I’m going to switch to arch for my general-purpose laptop, since I feel like kubuntu is not enough for me, I want to try a tiling WM and do some ricing.
I’m still undecided between plain arch or CachyOS, because that optimisation looks promising and I also game on my laptop.
The fact is that CachyOS seems more “bloated” with some unnecessary packages, so what do you suggest me? A simple arch installation, arch using the cachy-linux kernel and its optimisations or a debloated CachyOS install? Thank you all in advance.
I don’t use either but IMO people are far too worried about bloat, it’s not some monster that’ll drag you down. Unless you’re extremely space constrained some extra packages on disk won’t make any difference. And even on the slimmest install there’ll be stuff you never use anyway.
I understand, but less packages means it’s easier to manage my system. One of the reasons I’m leaning towards arch is because of its minimal approach, so that I can install only what I need.
Don’t buy into the bloat meme.
I have been an Arch user for a decade. This year I switched to CachyOS to give it a go. Performance (for me at least) has indeed improved but its not a massive jump.
I don’t find it particularly ‘bloated’. There wasn’t much I had to uninstall after installation and the installer gives you the option to deselect packages. List of packages here: https://github.com/CachyOS/cachyos-calamares/blob/cachyos-systemd-qt6/src/modules/netinstall/netinstall.yaml
Its also not as simple as many people claim to switch to CachyOS just by changing repos. CachyOS also has some of its own configs that would also need to be imported. I found it was easier just to install Cachy and remove unwanted packahes than switch repos on my Arch install and fiddle around with a bunch of configs and change some packages and settings.
So far I have found CachyOS a little more buggy than my install of Arch. But not so much that I want to switch back. So far the slight performance increases are keeping it worth it.
If, gods forbid, CachyOS ever stopped being maintained, it will be easy to switch back to vanilla Arch.
I suggest installing EndeavourOS because it is pretty minimal, you can even select the option to not include EOS’s OS theming during the install process, so basically a bare install. Their installer also allows me to choose ext4 instead of the buggy BTRFS file structure. Then, after install and updating, I add the Chaotic-Aur repos. and do an update. Then I get the Garuda Linux repos installed. Why? Because they have lots of handy tools, gaming, power-daemen for both performance and power-savings (laptops) and a handy app for installing kernels, including the CachyOS kernels and their optimizations in the Garuda Settings Manager. If you don’t want ext4 file structure you can skip EOS/Chaotic-Aur and just download Garuda KDE light edition.
Else, get Garuda repos on your system by downloading ‘Garuda-update’ from here, and install with Octopi or CLI command, and then do a system update, then do ‘garuda-update’ in terminal which should pull in the garuda repos (say ‘yes’ when prompted to all the options to add repos.) Minimal system with lots of options to choose.
I don’t really like endeavourOS, seems like that it points more towards user friendliness than performance, which is not what I’m aiming to. I will probably install base arch, get familiar with it and then select some packages from either cachy or guarda to improve performance.
EndeavourOS doesn’t add anything to Arch performance, it is basically a minimal install of arch with their theming included, which you can opt out of during install. But, to each his own.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people pushing catchyos lately. Has anyone actually tested if these optimizations actually offer any real world benefit?
Makes very little difference
