On 2026-01-02 17:42, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:28 AM William Park via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:

This is my first email from new distro (CachyOS).

Now that you have it installed, what are your initial impressions?

Will someone coming from Kubuntu, Debian or Fedora KDE be comfortable there?

- Evan

(Warning: long post)

1. Desktop:

Since CachyOS gives you choices of practically all the desktops out there, you can just select what you're familiar with. You don't have to "learn" a new desktop. I choose KDE, because I've been using KDE since the beginning. In the past, KDE was big and slow. Now, it's still biggest, but it's the fastest.

2. Package:

CachyOS uses "pacman", Debian/Ubuntu uses "apt", and Fedora uses "dnf". Command/option may be different, but the function is the same. Eg. For install,
sudo apt update; sudo apt install vim
sudo dnf install vim
sudo pacman -S vim

3. Bootloader:

I had so much problem with this. GRUB can't deal with the EFI boot table that my motherboard/firmware produces. Eg. This is my current boot table: (Warning: long lines)

BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006
Boot0000* Limine HD(1,GPT,97f82f98-e0c7-431b-ac9c-1cf526497151,0x1000,0x400000)/\EFI\LIMINE\LIMINE_X64.EFI
Boot0001* UEFI OS HD(1,GPT,97f82f98-e0c7-431b-ac9c-1cf526497151,0x1000,0x400000)/\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI0000424f
Boot0002* Hard Drive BBS(HD,,0x0)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
Boot0003* CD/DVD Drive BBS(CDROM,,0x0)0000474f00004e4fab000000010000005f00300036003a00300030002d003100200048004c002d00440054002d00530054002000440056004400520041004d002000470048003200300000000501090003000000007fff040001044e00ef47642dc93ba041ac194d51d01b4ce6300036003a00300030002d003100200048004c002d00440054002d00530054002000440056004400520041004d002000470048003200300000007fff04000000424f
Boot0004* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive BBS(129,,0x0)
Boot0005* UEFI:Removable Device BBS(130,,0x0)
Boot0006* UEFI:Network Device BBS(131,,0x0)

And, it is scanned and generated from my setup:

/dev/sda -- running CachyOS now.
/dev/sd[bcdefg] -- multi disk BTRFS raid1 filesystem, mostly for backup.
/dev/sdh -- old Slackware.

I don't know if it's firmware issue, hardware issue, or software issue.

All Debian/Ubuntu distros failed to install.
OpenSUSE also failed to install.
Fedora succeeded sometimes and failed sometimes. It would spend more time "loading bootloader" than "installing software".
CachyOS gives you 5 bootloaders (grub, systemd-boot, refind, another refind, limine) -- grub failed, systemd-boot failed. Refind and Limine succeeded. I choose Limine (more below).

4. Filesystem:

Ubuntu/Debian defaults to "ext4", Fedora defaults to "btrfs" at rudimentary level, and Cachy defaults to "btrfs" with more functions.

You can do "system rollback". In fact, I used it yesterday, when I screwed up the system after installing VirtualBox. Every time you install package using "pacman", it takes a snapshot and put it in the boot menu. So, next time you boot, you get the normal Limine boot menu, with snapshots entries. You select the snapshot you want (in my case, before VirtualBox), and you're up with that snapshot. Then, when you're satisfied it's the right one, you restore it as main system.

Fedora will probably follow Cachy, because you can do system rollback without all the "Atomic" or "Timeshift" sillyness. I tried Fedora Kinoite, and what I got was more maintenance and headache. The system part is atomic, yes. But, in order to install anything, you have to use Toolbox container which has its own system of "user:group". So, I had "user:group" in the main system, and "nobody:nobody" in Toolbox system. I ended up with 2 systems to maintain.

"btrfs" allows you to do backup easier and faster, by dumping from an old snapshot to a new snapshot. This is what I want to learn, because this is what other distros will be adopting.

They say "btrfs" is slower than "ext4". But, I haven't noticed it. In fact, Cachy is very crisp. It could be from all that optimizations they compiled with. Who knows. I'm just a user.

5. Migration: Slackware -> CachyOS

I did so many practice runs, and still I screwed up and had to "rollback" the system.

Firefox and Thunderbird have been migrated. Tip: copy ~/.mozilla, and do "firefox --ProfileManager" to select your old profile. Don't run firefox first, and then do "about:profiles". That's because you're contaminating ~/.mozilla before switching over.
Installed VirtualBox from Cachy repository. I didn't have to download from Oracle. It's definitely faster.
Cross-compile tool chains were easy to install. In compiling kernel for Raspberry Pi, Cachy is 10% faster than Fedora or Debian.
Everything is so automated, that I didn't have to copy over anything in /etc. Except /etc/fstab, but even that is just append.
Changed my shell to "bash". I just couldn't stand "fish".

6. Multimedia:

With CachyOS, all the needed codecs are downloaded for you, which is what "package manager" should do. But, I don't have too many movies on hand to test. I noticed that "mplayer" and "vlc" are available from repository, and "mpv" is installed from the iso.

7. Conclusion:

To answer Evan's question:

Will someone coming from Kubuntu, Debian or Fedora KDE be comfortable there?

Yes. If you pick the desktop you know, then everything is where it should be, and all the apps are what you were using before. Except for, package managers, of course.

Now, you can select "ext4" as your filesystem, and you really would have nothing to learn. I chose "btrfs" because I want to learn "btrfs".

--William