I installed CachyOS for a weekend and it’s now been several months. I love it.
But I would never, ever recommend it to a new user. It still requires someone to be comfortable on the command line and it’s possible to break it if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Bazzite just works. You install it and start logging into your accounts. It’s nearly impossible for a newcomer to break, and perfect for the vast majority of new Linux users.
Recommending Cachy to new users hurts not only those users but the entire Linux ecosystem.
I don’t recommend Mint, either, but only because I am a KDE cultist, I hate Cinnamon, and every time I’ve tried it on anything I’ve had frustrating hardware issues that I have never had on Fedora.
I’m BlameTheAntifa and I have a distro-hopping addiction.
This. I mained Arch for 2 years and still can’t be completely trusted with sudo. Moved to Nobara, would recommend as well. Its a bit more advanced, but you don’t have to touch the command line if you don’t want to and setup is right there step-by-step when you first boot.
I did try Bazzite first. I just couldn’t get used to living the Flatpak life. I know you can force install native packages, but at that point why wouldn’t I just use Nobara, lol.
Honestly, Day 1’ers, I’d rather they run Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. There are strong communities that are noob friendly. Go ahead and install Steam, get some games working, get their feet wet. 99% of the time, they don’t need more than basic stuff. Once they’re over being afraid of not being in windows, then start distro hopping to whatever they want.
I can really suggest Mint for beginners simply because it has an UI for about everything you need somewhat regularly. This means, that you can use GUIs to get familiar and aren’t forced to know your way around the terminal. Its the Ideal beginner Distros (at least from my experience)
I disagree. If you want to use Arch for the first time, install it the Arch way. It’s going to be hard, and that’s the point. Arch will need manual intervention at some point, and you’ll be expected to fix it.
If you use something like Manjaro or CachyOS, you’ll look up commands online and maybe it’ll work, but it might not. There’s a decent chance you’ll break something, and you’ll get mad.
Arch expects you to take responsibility for your system, and going through the official install process shows you can do that. Once you get through that once, go ahead and use an installer or fork. You know where to find documentation when something inevitably breaks, so you’re good to go.
If you’re unwilling to do the Arch install process but still want a rolling release, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s the trunk for several projects, some of them commercial, so you’re getting a lot of professional eyeballs on it. There’s a test suite any change needs to pass, and I’ve seen plenty of cases where they hold off on a change because a test fails. And when it does fail (and it probably will), you just snapper rollback and wait a few days. The community isn’t as big as other distros, so I don’t recommend it for a first distro, but they’re also not nearly as impatient as Arch forums.
Arch is a great distro, I used it for a few years without any major issues, but I did need to intervene several times. I’ve been on Tumbleweed about as long and I’ve only had to snapper rollback a few times, and that was the extent of the intervention.
I agree… I went with arch because I like rolling release but wanted to force myself to learn how things work. Anymore, arch has just as much chance of breaking as any other distro, fairly low honestly. It does however have the most detailed documentation and resources available.
Now on CachyOs cause it’s quicker to setup and the team behind it is so damn on top of getting issues fixed asap.
Yes, Arch is really stable and has been for about 10 years. In fact, I started using Arch just before they became really stable (the /usr merge), and stuck with it for a few years after. It’s a fantastic distro! If openSUSE Tumbleweed stopped working for me, I’d probably go back to Arch. I ran it on multiple systems, and my main reason for switching is I wanted something with a stable release cycle for servers and rolling on desktop so I can use the same tools on both.
It has fantastic documentation, true, but most likely a new user isn’t going to go there, they’ll go to a forum post from a year ago and change something important. The whole point of going through the Arch install process is to force you to get familiar with the documentation. It’s really not that hard, and after the first install (which took a couple hours), the second took like 20 min. I learned far more in that initial install than I did in the 3-ish years I’d used other distros before trying Arch.
CachyOS being easy to setup defeats the whole purpose since users won’t get familiar with the wiki. By all means, go install CachyOS immediately after the Arch install, buy so yourself a favor and go through it. You’ll understand everything from the boot process to managing system services so much better.
Yeah, there are many people that just want the system to work and not have to become full time geeks like some of us are. There are also plenty of distros, atomic or not, that provide that experience. Perfect match. There’s a distro for everyone, from anti-tech people to full blown rocket scientists.
I 100% agree. If you want the Arch experience, you should have the full Arch experience IMO, and that includes the installation process. I don’t mean this in a gatekeepy way, I just mean that’s the target audience and that’s what the distro is expecting.
For a new user, I just cannot recommend Arch because, chances are, that’s not what they actually want. Most new users want to customize stuff, and you can do that with pretty much every distro.
For new users, I recommend Debian, Mint, or Fedora. They’re release based, which is what you want when starting out so stuff doesn’t change on you, and they have vibrant communities. After using it for a year or two, you’ll figure out what you don’t like about the distro and can pick something else.
