Some people here may have been informed, some entertained, and others may applaud themselves by having avoided my distribution hopping of the last half-year. TL;DR: I did it. I installed CachyOS. And I'm happy with it so far. (But then again I was happy with Kubuntu and Fedora at the time I installed them too...) Recap for anyone keeping score: My hardware is a GMKTec EVO-X2 which uses the AMD "Strix Halo" architecture (Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU/NPU/GPU). My core use cases are running local LLMs, video editing/production, and Steam games. In a quest for the best balance of compatibility, stability and performance I have tried - KDE Neon - TuxedoOS - Kubuntu - Bazzite - Fedora - CachyOS (wouldn't install) - Kubuntu LTS - And now, as of this past weekend, CachyOS again Pretty well the only thing these distros had in common was KDE, a must-have in this search. (There's enough to learn about each distro, I don't need to keep relearning a GUI.) The ability to run AI software stacks and apps on this (relatively) bleeding edge hardware requires a distribution which is either officially supported by the software (Kubuntu LTS) or a community capable of providing sufficient unofficial support (everything else). Early on I learned that I would have to make tradeoffs between having current software and having a stable system. Of the distros above it seemed like only Fedora, Kubuntu and CachyOS even had sub-communities that cared about my use cases and hardware. In Fedora's case, the existence of said community enabled/allowed an update to the "linux-firmware" package to break LLM software on my platform and sat on fix for more than three months (because I no longer run it I don't even know if that fix has been released yet). And then there's Kubuntu LTS. Officially supported by AMD, this approach would, one would hope, avoid such severe breakage. It did, at least regarding the AI and video drivers. However, the 6.14 kernel was simply too old to support important features of this new CPU. Furthermore, going from Fedora to Kubuntu LTS was like a step back in time. My video software and kernel were now many releases older. Old Handbrake on Kubuntu would not read the backup of the config file I'd saved from New Handbrake on Fedora. And it seems unconscionable to me that any distro would not make one single decent browser that didn't force snaps upon me. The process of replacing Firefox-the-snap with Firefox-the-deb is well documented, but, as I found out, not particularly stable. I was receiving error messages upon starting Firefox that not even a purge-then-reinstall would fix. Sheesh, I thought I was going to Kubuntu LTS for its stability; yet mere weeks after installation its browser -- one of the components of it that I use the most -- breaks beyond repair. The fallback Falkon browser that's a part of KDE couldn't render any web page made in the last two decades. So enough of this. Then I recalled William Park's recent GTALUG post <https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/thread/WNBZ36RA2N7G4VESRXD62GKQI5ARFYDP/> about moving from Slackware(!) to CachyOS and having a good experience. I had to re-evaluate -- I had previously avoided CachyOS because of the instability inherent in its rolling release model. But since "stable" distros such as Fedora and Kubuntu had already let me down, why not try CachyOS again? At very least I would be confident that its rapid release cycle would ensure that I had the minimal kernel rev I need (6.18.4) and that fixes in linux-firmware would not be sat on for months. So then I tried again to install CachyOS and discovered why my first attempt had failed. CachyOS has a very unique install-time quirk -- the EFI partition. This is a FAT32-formatted chunk of your storage that is normally mounted under /boot/efi and has to be at least 100MB (maybe 200MB if you're dual-booting with Windows or want to have multiple boot options). *CachyOS won't let you install without an EFI partition of at least 2GB*. This is fine if you're starting with a fresh drive, but will likely require manual resizing (and maybe movement) of partitions if you want to dual-boot or have anything previous that you want to keep. So I rebooted into my favourite PC repair tool, repartitioned so that my EFI area is now 4GB, and CachyOS is finally happy to install. I understand that all this space is needed to accommodate btrfs snapshots into which you may want to boot if you need to rollback due to an update breaking things. In hindsight maybe Fedora -- which also likes btrfs for its filesystems -- would have benefitted from this too. So far, touch wood, all is good. All my hardware and peripherals were recognized and work fine. In fact CachyOS is the first distro I've ever installed that picked the correct