u/Lokielurker69

Hi!

I'm a new convert to the CachyOS cult. I was not familiar with this distros game when I moved to Linux I'll admit. Linux desktop has a lot of hype distros. Typically these fade as quickly as they show up. Distro hoppers love them and when I was originally getting into the Linux desktop I thought "why wouldn't you just install Arch?"

I distro hopped. A lot. I went from Linux Mint --> Arch Linux (learned why you don't install Arch) --> EndeavourOS --> Fedora and a few others I'm probably forgetting. I broke my shit. A lot. Particularly on all the other Arch derivatives. But I refused to give up and persisted on Linux anyway, because I was utterly disgusted with the state of Windows and proprietary software in general.

Eventually (or perhaps inevitably?) I landed on CachyOS. I'd had bad experiences with Arch based distros prior to this, and the initial response I received to my post asking about moving from Fedora to CachyOS was originally quite hostile I won't lie. I had a nice safe desktop on Fedora and I was giving it up for another Arch based experiment, it was a leap of faith. I actually did want to just use my computer without fucking everything up and moving all my files back and forth yet again and reinstalling all my essentials.

I finally stopped. I themed everything just how I liked it, swapped terminals because I wanted a picture as my logo, set up a few custom keyboard shortcuts... and best of all I didn't have to go through the CBT that is configuring PAM to my liking to prevent lockouts.

Winboat being an ootb setup option was so nice. I struggled with setting it up on other distros, so it was extremely buggy and pretty much unusable. The package installer? Super nice. Saved me probably about a half hour during setup.

In the last 30 days or so I've been experimenting with modding Bethesda games via Amethyst Mod Manager. Modding games was the thing that made me quit my Linux desktop experiment in 2024, and finally having a native replacement for that not only seriously impresses me because of the absolutely gargantuan task that comes by making all this Windows only software/tooling play nicely with Linux, but also the fact that it is fairly user friendly.

I got DaVinci Resolve set up! I plan to make some straightforward guides on things ranging from niche topics to picking a distro. As much as I love Cachy, it really lacks a GUI package manager (don't mind Discover which I use for Flatpaks). Not its fault necessarily, it just means I wouldn't recommend it to someone brand new to Linux. For me, though? I love it. I don't mind the terminal whatsoever. I enjoy it actually.

Originally I thought I would give up some level of stability from Fedora moving to another Arch derivative. This has been proven wrong almost immediately. Fedora was less stable AND less fast for day to day use than Cachy has been. Not to mention, from the time I boot to the time I login, my aesthetics got a major boost. Flashy as all hell. Limine is exactly what I was looking for and I had no idea.

All in all, it has been boring. In the best way possible.

I'm done distro hopping. Hopefully, I'll be using this distro for a few years at least. Linux has had nothing but good news lately for me. Tons of apps I know by name porting over from Windows, modding support finally getting some huge breakthroughs and the Linux playerbase on Steam growing such that one day in the near future we may not be a rounding error? I think I'm finally done with Windows too. It's been a great few months and I'm glad I stuck it through.

This is what you all sound like.

30 Days on CachyOS! (And 6 months on Linux!)