



Garuda is very, VERY similar to CachyOS. They are both gaming focused, Arch rolling releases, have their own modified kernel, have their own repos, both set up proprietary Nvidia drivers by default.
I haven’t spent a lot of time with Garuda, but I’ve found CachyOS to be an improved version of what it is trying to do. It has a bigger community, better gaming performance in every benchmark I’ve seen (they’ve also had a few bugs lately that have made Fedora benchmark better than Garuda), better general Ui responsiveness (and if you use Garuda’s Dragonized Desktop it’s even heavier than GNOME). I also don’t like that Garuda enables Chaotic AUR out of thr box. This allows random third parties to compile binaries for you, instead of building from source. This takes a lot less time to update if you have limited hardware, but you’re also probably not using a bleeding edge OS if you have old hardware. AUR is already dangerous, no need to add Chaotic AUR where you can’t even be sure that what code is being executed on your system is what is described in the package. Lastly I like Shelly a lot more than Pamac, I couldn’t even get Pamac to manage Flatpak last time I tried it, and Shelly easily manages every possible package type with ease and matches KDE’s theming better.
That being said, Linux is Linux for the most part. I did make this meme making fun of other CachyOS users for thinking the performance boosts are so mega important.

I like the variant where the green square is puke.
Endeavor is a very good distro, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to convince you to switch. It just seems silly to me that it seemed like you were interested in the other Cachy features, but as soon as you hear that it comes with a GUI package manager, that automatically makes it not for you, when it wouldn’t affect you.
I am familiar with Terminal. I don’t even use a GUI at all on my home server because that’s unnecessary overhead. But that doesn’t mean I want to use it for everything in my day to day life. For example, I’m not going to use it to move files. I’m just going to use Dolphin, it is far faster and logical to do so.
With Terminal I have to know the package name. Whoops it’s not “signal”, it’s “signal-desktop”, which there is no way to know unless I search the repo, remember from doing it before, or look it up on my browser, which I can’t do because that’s a GUI and GUI sucks /s. Then I have to do a second command to refresh all repos and update before installing. Then I have to know what repo it is in, and remember the commands for native, AUR, and Flatpak because I regularly use all 3. I can’t manage AppImages at all like I can with Shelly. Same goes for updates, I have to do a separate command for Flatpaks, and use a different package manager like yay for AUR + native.
Or I can just type “signal” in the Shelly search bar and see what I am looking for, sometimes with an icon, what the full package name is, who published it, what repo it is in, then install it with one click (+my password). Updates take one click (+ my password) because Shelly’s home page is set the updates page and auto check. For every type of package on my system, including AppImage.
Choices ARE good! It helped you find the niche that suits you best. After a while we forget that other people value different things, so there is no one best choice.
Nobody is forcing you to use it instead of command line, or preventing you from uninstalling it.
You may have to experiment a little. Cachy is good at auto finding drivers for you, but sometimes rolling releases can break compatibility with older drivers or stop supporting them faster. Then again, 970 isn’t THAT old so you might be OK. If you don’t like being harassed for updates, rolling release is probably not what you’re looking for.
If you have the drivers working, you may want to just leave it. People like CachyOS for gaming because it has up to date features and improves compatibility. You won’t get up to date features if thr GPU doesn’t support it though. The faster wait time for Proton compatibility will still help.
If you are still looking to switch, maybe something a bit in between. Tuxedo OS uses KDE, Wayland, and is good at auto detecting/downloading proprietary Nvidia drivers too. It’s based on Ubuntu LTS so it won’t update all the time. They are transitioning to being based on Debian Testing and further testing those updates, which will probably roughly feel like Fedora’s level of updates. Pop!_OS says that they support older Nvidia cards in their standard LTS version too, which is also based km Ubuntu. They just switched to their brand new DE though, which I like but has some bugs last I checked.
Also maybe consider using Docker for the server stuff, that way it doesn’t matter as much what distro you use.
More like
Arch: Actually you took most of who you are from me.
Not really, I use CachyOS, but it is funny how much people hype the performance boosts. I notice it, but not by a ton or anything. It’s mostly just Arch but easier to use and with built in tools that are helpful.
So I’m actually making fun of the tribalism.
Blasphemer!
It is also a command line package manager (like pacman), meaning it integrated with the system better than anything, even YaST on openSUSE. It doesn’t require a reboot for updates the way KDE Discover would for example (though occasionally I run into bugs if I don’t reboot), and also seems to manage proprietary Nvidia drivers that CachyOS downloaded for me.
Depends on what you’re hosting on the home server and how often you’ll use the device for gaming/other stuff. Most people prefer stable distros for servers, because if you go too long without updating you may be missing dependencies. But if you’re going to update regularly and use it every week, it’s probably fine. Some people do use Arch based distros for servers. CachyOS is my favorite and easiest to use Arch based distros despite making fun of it in the meme.
You were straighter when you used Arch? That can’t be right, isn’t that against the rules?
In fairness, Manjaro was one of the first ones to be that. And their 2 week waiting period for updates seems like a solid middle ground. The problem is, they don’t actually test those updates much, and if there is a breaking change on Arch, it’s usually on Manjaro as well, just 2 weeks later. This is not only pointless, but can cause additional dependency issues from being out of date, especially if you use the AUR, because AUR is rolling release and expects up to date Arch dependencies.
Also sorry if I came off harsh earlier, I’m just poking fun at everyone in this thread, even myself as a CachyOS user.
Good question, let me check real quick…
Oh. I can’t. They forgot to renew their website’s SSL certificate for the 9th time.
It is a good educational experience, especially if you want to do sysadmin adjacent stuff.
Yes, I think it may have cured my distro hopping. I was on Fedora KDE the longest besides Cachy, but there’s a lot of little things that I like better.
That is true, Arch performance is technically at zero when I’m staring at Terminal for 3 hours.
Yeah this is the real reason I prefer it. A sane installer, auto installing Nvidia drivers, auto setting up Snapper, a good GUI package manager that actually manages everything.
The customized kernel, and performance boosts that may or may not actually exist are just a bonus.