CachyOS

Reader supplied reviews for CachyOS Average rating 8.0 from 352 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on CachyOS? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 251129241221231210221230 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 251129 Rating: 8 Date: 2025-12-11 Votes: 4 Well, this shall be an interesting one. Let me explain my experiences with CachyOS. So First I decided to try Openbox since I was familiar with it. (Thanks Ubuntu MATE) The config for Openbox that you see in the image in the installer and on the wiki doesn't appear anymore, since the tweaks that CachyOS needs involves the package Nitrogen, which, for some unknown reason, cant seem to be found by the package manager, thus not allowing me to install it and then install customization's that CachyOS has for Openbox manually, (Which really should have been automatic in the installer) so I'm left with a vanilla Openbox install with a few applications like a browser. Not a great start and it isn't very good! So a few hours later a thought pops into my head "If Openbox isn't gonna work, why not just try Hyprland and see how it goes?" Turns out, that was a pretty good thought. Followed both the CachyOS Wiki and the actual Hyprland wiki, didn't need to check the Arch one (Although it would have been good as well) and it worked out quite well! I'm currently running it, with some modifications of mine. Cachy USED to have their own config files for their installation of Hyprland, but those were removed due to a lack of maintainers, (The Installer Image is a LIE for both Hyprland and Openbox, and I suspect this may be the case for some other WMs) but nonetheless, I made it work. As for the actual OS Itself, well, its alright. the package manager is built in quite nicely into a graphical application, and I have used it for the few extra applications I have wanted and swapped out. I probably could easily add flatpak if I wanted it, but I have the AUR, so there's really no point unless I want something specific. Besides the nice package manager for easily accessing those packages, that's really about it. Cant really see a difference with the so called "Kernel Optimizations," at least not on this old Laptop. Runs about as nice as it would on Debian or Solus, 6 hour battery life if I just have it normal, 4 if I've got the all the cool looking Hyprland effects on (Usually when I'm on a charger) so it works out. Overall in the end, the only noticeable changes I get is said package manager and not having to manually install it myself like I would with Vanilla Arch. Otherwise, it really just ends up being Arch with a few minor changes. For some that's great, for others its not. If you just stick on the big 2 (+XFCE) you'll be fine on Cachy, but the rest of the DE's and WM's you probably wont have much support and will basically just be on Arch with a nice package manager, and that's about it. For CachyOS, its quite simple, stick to the 3, and if you use anything else, be ready to spend plenty of time reading Wiki Pages and typing terminal commands. One final note though, please do NOT try this in a VM, it seems like a lot of folks don't go to the CachyOS wiki and read the little thing on the Preparation steps page that tells you not to. If you don't have the hardware, don't do it! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 251129 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-08 Votes: 0 Very nice distro i will tell the good then the bad good: the distro has many env's and is very user friendly and has a truckload of features. very amazing! bad: Trying to install this on a vm is quite hard for newbies but my recommendation is to run it on vmware not vbox since it works better on vmware and has a lower change of error. FYI the password for liveuser is live with wayland session. NOTE: Arch based distros like this one are not recommended for new users due to instabilty with rolling relases and the sheer complexity of arch distros. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 251129 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-08 Votes: 10 I’ve been using CachyOS as my daily driver for over a year now, after previously running Arch and Manjaro, and having a long history with Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Debian for work. The installation process was incredibly smooth, and everything worked right out of the box across several different hardware setups. I even installed it on three different laptops without a single issue. My main machine is an HP Victus, which I use for both gaming and productivity. CachyOS handles both flawlessly—and in fact, some of my games run even smoother than they did on the Windows installation that originally came with the laptop. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 352 reader reviews of CachyOS...