Link: https://www.howtogeek.com/i-tried-cachyos-but-bazzite-is-still-my-linux-gaming-distro-of-choice/?=0

CachyOS has taken the Linux world by storm lately. It’s currently one of the most popular Linux distros, and for good reason — it’s fast, polished, and, most importantly, reliable. I’ve used it myself, and I can see why so many people, especially Linux gamers, are fans of it. That said, if I were building a Linux gaming system, I’d choose Bazzite over CachyOS, and it boils down to one key reason.

CachyOS is a solid gaming distro

Giving credit where it’s due

CachyOS is an Arch-made-easy distro, giving you all the benefits of Arch without the technical hassle. You get a proper graphical installer to streamline the setup process, while the CachyOS Hello app offers one-click access to routine maintenance tasks like updating mirrors, installing gaming packages, adjusting system settings, and more.

That said, the real reason behind CachyOS’s astronomical rise to fame is its performance. The distro ships with its own custom Linux kernel, aptly named the CachyOS kernel, which is optimized for modern x86-64 processors. The official repositories also contain packages compiled for these architectures to take advantage of the CPU-specific optimizations.

All these optimizations help CachyOS squeeze more performance out of your hardware, making it a great choice for gamers. With the same hardware, you may see higher frame rates, better 1 percent lows, and more responsive gameplay compared with other Linux distros. Granted, the gains aren't anything extraordinary — CachyOS won't magically make a game that was otherwise unplayable run smoothly on your hardware — but the extra performance is certainly nice to have.

But it’s still an Arch-based distro

Performance matters, but so does reliability

CachyOS is based on Arch Linux, and there's a reason Arch isn't generally recommended for Linux newcomers. You see, Arch is a rolling-release distro, which means package updates become available as soon as they're released. This is usually good news for gamers because they get quick access to the latest features and performance improvements. However, it also introduces additional maintenance overhead.

You're expected to update your system regularly, ideally weekly or at least every couple of weeks. If you put off updates for too long, you might run into problems when you finally update, including keyring errors, outdated mirror lists, and other technical conflicts.

There's also the fact that constantly dealing with cutting-edge software can affect system stability. While most updates go smoothly, a buggy update can occasionally break something when you least expect it. It might be a driver, your desktop environment, or even a package dependency that causes your games to stop launching. When that happens, it's on you to figure out what went wrong and fix it.

Granted, CachyOS does provide a safety net for buggy updates and system breakages. It uses the Btrfs file system alongside Snapper to take snapshots before every system update. This way, if an update introduces bugs or breaks your system, you can roll back to a previous working snapshot. It's certainly a useful feature, and one that makes many rolling-release distros more viable for daily use.

Reliability by recovery vs. reliability by design

It's worth pointing out that snapshots are a recovery tool, not a way to prevent breakage in the first place. You still have to deal with a broken system and know how to boot into the appropriate snapshot. There's also a limit to what snapshots cover. By default, Snapper only takes snapshots of the preconfigured subvolumes, which typically include the root file system — not the home directory where your games live.

Now, yes, you can technically configure snapshots for your home directory, but doing so requires a lot of care and attention. Depending on your setup, rolling back personal files could also revert game saves, settings, and other documents alongside the changes you're trying to undo, which is a disaster in its own right.

For someone who's comfortable with Linux, all of this is manageable. However, for someone who has just switched from Windows to Linux to play games, it's a lot of unnecessary technical hassle.

Bazzite is far more reliable and beginner-friendly

It’s a distro designed to be fool-proof

Bazzite is another popular distro for Linux gaming. However, unlike CachyOS, it uses Fedora's Atomic Desktops as its base, offering a balance of stability and up-to-date software. These desktops use an image-based approach to system updates. Instead of updating individual system packages, Bazzite downloads an updated system image, prepares it as a separate deployment, and activates it after a reboot.

This sort of atomic update ensures that system updates are applied as a whole. If something goes wrong during an update, you can boot back into the previous deployment. This reduces the risk of partial updates and dependency conflicts, significantly lowering the chances of system breakage caused by failed updates.

What's more, Bazzite is an immutable distro, which means its core system is read-only. You can't freely modify the base system files as you would on a traditional Linux distro. This prevents applications and packages from casually modifying the underlying system, making Bazzite more resilient to accidental changes and the resulting breakages that can occur on other distros like CachyOS.

Bazzite's immutable nature also means you can't install apps and packages as freely as you can on other distros, since doing so involves modifying the core system. However, this generally isn't a problem for gaming since Steam and Lutris come preinstalled, and you can install your games through these launchers.

Furthermore, you can install system-level RPM packages using rpm-ostree, although this approach is generally discouraged. Instead, you're expected to use Flatpak for traditional desktop apps, Homebrew for command line apps, and Distrobox for software that needs a traditional package manager.

Overall, for someone who just wants to install Linux and play games without worrying too much about maintaining their OS, Bazzite is the more beginner-friendly choice.

