usually just worse versions of
| Arch with more problems. Manjaro being the worst offender there.
| Pushing those onto people, is not a good thing and if someone
| does not have the basic tech literacy to install Arch, they
| should not be using any Arch derivative.
|
| No, this isn't gate keeping. It is protecting people from
| inevitable disappointment and frustration, which can only harm
| Linux Desktop and Linux gaming.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I somewhat agree with your comment, but there is definitely a
| space for something in between Ubuntu and a full-fledged Arch
| distro installed by hand. As in, not for beginners, but for
| intermediate users who want a taste of Arch without a strong
| commitment. Where I agree with you is that this approach has
| indeed failed several times before (Antergos and more recently
| Manjaro), but who knows, CachyOS may be different.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Why? Any intermediary user can install Arch and is able to
| find their way through documentation.
|
| These distros also target completely new people, with very
| little or even zero, Linux experience. Someone like that is
| not done any favors by putting him in front of a pre
| configured Arch. They _will_ run into problems they can not
| solve without substantial time commitments and that will lead
| to frustration and disappointment.
|
| At the very least these distros should be honest about what
| they are. From the top of the CachyOS Website: "Whether
| you're a seasoned Linux user or just starting out, CachyOS is
| the ideal choice for those looking for a powerful,
| customizable and blazingly fast operating system."
|
| This is doing a complete disservice to their potential users.
| This is ot the "ideal" distro for someone who never touched
| Linux.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Nah. Manjaro sucks because it's just different enough that it
| breaks a lot of things (like the AUR) but EndeavourOS and
| CachyOS are just Arch with the edges filed off. Nice
| installers, sensible defaults. If your argument is that filing
| those edges off is antithetical to Arch, that absolutely _is_
| gatekeeping. EndeavourOS and CachyOS don 't put any barriers
| upon the user, what fixes and guides that work for Arch will
| work for them and ultimately it's not a whole lot more
| complicated than Ubuntu is but with _much_ better documentation
| thanks to the Arch wiki.
|
| SteamOS also clearly has a place as an immutable Arch, hard to
| argue that it's been a disappointment or a cause of frustration
| for users, given the narrative has been an overwhelming want
| from the gaming community for a desktop version. I guess the
| frustration comes from, if anything, it's narrow scope.
|
| Speaking of Ubuntu, it has atrophed. It used to be that it was
| popular enough that you could google your problem and someone
| would have solved it. Try doing that now, you get ancient posts
| from a decade ago that are no longer relevant. It's not like
| it's terrible, but I don't see anyone recommend it anymore.
| Though Mint has it's fans.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >EndeavourOS and CachyOS don't put any barriers upon the
| user, what fixes and guides that work for Arch will work for
| them
|
| The Arch project itself disagrees with that, they will not
| provide any support or make any assurances about what works
| on other Arch based distros. The edges being filed of is a
| substantial difference, which sometimes will matter. The
| distros (by design) include a lot of defaults, which are
| assumptions Arch does not make and which it assumes users
| _know_ about.
|
| >SteamOS also clearly has a place as an immutable Arch, hard
| to argue that it's been a disappointment or a cause of
| frustration for users, given the narrative has been an
| overwhelming want from the gaming community for a desktop
| version. I guess the frustration comes from, if anything,
| it's narrow scope.
|
| I specifically talked about managing Arch yourself. On the
| Steamdeck you never have to touch a console to make things
| work. Valve will provide updates for you, no manual
| intervention needed. It is also well defined and extensively
| tested hardware, which does not apply to anything else. No
| user should use SteamOS outside of the Steamdeck, Valve is
| clear about that.
|
| Besides my main point still stands. If you can not install
| Arch, you lack basic Linux literacy. The moment your Arch
| based distro based, you can not fix it without these basic
| skills. You will be disappointed and frustrated and unless
| you are willing to spend a lot of time learning (after which
| you could just install Arch anyways) you will never touch
| Linux again.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| I specifically said fixes and guides, Arch deriviatives
| usually have their own active support communities to deal
| with user support. What your describing also counts for,
| say, Mint or literally any *-based distro. Nonetheless the
| Arch wiki is still a useful rescource for solving problems,
| indeed that was so even when I was using Ubuntu which
| incenidentlally is how I ended up trying Arch in the first
| place; I used Arch's resources to fix Ubuntu's problems
| more than Ubuntu's resources, why not give it a shot?
