Credit: Jordan Gloor / How-To Geek

After a long while of messing around with EndeavourOS, I’ve decided it’s time to hop distros again on my main tower. My new daily driver on my dual-boot setup will be CachyOS. To be honest, I’ve been peer-pressured into it.

If you look back at my past blog posts, you’ll see I hop distros pretty often. I have methods of making distro switches easy because it’s true: I’ve long been in search of the perfect Linux distribution for me. While my laptop runs Kubuntu (in fact, it’s a Linux-first Kubuntu Focus Ir14 laptop), I move between distros on my tower multiple times a year. None of the distros I’ve tried have quite fit the bill, and it always seems like there’s another exciting one on the horizon—CachyOS, to name one example.

My current distro is too minimalist for me

In my defense, I’m not leaving my current distro just because I got distracted by a shiny new one. I installed EndeavourOS one weekend back in August, and my experience with it has left me wanting. I understand it’s meant to teach you how to be more comfortable with the command line, which I appreciate. I have learned a lot.

One of the ways EndeavourOS did that was by leaving it up to me to figure out how to get the software I needed via the terminal. I now have a deeper understanding of Arch repositories, AUR helpers, and other software sources through the experience, and, again, I’m appreciative.

Still, as a journalist, I have deadlines. It’s been annoying when software I need to install isn’t located or in the state I expect, and I have to take several extra steps just to get it installed and working. I don’t have time for working my own way out of dependency hell.

Again, I learned a lot from EndeavourOS, so I don’t regret giving it a go. It’s just that the responsibility it puts on me to problem-solve doesn’t mesh with my current workflow. If I had more free time, I can see myself putting in more effort to manually molding EndeavourOS into my ideal operating system. I don’t have that much free time, though, and instead I found myself longing for the days of using Octopi on Garuda Linux with Chaotic-AUR already enabled.

CachyOS makes customization easy

While I was feeling nostalgic for my Garuda days, I now feel the need to branch out a little. From what I’ve heard, CachyOS similarly makes customizing the operating system to fit your needs easy. At least, it’s easier than EndeavourOS makes it.

Of course, Linux and other open source operating systems are all as customizable as your knowledge and determination allows. CachyOS, though, doesn’t leave the onus on you and your terminal to accomplish that. What I look for in a good Linux distribution is a level of ease in the customization and software acquisition process that doesn’t conflict with the granularity of control I want. And, again, the learning curve also needs to be low enough it doesn’t disrupt my workflow.

I know—I’m asking a lot. My hope is that CachyOS and its software management tools can deliver that experience for me. Is that unrealistic? I’m about to find out.

CachyOS outperforms the rest

In benchmarks published by Phoronix this week, CachyOS was clocked at higher performance rates than Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43. Those two distributions are titans of the Linux landscape, so it’s impressive to see a relative newcomer, and one that isn’t based on an enterprise-level distribution, eat their lunch.

I’m no overclocking enthusiast, but I do feel good knowing I’ll likely be making the most of my hardware by switching to CachyOS. Those benchmarks were even done with an AMD graphics card, which is what I’m running, so that gives me even more confidence.

Plus, I’m interested in directly weighing Windows 11 performance to that of Linux. Since I’ll be dual-booting CachyOS with my Windows installation, I can easily compare the experience using one of the best the Linux world has to offer.

People just can’t stop talking about it

Finally, I’m going to admit part of my interest is due to peer pressure. I hear so much about CachyOS, from Reddit discussions to comments on my own articles. Curiosity has gotten the best of me, and while I’m refusing to set my expectations sky-high, I do want to investigate the hype.

I also have a theory that excitement around a distribution actually has a positive effect on quality. Generally speaking, the more people actively using a distribution, the more feedback is going to the developers. You can also assume more volunteers are coming on board with contributions too, improving the distribution in ways that might not happen if there was less attention on it.

If I were trying to bulletproof this argument, though, I’d acknowledge that the same dynamic invites malicious activity. The more popular a distribution, the bigger the target for malware. There has been some progress in that area lately, though, like Chaotic-AUR putting together a trusted maintainer initiative.

If you care to join me in trying CachyOS this weekend, you can get an ISO image from the CachyOS downloads page. If you’ve never installed Linux before, you can test it out by running it as a virtual machine first, or try live-booting the distribution.