Every product or app has its fanbase, and every fanbase has its purists. In the Linux community, Arch Linux is known for being one of the lightest, most bleeding-edge distros you can get, and its fans can sometimes be what you'd consider purists, insisting that the vanilla Arch experience is the way to go, despite its many variations.

And while yes, to a certain extent, some Arch variations make changes that aren't necessary as the default, one in particular as emerged as one of the best Linux experiences around. CachyOS, which I've covered before, is a very compelling Arch Linux variant, and it's arguably proven that Arch Linux variants can do more than just add unnecessary fluff. Sometimes, they can make things even better.

A simplified, user-friendly install

The command line isn't for everyone

By default, setting up Arch Linux is one of the least user-friendly experiences you can have with installing an operating system. The entire experience is based on the terminal, though in more recent times, the team has added an archinstall command, which lets you go through a more human-readable install UI, though it's still entirely based on the command line.

That can still be a deterrent to a lot of people, and understandably so, especially when you still need a command to connect to the internet before you can run archinstall — if you're using Wi-Fi, at least. CachyOS greatly improves upon this by offering a simple, but more user-friendly install experience based on the KDE Plasma desktop environment. You can still install any desktop environment you want for the operating system itself, but using Plasma for the installer makes things a whole lot easier for users, while also looking much nicer.

It's not just about looks, either. This installer only puts the most relevant options in front of you, so you don't need to waste time jumping through pages to configure every single aspect of the install, which can be a daunting task for anyone using Arch for the first time. Everything is more streamlined here.

It's interesting because, from what I've heard, there's a subset of Arch Linux purists who believe even the archinstall command deviates too much from the pure Arch experience you "should" use. Naturally, the CachyOS installer isn't going to be a positive for that group, but for everyone else, this is a clear upgrade.

Optimized packages, better performance

CachyOS isn't just a pointless flavor of Arch

Some Arch variations may just throw a custom desktop environment and a few extra packages on top of the base operating system, but CachyOS is a very focused distro with a clear goal to deliver the best possible performance for your system. Part of that goal is that the CachyOS team compiles packages specifically for different instruction sets, not just architectures, so whether you have an Intel or AMD processor, you'll always get the package that's most optimized to run on your specific system.

This is because CachyOS includes its own repositories (on top of the standard Arch repositories as a fallback), and all the packages there are compiled for different processor models. CachyOS checks the instruction set of your processor and automatically picks the most optimized package. That includes the Linux kernels themselves, so the performance optimizations are felt across the board.

This is on top of other system-level changes, including a BORE scheduler, optimized for day-to-day performance, and multiple scheduler options that let you tweak performance further to your specific machine and needs. It even comes with the ananicy.cpp package, a performance-enhancing tool I've covered before, which adjusts the "niceness" levels of processes automatically, maximizing the performance for tasks on the fly.

You can feel the difference in performance and smoothness, though those results won't necessarily be visible in benchmarks every time. I did try comparing Geekbench scores for illustration purposes, and on the same computer, CachyOS gave me scores of 3,219 for single-core and 14,765 for multi-core, while standard Arch resulted in 3,154 for single-core and 14,837 for multi-core. Those are small differences, though the single-core uplift is much more pronounced percentage-wise.

Gaming is better, too

A custom Proton/Wine implementation

On top of customizing and tailoring packages for specific architectures, CachyOS also ships a custom version Wine and Proton for the best compatibility possible with Windows games. The wine-cachyos and proton-cachyos packages are pretty identical, meaning both are focused on gaming and based on Valve's own Proton implementation.

However, they come with a range of quality-of-life improvements and fixes that make the gaming experience on CachyOS even better. CachyOS developers recommend using this package instead of Valve's whenever possible, especially for games that use anti-cheat technologies and custom launchers. These packages also benefit from being compiled for specific instruction sets.

In this case, there isn't a major performance difference between Wine and Proton. Instead, the distinction is that CachyOS's Proton is meant to be used with Steam and is included with the cachyos-gaming-meta package so you can easily pick it when choosing a Wine/Proton version in Steam. CachyOS Wine is essentially a standalone version of the Proton package, which you can use with any game outside of Steam.

Again, CachyOS puts a ton of effort into providing the most performance experience possible across the board, building on top of the lean Arch experience in clever ways that benefit everyone. This is just another example of that commitment.

CachyOS is the Arch Linux experience everyone deserves

With its user-friendly approach and optimized performance, CachyOS is a very easy Linux distro to recommend if you're considering Arch in the first place. It doesn't include any unnecessary fluff, and all the enhancements it makes are meaningful without being intrusive. I know I'll be defaulting to CachyOS in the future, and I recommend others do the same.