With Intel having sunset Clear Linux, when it comes to aggressive out-of-the-box Linux performance there is the Arch Linux based CachyOS as the leading contender. Given the recent releases of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora Workstation 43, if you are curious about the out-of-the-box performance here are some fresh benchmarks of all three using the Framework Desktop.
Nobody will even notice the difference. This is like neovim users shaving 15 microseconds off their startup time, or Gentoo users making a smaller binary by excluding features… Its cool and fun but when picking a Linux distro, probably shouldnt be anyones primary reason.
Gentoo users making a smaller binary by excluding features
Sometimes we do this not for smaller binaries, but for security hardening. Excluding a feature from a standard package sometimes shrinks the attack surface.
Yeah thats true. It has security benefits as well.
That’s not true. I noticed significant FPS boosts on some games I play, including Dune: Awakening and modded Minecraft. In Dune, I went from an average of 65fps on Bazzite to 110fps on Cachy, which was a real shock to me since I’m on a laptop. And I can now run BSL shaders on Minecraft on Ultra settings, something that used to be unplayable, with average FPS of around 124, which is over the 35fps I used to get.
The results aren’t that good with everything, but for the games I’m playing it was a huge improvement and convinced me to immediately switch both my laptop and Steam Deck to Cachy so I could take advantage of it.
Be cautious in attribution. On a different distro I had nvidia drivers installed and working. When they weren’t working It would boot to a black screen under Wayland. Anyway sorted out nvidia with Wayland. Gameplay was decent but sometimes I’d get stutter in heavy detail map areas, but later I realized there was a missing meta driver package, installing that made the system aware of switching fully to the nvidia GPU and performance improved substantially.
Switching distros sometimes provides other drivers or driver versions, which can appear like it made your system faster, when it could be on par on the other OS if the right package components installed.
The whole correlation causation scenario
That huge difference cant be an optimized kernel. Must be graphics driver differences…A kernel cant double the fps you get. Maybe a few more frames but thats it. Perhaps cachy has proper drivers and you had poor drivers on the other one.
My Legion Go runs CachyOS and it works like a charm.
Am I missing something? I’m seeing like a 1-3% difference in most things aside from that Pogocache bench.
well that and cachys opengl performance is like 1.5x the other distros in super tux kart, so if you had some legacy games, its run better in cachy probably but raw modern hardware would have likely made it trivial. the one exception i could imagine where opengl performance probably matters is heavily modded java minecraft
I’ve noticed really good improvements with modded Minecraft. I’m now getting over 100fps on a laptop with BSL shaders set to ultra. That’s pretty good to me, considering I wasn’t even getting 40fps before while on Bazzite.
There’s a Super Tux Cart?!?!?!!
Always has been
- happy cake day! 2):
i could imagine where opengl performance matters is heavily modded java minecraft yup, that’s enough for me forever (a very long time!) jk, it’s not forever; but it’s a long time.
Gotta link for that? Can’t imagine what tuning would make that possible simply from library choices or kernel flags.
its in the review, in the super tux kart benchmark section. under vulkan, their FPS is functionally the same. Under OpenGL, Cachy is somehow significantly faster
I think this cant be some odd anomaly, because that gap is huge
Granted in some cases all three Linux distributions were performing close to one another on this AMD Ryzen AI Max+ desktop.
No complaints with cachyos, it just works, has solid defaults, I like it over alternatives since I like using the aur repos, but honestly now that ive adjusted to linux, all of what I need could be grabbed through a flathub appstore like bazaar/software, any disto works, the performance gains are marginal, don’t really need to use the terminal at all on cachyos, but even less so on other distros, unless you constantlly finnick/tweak and want to be on arch for that purpose, any distros fine and should work pretty much the same, most like mint are much easier to use and setup, since you never feel the need to use the terminal on those.
I think the biggest benefit of cachyos is actually all the des you can install when launching, easy to reinstall and try all the popular ones.
Is Cachy pronounced cashy or catchy?
Yes
i pronounce it as cauchy
Neither. How do you pronounce cache? Now add a Y at the end. That’s how you pronounce cachy.
So, the first one they said.
That’s the first one… Wait, how do you think Cache is pronounced??
Cache with a pronounced first syllable (Kash) while Cash is just uh… not so pronounced? I dunno how to explain.
with a pronounced first syllable
They are one syllable words…
always my go to distro. love CachyOS.
literally manjaro 2.0 but by an aspie.
manjaro 2.0
Was that insult intentional and if yes then what did they do to deserve it?
