It's not just a gaming distro, it has all quality of life fixes on modern hardware.
On my Lenovo laptop, fixes that would take over a day to enable and patch on most distros are already included:
- Wake from sleep
- Nvidia GSP firmware workarounds and correct version OOTB (proprietary)
- Mouse lag/jitter
- External display hotplug
- DDC/CI over type-c
- Embedded controller power profiles from taskbar with correct TDP limits for CPU/GPU
- Battery charge limiter support right from KDE settings
- Working `switcherooctl` in hybrid graphics mode on AMD
- Firefox with hardware acceleration (YouTube) on almost all GPU models
Another gaming feature that is otherwise usable in workstations is the external scheduler support.
I'm currently using BPFland which makes my machine as responsive as idle while compiling Yocto/Chromium in the background.
Windows, Mac (mini M1), and kernel built-in scheduler Linux all stutter and become almost unusable (Ryzen 5800H).
Former Windows 11 user here. Microsoft operating systems have been my primary desktop since DOS 6.0, but the embedding of advertisements in Win11 drove to me finally try out Linux distributions, and CachyOS was the only one that stuck for me in terms of familiarity and performance. It's been my daily driver for 1.5 years now, and I've been extremely grateful for it.
I few months ago, I backed up my windows gaming machine and overwrote the partition with CachyOS. Haven't looked back. Gaming performance and compatibility has exceeded my expectations. Just a much better experience overall. I feel sorry anytime I see someone using Windows.
I feel sorry every time I'm stuck going back to Windows. And admittedly, the situation is not even comparable to how it was ~25 years ago when I first started playing around with Linux, most things I want to do with a computer just work on Linux nowadays. There are still such things that just are not there yet - but for most of them, it's not necessarily Linux's fault.
If we limit the conversation to gaming specifically, one area where I don't see Linux taking over any time soon is competitive/esports oriented titles and their invasive ~rootkits~ anti-cheats. Another place I kind of have to live with Windows is simulation (in my case Elite: Dangerous and iRacing/Le Mans Ultimate) - the overlays and other third-party utilities either don't exist on Linux, or I couldn't get them to work and kind of abandoned the idea.
Audio production is also kind of a no-go. The DAWs and hardware support are absolutely getting there - Bitwig studio is apparently very good for something Ableton-like, and my DAW of choice, Reaper, has native Linux support. But the plugins and virtual instruments for the most part just don't exist. Some work through a Wine bridge, if you're lucky.
However, if you're not too deep in a niche with very specific pieces of software, or don't care about esports offerings, there isn't much tying one to Windows nowadays.
I think the situation with anti-cheat on Linux is changing. Studios are putting resources into anti-cheat that will work on Linux. If I'm being a bit cynical, I could say this is "just" because of Steam Deck and Steam Machine, but I think the number of potential players switching to Linux right now outside of the Steam ecosystem is starting to be worth considering.
Same, games aside, it’s just so snappy. I knew windows was slow at a lot of things but I hadn’t quite realized how slow things as banal as locking/unlocking had become. The first week with cachyos was mind blowing on just that front.
Wine has evolved a lot, but there's an entire community dedicated to improving games specifically building Proton, essentially a Wine fork focused on games, including big contributions from Valve.
This has made many old and modern games playable without issues. On Steam or Heroic Launcher, running a game has mostly become as simple clicking install and later play.
That being said, it's not all peachy. There's not really been much progress on native Linux gaming outside of Flatpak/Steam Linux runtime. Many native games run worse or with issues.
And Proton/Wine isn't perfect. Many games need tweaks or may not work without glitches. And games with anticheat don't work more often than they do, on purpose.
Still, depending on what games you play and hardware you own it has become entirely possible to ditch Windows and not suffer for it.
if you have a steam account, and you open it on Linux most of your games will be present to be played. Most of them will just work.
Those that don't you can look up details on protondb.com.
as mentioned above if you play any competitive games that come with anti-cheat features, then you won't be able to join in the fun. So if you don't care about those games, you'll be fine.
In the last few years, Valve has made incredible progress with their equivalent set of API wrappers to what Wine does. Apparently (not experienced first hand) it’s like 97% of the way there, now.
I’ve been in love with cachy since I switched from windows but this past weekend has been extremely trying after experiencing metadata exhaustion probably due to the snapshots filling up my home drive. Learned a few things and I realize btrfs is not specific to cachy, but this was definitely the hardest thing I’ve worked through since switching from windows.
Yeah I really enjoyed Cachy but the model of using the AUR to install third party applications just seems broken. I don't want to have to trust some random install script maintainer in addition to the 3p app developer. And sadly I don't have the time and attention to spare to review the AUR scripts of apps every time I update.
I switched to Kubuntu to keep KDE (which I really found I enjoyed from Cachy) while using a more stable and familiar ubuntu base. It's not one of the "gaming" distros but I haven't noticed any major drawbacks with the games I play.
