CachyOS November 2025 Release Changelog

[ptr1337]

Hello CachyOS Enthusiasts,

This is our seventh release this year, bringing better accessibility, changes to mkinitcpio, and more!

First, we are pleased to bring Orca and espeak-ng to the ISO and installer. This adds crucial support for users with visual impairments, helping them navigate the CachyOS installation process.

Next, we have enabled the mkinitcpio “systemd” hook for supported configurations. Since ZFS and Bcachefs do not currently support this hook, it is automatically disabled if either is selected as the root filesystem. Additionally, we are now installing bcachefs-dkms, which replaces the default kernel module to provide better integration for Bcachefs users.

We have prepared the installer to support Plasma Login Manager and Cosmic Greeter. While we plan to use Plasma Login Manager as a replacement for SDDM in the future, we are holding it back for now as it currently lacks integration with KDE Settings. However, Cosmic Greeter is now used for COSMIC installations, providing a smoother experience with the COSMIC desktop.

Regarding hardware detection, the system now installs intel-media-sdk and vpl-gpu-rt on supported GPUs. We have also dropped support for the legacy 390xx NVIDIA driver; Fermi GPUs will now use Nouveau NvBoost instead. Furthermore, we have added handheld support for the Xbox ROG Ally and ROG Ally X.

CachyOS-Hello now opens CachyOS’s PackageInstaller window when the “Install Apps” button is clicked. Additionally, it now supports CLI operations for its GUI functionality. In cachyos-settings, we have disabled recompression for incompressible pages in ZRAM, as we found it offered no real performance improvement.

Proton-CachyOS now supports dxvk-gplasync as an alternative DXVK via PROTON_DXVK_GPLASYNC=1. Additionally, AMD’s Anti-Lag layer has been disabled when using PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE due to stability issues. We have also introduced a tuned per-game shader cache with larger limits, which helps prevent cache overflow and reduces the need to recompile shaders.

On the fixes side, we resolved an issue with Limine installation on systems with broken UEFI implementations where entries were not registering. Finally, the systemd variant of the btrfs-overlayfs hook is now used to ensure compatibility with the mkinitcpio systemd hook.

Features:

• ISO/Installer: Added Orca and espeak-ng for better accessibility
• initcpiocfg: Enabled systemd hook on supported configurations
• Netinstall: Hyprland dotfiles have been removed
• pacstrap: Install bcachefs-dkms if bcachefs is selected as the filesystem
• Calamares: Added support for plasma-login-manager and cosmic-greeter
• Cosmic: Switched from SDDM to cosmic-greeter
• Fonts: Improved fonts for Asian users
• chwd:
  • Installs intel-media-sdk and vpl-gpu-rt on supported GPUs
  • Enabled Nouveau NvBoost for Fermi GPUs
  • Dropped support for 390xx legacy NVIDIA driver
  • Added support for Xbox ROG Ally/X
• cachyos-hello:
  • Removed internal package installer; opens CachyOS package installer instead
  • Added CLI interface for the GUI functionality
  • Various ISO version check fixes
• cachyos-settings: zram-generator: Removed compression for incompressible pages
• Proton-CachyOS:
  • Added dxvk-gplasync as alternative DXVK. This can be enabled via PROTON_DXVK_GPLASYNC=1
  • Added DISABLE_LAYER_MESA_ANTI_LAG when using PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE
  • Brought in multiple Wayland fixes (fullscreen offset, dead keys, DPI behavior, video output tweaks) and winewayland.drv improvements
  • Introduced and tuned per-game shader cache behavior and larger shader caches (especially for NVIDIA)
  • Added FSR3 and XeSS upscaler upgrades

Fixes:

• Limine:
  • Fixed installation of Limine without entry registering on broken UEFI
  • Uses systemd variant of btrfs-overlayfs hook
• Calamares: Removed attr2 as an option on XFS mount settings
• chwd: Disabled T2 chip’s USB Ethernet interface

Manual changes for existing users:

Steam-native-runtime has been deprecated. You can follow here:

CachyOS Announcement: Migrating away from steam-native-runtime

CachyOS Announcement: Migrating away from steam-native-runtime Why this change? Arch Linux has removed compatibility with the Steam Native Runtime (steam-native-runtime). To ensure Steam continues to work reliably on CachyOS, we’re standardizing on Valve’s official Steam Runtime bundled with the steam package. What you need to do (1–2 minutes) Update your system: sudo pacman -Syu Remove the native runtime shim: sudo pacman -Rsn steam-native-runtime After that, Steam will automatically us…

outside of this the usual:

sudo pacman -Syu

Download:

Desktop Edition:

Grab your copy of the latest ISO from our mirrors on SourceForge:

• CDN: https://iso.cachyos.org/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• CDN2: https://cdn77.cachyos.org/ISO/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• Germany: https://mirror.cachyos.org/ISO/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• USA: https://us.cachyos.org/ISO/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• China: https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/cachyos/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• Russia: https://archlinux.gay/cachy/ISO/desktop/251129/cachyos-desktop-linux-251129.iso
• CachyOS - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

Handheld Edition:

• CDN: https://iso.cachyos.org/handheld/251129/cachyos-handheld-linux-251129.iso
• CDN2: https://cdn77.cachyos.org/ISO/handheld/251129/cachyos-handheld-linux-251129.iso

Support Us:

Your contributions help us maintain our servers. Consider supporting CachyOS through:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CachyOS

Thank you for your continued support!

The CachyOS Team

[ptr1337]

Sorry also for being a bit inactive in the forum recently. Soon I have vacation and work things up and try to be more active again!

[Darkmann]

I wondered when we might see a new release

[Grumpydev]

On cosmic Greeter is fixed but polkit is broken. Running any app that needs auth opens and closes terminal immediately tested fedora and pop when no issue seems to be an installer issue

[HardCode4All]

Someone should pin this post to the main page…

[ptr1337]

I think thats a problem of the packaging in archlinux. Ill look into

[ptr1337]

It should be pinned for 2 weeks

[HardCode4All]

It was a caching issue on my part:

Clearing the cache helped. Maybe there is some setting in Discourse to reduce the caching period of the main page?

To be honest I hadn’t thought one would need to clear the cache in order to get the latest announcements

PS: it’s good to see there is work going on behind the scenes! I was starting to get a bit worried for all the silence lately. Big shout-outs to the whole Cachy team!

[Grumpydev]

Thank you.

[deagle]

Thanks to the team for all their hard work have a good December guys and enjoy the vacation

[vuhsar]

idk if you will reply but can you help me in this - Rocket League- 20 FPS and too much input lag in Cachy os

[cscs]

Thats not really how its done.

You made a post.

Dont cross post in unrelated threads.

And in an announcement no less.

[vuhsar]

oh sorry i didnt know , i was so desperate for a help

[Grumpydev]

Found the issue with COSMIC polkit auth not working on the November release.
cosmic-osd looks for polkit-agent-helper-1 at /usr/libexec/polkit-agent-helper-1 but CachyOS has it at /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1.

Fix for me:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1 /usr/libexec/polkit-agent-helper-1

[ptr1337]

Oh, well. Then I failed packaging. Not sure if its an upstream issue? Normally it should update the value.

[Grumpydev]

It could be. I noticed that there was a bug closed last thursday around cosmic-osd and polkit. I’ve not really looked at the specifics for that.

Thanks for all you do here.

John