Linux Gaming

I only use EndeavourOS and don't speak by experience for CachyOS. While EndevaourOS is a more traditional Archlinux with some additional tools and GUI elements, and some branding, Cachy is a more optimized OS trying to squeezing out performance. I feel like EndeavourOS is a bit more minimal, bit more CLI oriented and is closer to original Archlinux. CachyOS is a bit more opinionated, has strong focus on performance optimizations and may come with a bit more pre-selected applications for a head start. At least this is my impression I get.

I game a lot on my EndeavourOS and its well suited for that case. On the other side, CachyOS will may have an edge on this point and is also well suited for everyday tasks.

Lot of people will recommend Cachy, because of the performance optimizations they do. These are metrics you can compare directly with benchmarks and "proof it scientifically". However all the other differences are not that scientific to put into words and often are a taste and philosophy difference. Therefore I can't say which one is better (even if I tested Cachy too). They just have different focus, building on the same foundation.

I've been running EndeavourOS on my server for about 3 years, and on desktop for about 18 months. My DE is KDE plasma which is perfect for me, being similar to windows but customisable.

You can deploy the CachyOS performance tweaks and kernel to EndeavourOS if you fancy best of both. (See the CachyOS install guide).

Personally I prefer the barebones of EOS to something that has already made software choices for me.

Cachyos is very user friendly. I moved from popos and love it.

100% of endeavor is using command line pacman for all your application installs and updates. They are like base arch with a wizard for installing. I installed them once in a work system and tried them for half a day before saying to myself “this isn’t worth it.”

Both are using arch, but cachyos has a much better curated set of bins for gaming for people who don’t want to pick and choose what things do what and really dig deep into custom repos and modules.

Cachyos has been rock solid for me too. Highly recommend limine for a bootloader with a btrfs partition so you can have btrfs snapshots that are easily recoverable (other loaders work, limine is just what I see recommended the most for it for some reason, I think I use systemd-boot for mine.)

Cachyos has a wiki with an install guide as well as a gaming section I highly recommend following.

Pop os bins are so out of date, I gained substantial performance and all the games I really had to fuck with to get working on pop 22/24 just fucking worked- no joke- on cachy. You don’t need to constantly update your proton versions either, cachyos keeps their one up to date as part of the distro and it’s already there in steam as an option if you install the gaming packages they have prepared with gamemode and other things.

You can’t just copy your home folder over. Arch does things differently than pop/ubuntu. You can however move over stuff to your new user folder bit by bit. My Firefox config went over and even kept my signed in sessions.

Anywho, your call on which to go with.

The main difference is cachy has their own repos that contain packages optimized for more modern cpus, although they are optional they could potentially be a speed improvement.

Having tried both i would say cachyos is probably better for gaming and a bit more noob friendly but only slightly.

I used Endeavor for a long time, then out of curiosity I put CachyOS on my laptop. On CachyOS, games seem to have been a shade faster, but that's it. The updates got stuck after a while, the system kept running into some errors during the update process. Not to mention that after a while I always ran out of storage space on the hard drive, I had to manually delete the limine+btrfs backups, even though it was set that the last four could be max on the vinyon. So I switched from CachyOS back to Endeavor. I like the command line and its minimalism better.

Daily driving EndeavourOS for over a year, game daily with no issues. Command line updating isn't a big deal, just

sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Syu

Alias it or use a terminal like quake that disappears. If you want yay to just do it's packages use -Sua instead.

My PS5 controller worked out of the box.

Bazzite is fine as a daily driver, just sayin.

I've been daily driving CachyOS for probably a year or two now? And it's been pretty solid for just about everything.

It doesn't feel like Arch as much to me. A gui package manager, easy-to-use optimized packages, and most things working easily out of the box make it feel more like Mint without all the extra default applications (which I prefer). There's lots of room to tinker, but I don't do much of that, and it runs great.

I mostly game but I do need my system to have support for the everyday tasks I sometimes need to do, so I fell bazzite is a no go.

I wouldn't recommend either, personally. Bazzite, however, is a top recommendation. What makes you think it's not suitable for "everyday tasks"?

having used cachy and bazzite before I can tell you both work fine for daily browsing/gaming/programming

but after actually reading the last line of your post I would recommend cachy, looks like you will need to install very specific drivers for those peripherals and you will have an easier time doing so in cachy than bazzite

I have tried both Endeavour and Cachy, and I feel no real difference.

I used KDE Plasma on both and the experience is so similar, so I would say go with the one you feel for.

I chose Cachy due to it being new and popular.

I'm planning on installing CachyOS on my desktop and the main reason for me is so I can have easily snapper snapshots set up with btrfs and limine.

How comfortable are you using the terminal to install and update your apps? EndevourOS and (I think) CachyOS do not have a GUI software store to pick your apps from. You typically install software using pacman or yay. They are great options if you’re comfortable with it. But if you’re new to Linux or just want to stick with GUI tools, then I’d stay with PopOS or Bazzite or Linux Mint or something like that.

It really comes down to how much you want already set up. Archinstall = base system with DE / Endeavour = base system with helpful scripts / Cachyos = Full System

All of them work. How much work you want to put in and how close you want to stay to Vanilla.

I liked the Endeavour defaults and post-install wizard better tbh