CachyOS has been flawless on my S/O’s desktop. From an easy install to plenty of documentation available, I couldn’t have asked for much more. During install, there’s an entire step dedicated to checking a box if you want to play games. (To enable non-free drivers).
Yeah, a lady got third degree vagina burns and a fused labia from McDonald’s coffee. She needed surgery and skin grafts. She sued them and asked for her surgery bills paid, but the judge noticed that McDonald’s had already got a lot of complaints about serving dangerously hot coffee, and he decided to award her one full day’s worth of profits to teach them a lesson.
Just went from Bazzite to Steam OS on my TV PC. It’s a little less flexible but I don’t use desktop mode for much on the TV or want to install anything outside a few emulators and external game launchers. I’ve had too many updating issues with Bazzite over the years. The recent deal breaker was sunshine broke preventing it from updating.
As a veteran geek but absolute Linux noob, can you explain a bit the differences of Bazzite vs Mint? Just recently installed Mint on an old laptop, and it went quite smoothly… But the real test will be my plex server!
Mint is Ubuntu/Debian based and uses their Cinnamon desktop environment.
Bazzite is Fedora based and uses KDE as the desktop environment.
The biggest difference is that Bazzite is atomic or immutable distro. The core systems are read only so it’s harder to break. It’s also harder to tinker with. You’re mostly limited to packages that are available in their package manager. You can install other stuff via layering if you really need to tinker.
🤞pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite🤞
oh god dammit
Bazzite is much worse for a new user then cachy. Worse documentation and a load of quirks from being immutable.
Frankly they would be better off with mint unless they need very up to date hardware support for like a laptop.
I installed CachyOS for a weekend and it’s now been several months. I love it.
But I would never, ever recommend it to a new user. It still requires someone to be comfortable on the command line and it’s possible to break it if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Bazzite just works. You install it and start logging into your accounts. It’s nearly impossible for a newcomer to break, and perfect for the vast majority of new Linux users.
Recommending Cachy to new users hurts not only those users but the entire Linux ecosystem.
I don’t recommend Mint, either, but only because I am a KDE cultist, I hate Cinnamon, and every time I’ve tried it on anything I’ve had frustrating hardware issues that I have never had on Fedora.
I’m BlameTheAntifa and I have a distro-hopping addiction.
Bazzite is good for people who break their computer constantly because it’s harder to break. Cachy is better for people who can be trusted with sudo
This. I mained Arch for 2 years and still can’t be completely trusted with sudo. Moved to Nobara, would recommend as well. Its a bit more advanced, but you don’t have to touch the command line if you don’t want to and setup is right there step-by-step when you first boot.
I did try Bazzite first. I just couldn’t get used to living the Flatpak life. I know you can force install native packages, but at that point why wouldn’t I just use Nobara, lol.
Cachy’s not that bad for beginners. I just did a test install on an old Nvidia PC, and it works for gaming OOTB.
We’ve come a looooong way from Manjaro. I wouldn’t wish Manjaro on my worst enemy, to be clear.
I haven’t used Manjaro in many many years, but IIRC it was the first distro I used that reliably supported Wi-Fi.
Are you looking for fellow Bazzite users? (I’m one of them)
Good to meet you brother/sister! We walk a rather lonesome road but glad I stand alongside you
I’m standing slightly to the left of you.
I’M FED UP, GOING TO INSTALL LINUX!
I’M FED UP, THIS IS TOO HARD, I’M GOING BACK TO WINDOWS!
Cachy is one of the easiest distros to use
Every. Single. Time.
If you want to use arch for the first time use an already setup distro like Manjaro.
Cachy is a better starting point then Manjaro. Manjaro gets funky.
Honestly, Day 1’ers, I’d rather they run Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. There are strong communities that are noob friendly. Go ahead and install Steam, get some games working, get their feet wet. 99% of the time, they don’t need more than basic stuff. Once they’re over being afraid of not being in windows, then start distro hopping to whatever they want.
This is exactly right. It’s a journey, not a race.
I can really suggest Mint for beginners simply because it has an UI for about everything you need somewhat regularly. This means, that you can use GUIs to get familiar and aren’t forced to know your way around the terminal. Its the Ideal beginner Distros (at least from my experience)
KDE Neon ftw
I disagree. If you want to use Arch for the first time, install it the Arch way. It’s going to be hard, and that’s the point. Arch will need manual intervention at some point, and you’ll be expected to fix it.
If you use something like Manjaro or CachyOS, you’ll look up commands online and maybe it’ll work, but it might not. There’s a decent chance you’ll break something, and you’ll get mad.
Arch expects you to take responsibility for your system, and going through the official install process shows you can do that. Once you get through that once, go ahead and use an installer or fork. You know where to find documentation when something inevitably breaks, so you’re good to go.
