Hey, I have nothing to do with CachyOS or this Lemmy community, but just wanna say I love this distro.

It’s everything annoying about Arch Linux (to me) fixed, more convenient, and objectively fast as heck. I distro hopped for a long time, but have zero inclination to switch after finding CachyOS. I hardly need to tweak anything. It’s all optimal out of the box! And how many other distros offer their own AVX2/AVX512 packages by default?

…I haven’t even reinstalled CachyOS on my main PC for almost two years. I can’t say that for Ubuntu, Fedora, PopOS, or (heaven forbid) Manjaro, all of which are more ostensibly stable yet always seem to break, or get behind on fixes I need. Kionite was too finicky with the whole immutable thing. Garuda Linux was OK, but more bloated, and not nearly as “optimally preconfigured” as CachyOS.

  • daggermoon@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m glad you’re liking CachyOS. I recently switched from endeavourOS because of the modified kernel and the difference for me was night and day. I haven’t had any major issues so far which is always good. I actually started seriously using Linux with Manjaro which started out good, until the bugs started to show. I don’t see myself switching anytime soon.

  • tpWinthropeIII@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is what I’ve been hoping to read, “almost two years.” But let me ask, how many times in that period have you not been able to fully boot into a working desktop environment?

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Mmm, at least once. But the last time was over a year ago, very much “my own fault.”

      I haven’t reinstalled in ages (2 years, I guess?). My last issue was fundamentally a bootloader/Nvidia one, but I figured it out.

      It’s still Arch underneath. There’s a lot of temptation to tweak to oblivion, but custom configs and the AUR is exactly what gets one in trouble, heh. I find that staying “within” CachyOS, their extra packages, and most of their defaults is a far more stable experience.

      • tpWinthropeIII@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’m installing now

        I also have Nvidia.

        On the notebook I have split Intel / Nvidia. The live installer failed when I tried to select legacy Nvidia. So I had to install using the default in hopes that limiting to Intel GPU at least installs correctly and from there change the kernel to LTS Nvidia somehow.

        What recommendations do you have, given Nvidia, to avoid the bootloader/Nvidia problem you ran into?

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Honestly I just boot to my (desktop) IGP and use Nvidia for compute, and Windows for any gaming, heh.

          CachyOS is a gaming centric distro and should configure the (proprietary) Nvidia drivers by default. In fact, they specifically build Nvidia packages against the kernel so you don’t have to bother with DKMS.

          Go to the CachyOS kernel manager and pick a kernel, if you can get access to it. You will see there are individual Nvidia driver packages shipped with each kernel always kept in sync.

          If you need legacy Nvidia drivers for an older card, I’m less sure of what to do. I am AFK now, but try their forums or chat channels.

          For laptops, I used to have to install asusctl management software for my Nvidia Asus laptop (with a 2060), but it worked out of the box last time I tried.

          • tpWinthropeIII@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I installed cachyOS precisely because the NVIDIA drivers are pre-compiled and already synced. That is, if they will boot, they will boot together like an orchestra. And if they don’t boot, I’m hoping there’s a way to go in there with a live CD and alter the selected kernel. Actually, I wish there was a way to do that from the boot loader.

            So far, CashyOS is working well, but I’ve yet to switch to the Nvidia driver. I will try that today.

            • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              Ugh, I don’t remember the commands of the top of my head, but CachyOS uses systemd-boot by default and bootctl or something similar to auto set boot entries and command line parameters for your kernel from a text file. You can put Nvidia stuff like DRM modeset there from a headless “rescue” mode, which I have done before, and you can even set different parameters for the automatically created “rescue” entry as a kind of emergency access.

              I generally haven’t needed a rescue USB; I’ve been able to fix Nvidia stuff from headless rescue mode (and a phone for looking things up, heh).

              • tpWinthropeIII@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                1 year ago

                Rats. Unfortunately, I didn’t use systemd-boot as my bootloader and instead I used rEFInd. And I didn’t see any rescue options in its settings.