Or Suse

Any chance, have you ever used Garuda? I'm curious how CachyOS compares on the "ease of use" front. I've been on Garuda for like 3 or 4 years now as it is the only one (that I tried) that I've had "just work" for everything out of the box. My laptop had a lot of trouble with Bazzite and the nvidia drivers, but again, I don't have to do anything under Garuda besides install it, periodically run updates, and it plays games just fine with no headaches. I'm not a huge fan of the decoration choices in Garuda, and some of the stuff you mentioned like Winboat and Gaming one-click installs sound amazingly helpful... but everything is working right now so there's a hurdle to changing, lol.

For gaming, I don’t really understand why anyone would prefer slower update cycles since there are frequent updates that fix compatibility or increase performance.

Which game uses host system libraries? I think you have a wrong impression how things work in Linux gaming outside of Tux Kart these days. Valve maintains their own set of Linux containers called Steam Linux Runtimes and their entire point is to be relatively slow moving. Just have a look at all the package dates at https://repo.steampowered.com/steamrt4/images/latest-public-stable/sources/

On top of that, almost every game is a proprietary Windows application. So it runs on top of Proton which sits on top of the latest Steam Linux Runtime.

It's similar with FOSS games where the foremost distribution outlet is Flathub and software published there relies on Flatpak Runtimes which are also relatively slow moving.

CachyOS is apparently “optimized” for gaming performance—I don’t pretend to know what that means or how much of an impact it has.

Barely any unless you're installing FOSS games from their own repository for the reasons I outlined initially.

I’m super impressed with how well everything just works

And that's what's important.

You will not see much difference in performance. This is from 2022 but should still be true?

https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-linux-perf/5

I think it has some improvements in kernel settings but in day to day, you wont notice them.

This performance gains myth sounds like exactly the same wishful thinking as we used to heard back when Gentoo Linux was The Cool Hotness(tm). Don't get me wrong, Gentoo was great, but its added value was not in the compiler optimizations, but rather in the modularity, where you could select a feature set you wanted for your system, and not worry about useless dependencies, their associated support libraries and bugs or vulnerabilities in those.

And when it comes to the kernel, can compile your own on any distribution, including using or omitting any kernel patches you want.

You can use Endeavour OS instead just as well.

vanilla arch user here, the installation is a totally different experience but it just gets you into that „go, read / listen and just try to understand what you are doing“ mode.. which, in a long run, is quite helpful. Third year now, still mostly no clue what I am doing most of the time, but plenty of fun has been had in the meantime.

with the direction that Wind(r)ow(n)s took some time ago, I am willing to even write 0s and 1s by hand on a wet toilet paper to just avoid it. Super happy to see CashyOS or SteamOS grow, actually any distro getting popular is a great thing, more users, more knowledge, more problems being pointed out.

Yeah, I noticed that secure boot was going to be an issue with CachyOS on first go, as I am used to this workflow of installing a new distro...I had already done so. Still, the installer is a boss battle and that is not the normal experience for most first time users. It often is a much smoother process with something like openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, or even Fedora. Windows doesn't like playing with other OS because it expects to be the only one there. Hates house guests so much that it can interfere unexpectedly with Linux distros.

Starting with CachyOS if you are new to Linux is a gut punch to be sure. However, it gives you initiative to get up to speed ASAP because Arch is peculiar to deal with (even in a tamed form like CachyOS as it still has bite). As Arch-based distros expect more from you than a standard Debian, Mint, or even Ubuntu. It's good that you are attempting to get up to speed with at least the basics of dealing with a Linux system, as that knowledge can get you pretty far with a bit of application. Even though I used Linux for years, I haven't gone too profoundly deep within the reeds.

I mean I don't think he is wrong entirely, but wasn't he Lutris guy also VERY hostile to criticism? And just AI generated wallpapers is where I absolutely will draw the line. Just don't have any then, use the Fedora stock ones. Use a black screen. Everything is better than slop.