Bazzite gives you the console experience

The way I see it, Bazzite offers more of a plug-and-play console gaming experience, which is perfect for casual gamers who aren't interested in worrying about the technicalities of Linux. In fact, you can install Bazzite's HTPC variant, which boots straight into Steam Gaming Mode, giving you a console-like experience based on Steam's Big Picture Mode. From there, you can simply install your Steam games and play them without ever having to worry about the Linux distro underneath.

In comparison, CachyOS is closer to traditional PC gaming. It gives you plenty of options but expects you to be tech-savvy enough to make the most of them and patient enough to troubleshoot problems if and when things go wrong. It certainly gives you more control over the OS, and if you enjoy that, CachyOS is going to be the better distro for you.

However, I just want a system that works. I have limited free time, and I'd rather spend it playing games than optimizing a system for gaming.

so in short - CachyOS requires you to put in expertise and effort to get a little extra, whereas bazzite is letting the experts at universal blue handle the bulk. is that right?

I've found Cachy to be very snappy and responsive, but Bazzite offers a better user experience out of the box.

I'm getting tired of arguing about how Arch has a false reputation of needing more "maintenance", as if you have to update every day or every week or some shit.

Just don't update if you don't want to! Update as often as Debian does, if you so choose! That is the beauty of Arch. You decide.

Sometimes I'll go every day of the work week. Sometimes it'll go a month, or more.

It's been months since I updated my server because Jellyfin had some breaking changes that I haven't been ready to deal with. But it's fine! It's still working! 😆

I wish people would stop perpetrating the lie that Arch somehow requires more "maintenance" than other distros.

My "maintenance" consists of running doas pacman -Syu, typing my password, pressing enter. Oh no, so much maintenance...

Just stop.

And don't get me started on "reliability". 🤡 Ubuntu broke way more often than Arch has, in number of times, and I've been running Arch for probably twice as long as I did Ubuntu. (Like over a decade versus maybe ~5 years.)

So many words just to say "I use Arch, actually." ;)

I wish I could double upvote this. I've been using vanilla arch for years and found that Cathy's edge is more in the eye of the beholder. I've yet to find a measurable difference and on my hw there is almost 0 improvement with using cachy over vanilla arch.

Bazzite is a bloated mess. They put everything in a 7GB iso, lots of things consisting of 1 line of packages to install.

The immutable part has never held any water for me,as I guess if people are afraid of their OSes, maybe that OS is just not for them. No shame in using Windows or MacOS.

Doesn't help that the one time I tried to install bazzite and used LACT,causing a crash, resulted in my Bazzite install somehow removing all installed programs - I might have just been unlucky with a specific version,but that was the first impression I got from it and it was a nasty one.

Edit: words

Edit2: I'm not gatekeeping anything. I just think that people should make up their own minds and stop spreading useless information.

So to summarise, they don't like cachyos because if something goes wrong, you have to roll it back Vs bazzite where if something goes wrong you roll it back. Great, that clears it up.

I let my partners PC go for 6 months without an update on cachy. It updated in one shot with no issues.

CachyOS is the most stable distro I've ever used. It's been like 20 months or so, and I've had exactly a single issue, which resolved itself in like 3 days (kde bug that got fixed quickly and wasn't a big deal either). I have zero problems with only having outdated software in the repo, which is something I can't say about any other distro I've tried. It's the ONLY one where that's the case (obviously would apply to base arch as well).

I have no idea what kind of problems people keep having that leads them to calling it "unstable". I certainly haven't experienced this at all.

"That said, the real reason behind CachyOS’s astronomical rise to fame is" people follow other people

Interesting take on things.

My take is that cachy is no better or worse than steamos. Bazzite is no better or worse than steamos. Since I do most of my gaming on my deck these days, having two options for a desktop/laptop experience that have a similar level of performance, and have never seen a major problem with is a good thing.

Now, ngl, cachy and bazzite aren't my daily drivers on anything. Like I said, I game on my deck mostly, and my laptop is set up for way more casual use with mint. But I've tried them both multiple times, and had zero trouble with them. Wellll, not entirely true. On an ancient (damn near twenty year old) pc I screw around with for funsies, bazzite noped the fuck out. But mint runs like shit on it, so does debian, ubuntu, popos, and everything else I've put on it. Haven't tried cachy on it yet. If it takes something that old to flummox a distro, I ain't mad.

And it's like 5 sentences apart in the article xD

See? See?!

😄 Thanks for sharing!

Hey friend, thanks for having my back on this, I appreciate it. 😊

I fully agree. The level of maintenance on Arch is up to the user. I'm just starting to get really tired of hearing people who don't really understand how Arch really works, or haven't even used it, regurgitate this mere rumor as hard truth.