|
| But I bounced off vanilla Arch's install process and
| painstaking setup. Tried Manjaro, got hit by successive
| boot breaking bugs, then found EndeavourOS and discovered
| they hey, Arch doesn't need to be a pain in the ass or a
| broken piece of shit.
|
| Arch can be and can continue to be Arch, anything based on
| it can be something else but also sort of Arch and that's
| fine and maybe even really good.
| constantcrying wrote:
| You are still completely ignoring my point.
|
| You, presumably, are not new to Linux. You know how to
| fix your system. The users CachyOS is targeting do not.
| They will run into walls, get frustrated and leave.
|
| I really couldn't care less that someone like you uses
| some Arch derivative, because they don't want to spend
| the 3 hours doing the setup themselves.
|
| Just FYI,the Arch setup is as easy as setting up e.g.
| Debian, unless you are terminally afraid of using
| terminal UIs.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| From a usability perspective all the popular desktop
| Linux distros are barely different from each other, the
| things I do and the way I did them in Arch were basically
| the same things I was doing in Ubuntu, only with pacman
| instead of apt. Any operating system that requires the
| user actively maintain it's system stack will, at some
| point, likely require diving into a terminal and messing
| with configuration files.
|
| The people who run into that wall and bounce off of it
| wouldn't be better served by Ubuntu, but an immutable OS.
| Fedora Silverblue, Bazzite et al.
|
| Like the Steam Deck, too; though you're wrong about the
| OS's scope for hardware compatibility. SteamOS supports
| the Legion Go S officially, but also contains specific
| patches to support the ROG Ally which they have no
| affiliation with. Their intent for SteamOS isn't for it
| to stay on Valve hardware forever.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >From a usability perspective all the popular desktop
| Linux distros are barely different from each other
|
| Obviously false. Rolling release distros like Arch
| require far more intervention. Why do you make up
| nonsense like that?
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| I'd say "far more intervention" is massively overstating
| the supposed problem, in practice I haven't noticed a
| whole lot of difference over the last few years. I run
| sudo pacman -Syu, I restart and it works. For those that
| do run into problems, there's community support available
| just like there is for Ubuntu as well as a bounty of
| resources for Arch in general.
|
| None of this requires some trial by fire bullshit on part
| of end users.
| constantcrying wrote:
| In all likelihood once a year an Arch distro requires
| intervention by someone who knows what he is doing. For
| Debian that is zero, unless you are switching versions.
| fao_ wrote:
| You forgot all the times that debian requires you to run
| terminal instructions just to add a new repo, to get a
| specific type of software that's new for a specific
| feature you want, instead of one that's ancient and
| crusty. And then the inevitable conflicts that result
| when you try to upgrade a system that is trying to ship
| two versions of e.g. openssl concurrently because the one
| new program needs network access and a new version of
| GLIBC.
|
| I ran a single Arch Linux install concurrently for 7
| years before 2020 (i.e. before the rot took hold) and
| needed to use the terminal to fix things less than I ever
| did Ubuntu around the same time period.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well yeah; if you exclude the main maintenance task of a
| non-rolling distro, the rolling distro looks like it has
| more maintenance.
| onli wrote:
| No. I run a rolling release distro, void, for years and
| never had to fix anything caused by system updates. It is
| not nonsense at all to state that this exists.
|
| I would suggest to look a bit more at other distros
| outside the arch bubble before claiming such an opinion.
| rabid-zubat wrote:
| From all things far from truth, this is the farthest.
| imzadi wrote:
| > Speaking of Ubuntu, it has atrophed. It used to be that it
| was popular enough that you could google your problem and
| someone would have solved it. Try doing that now, you get
| ancient posts from a decade ago that are no longer relevant.
| It's not like it's terrible, but I don't see anyone recommend
| it anymore. Though Mint has it's fans.
|
| I think this is largely because most of Ubuntu support is
| through StackExchange and they tend to moderate the
| usefulness out of it. Every new issue is closed as being a
| duplicate, even when the linked "duplicate" is years old and
| not even resolved.
| CrackerNews wrote:
| Ubuntu went through multiple changes in the software stack
| that those answers can be outdated and inapplicable.
| boneghost wrote:
| Its only Monday, but calling an Arch installation "basic tech
| literacy" is the funniest thing I'll read this week.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Its only Monday, but calling an Arch installation "basic
| tech literacy" is the funniest thing I'll read this week.
