CachyOS review

CachyOS is currently top of the pile at Distrowatch, and is one of the most popular distros in 2026 . It’s Arch based, and has a range of customisation and kernel options for the gamer and discerning user. It’s mantra is speed (blazingly fast) and it’s surprising light on system resources.

I put it on my laptop and took it for a test drive. The installation is fast and straightforward. If offers a range of options, including 18 desktops and window managers (such as Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc) and bootloaders (Grub, Refind, Systemd and Limine)

The Limine bootloader

There are many bootloaders for Linux, Grub (Grand Unified Bootloader) being the most common. Systemd boot is another alternative that many consider to be quicker and leaner, along with Limine.

The official documentation for Limine is not easy to follow, consisting of a single Github page with links to various markdown files. It would be difficult for a person with limited experience to follow. I think the poor quality of the docs does a disservice to the project, as it’s a modern, fast, lightweight and customisable bootloader.

I would consider myself an experienced Linux user, and have run distros such as Arch and Nixos over the past eight years. Yet my attempts with Limine on an Ubuntu machine proved unsuccessful. I managed to load the splash screen, but when I tried to boot into an OS it kept giving me errors - the path to the bootloader could not be found. Numerous attempts at different paths kept giving the same unsuccessful result.

Enter Cachy

But then there is CachyOS. If you want to use Limine, Cachy makes it very easy. The process is painless. During installation you get the option of Limine with snapper btrfs snapshots, easily integrated into the machine.

Works a charm. Snapshots are automatically created every time you install a new package etc. This has the advantage of allowing you to rollback to a previous install state in the case of a new package update bricking your system or causing instability.

Performance

Base XFCE running with no open applications runs at about 600MB, which is very tidy. Once you open something like Firefox, it will jump to about 1GB with one tab open. For a desktop this is still quite economical, compared to other distros.

The Hello app has some useful features for installing software and tweaking your system – this is good for users who are not comfortable with the command line or terminal, and ensures that CachyOS will have a broad user base.

Overall I would not hesitate to recommend Cachy OS as a daily driver.