Linux Distros for Gaming: CachyOS is Taking over (ProtonDB data)
Linux Distros for Gaming: CachyOS is Taking over (ProtonDB data)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/6562285
Companion article here: https://boilingsteam.com/distro-for-gaming-cachy-os-takes-over/
I don't get it, CachyOS is probably improving performance in the low single digit percentages. Why are people so crazy about it?
CachyOS is a really good time to use.
Very sane defaults, no bloat, extremely easy snapper/btrfs/limine setup, a 1-click gaming setup button that gets everything you need ready to go.
I don't think it does much for gaming, as the video and article also point out, but even if it turns out to just be placebo - my old and creaking PC here feels more responsive than it did with Manjaro, Vanilla Arch and Garuda respectively.
Yeah, it always reminds me that I did a kernel benchmark for gaming a couple of years ago and the differences were within the margin of error. https://web.archive.org/web/20220602144244/https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/utfazn/results_for_the_kernel_benchmarks_in_gaming/
I tried a few Linux distros and Cachy has been the most painless so far.
Why are people so crazy about it?
Looking at the chart, I guess it's just one of the destinations a bunch of Manjaro and Ubuntu users moved to and Ubuntu users are probably amazed how a Linux distro without Canonical BS feels like.
The data ☝️
I'm always surprised by how low the Flatpak share is.
Imagine having a 40% market share and losing it all. Honestly, it's kind of incredible how far Ubuntu has fallen. Hopefully it serves as a lesson for anyone thinking about alienating their users.
It's just kind of annoying to not have your files where they normally are.
Flatpacks always break the moment you want to mod use community tools or need to do really much of anything.
They are great, but in a gaming or streamer context they are an annoying problem child.
The sandboxing sometimes breaks applications or requires additional configuration. And I don't like that it's a separate thing I need to maintain, although some package managers pair main package updates etc together.
And as a NixOS user, I prefer to use nix to handle as much of my system as possible, although flatpak at least is useful as a fallback in a pinch. Of course, this is a niche within a niche and mainstream users, particularly those using immutable distros can and do benefit from flatpak.
flapak when i was using it on arch always had issues getting gamescope to run as the flapak version doesn't match the version in steam. with wine adopting support for native Wayland and improvements to Vulcan layers i think flapak version may start to get more popular. but for now the main limiter is, "do i need gamescope to play?"
Love cachyOS, I don't pay much attention to the claimed performance improvements. I just think it has some really good defaults and in-house tools for beginners that make navigating an Arch distro easier.
Despite the changes around them, both Nobara and Bazzite seem to keep hanging on at a stable share, close to 5% each. However it seems that both have stopped growing at that point and may be stuck at the current threshold. I’m not sure there is however much future when it comes to Bazzite, since SteamOS will eventually be rolling out to more and more devices out there. I guess it depends how much Valve does in terms of hardware support, and if Bazzite provide tangible benefits on top what Valve delivers.
I mean, Nobara is definitely steady or losing some of its share but Bazzite has only ever continued to gain, even if a bit slower now. As far as if it has benefits over SteamOS, well the Steam Deck is the largest percentage of Bazzite users by far, so it's clearly offering something that Valve isn't. I'd say that it's a lot simpler OOTB to set up other store's games with Lutris included.
Plus, Bazzite doesn't have the same hardware requirements. I have a handheld device that can't install SteamOS because of an incompatible hard drive, but Bazzite works just fine.
Yeah, it does seem to be a lot less picky. I'm genuinely surprised we haven't seen OEMs like Ayaneo, GPD or MSI jump on it for their lower end devices.
Isn't Cachy not immutable? Also the graph from this article seems to show Cachy was released first. Bazzite pawbably does have better marketing though but eh? It's not like they're selling anything, it's all still FOSS, so I don't see that as a big negative as long as it does what it says on the tin.
I keep hearing this, but I don't really want an Arch-based distro because I don't want fixing my computer to become a hobby. I have a 10-year-old PC running Debian 12 that can still play (some) games that came out this year, so it doesn't feel like I should switch.
Fwiw I was avoidant of arch for a long time and took the deep dive a few years back. I've really not had to do any more debugging work than I have to with Debian (which I'm also a fan of and use).
EndeavourOS helps a lot with smoothing over the possible gotchas and my machines with it tend to run steam games (proton or native) out of the box the majority of the time.
I finally switched from Windows to Linux and chose CachyOS. This was months ago. I never had to fix anything (so far). There was a fuck up by me once, but that wasn't the distros and could've happened on any distro. Honestly couldn't be happier with it being arch based, as it's really nice to basically get anything that is released instantly as a package update.
I haven't had to hunt for packages that aren't years old for anything as I was used to on Debian (used on most of my servers). And while the AUR is there, I think I got a total of two things installed from there, anything else was just there in the repos.