The AUR is very user managed and orphaned packages can be picked up I guess to continue maintenance. Obviously, this can lead to some issues. It's one of the tradeoffs for a heavily user supplied repository of packages. You get a lot of good stuff quickly, but I personally will stick with Debian.
I switched to Bazzite from CachyOS and while I really appreciate how accessible it is, the immutability of the core OS doesn't do enough to scratch my Linux tinkering fix. So I'll probably install this in a few days.
I loved Bazzite for hardware compatibility out of the box but the necessity of flatpak made it enormously inconvenient as a general machine. CachyOS sounds worth checking out if I still want to game but also occasionally do real work.
I’m annoyed that games I play use BattleEye and the use of BattleEye prevents me from being able to switch over to CachyOS on our family gaming PC+TV setup in the play room. Doubly so because BattleEye appears to do absolutely nothing to prevent PC lobbies from becoming rife with cheaters anyway, so I don’t really get the point of it.
This has been my experience as well. My main game right now is escape from Tarkov and battle eye wont let me into official servers. I’m able to manage my stash and buy from traders just fine.
For other steam titles, popOS and proton were just fine
This one seems particularly attractive to Windows refugees especially gamers. The default desktop looks very much like Windows: even the wallpaper is one of those blue gradient 3d wave shapes.
I tried it in a VM and I don't think I can deal with the jank. The default install comes with 3 different GUIs for installing software, all of them confusing and inconsistent. Apps with context menus that go 5 levels deep everywhere, confusing layouts, sometimes icons, sometimes not. I guess if you are coming from Windows this is the status quo so that's fine.
Not for me but I'm glad this new wave of Linux users are finding success with it.
My newbie recommendation is https://bazzite.gg/. It ships a very simple GUI package manager and the system silently updates in the background. It's also atomic, so rollbacks are easy and destroying the system is hard. It's not a separate distro per-se but a layer atop Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (you can re-base to/from them without a reinstall).
It's been my daily driver for ~2 years.
The Cachy/Arch approach is more flexible, I'm fine with atomic since containerized workflows are my preference.
It's not just a gaming distro, it has all quality of life fixes on modern hardware.
On my Lenovo laptop, fixes that would take over a day to enable and patch on most distros are already included:
Another gaming feature that is otherwise usable in workstations is the external scheduler support.I'm currently using BPFland which makes my machine as responsive as idle while compiling Yocto/Chromium in the background.
Windows, Mac (mini M1), and kernel built-in scheduler Linux all stutter and become almost unusable (Ryzen 5800H).
Former Windows 11 user here. Microsoft operating systems have been my primary desktop since DOS 6.0, but the embedding of advertisements in Win11 drove to me finally try out Linux distributions, and CachyOS was the only one that stuck for me in terms of familiarity and performance. It's been my daily driver for 1.5 years now, and I've been extremely grateful for it.
I few months ago, I backed up my windows gaming machine and overwrote the partition with CachyOS. Haven't looked back. Gaming performance and compatibility has exceeded my expectations. Just a much better experience overall. I feel sorry anytime I see someone using Windows.
I feel sorry every time I'm stuck going back to Windows. And admittedly, the situation is not even comparable to how it was ~25 years ago when I first started playing around with Linux, most things I want to do with a computer just work on Linux nowadays. There are still such things that just are not there yet - but for most of them, it's not necessarily Linux's fault.
If we limit the conversation to gaming specifically, one area where I don't see Linux taking over any time soon is competitive/esports oriented titles and their invasive ~rootkits~ anti-cheats. Another place I kind of have to live with Windows is simulation (in my case Elite: Dangerous and iRacing/Le Mans Ultimate) - the overlays and other third-party utilities either don't exist on Linux, or I couldn't get them to work and kind of abandoned the idea.
Audio production is also kind of a no-go. The DAWs and hardware support are absolutely getting there - Bitwig studio is apparently very good for something Ableton-like, and my DAW of choice, Reaper, has native Linux support. But the plugins and virtual instruments for the most part just don't exist. Some work through a Wine bridge, if you're lucky.
However, if you're not too deep in a niche with very specific pieces of software, or don't care about esports offerings, there isn't much tying one to Windows nowadays.
I think the situation with anti-cheat on Linux is changing. Studios are putting resources into anti-cheat that will work on Linux. If I'm being a bit cynical, I could say this is "just" because of Steam Deck and Steam Machine, but I think the number of potential players switching to Linux right now outside of the Steam ecosystem is starting to be worth considering.
Same, games aside, it’s just so snappy. I knew windows was slow at a lot of things but I hadn’t quite realized how slow things as banal as locking/unlocking had become. The first week with cachyos was mind blowing on just that front.
Wait... what's gaming like? Can you describe it for someone who only ever could play Unreal Tournament back in the day on Linux?
