I switched to CachyOS from Ubuntu; here are my thoughts.

So, not too long ago I decided.. It was time to switch from Ubuntu.

At the time I was pissed off about Canonical bowing to regulatory pressure in enabling age verification into the core distribution, but I was also just plain curious.. And then Ubuntu's servers started getting hammered hard with DDoS attacks, which became a headache for a lot of folks.

I started digging around, looking for a distribution that wasn't going to give in to the bullshit that wouldn't even be effective and would only be a potential vector for tracking folks, and happened upon CachyOS.

CachyOS is based on Arch; Initially, that was a "Ugh, fuck me please no", but I did my due-dilligence and felt like it was worth at least trying.

I loaded it up on my old System76 machine to test, and in short order I found it wasn't bad at all.

My big requirement was that I not have to deal with a bunch of excessive configuration or bullshit to get it running and keep it running, but I also wanted to be able to run updated software with relative stability.

While there was absolutely a learning-curve on managing and setting up CachyOS, it gave me just enough stuff to tweak without being obnoxious about it..

..And I also got to return to an old style of window manager that I love: Tiling.

I'm running Niri + Noctalia for my WM & Shell, and it is fucking awesome. It is visually wonderful, and is highly customizable out of the box. This combo is also one of (many) presets available to folks when installing CachyOS (which was easier than I was in my mid-20s).

Not everything is sunshine and cocaine, however; I had a few hurdles to jump over before I got settled.

First: Multi-monitor setups are a pain in the fucking ass to set up properly with Niri. There is no GUI for configuring these; You've got to edit config files here, and positioning my unique home office setup was a frustrating experience.

Still, now that it's set up? No big deal at all.

Beyond that, I did have an update fail, but that's where another pro comes into place: Btrfs (ButterFS).

As I noted, an update failed.. And borked the install to the point that I couldn't even get booted into CachyOS.

No worries, however! The bootloader allowed me to select one of the automatically-created snapshots before the update (thanks to Btrfs) to boot from. I did that, told it to make this my new base state, and was golden. A week later I tried updating again and it worked without issue.. Although I noticed after the fact that my sound wasn't working. Thankfully, another update and it was fixed.

I'm an old-hand with Linux; I got started back when you'd get a CD included with a book on how to use Linux (Redhat was my first), and have been using it on-and-off ever since.

That makes CachyOS relatively easy to use, since I'm eminently familiar with troubleshooting Linux (you have no idea how hard it was to get dialup modems to work back in the day).. And it's also fucking fast as fucking fuck, and I'm not dealing with bullshit shitty Snaps.

Do I think CachyOS is good for newbies? Fuck no, and I am annoyed that I keep seeing folks pushing it to the uninitiated. I know it's great for gaming, but there are other options out there.. And for casual usage I'd still say Ubuntu or Fedora would be a better choice overall, because in most cases you can easily get by with those without ever having to touch a command line.