If you’re unwilling to do the Arch install process but still want a rolling release, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s the trunk for several projects, some of them commercial, so you’re getting a lot of professional eyeballs on it. There’s a test suite any change needs to pass, and I’ve seen plenty of cases where they hold off on a change because a test fails. And when it does fail (and it probably will), you just
snapper rollbackand wait a few days. The community isn’t as big as other distros, so I don’t recommend it for a first distro, but they’re also not nearly as impatient as Arch forums.Arch is a great distro, I used it for a few years without any major issues, but I did need to intervene several times. I’ve been on Tumbleweed about as long and I’ve only had to
snapper rollbacka few times, and that was the extent of the intervention.I agree… I went with arch because I like rolling release but wanted to force myself to learn how things work. Anymore, arch has just as much chance of breaking as any other distro, fairly low honestly. It does however have the most detailed documentation and resources available.
Now on CachyOs cause it’s quicker to setup and the team behind it is so damn on top of getting issues fixed asap.
Yes, Arch is really stable and has been for about 10 years. In fact, I started using Arch just before they became really stable (the /usr merge), and stuck with it for a few years after. It’s a fantastic distro! If openSUSE Tumbleweed stopped working for me, I’d probably go back to Arch. I ran it on multiple systems, and my main reason for switching is I wanted something with a stable release cycle for servers and rolling on desktop so I can use the same tools on both.
It has fantastic documentation, true, but most likely a new user isn’t going to go there, they’ll go to a forum post from a year ago and change something important. The whole point of going through the Arch install process is to force you to get familiar with the documentation. It’s really not that hard, and after the first install (which took a couple hours), the second took like 20 min. I learned far more in that initial install than I did in the 3-ish years I’d used other distros before trying Arch.
CachyOS being easy to setup defeats the whole purpose since users won’t get familiar with the wiki. By all means, go install CachyOS immediately after the Arch install, buy so yourself a favor and go through it. You’ll understand everything from the boot process to managing system services so much better.
Yeah, there are many people that just want the system to work and not have to become full time geeks like some of us are. There are also plenty of distros, atomic or not, that provide that experience. Perfect match. There’s a distro for everyone, from anti-tech people to full blown rocket scientists.
I 100% agree. If you want the Arch experience, you should have the full Arch experience IMO, and that includes the installation process. I don’t mean this in a gatekeepy way, I just mean that’s the target audience and that’s what the distro is expecting.
For a new user, I just cannot recommend Arch because, chances are, that’s not what they actually want. Most new users want to customize stuff, and you can do that with pretty much every distro.
For new users, I recommend Debian, Mint, or Fedora. They’re release based, which is what you want when starting out so stuff doesn’t change on you, and they have vibrant communities. After using it for a year or two, you’ll figure out what you don’t like about the distro and can pick something else.
CachyOS has been flawless on my S/O’s desktop. From an easy install to plenty of documentation available, I couldn’t have asked for much more. During install, there’s an entire step dedicated to checking a box if you want to play games. (To enable non-free drivers).
I don’t think it was a poor choice.
Flawless wouldn’t require any documentation.
There are instructions on your McDonalds coffee that say, “This coffee is hot.”
You might feel as though no documentation is necessary here, but clearly it was a critical miss for someone.
Yeah, a lady got third degree vagina burns and a fused labia from McDonald’s coffee. She needed surgery and skin grafts. She sued them and asked for her surgery bills paid, but the judge noticed that McDonald’s had already got a lot of complaints about serving dangerously hot coffee, and he decided to award her one full day’s worth of profits to teach them a lesson.
Everything requires some documentation.
I distro hop regularly, still have to see that one ‘flawless’ distro, or system for that matter.
Agree.
They didn’t say it required documentation, they said it had plenty of documentation should you need it.
And I’m telling you to grab a dictionary and lookup what flawless means
Just a heads up- You appear to be interpreting things in a strictly literal sense.
Some people might view this as trolling.
That’s so passive aggressive it’s impressive.
Just went from Bazzite to Steam OS on my TV PC. It’s a little less flexible but I don’t use desktop mode for much on the TV or want to install anything outside a few emulators and external game launchers. I’ve had too many updating issues with Bazzite over the years. The recent deal breaker was sunshine broke preventing it from updating.
As a veteran geek but absolute Linux noob, can you explain a bit the differences of Bazzite vs Mint? Just recently installed Mint on an old laptop, and it went quite smoothly… But the real test will be my plex server!
Mint is Ubuntu/Debian based and uses their Cinnamon desktop environment.
Bazzite is Fedora based and uses KDE as the desktop environment.
The biggest difference is that Bazzite is atomic or immutable distro. The core systems are read only so it’s harder to break. It’s also harder to tinker with. You’re mostly limited to packages that are available in their package manager. You can install other stuff via layering if you really need to tinker.