What games are available? Do you use emulators or stuff like Wine?
Wine has evolved a lot, but there's an entire community dedicated to improving games specifically building Proton, essentially a Wine fork focused on games, including big contributions from Valve.
This has made many old and modern games playable without issues. On Steam or Heroic Launcher, running a game has mostly become as simple clicking install and later play.
That being said, it's not all peachy. There's not really been much progress on native Linux gaming outside of Flatpak/Steam Linux runtime. Many native games run worse or with issues.
And Proton/Wine isn't perfect. Many games need tweaks or may not work without glitches. And games with anticheat don't work more often than they do, on purpose.
Still, depending on what games you play and hardware you own it has become entirely possible to ditch Windows and not suffer for it.
if you have a steam account, and you open it on Linux most of your games will be present to be played. Most of them will just work. Those that don't you can look up details on protondb.com.
as mentioned above if you play any competitive games that come with anti-cheat features, then you won't be able to join in the fun. So if you don't care about those games, you'll be fine.
> if you play any competitive games that come with anti-cheat features, then you won't be able to join in the fun.
I'd say it's a majority of games that won't work if they require anti-cheat, but some will.
In the last few years, Valve has made incredible progress with their equivalent set of API wrappers to what Wine does. Apparently (not experienced first hand) it’s like 97% of the way there, now.
I’ve been in love with cachy since I switched from windows but this past weekend has been extremely trying after experiencing metadata exhaustion probably due to the snapshots filling up my home drive. Learned a few things and I realize btrfs is not specific to cachy, but this was definitely the hardest thing I’ve worked through since switching from windows.
I'm surprised this is the default. How good are the snapshot management tools?
Running CachyOS has overall been great for me in the past year but the AUR supply chain attack (or whatever it was exactly) was a little unnerving.
Yeah I really enjoyed Cachy but the model of using the AUR to install third party applications just seems broken. I don't want to have to trust some random install script maintainer in addition to the 3p app developer. And sadly I don't have the time and attention to spare to review the AUR scripts of apps every time I update.
I switched to Kubuntu to keep KDE (which I really found I enjoyed from Cachy) while using a more stable and familiar ubuntu base. It's not one of the "gaming" distros but I haven't noticed any major drawbacks with the games I play.
The AUR is very user managed and orphaned packages can be picked up I guess to continue maintenance. Obviously, this can lead to some issues. It's one of the tradeoffs for a heavily user supplied repository of packages. You get a lot of good stuff quickly, but I personally will stick with Debian.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/arch-linux-aur-packages-compro...
How many packages are you using from AUR vs the official repos though? The official repos have almost everything I need
I switched to Bazzite from CachyOS and while I really appreciate how accessible it is, the immutability of the core OS doesn't do enough to scratch my Linux tinkering fix. So I'll probably install this in a few days.
I loved Bazzite for hardware compatibility out of the box but the necessity of flatpak made it enormously inconvenient as a general machine. CachyOS sounds worth checking out if I still want to game but also occasionally do real work.
I’m annoyed that games I play use BattleEye and the use of BattleEye prevents me from being able to switch over to CachyOS on our family gaming PC+TV setup in the play room. Doubly so because BattleEye appears to do absolutely nothing to prevent PC lobbies from becoming rife with cheaters anyway, so I don’t really get the point of it.
This has been my experience as well. My main game right now is escape from Tarkov and battle eye wont let me into official servers. I’m able to manage my stash and buy from traders just fine.
For other steam titles, popOS and proton were just fine
Agreed, anti-cheat and DRM are the last things truly preventing Linux to be a true one to one replacement for gaming in most people's cases.
Another era, another Arch based distribution.
This one seems particularly attractive to Windows refugees especially gamers. The default desktop looks very much like Windows: even the wallpaper is one of those blue gradient 3d wave shapes.
I tried it in a VM and I don't think I can deal with the jank. The default install comes with 3 different GUIs for installing software, all of them confusing and inconsistent. Apps with context menus that go 5 levels deep everywhere, confusing layouts, sometimes icons, sometimes not. I guess if you are coming from Windows this is the status quo so that's fine.
Not for me but I'm glad this new wave of Linux users are finding success with it.
My newbie recommendation is https://bazzite.gg/. It ships a very simple GUI package manager and the system silently updates in the background. It's also atomic, so rollbacks are easy and destroying the system is hard. It's not a separate distro per-se but a layer atop Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite (you can re-base to/from them without a reinstall).
It's been my daily driver for ~2 years.
The Cachy/Arch approach is more flexible, I'm fine with atomic since containerized workflows are my preference.
That's one way to look at it. At the end of the day though its just arch linux with a jetpack. So you can use and treat it like any other arch distro.
TIL you can run CachyOS kernels on Fedora: https://github.com/CachyOS/copr-linux-cachyos