|
| Booting from an USB Drive understanding a few menu options is
| in fact what I would call "basic tech literacy".
| zamadatix wrote:
| Most would disagree. I think it's easy to take for granted
| how much work, experience, and knowledge goes into being
| able to use a computer at all.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Maybe parent commenter should root-cause why they think
| it's Monday first
| margalabargala wrote:
| Probably because they, unlike you, are able to read
| comment datestamps?
|
| EDIT: this is fascinating. On web, their comment shows as
| 1 hour ago. But on my mobile app, their comment shows as
| 3 days ago. Looks like the HN mods second-chanced this
| article, and it edited all the old comment timestamps as
| a result?
| temp0826 wrote:
| Maybe we're all just having a case of the mondays
| zamadatix wrote:
| The behavior does match what I've seen in articles which
| have been second chanced.
| pndy wrote:
| Gotta be some bug because I've seen a thread 4 days ago
| on mobile that was yesterday shown as new on desktop with
| comments that I clearly read already dated also as new,
| posted within hour.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| This has been my experience too, with the exception being
| SteamOS. Arch and variants all inevitably break, usually after
| an update because I missed some patch note about a config
| change or something. Maybe non-Valve Arch+derivatives are
| better if used as a daily driver which are subject to more
| attention from the user, but I'm not convinced they're that
| well suited to dedicated gaming boxes that need to just work
| without much fuss, especially for those not already versed in
| the ways of (Arch) Linux.
|
| Other distros bring their own problems of course but that's
| another topic.
| keyringlight wrote:
| That matches my experience with Cachyos, it's a rolling and
| cutting/bleeding edge distro which means it maybe cuts you
| occasionally. They still seem to be finding their way with
| some aspects like changing what bootloader they want to use
| (I'm not sure how much difference it makes to the
| maintainers, but it seems a little like bike-shedding for a
| distro which is out in public), and there's some changes
| which are forced on them like the nvidia drivers splitting
| between open/closed.
|
| That's in contrast with what I perceive with a lot of gamers
| (seeing as Valve is being mentioned a lot) where they see a
| PC as a deluxe console with steam as the UI, and seem to be
| desiring a high level of polish. That's in combination with
| signalling that they're using the latest and greatest,
| tweaking to get the most out of their rigs, showing off their
| pretty color coordinated builds, and somehow are expected to
| dive into linux (and the freedom it brings) when there's
| hostility to running more than one
| client/store/downloader/gaming package manager. Some aspects
| of PC gaming seem weird to me.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| IMO bootloaders deserve more attention than they've
| traditionally gotten in mass-targeted distros. GRUB is ugly
| and to less technical users, initimidating. With modern EFI
| stacks the ceiling for UX is much higher.
| scblock wrote:
| Grub doesn't have to be ugly. Mine loads into a 4k
| framebuffer with a nice graphical setup. Only issue is
| secure boot and fonts don't seem to play nice so those
| are still basic monospace.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Eh, I can't really agree. I'm totally capable of installing
| Arch, I've installed Arch and Gentoo and all kinds of random
| distros in the past, but the reason Manjaro is on my living
| room PC is because it's basically here to run a web browser and
| I wanted the lowest effort rolling release distro to install.
| Did I still have to do some annoying things at a low level to
| deal with some weird wifi and audio stuff? Yes. Was it easier
| and faster than ground up Arch? Yes.
|
| Are there better options? I wouldn't be shocked. But it wasn't
| worth my time to do a big comparison. (Note that I would not
| necessarily install Manjaro today, but I do think wanting a
| more out of the box Arch is totally reasonable.)
| howyesno wrote:
| No, it isn't gate keeping, its just pure arrogance. My replay
| is not to change your opinion, but to encourage others, that
| come across your BS, to try, fail and finally succeed in
| whatever they want to...
| Nilithus wrote:
| "If someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install
| arch"
|
| I think there is a big jump from the tech literacy to install
| Arch and the tech literacy to maintain an Arch system over
| time. These derivatives feel like they are there to help solve
| the latter.
| kriops wrote:
| As someone who has been happy with both Arch and Gentoo for
| non-gaming purposes, my hot take in 2025 is that I cannot
| recommend good old Debian enough. Homebrew/cargo for bleeding
| edge software, but since that lives in my home folder it
| doesn't affect or interfere with the rock solid experience of
| Debian. I use Lutris for Windows-exclusive games, and actually
| have better performance than in Windows thanks to Microsoft's
| unholy levels of bullshit in their OS.