Just like any system, the level of maintenance you need to do depends entirely on what you have installed. It does not come inherently from Arch or a rolling release. People think that just because the install process is complicated (also a false reputation; everything is explained, so all you need to do is read instructions and type text), the installed system need also be.

It's just uninformed and I'm tired, boss. ❤️

I moved and had my computer shipped via sea. Literally 8 months with no update, update was massive, no issue at all (arch BTW).

Most of my update problems were either a keyring or a problem with an AUR package that had to be uninstalled, update ran, and reinstalled again because of a dependency loop.

I run bazzite now just because I literally don't have to remember to update, but arch-based is completely fine.

The only major problems I every had were on Mint and Opensuse, 12 and 5 years ago respectively. All distros are pretty care-free nowadays I think (except manjaro).

You can run without updates, but sometimes you will not be able to install a new package because dependencies will return Not Found

I think, it's by design, to not maintain a ton of stale dependencies, but maybe I'm doing it wrong, don't know

Definitely, I have run into that many times, indeed. I guess most(?) package mirrors will only keep the current version available for download, or at most two or something?

At that point, it is good to upgrade the system. Installing a new package in that way, without syncing the rest of the system, I suppose essentially and technically counts as a "partial upgrade" which is not supported.

That's a separate thing from "maintenance" though, and an intrinsic behavior of the combined package manager and mirror systems. And also something you can have mixed feelings about. 😅

Yeah, it's clear that partial update is not something you want, and sometimes it stops working until restart, indeed

I guess, you can argue that repository maintainers and distro maintainers are different people, but I feel like it still counts as you can't go on without updates

But I'm fine with that, it didn't break for me yet :)

I’ve been on the same CachyOS partition/install for years now.

That’s never happened to me in any distro.

That sounds right, though both distros are quite preconfigured.

My favorite thing about CachyOS/Arch is how it stops me from footgunning myself.

Okay, I need to make some weird manual tweak… oh look, they’ve already done it and are maintaining it for me.

Package issue? Oh, they’ve already updated it; that was easy.

AUR can of worms? Nope. They’ve already added what I wanted in the main repos. Same with Flatpak stuff.

And my brief adventures with an immutable and “slow” OSes led to further breakage when I needed to fix something esoteric, but Arch is configured to make applying fixes quite easy, and well documented.

My info on other distros is a bit dated though.

I do agree with the articles assessment. I’d probably recommend Bazzite over CachyOS to someone who won’t do any maintenance.

Wait, is Cachy immutable as well, or how do you roll back on it?

9 times out of 10 it's a Nvidia driver problem or hardware problem. Occasionally someone might get a update which is only partly on the server they update from due to timing, but again normally corrected by updating again.

Cachyos has snap shots after every update you can roll back to if something doesn't work.

I always read Brazzite and keep getting disappointed that it isn't a Brazzers themed distro

It takes a lot of snapshots, not just updates iirc.

😉

I have an anecdote where Noctalia Shell broke for me suddenly the other day for some unexplained reason. I imagine it had to do with upgrading the system, but Noctalia had moved from version 4 to 5 and development on version 4 is completely abandoned, so it didn't support my upgraded system or something.

Anyway, so that was a matter of just installing a new Noctalia package. But that was maintenance due to what I had installed on my system, namely software from the AUR, and when I did that I signed up for it. 😅

Regarding the stopped working, after an update and before reboot I usually see videos, wine, and sometimes system settings stop working. But the only thing that breaks is ricochet-refresh client which is AUR and I think it is maybe not made how it should

I don't like either, just go with a normal distro. All distros are nearly equal, shown in benchmarks over and over again. just pick your favorite package manager / release model, that's way more important than 2% more performance in archiving or some bs.

I think I'd use bazzite on a system that was exclusively an entertainment system, like a minipc hooked up to the tv. But that's super expensive to make myself ATM and I've already got a steam machine for that purpose.

Just for completeness sake: I'm also on Nvidia (semi recent, rtx 3080), and it's been fine. I do man it when I say "everything just works", I don't have to do or fix anything.

That's kind of the conclusion this article comes to. The author likes Bazzite because it's an immutable distro, which makes it feel like a console (in a good way), not because of any performance benefits.

I like Bazzite because when I get into some kind of hyperfocus rabbit hole with some kind of tool/language/library/project, it basically forces me to make a Distrobox for it instead of making a mess in my system, and I can easily clean up all of the random packages and dependencies once I get border with it and inevitably start running out of disk space.

Make a soft fork!

The concept of an 'immutable' distro just rubs me the wrong way, personally.

Bazzite has been nothing but a pain in my ass since I put together a build for my wife to play games on. Controller drop out on Bluetooth. Then the next update broke Bluetooth on the entire system. Issues with video output after wake from sleep. The absolute mess that is trying to setup sunshine and get it to work in game mode.

At this point if one more thing happens I'm seriously dumping the entire thing and moving it over to a real distro so I don't have to ever deal with an immutable os ever again.