Stable? Good? Bad? Annoying? Is it beginner friendly? Should I try KDE or Gnome?

I’ve only used Mint and SteamOS and from what I understand KDE should be similar to SteamOS Desktop mode because that is KDE based, right?

I don’t plan to distro hop any time soon, but I’m just curious if I ever get a new laptop I might try it to take advantage of it supposedly being descent at performance optimisation

  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    1 month ago

    It’s pretty good. Our household mains it on several computers.

    It uses fish as its login shell which makes people screech, so you can change that if you want, use bash. Other than that it’s pretty good? Once or twice I’ve seen their linux-cachyos and linux-cachyos-lts kernels pushed in a state where they wouldn’t boot, so it pays to use Cachy’s kernel manager to download the standard linux and linux-lts kernels as a backup, which is not difficult.

    Other than that it performs well, has a variety of (unthemed, granted) desktops, can be faster for games by a little bit. One thing to note is that it comes with Shelly, a GUI for accessing the Arch User Repository by default. This is dicey because AUR packages are all just user submitted scripts, so always check the pkgbuild first in case an old package is hijacked and tries to download js shit.

    It’s probably better than Endeavour, because it comes with much more useful stuff and doesn’t use fuckin dracut in place of mkinitcpio. Most likely the best prepackaged Arch?

    The forum is also pretty friendly.

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    • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      One thing to note is that it comes with Shelly, a GUI for accessing the Arch User Repository by default. This is dicey because AUR packages are all just user submitted scripts, so always check the pkgbuild first in case an old package is hijacked and tries to download js shit.

      Sorry to be nitpicky but that isn’t exactly true for Shelly. Yes, out of the box, AUR is enabled by default in Shelly GUI but this can be turned off:

      Another thing is that Shelly is not just for AUR. It handles AUR, official Arch repo packages, Flatpaks/Flathub, and even AppImages. Shelly also has security features like PKGBUILD verification. For more info check out this page: https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/post_install_setup/#updating-the-system

      One other thing is, Cachy-Hello - the first app you’re introduced to. Within it, the Install Apps link directs users to the CachyOS Package Installer, like they want you to use that by default. I could have saved time and not installed Bazaar for Flatpaks if I had known about Shelly beforehand.

      • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        1 month ago

        Yes, out of the box, AUR is enabled by default

        Yeah, like I said. I also don’t like flatpak fwiw. I just think users should be warned more about the AUR than Cachy does, given the recent shitstorms with compromised aur packages.

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        • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          1 month ago

          I also don’t like flatpak fwiw.

          I can dig that. I know Snap and Flathub turn some people off. I only use flatpaks when I can’t find an app in the official repo or as an appimage. Or when an official repo version app acts ‘squirrely’ on my system for some reason, but the flatpak version plays nice. Go figure.

          You are right to warn about the AUR. I won’t mess with that shit either.

          • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            1 month ago

            I used to be the “average ‘install whatever from the aur’ fan” but as of recent I have become the “average ‘only install from official repos or build it from source’ enjoyer”. Feels pretty good honestly.

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            • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              4·
              1 month ago

              What’s wrong

              Snaps were the original version. The main hate is because the Snap system is proprietary to Canonical and Ubuntu. Snaps were also laggy - very slow and took up a lot of resources when initially ran.

              When Flatpaks were introduced, they were meant to run on all distros and not just Ubuntu, but by then, the distaste for anything Snap-like was set in.

              At least, that’s how I’m remembering it.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      It uses fish as its login shell which makes people screech, so you can change that if you want, use bash. Other than that it’s pretty good?

      I’m still waiting on a distro to use xonsh as the login shell.

      (Bit of a joke, but xonsh is actually really fun to use if you like Python and Bash. Honestly great as a glue shell if you use a lot of Python scripts. Plus the webui for config is actually pretty slick.)