audio device immediately. I note that the EFI partition (here mounted as /boot) already has almost 600MB in use. I have not installed Steam or the AI software suite yet but I see that the documentation to do both appears robust. The video software is current, functioning, and for the most part taking advantage of this system hardware. The software maintenance system is ... different, but having to know one's way around dnf, apt, flatpak and snap this system is easy enough to pick up. Things feel "snappier" but I can't quantify it, and I haven't yet investigated if further system specific fine tuning can be done. If there's interest I'll report back on how well the AI and games work once installed as well as any hiccups in day-to-day use. And thanks, WIlliam. PS: Yes I know that Kubuntu LTS 26.04 is coming up in April and will refresh its app releases. It might even ship with kernel 6.20 which doesn't exist yet. But then it will be frozen in time for another two years. Don't want that, not on new hardware whose features have not been fully exploited yet. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
Thank you for keeping us updated! I continue to use very old hardware, so this is less necessary for me, but it is great to see how things are going for those using new hardware, and installing for the first time these days. I am especially interested as I think a lot of hardware that can't run the latest Windows is going to have Linux installed on it :-) Microsoft seemingly never met a footgun it didn't like, in spite of having access to essentially anyone in the world. As my parents age I am thinking of trying them on Linux so that I can help them remotely, and the ease-of-use for desktop Linux has never been better. Thanks again! On Tue, 20 Jan 2026 at 03:33, Evan Leibovitch via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Some people here may have been informed, some entertained, and others may applaud themselves by having avoided my distribution hopping of the last half-year.
TL;DR: I did it. I installed CachyOS. And I'm happy with it so far. (But then again I was happy with Kubuntu and Fedora at the time I installed them too...)
Recap for anyone keeping score: My hardware is a GMKTec EVO-X2 which uses the AMD "Strix Halo" architecture (Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU/NPU/GPU). My core use cases are running local LLMs, video editing/production, and Steam games.
In a quest for the best balance of compatibility, stability and performance I have tried
- KDE Neon - TuxedoOS - Kubuntu - Bazzite - Fedora - CachyOS (wouldn't install) - Kubuntu LTS - And now, as of this past weekend, CachyOS again
Pretty well the only thing these distros had in common was KDE, a must-have in this search. (There's enough to learn about each distro, I don't need to keep relearning a GUI.)
The ability to run AI software stacks and apps on this (relatively) bleeding edge hardware requires a distribution which is either officially supported by the software (Kubuntu LTS) or a community capable of providing sufficient unofficial support (everything else).
Early on I learned that I would have to make tradeoffs between having current software and having a stable system. Of the distros above it seemed like only Fedora, Kubuntu and CachyOS even had sub-communities that cared about my use cases and hardware. In Fedora's case, the existence of said community enabled/allowed an update to the "linux-firmware" package to break LLM software on my platform and sat on fix for more than three months (because I no longer run it I don't even know if that fix has been released yet).
And then there's Kubuntu LTS. Officially supported by AMD, this approach would, one would hope, avoid such severe breakage. It did, at least regarding the AI and video drivers. However, the 6.14 kernel was simply too old to support important features of this new CPU. Furthermore, going from Fedora to Kubuntu LTS was like a step back in time. My video software and kernel were now many releases older. Old Handbrake on Kubuntu would not read the backup of the config file I'd saved from New Handbrake on Fedora. And it seems unconscionable to me that any distro would not make one single decent browser that didn't force snaps upon me. The process of replacing Firefox-the-snap with Firefox-the-deb is well documented, but, as I found out, not particularly stable. I was receiving error messages upon starting Firefox that not even a purge-then-reinstall would fix.
Sheesh, I thought I was going to Kubuntu LTS for its stability; yet mere weeks after installation its browser -- one of the components of it that I use the most -- breaks beyond repair. The fallback Falkon browser that's a part of KDE couldn't render any web page made in the last two decades. So enough of this.