|
| But yeah: Debian truly "just works", with the caveat of initial
| setup for Nvidia cards. And I would say that certain Gnome
| extensions are kind of mandatory as well, but the IX of
| installing those is ridiculously good for what they are.
| abhinavk wrote:
| And if you want to experiment or play with shiny tools,
| there's toolbox and distrobox.
| ahepp wrote:
| I agree that people who aren't at the point where they can
| install Arch easily based on the wiki guide are likely to have
| an inferior experience using it as opposed to something in the
| Debian / EL families.
|
| That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch
| installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I learned
| to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise Linux a lot
| more.
|
| I think that people choosing to do this stuff are doing it
| because they want to learn. I'm not convinced a few kids being
| precocious and getting in way over their heads "harms Linux
| Desktop". I think it's more likely that this is the next
| generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who could help make the
| dream a reality.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch
| installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I
| learned to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise
| Linux a lot more.
|
| Which percentage of people do you think would have done the
| same? Especially if those people just wanted a way to escape
| from Windows?
|
| >this is the next generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who
| could help make the dream a reality.
|
| I am all for it. _But_ these distros should set realistic
| expectations and should be clear and upfront that willingness
| to engage with technical topics is _mandatory_.
| ahepp wrote:
| from CachyOS's web site:
|
| > CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds
|
| Ok, can we see the benchmarks on some popular video games,
| compared to vanilla Arch? Then let's compare it to Ubuntu for
| good measure. If they are making the claim that it's lightning
| fast, surely that has been measured?
| amlib wrote:
| There are some extensive benchmarks in phoronix and it seems
| like CachyOS always stays ahead or even at the lead on both
| "first places" and the geometric mean of all tests.
| ahepp wrote:
| > But if taking the geometric mean of all those benchmarks,
| CachyOS performance overall was similar to that of Fedora /
| EndeavourOS / Ubuntu while Clear Linux maintained a ~6.5%
| advantage overall compared to those other Linux
| distributions.
|
| from https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-linux-perf
|
| And that's without really digging deep into significance
| testing.
| kokada wrote:
| The benchmarks from this article are mostly focused in non-
| gaming workloads. If you look at the few games that was
| tested, it seems that CachyOS has some performance
| advantages, in some cases significantly so.
| bethchg wrote:
| You could be less gullible and influenced by language.
|
| You could be change you want to see and download and run
| benchmarks and publish and hold them to it.
|
| Sorry they only cooked the steak and didn't raise the cow too.
| If only everyone had RD team budget, you know.
|
| Faster is too simple a benchmark and just headline wank anyway.
| Performance per how much more on my power bill is more
| interesting to me.
|
| If their "improvements" just shift burden to me it's not an
| improvement.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| I'm more interested in benchmarks compared to Windows or MacOS.
| I doubt any Linux distro even comes close
| jeppester wrote:
| Then I guess you'll be surprised to learn that Linux is
| usually faster for most things with gaming being the
| exception. Even when it comes to gaming it's becoming more
| and more of a "trading blows" situation over time.
|
| Still I don't think that speed in itself is very important
| when making a desktop OS choice. The differences are usually
| too small matter in my opinion.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > I'm more interested in benchmarks compared to Windows or
| MacOS. I doubt any Linux distro even comes close
|
| Ars ran an article last month comparing SteamOS to Windows
| 11, with SteamOS coming out ahead:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-
| on-s...
|
| I don't think there's been any macOS comparisons done as
| there's no equivalent to proton to run windows games, outside
| of vanilla wine, as whisky is now no longer maintained
| WD-42 wrote:
| I wouldn't be so certain. Here are some recent benchmarks on
| newer CPUs: https://www.phoronix.com/review/lunarlake-
| windows11-ubuntu25...
|
| > Across dozens of benchmarks run on Windows 11 and Ubuntu
| Linux 25.04 from these two Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, the Intel
| Core Ultra 7 258V within the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura
| was around 23% faster on Ubuntu 25.04 than the stock Windows
| 11 Pro installation. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 laptop
| with the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 was 8% faster on Ubuntu 25.04
| than Linux. The Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 "Strix Point" though with
| 8-cores plus SMT, AVX-512, and other features was much faster
| overall on both operating systems than the Intel Lunar Lake
| SoC.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Depends on the game. Generally they are pretty close, outside
| of silly cases
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia2022-windows11-linux
|
| Has cyberpunk at 4K, high, 75 fps for windows, 67 for Ubuntu.
