Arch derivatives have to be one of the worst monkey paws for the Linux desktop.
A person who can not install Arch Linux should not be managing their own Arch installation. Inevitably something will not work right and confusion and disappointment will set in as that person is completely unprepared to help themselves.
Arch derivatives themselves are usually just worse versions of Arch with more problems. Manjaro being the worst offender there. Pushing those onto people, is not a good thing and if someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install Arch, they should not be using any Arch derivative.
No, this isn't gate keeping. It is protecting people from inevitable disappointment and frustration, which can only harm Linux Desktop and Linux gaming.
This has been my experience too, with the exception being SteamOS. Arch and variants all inevitably break, usually after an update because I missed some patch note about a config change or something. Maybe non-Valve Arch+derivatives are better if used as a daily driver which are subject to more attention from the user, but I’m not convinced they’re that well suited to dedicated gaming boxes that need to just work without much fuss, especially for those not already versed in the ways of (Arch) Linux.
Other distros bring their own problems of course but that’s another topic.
Eh, I can't really agree. I'm totally capable of installing Arch, I've installed Arch and Gentoo and all kinds of random distros in the past, but the reason Manjaro is on my living room PC is because it's basically here to run a web browser and I wanted the lowest effort rolling release distro to install. Did I still have to do some annoying things at a low level to deal with some weird wifi and audio stuff? Yes. Was it easier and faster than ground up Arch? Yes.
Are there better options? I wouldn't be shocked. But it wasn't worth my time to do a big comparison. (Note that I would not necessarily install Manjaro today, but I do think wanting a more out of the box Arch is totally reasonable.)
No, it isn't gate keeping, its just pure arrogance. My replay is not to change your opinion, but to encourage others, that come across your BS, to try, fail and finally succeed in whatever they want to...
“If someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install arch”
I think there is a big jump from the tech literacy to install Arch and the tech literacy to maintain an Arch system over time. These derivatives feel like they are there to help solve the latter.
As someone who has been happy with both Arch and Gentoo for non-gaming purposes, my hot take in 2025 is that I cannot recommend good old Debian enough. Homebrew/cargo for bleeding edge software, but since that lives in my home folder it doesn’t affect or interfere with the rock solid experience of Debian. I use Lutris for Windows-exclusive games, and actually have better performance than in Windows thanks to Microsoft’s unholy levels of bullshit in their OS.
But yeah: Debian truly “just works”, with the caveat of initial setup for Nvidia cards. And I would say that certain Gnome extensions are kind of mandatory as well, but the IX of installing those is ridiculously good for what they are.
I agree that people who aren't at the point where they can install Arch easily based on the wiki guide are likely to have an inferior experience using it as opposed to something in the Debian / EL families.
That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I learned to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise Linux a lot more.
I think that people choosing to do this stuff are doing it because they want to learn. I'm not convinced a few kids being precocious and getting in way over their heads "harms Linux Desktop". I think it's more likely that this is the next generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who could help make the dream a reality.
> CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds
Ok, can we see the benchmarks on some popular video games, compared to vanilla Arch? Then let's compare it to Ubuntu for good measure. If they are making the claim that it's lightning fast, surely that has been measured?
Feels like a hype distro to me since they package WIP / unreleased features as if they are released left and right. It's not even using upstream kernel. Many newcomers especially don't realize this and when they hit problems coming from these mods, they come to the realization that they can't report bugs upstream.
I don't recommend it if you want to contribute your bug reports to Linux gaming community back properly.
Based on benchmarks[1], CachyOS is slightly faster than other distros, only behind Clear Linux (RIP), but I would be extremely curious to see why this would warrant a whole who distro being created. These optimizations can (and probably will) be upstreamed into Arch Linux at some point in the future. Compiler optimizations are one thing, but enabling newer instruction sets doesn't improve performance sans some very specific workloads. This all seems like marketing hype to me with very little substance.
Since the headline is about gaming distros:
I'm on a quiet similar OS for like 2 years now, Garuda. Also tuned for performance/gaming, arch based, btrfs etc. Biggest differences will probably be the zen kernel, pre installed gaming utils like lutris, fan control etc. and a probably less performant but highly customized default style.
Its a curated version of Arch, releases drop in with a ~2w delay. It's brutally stable. As I said, I'm running the first installation for almost 2y now, doing my updates (everything comes with GUI support) daily to weekly and I faced one single hick up so far. I resolved it on the most user friendly way, picked the last snapshot during the boot (it automatically created before the update) and it acted like nothing ever happened. BTRFS with Timeshift works like magic for these rare edge cases.
I wonder how it compares to CachyOS, will definitely test it in a few weeks on my laptop
I've heard some good things about Bazzite, which is a Fedora immutable based gaming distro. I'm on a vanilla Arch install with the Zen kernel and been too lazy to try something different.
I like the idea of Arch, but find the work required to be onerous and the community toxic.
I'm using Fedora at home, community is friendly and open then documentation is decent and the OS is just cutting edge without being bleeding edge. its all i need.
18 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 50.8 ms ] threadA person who can not install Arch Linux should not be managing their own Arch installation. Inevitably something will not work right and confusion and disappointment will set in as that person is completely unprepared to help themselves.
Arch derivatives themselves are usually just worse versions of Arch with more problems. Manjaro being the worst offender there. Pushing those onto people, is not a good thing and if someone does not have the basic tech literacy to install Arch, they should not be using any Arch derivative.
No, this isn't gate keeping. It is protecting people from inevitable disappointment and frustration, which can only harm Linux Desktop and Linux gaming.
Other distros bring their own problems of course but that’s another topic.
Are there better options? I wouldn't be shocked. But it wasn't worth my time to do a big comparison. (Note that I would not necessarily install Manjaro today, but I do think wanting a more out of the box Arch is totally reasonable.)
I think there is a big jump from the tech literacy to install Arch and the tech literacy to maintain an Arch system over time. These derivatives feel like they are there to help solve the latter.
But yeah: Debian truly “just works”, with the caveat of initial setup for Nvidia cards. And I would say that certain Gnome extensions are kind of mandatory as well, but the IX of installing those is ridiculously good for what they are.
That said, I learned a lot by constantly screwing up Arch installs I had no real reason to be doing. Eventually I learned to appreciate projects like Debian or Enterprise Linux a lot more.
I think that people choosing to do this stuff are doing it because they want to learn. I'm not convinced a few kids being precocious and getting in way over their heads "harms Linux Desktop". I think it's more likely that this is the next generation of Linux Desktop enthusiasts who could help make the dream a reality.
> CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds
Ok, can we see the benchmarks on some popular video games, compared to vanilla Arch? Then let's compare it to Ubuntu for good measure. If they are making the claim that it's lightning fast, surely that has been measured?
I don't recommend it if you want to contribute your bug reports to Linux gaming community back properly.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-linux-perf
It was fun until it stopped booting one day.
Switched to Tumbleweed, but I'm ready for the same thing to happen.
Its a curated version of Arch, releases drop in with a ~2w delay. It's brutally stable. As I said, I'm running the first installation for almost 2y now, doing my updates (everything comes with GUI support) daily to weekly and I faced one single hick up so far. I resolved it on the most user friendly way, picked the last snapshot during the boot (it automatically created before the update) and it acted like nothing ever happened. BTRFS with Timeshift works like magic for these rare edge cases.
I wonder how it compares to CachyOS, will definitely test it in a few weeks on my laptop
I'm using Fedora at home, community is friendly and open then documentation is decent and the OS is just cutting edge without being bleeding edge. its all i need.