Then I recalled William Park's recent GTALUG post <https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/thread/WNBZ36RA2N7G4VESRXD62GKQI5ARFYDP/> about moving from Slackware(!) to CachyOS and having a good experience. I had to re-evaluate -- I had previously avoided CachyOS because of the instability inherent in its rolling release model. But since "stable" distros such as Fedora and Kubuntu had already let me down, why not try CachyOS again? At very least I would be confident that its rapid release cycle would ensure that I had the minimal kernel rev I need (6.18.4) and that fixes in linux-firmware would not be sat on for months.
So then I tried again to install CachyOS and discovered why my first attempt had failed. CachyOS has a very unique install-time quirk -- the EFI partition. This is a FAT32-formatted chunk of your storage that is normally mounted under /boot/efi and has to be at least 100MB (maybe 200MB if you're dual-booting with Windows or want to have multiple boot options). *CachyOS won't let you install without an EFI partition of at least 2GB*. This is fine if you're starting with a fresh drive, but will likely require manual resizing (and maybe movement) of partitions if you want to dual-boot or have anything previous that you want to keep. So I rebooted into my favourite PC repair tool, repartitioned so that my EFI area is now 4GB, and CachyOS is finally happy to install. I understand that all this space is needed to accommodate btrfs snapshots into which you may want to boot if you need to rollback due to an update breaking things. In hindsight maybe Fedora -- which also likes btrfs for its filesystems -- would have benefitted from this too.
So far, touch wood, all is good. All my hardware and peripherals were recognized and work fine. In fact CachyOS is the first distro I've ever installed that picked the correct audio device immediately. I note that the EFI partition (here mounted as /boot) already has almost 600MB in use.
I have not installed Steam or the AI software suite yet but I see that the documentation to do both appears robust. The video software is current, functioning, and for the most part taking advantage of this system hardware. The software maintenance system is ... different, but having to know one's way around dnf, apt, flatpak and snap this system is easy enough to pick up. Things feel "snappier" but I can't quantify it, and I haven't yet investigated if further system specific fine tuning can be done.
If there's interest I'll report back on how well the AI and games work once installed as well as any hiccups in day-to-day use.
And thanks, WIlliam.
PS: Yes I know that Kubuntu LTS 26.04 is coming up in April and will refresh its app releases. It might even ship with kernel 6.20 which doesn't exist yet. But then it will be frozen in time for another two years. Don't want that, not on new hardware whose features have not been fully exploited yet.
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/H7APENJ...
On 2026-01-20 03:31, Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote:
I understand that all this space is needed to accommodate btrfs snapshots into which you may want to boot if you need to rollback due to an update breaking things. In hindsight maybe Fedora -- which also likes btrfs for its filesystems -- would have benefitted from this too.
Actually, snapshots are in /.snapshots, because snapshot is BTRFS features and can't cross filesystem. I'm guessing, that the real work of rollback is done in "initramfs". Because, I'm at snapshot #112, but there isn't 112 kernel/initramfs in /boot. To list all the snapshots, btrfs subvolume list / For me, "fonts" is another important factor. Let's face it, you ask AI, and you have to *read* all the answers. At least on Firefox, - Kubuntu -- is best - CachyOS -- is very close second (after latest font updates) - Fedora -- same as before, no change. - OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -- the worst.
On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 2:33 PM William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
For me, "fonts" is another important factor. Let's face it, you ask AI, and you have to *read* all the answers. At least on Firefox, - Kubuntu -- is best - CachyOS -- is very close second (after latest font updates) - Fedora -- same as before, no change. - OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -- the worst.
Are you talking about the choice of default fonts, or how they are rendered? One of the first things I do after installation is add some Nerd Fonts <https://www.nerdfonts.com>, including their variation on Noto and ComicShannsMono, an actually nice (to me) redoing of THAT font. And all of the Nerd Fonts are in the CachyOS repo. - Evan
Evan Leibovitch via Talk wrote on 2026-01-20 13:03:
For me, "fonts" is another important factor. Let's face it, you ask AI, and you have to *read* all the answers. At least on Firefox, - Kubuntu -- is best - CachyOS -- is very close second (after latest font updates) - Fedora -- same as before, no change. - OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -- the worst.