| In Steam Play, so that's including some overhead. (There's a
| bigger difference on silly benchmarks, like Portal in the .5
| kfps range).
|
| Cachy looks to be a little faster than Ubuntu in most
| benchmarks so it may be a wash compared to Windows 11 (which
| ought to be pretty shocking given that Linux is working with
| some comparability layer).
| shmerl wrote:
| Feels like a hype distro to me since they package WIP /
| unreleased features as if they are released left and right. It's
| not even using upstream kernel. Many newcomers especially don't
| realize this and when they hit problems coming from these mods,
| they come to the realization that they can't report bugs
| upstream.
|
| I don't recommend it if you want to contribute your bug reports
| to Linux gaming community back properly.
| nan60 wrote:
| Based on benchmarks[1], CachyOS is slightly faster than other
| distros, only behind Clear Linux (RIP), but I would be extremely
| curious to see why this would warrant a whole who distro being
| created. These optimizations can (and probably will) be
| upstreamed into Arch Linux at some point in the future. Compiler
| optimizations are one thing, but enabling newer instruction sets
| doesn't improve performance sans some _very_ specific workloads.
| This all seems like marketing hype to me with very little
| substance.
|
| [1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-linux-perf
| seaal wrote:
| The small performance boost isn't the main reason most people
| install these distros instead of Arch, they rather have to
| spend hours reading the Arch wiki and instead want a GUI live
| boot installer, preconfigured desktop environments that just
| work with NVIDIA, built-in gaming-meta-packages that make
| gaming on Linux more bearable.
|
| I just recently made to switch to base Arch from Cachy so I can
| run Omarchy without any issues and it did take several hours of
| extra setup just to have a working system but it is nice
| knowing how to do it now.
| nan60 wrote:
| I understand, but this distro doesn't bill itself as an "arch
| but for noobs" or something of the like like EndeavorOS does.
| It puts performance first and foremost, and I'm also making
| the (dangerous) assumption that Arch was chosen as the base
| for its reputation of being fast, up to date, and light, and
| not for any other reason(s). See also: constantcrying's
| comment
| WD-42 wrote:
| Gentoo exists, and has been popular with those that simply
| enjoy the idea of their systems being slightly better
| optimized. There's really not much else to it.
| stebalien wrote:
| The main reason for CachyOS to exist is that it can take bigger
| risks and ship defaults more mature distros wouldn't be
| comfortable with.
|
| In terms of benchmarks, gamers tend to care more about
| consistent responsiveness (and worstcase performance) than raw
| throughput. Phoronix benchmarks are probably not the best way
| to compare CachyOS against other distros. E.g., look at the
| game benchmarks you linked: all tested games were already
| running above 500 frames per second in the worst performing
| game.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Ubuntu always felt kinda bloated, one of the reasons i left
| windows.
| kelsey98765431 wrote:
| Here I am using debian 12 to play counter strike 1.6 still, don't
| mind me
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I like CachyOS.
|
| It was fun until it stopped booting one day.
|
| Switched to Tumbleweed, but I'm ready for the same thing to
| happen.
| Prunkton wrote:
| Since the headline is about gaming distros: I'm on a quiet
| similar OS for like 2 years now, Garuda. Also tuned for
| performance/gaming, arch based, btrfs etc. Biggest differences
| will probably be the zen kernel, pre installed gaming utils like
| lutris, fan control etc. and a probably less performant but
| highly customized default style.
|
| Its a curated version of Arch, releases drop in with a ~2w delay.
| It's brutally stable. As I said, I'm running the first
| installation for almost 2y now, doing my updates (everything
| comes with GUI support) daily to weekly and I faced one single
| hick up so far. I resolved it on the most user friendly way,
| picked the last snapshot during the boot (it automatically
| created before the update) and it acted like nothing ever
| happened. BTRFS with Timeshift works like magic for these rare
| edge cases.
|
| I wonder how it compares to CachyOS, will definitely test it in a
| few weeks on my laptop
| vondur wrote:
| I've heard some good things about Bazzite, which is a Fedora
| immutable based gaming distro. I'm on a vanilla Arch install with
| the Zen kernel and been too lazy to try something different.
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