My Favorite Linux Distros: Mint vs. CachyOS
My journey in the Linux universe has been a rollercoaster of discoveries, and along the way, two distributions have stood out as my favorites: Linux Mint and CachyOS. Each, in its own way, offers a unique experience that caters to different aspects of my needs as a user.
Linux Mint: Stability, Simplicity, and Unwavering Reliability
For many years, Linux Mint has been my digital home. It proved to be the most stable and clean distro I’ve ever used. Its simplicity is one of its greatest strengths, making the user experience incredibly pleasant and straightforward. Cinnamon, its flagship desktop environment, despite being considered “old” by some, still manages to be extremely efficient and beautiful, offering an intuitive usability that kept me loyal for a long time.
Beyond its rock-solid stability, Mint comes with a well-curated selection of pre-installed software, and its software manager, deeply integrated with Flatpak, offers a vast array of programs, ensuring I always found what I needed. Its foundation on Ubuntu and the use of the familiar apt package manager make package management robust and easy. Mint’s commitment to long-term support (LTS) releases further solidifies its reputation for reliability, making it a top choice for users seeking a dependable and hassle-free computing environment. Its strong community support and user-friendly approach have consistently kept it at the top of popularity charts like DistroWatch.
CachyOS: Performance, the Arch World, and Gaming Prowess
Despite my satisfaction with Mint, the world of Arch Linux always fascinated me. However, my attempts to dive into it were often met with frustration. The installation process was notoriously challenging and non-interactive, and other Arch-based distros like Manjaro simply couldn’t compare to the solidity of the Debian or Ubuntu-based distros I was accustomed to.
Then CachyOS emerged. This distro has grown rapidly recently, climbing to the top of DistroWatch, and I decided to give it a try. I was thoroughly impressed. Its installer is excellent, offering various desktop environment options, with KDE Plasma being a standout. Driver support is superb, and Wayland compatibility is a significant advantage for modern setups.
What truly won me over with CachyOS was its dedication to performance and gaming. It leverages custom kernels (like the CacULE or TKG kernels) and aggressive compiler optimizations (like march=native and O3 flags) to deliver a truly snappy experience. Beyond just pre-installed packages, CachyOS provides a highly optimized gaming environment, often including specialized repositories and its own optimized Proton builds for seamless gameplay of Windows-only titles. This focus on bleeding-edge performance and gaming-specific enhancements has propelled it to prominence among power users and gamers on DistroWatch. Its use of pacman and access to the vast Arch User Repository (AUR) also provide unparalleled software availability and flexibility.
The Best of Both Worlds and the Return to Mint
After spending some time with CachyOS and enjoying its performance and optimizations, I eventually found myself returning to Linux Mint. The reality is that, as incredible as CachyOS is, Arch-based systems can still be a bit “fragile” for long-term daily driving, often requiring more attention and maintenance.
Nevertheless, CachyOS remains a distro I intend to use and revisit many times. It represents the best of the Arch world in terms of performance and optimization, especially for gaming, while Mint continues to be the safe haven of stability and simplicity. I believe that having the best of both worlds, alternating between them as needed, is the key to a complete and satisfying Linux experience.