Are you talking about the choice of default fonts, or how they are rendered?
I too am interested in this fonts issue. Could it be sub-pixel aliasing or some such feature on (or off) by default?
On 2026-01-20 16:03, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 2:33 PM William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca <mailto:opengeometry@yahoo.ca>> wrote:
For me, "fonts" is another important factor. Let's face it, you ask AI, and you have to *read* all the answers. At least on Firefox, - Kubuntu -- is best - CachyOS -- is very close second (after latest font updates) - Fedora -- same as before, no change. - OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -- the worst.
Are you talking about the choice of default fonts, or how they are rendered?
For me, they are both same thing. I have bunch of YouTube channels I subscribe to. I use that to test video, sound, and fonts. I didn't download any fonts manually, except in OpenSUSE. So, everything is "out of box", factory default.
One of the first things I do after installation is add some Nerd Fonts <https://www.nerdfonts.com>, including their variation on Noto and ComicShannsMono, an actually nice (to me) redoing of THAT font. And all of the Nerd Fonts are in the CachyOS repo.
I used Noto Mono (14pt) in Konsole on Slackware. For some reason, it takes more vertical space in the newer distros. So, I've settled on Hack font (14pt) for the terminal.
From: Evan Leibovitch via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
Some people here may have been informed, some entertained, and others may applaud themselves by having avoided my distribution hopping of the last half-year.
I'm informed. Thanks!
Pretty well the only thing these distros had in common was KDE, a must-have in this search. (There's enough to learn about each distro, I don't need to keep relearning a GUI.)
Agreed, but I use GNOME for the same reason.
The ability to run AI software stacks and apps on this (relatively) bleeding edge hardware requires a distribution which is either officially supported by the software (Kubuntu LTS) or a community capable of providing sufficient unofficial support (everything else).
This is kind of a niche. Only a few of us are in this situation.
Early on I learned that I would have to make tradeoffs between having current software and having a stable system. Of the distros above it seemed like only Fedora, Kubuntu and CachyOS even had sub-communities that cared about my use cases and hardware. In Fedora's case, the existence of said community enabled/allowed an update to the "linux-firmware" package to break LLM software on my platform and sat on fix for more than three months (because I no longer run it I don't even know if that fix has been released yet).
As I understand it, this was a bug contained in an update of the mainline linux-firmware package. This isn't a Fedora issue, other than the fact that Fedora tracks upstream faster than most distros. If you don't like the latest version of a package, Fedora's dnf has a subcommand "downgrade" to back out of an upgrade. I am guessing that the problem is as described here: <https://www.hardware-corner.net/strix-halo-rocm-firmware-fix/> Apparently there is a fixed version upstream (20260110) and Fedora has it. I don't know when it appeared in the update repos, but certainly before Jan 16. This is all easy IF you know that the problem is isolated to the linux-firmware package. I only know that because you told me.
So then I tried again to install CachyOS and discovered why my first attempt had failed. CachyOS has a very unique install-time quirk -- the EFI partition. This is a FAT32-formatted chunk of your storage that is normally mounted under /boot/efi and has to be at least 100MB (maybe 200MB if you're dual-booting with Windows or want to have multiple boot options). *CachyOS won't let you install without an EFI partition of at least 2GB*. This is fine if you're starting with a fresh drive, but will likely require manual resizing (and maybe movement) of partitions if you want to dual-boot or have anything previous that you want to keep. So I rebooted into my favourite PC repair tool, repartitioned so that my EFI area is now 4GB, and CachyOS is finally happy to install. I understand that all this space is needed to accommodate btrfs snapshots into which you may want to boot if you need to rollback due to an update breaking things. In hindsight maybe Fedora -- which also likes btrfs for its filesystems -- would have benefitted from this too.
As I mentioned before, there seems to be a move to able to boot kernels from the ESP. That requires more space too. What is your favourite PC repair tool? I'm annoyed that GPARTED cannot grow a 100G ESP since that uses an usupported FAT variant. At least on one of my computers. The obvious but inelegant work-around is to create a new, larger, ESP, copy the old ESP's contents to it, and then delete the old ESP.
