Gaming with CachyOS Guide

Welcome to the world of gaming on CachyOS, a leading Arch-based distribution! This guide will help you get started with playing your favorite games on this operating system.

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the fun stuff, it is essential to ensure that your graphics card drivers are installed and working properly. If your graphics card is not functioning optimally, you won’t be able to play games properly.

Essential Packages

To make things easier for you, CachyOS has grouped all the necessary packages for gaming into one meta package. This makes the installation process faster and easier. Simply run the following command in your terminal:

sudo pacman -S cachyos-gaming-meta

Note

The cachyos-gaming-meta package installs the following packages. If you find that it is missing any packages, feel free to let the CachyOS team know.

Steam

For Steam users, playing games on CachyOS is a breeze! Simply open Steam and select the Proton option, and you’re ready to enjoy your games.

Note

Notebook users with NVIDIA GPUs should refer to the following guide: NVIDIA PRIME Render Offload

Proton

Don’t worry, Proton is very simple! In just a few clicks, you can have it set up and ready to use. Check out the screenshots below for a step-by-step guide.

You can use Proton to play your Windows games on Linux.

Note

To check if your game is compatible with Linux, visit proton-db.

CachyOS provides various Proton versions for improved performance, including proton-cachyos, proton-ge-custom, proton-tkg-git, and the official Proton versions proton-experimental and proton.

Performance

Power Profile Switching on Demand

Note

This behavior is slightly different with intel_pstate. On Intel, the governor remains at powersave but the EPP/EPB values are set to performance.

CachyOS provides a wrapper script game-performance which uses power-profiles-daemon to temporarily switch the current power profile to performance. The performance profile increases the system’s power levels and changes the CPU governor to performance.

When this script is used to run a game, the system will be set to use the performance profile as long as the game is running. The previously used power profile will be restored once the game is closed. Feral’s GameMode has similar behavior but it should not be used as CachyOS ships with ananicy-cpp.

How to add game-performance to Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher and Bottles

Steam

1. Open your Steam Library
2. Right click the game’s title and select Properties.
3. On the General tab you’ll find Launch Options section.
4. Add the following Launch Option:

   game-performance %command%

Heroic Games Launcher

1. On the left panel open Settings.
2. Go to Game defaults then click on Advanced.
3. In the wrapper command section. Add the following line without any argument:

   game-performance

4. Click on the plus sign to save.

Lutris

1. On the top right open the hamburger menu
2. Go to Preferences/Global options.
3. Enable Advanced Mode on the top right.
4. Scroll down to Command prefix and add the following line:

   game-performance

5. Save changes.

Bottles (Broken)

1. Open an existing Bottle.
2. Open the cogwheel(Next to Run executable).
3. Add the following line in the Launch Options field:

   game-performance

Proton-CachyOS

Proton-CachyOS is based on proton-experimental and applies a bunch of patches on top of it:

• Wine-staging patches
• Wine Fullscreen FSR
• Reflex support for Wine and DXVK
• Wineserver gets LTO’d at compilation

In addition, proton-cachyos is compiled against native system libraries and compiler instructions, which can further improve performance

Wine-CachyOS

This is a solution similar to proton-cachyos, but as standalone version, which can be used by Lutris, Heroic, Bottles and others or even as a system-wide wine solution.

Bottles

Bottles is an application that allows you to easily manage Windows prefixes on your favorite Linux distributions.

Bottles can also make use of different runners like Lutris and are all manageable within the application. Bottles offers the option of a gaming-oriented prefix. You can also install dependencies, add EXE files, and use their one-click installers for gaming-related apps like EA App or Battle.net.

To install Bottles, run the following command in your terminal:

sudo pacman -S bottles

If you want to know more about it, check out their documentation.

Lutris

Lutris serves as a central hub for all your games on CachyOS. With Lutris, you can efficiently manage your game runners, including Wine, Proton, and emulators. You can even customize their parameters! To install Lutris, execute the following command in your terminal:

sudo pacman -S lutris

Lutris guide

Example on how to install the Epic Games Store inside Lutris on CachyOS.

1. Set the proper Wine runner

Many games perform optimally with the Proton-GE runner, so it’s advisable to configure it before installing anything else.

2. Install the Epic Games Store

It’s as simple as clicking with your mouse; Lutris automates the entire installation process.

3. Sign in to the Epic Games Store with your account.

Yes, you can even sign into the Epic Games Store, and Lutris will display all your owned games in your library.

4. Final words about Lutris

• You can launch games through Lutris simply by clicking the Play button.
• You can also launch a store using the Play button and then run games from within the store, just like you do on Windows.

FAQ (WIP)

• How can i add a parameter when launching a game? For example -dx11

  Right click on the game icon > Configure > Game options > Arguments

• Does game-performance work on Lutris?

  Yes. Look here

Games stores

• Epic Games Store
• Ubisoft Connect
• GOG Galaxy

Raytracing

The Arch Wiki has already provides comprehensive instructions on how to enable raytracing for various hardware platforms.

• Raytracing on the NVIDIA
• Raytracing on the AMD
• Raytracing on the Intel

With this guide, you are now ready to start gaming on CachyOS. Enjoy!