But if you've got a setup that already works, and you're happy with, why change anything? Having something that works for you is what makes the large amounts of choices in the Linux world so great.
Isn't SteamOS Arch-based?
Yes its based on arch packages but its not the same as when people say "arch based distro" because SteamOS doesn't inherit the arch problems because its not on archs update schedule. While other arch based distro's follow the arch schedule and get all the issues that come with bleeding edge software.
I have found that with Arch I don't run out of troubleshooting before the problem is solved like I did with Debian. That said, the learning curve is a little steep so not switching makes sense, but I find it better personally. Just like in Windows things are out of your control I felt that Debian had strong defaults and I had trouble changing them too far. I am sure ignorance played a role but I have found the documentation on the Arch wiki was more useful in actually solving my problems.
Same. I tried arch many moons ago and heard all the stories and that was enough.
Maybe it's better by now but fedora has been stable and things like bazzite with immutability exist. Not sure why I'd pick cachy then. Especially if the gains are that minimal.
I like the aur, only reason i stayed on cachyos instead of trying bazzite, def won't find everything as a flatpak.
I tried CatchyOS for a HTPC and really liked the UX, but can't remember what happened with it, something broke or couldn't do something, and settled for Bazzite and it's have been working good so far.
glad more people are using Arch-based distros! I finally installed arch (btw) without the archinstall script, and I must say, the more people that can potentially feel the sense of accomplishment that I felt when I got my display manager and window manager set up the way I wanted, the better!
I'm genuinely happy to see people trying out new stuff! I like seeing all the new approaches every distro takes, understanding real use cases, making interesting design decisions at each turn.
This is what it used to be like to be a PC enthusiast and I think it's great to see computing become personal again.
Now CachyOS I've been following for a while and it seems much closer to something like endeavor which is still prone to all the potential issues I've experienced before. I've moved to ublue Bazzite and bluefin recently because the out of box experience is amazing and updates are pretty much immaculate.
I still don't understand what Cachy does in its kernel optimization and BORE scheduler properly but I'd love to learn and understand.
Either way, I_see_this_as_an_absolute_win.gif
3.1% NixOS... that's barely a step below Debian at 3.4%. Is Nix really that popular?
First before the results, the usual disclaimer, as this data comes from 'ProtonDB':
Gave CachyOS a try over weekend and I'm back to Fedora. It's not really appealing to me at all but I can see why people like it.
Funny that I see an article about CachyOS, i just installed it this morning because of some trouble with an RX 9060 XT that I couldn't get it to work with kubuntu. It just worked out of the box with CachyOS. I know it would probably have worked with other distro but still...
That is likely due to the RX9000 lineup needing the newer kernel for driver support. Kubuntu maybe didnt ship that 6.14 kernel at the time. Cachy is the best for new hardware because they have great tools for switching kernels and patching everything up to the bleeding edge. They make it easy to grab the latest kernel, mesa, nvidia driver or whatever you need for new hardware.
I've been using CachyOS on my HTPC for the past few weeks now. Works fine so far
I didn't know Pop_OS was no longer being updated. I know I've had recent updates though. Perhaps I should switch distros.
The work on cosmic is proceeding and as far as I know when cosmic is done, 24.04 will be released. In the mean time 22.04 still gets updates.
It's being updated, just not being changed constantly I guess? I dunno, I think it's kinda nice.
CachyOS claims performance improvement by compiling its packages with CPU-family-specific optimizations. Okay, but most games are not CPU bound, and even those that are mostly spend their CPU time in game code, not distro package-provided code.
CachyOS claims interactivity improvement by using the BORE scheduler. Okay, but that's unlikely to help games unless you're running other tasks that compete for CPU time while you play.
So for most gamers, I wouldn't expect CachyOS to offer much improvement in either area.
Everything you say is spot on. I've chased the tail of the dragon in search of performance gentoo, custom kernels, over clocking, etc. The defaults are 99.99% that other .01 just isn't worth the effort.
This is the one true CachyOS description. The distro has been gaining so much traction based on naive interpretations of what performance is.
It’s not a bad distro, but its advantages are minimal over others. Whatever linux people pick, it will be fine.
I just like it. I treat it more like EndeavorOS. It's got sensible defaults.
It was the easiest experience I had installing and setting up different des/bootloaders to test out as a newcomer to linux. It has hella options. The wiki is also really nice and easy to use. And gaming wise, the useful part is all the packages it installs that i didn't know about and the documentation on the wiki related to it.
While everything just works, I did have to switch to lts kernel because of freezing, this freezing also occured on endeavour and mint tho.
plus the plasma de in the usb immediately made me feel like i wanted to swap to linux just playing with it
seems to be specific games, kingdom come deliverance (the original) stuttered & hitched badly on other distros, but cachy was 👌
If you post your system specs and the distros that had that problem, it might help someone else who runs into the same thing. Or it might even hint at a cause more specific than "wasn't running CachyOS".