If there's interest I'll report back on how well the AI and games work once installed as well as any hiccups in day-to-day use.
Yes, please!
PS: Yes I know that Kubuntu LTS 26.04 is coming up in April and will refresh its app releases. It might even ship with kernel 6.20 which doesn't exist yet. But then it will be frozen in time for another two years. Don't want that, not on new hardware whose features have not been fully exploited yet.
The reason I gave up on CentOS / RHEL is that it's product cycle was even slower. Each version upgrade was quite disruptive. Normally, two years isn't bad (Ubuntu LTS). It just doesn't work for AI where everything changes quickly. But for me Fedora's cycle (6 months) seems OK for most things I actually do.
On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 4:59 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
The ability to run AI software stacks and apps on this (relatively) bleeding edge hardware requires a distribution which is either officially supported by the software (Kubuntu LTS) or a community capable of providing sufficient unofficial support (everything else).
This is kind of a niche. Only a few of us are in this situation.
For now. At CES AMD announced a full family of new CPUs in the Ryzen AI MAX family. The hardware will be less niche every day, though not everyone will be tinkering with LLMs.
Early on I learned that I would have to make tradeoffs between having
current software and having a stable system. Of the distros above it seemed like only Fedora, Kubuntu and CachyOS even had sub-communities that cared about my use cases and hardware. In Fedora's case, the existence of said community enabled/allowed an update to the "linux-firmware" package to break LLM software on my platform and sat on fix for more than three months (because I no longer run it I don't even know if that fix has been released yet).
As I understand it, this was a bug contained in an update of the mainline linux-firmware package.
There were actually two unrelated bugs that hit at the same time. One was related to the linux-firmware package. The other involves a kernel-ROCm mismatch and requires kernel 6.18.4+ and ROCm 7.2+ (or nightly builds) Here is a video that gives detail better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdg7zL3pcIs If you don't like the latest version of a package, Fedora's dnf has a
subcommand "downgrade" to back out of an upgrade.
I get that, but then Fedora is no more stable than CachyOS. I thought Fedora would be a sweet-spot middle ground between being current and being stable, but not now. Maybe this is indeed a niche use case, but then I would conclude that Cachy, for all its rolling-release warts, cares more about this niche than Fedora does.
Apparently there is a fixed version upstream (20260110) and Fedora has it. I don't know when it appeared in the update repos, but certainly before Jan 16.
What pissed me off about Fedora is that they actually had the linux-firmware fix before the new year but waited three weeks to roll out.
What is your favourite PC repair tool? I'm annoyed that GPARTED cannot grow a 100G ESP since that uses an usupported FAT variant. At least on one of my computers. The obvious but inelegant work-around is to create a new, larger, ESP, copy the old ESP's contents to it, and then delete the old ESP.
The USB rescue drive I use is Hiren's BootCD <https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/>. It boots a legal, stripped-down version of Windows that includes a bunch of tools including multiple different partition apps. The app I use is AOMEI Partition Assistant (free edition). It's great at not only resizing but also moving partitions as needed. I've used it with ntfs and ext4. No idea if it supports resizing btrfs. In my case, since I was reformatting the root partition immediately after repartitioning, it didn't matter to me. Worst case: redo the Windows partitions with AOMEI and the Linux ones with gparted. - Evan
Evan Leibovitch via Talk said on Tue, 20 Jan 2026 03:31:38 -0500
Some people here may have been informed, some entertained, and others may applaud themselves by having avoided my distribution hopping of the last half-year.
There's absolutely no shame in distro hopping. Before buying a car, an intelligent person does many test drives. Before marrying, the intelligent person dates many potential mates. One beautiful thing about Free Software is that such test driving and dating has no monetary cost. By distro hopping for six months, you proved yourself an intelligent person. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com
participants (6)
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D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Evan Leibovitch -
Ron -
Steve Litt -
William Park -
William Witteman