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CachyOS

Why CachyOS?

CachyOS offers a polished Arch experience, complete with a user-friendly installer, pre-configured desktops and performance optimizations without compromising the user experience and security of the system. Below are some of the highlight features that we provide to ensure an amazing desktop experience.

Optimized Packages and Repositories

CachyOS offers optimized packages for various hardware configurations, including x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4, and Zen4+ systems to improve overall performance of the system. Additionally, we ship highly-requested AUR packages from users for QoL improvements.

For a better idea of the various packages we have optimized, learn more at our optimized repositories page.

Custom Kernel Tuned for Performance and Stability

Aside from our main patch set that tunes various kernel parameters to improve desktop responsiveness, we also cherry pick promising patch sets that have not been mainlined or not in the stable revision of the kernel. These patches undergo internal testing before being shipped to users to ensure that stability isn’t impacted. For a complete list of patches that we provide, visit our kernel page.

Custom CPU Scheduler Support

CPU scheduling is an important part of the kernel to ensure all tasks are allocated CPU time fairly. The Linux kernel implements various scheduling classes to ensure that each and every task gets scheduled appropriately. The fair scheduling class, more well known as just “default scheduler” is based on the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First) algorithm.

By default EEVDF is tuned to divide available CPU time fairly among all tasks and is mostly geared for throughput-oriented workloads. Our kernel configures some EEVDF tunables to prioritize desktop responsiveness over sheer throughput, but there are limitations.

With that in mind, we go one step further and patch our kernel with the BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) that introduces an additional property to assign tasks requiring high responsiveness more CPU time compared to tasks that don’t based on their “burstiness”.

In 6.12, we also have the ability to hotplug BPF schedulers and replace the fair scheduling class with a different scheduler. To facilitate this, we provide first-class support for sched-ext schedulers

For more information about the kernels that we offer and sched-ext schedulers, see kernel and sched-ext.

Hardware Detection

Our own hardware detection tool correctly installs necessary packages and drivers for each system to lighten the burden of post-install setups from users.

Customizable Installation Process

Our installer guarantees that users can have the choice of what system they want. This customizability includes but is not limited to:

CachyOS Applications

By default, we provide our own applications, such as CachyOS Hello or CachyOS Package Installer among others to simplify and enhance your Linux experience. For example, CachyOS Hello provides options to update your system, enable services and rank the mirrors. Package Installer will help you to install packages. Also some tweaks and quick access for fixes to the most common issues found in Arch e.G: removing pacman’s db lock.

List of applications we develop and maintain:

  • Cachy Browser: Browser based on Firefox, with a more secure config and patches from Gentoo + Performance optimizations.
  • CachyOS Kernel Manager: Easily install kernels from the repository or configure your own kernel and include your own patches and even manage the sched-ext framework via the scx_loader.
  • CachyOS Hello: Application for controlling tweaks, applying fixes, package installation and more information about CachyOS.
  • CachyOS Package Installer: GUI for an easy installation of commonly used applications.
  • cachyos-rate-mirrors: Automatically rank Arch and CachyOS mirrors for optimal download speeds.
  • systemd-boot-manager: Automatically generates new entries for the systemd-boot-manager and can be easily configured in /etc/sdboot-manage.conf.

Friendly and Active Community

Finally, our ever-growing community is the most important part of our highlight. Without the community, CachyOS would never be able to reach where it is now. The community assist each other and share tips and tricks for a better linux experience. If you would like to be part of our family, join us in our Discord or our forum.