CachyOS September 2024 Release Changelog

Announcements
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Hello CachyOS Enthusiasts,

This is our 10th release this year, featuring improvements to performance, faster updates, and other enhancements. The release comes a bit delayed, since the CachyOS Team was at the LPC, and therefore we couldn’t follow our common release cycle.

We have started to optimize more packages with PGO. In the case of LLVM and Clang, we have seen a 10% performance improvement. Additionally, packages like svt-av1, nodejs, and ripgrep got optimized with PGO. We will work further to optimize our packages and improve their performance. Also, we have added cherry-picked patches to glibc and gcc from clearlinux. This provided an additional 1.5% improvement to the gcc compiler.

The repository sync is now happening more often, which means there will be even less delay between the Arch repository and our optimized packages. Also, starting from 27.09.24, we are applying -fno-semantic-interposition automatically to -fpic compiled packages. This can significantly improve many shared packages. We have also started to replace zlib with zlib-ng and its compat layer. zlib-ng is a more modern alternative to zlib, which provides better performance and more modern techniques.

The cachyos-kde-settings package now installs an sddm config, which enables Wayland by default for sddm. This has the benefit that refresh rates, resolution, and other settings can be applied to it, providing a better experience.
GPUs that do not support Wayland (legacy NVIDIA) need to manually remove this config. We may introduce hardware detection integration for this in the future, but this has not been done yet.

In cachyos-settings, we have added changes to the handling of NetworkManager. NetworkManager will now use systemd-resolved as the backend, which helps fix issues with download speed in Steam due to its massive DNS requests. Enabling DNS caching massively improves that. Also, we are now adding an NTP Server for systemd-timesyncd, which will default to time.google.com. There have been increased reports in Arch Linux, as well as CachyOS, that the timeservers provided as default are not working correctly. The previously used timeservers will still be used as fallbacks.
The CachyOS Hardware Detection (chwd) simplified the device handling, and all profiles are now specifically designed for PCI devices.

In terms of fixes, we have added to the “Launch Installer” fixes to sync the time to the hardware clock. There have been some reports that the installation failed since the time was “backwards”. Calamares now correctly unmounts the root filesystem after the installation. Core dumps have been enabled in CachyOS again to have easier debugging, and core dumps get cleared every 3 days to avoid an increase in used storage.

Together with this release the old ISO will not work anymore, due the changes in the hardware detection.

Changelog for this Release:

Features:

  • Packages: Optimized a bunch of packages with PGO, like LLVM, Clang, svt-av1, and nodejs. This yielded, for example, a 10% faster Clang compiler
  • Repository: The repository is now synced and updated more frequently, meaning there will be even less delay. The sync interval has been decreased from every 3 hours to every hour.
  • Repository: Starting from 27.09.2024, packages compiled with -fpic will automatically enable -fno-semantic-interposition. This can provide a performance improvement for many packages.
  • zlib-ng: Is now used as a replacement for zlib
  • Mirrors: New Mirror in Austria, hosted by Soulharsh007.
  • sddm: On the KDE Installation, sddm will now default to Wayland as the compositor.
  • cachyos-settings: NetworkManager now uses systemd-resolved as the backend, which helps with DNS caching
  • cachyos-settings: Use time.google.com as the timesync server to avoid issues with timesync on some setups
  • gcc: Added fixes for the tuning of znver5
  • gcc: Cherry-picked patches and flags from Clear Linux
  • glibc: Added “evex” patches as well as cherry-picks from Clear Linux
  • wiki: The Wiki received many new additions and reworks
  • chwd: Simplified device handling
  • chwd: All profiles are now specifically designed for PCI devices
  • chwd: Add --autoconfigure to automatically handle the driver installation
  • Package Updates: linux-cachyos 6.11.0, mesa 24.2.3, Plasma 6.1.5, NVIDIA 560.35.03, calamares 3.3.10, QT 6.7.3

Bug Fixes:

  • Launch-Installer: Added fixes to sync the hardware clock before starting the installation
  • calamares: Added fix for unmounting the filesystem after installation
  • keyring: Clean up the keyring and recreate it before starting installation; this fixes rare keyring issues
  • sysctl: Core dumps have been enabled again
  • chwd: Removed libva-nvidia-driver from the PRIME profile to prevent potential conflicts and improve compatibility with software like Spectacle
  • cachyos-settings: Added workaround for GNOME Wayland crashes
  • cachyos-fish/zsh-config: Dropped wayland specific quirks

Changelog for Handheld Edition:

  • Ally/Ally X: HHD got replaced with inputplumber, since hhd does not use the kernel driver for it correctly, which results in issues.
  • Handheld related packages updated

Manual changes for existing users:

No special changes required.
Users who are on the legacy NVIDIA Driver (470xx and 390xx) need to remove the cachyos-kde-settings package due to the usage of Wayland.
Simply running: sudo pacman -R cachyos-kde-settings solves the issue.

Download:

Desktop Edition:

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

Handheld Edition:

Support Us:

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

Thank you for your continued support!

The CachyOS Team

15 Likes
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Thx for the hard work @ptr1337 & from the team, bet that it will make for Sept/Oct release !

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this version made be come back to cachyos it fixed my issue i love this distro yk arch linux + preformance optimizations and gaming optimizations and also a gui installer

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Thanks @ptr1337 . I installed it on my spare nvme drive, and there were no issues. I think Calamaris did the job quicker. It feels fresh and crispy compared to my old Cachy OS installation. I am sure it is psychological :rofl:

I remember installing Pop OS a few times when I was distro hopping. No distro can beat Pop OS in terms of installation time. I hope Calamaris will catch up one day.

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The installation is already as fast as possible, the bottleneck is only your internet connection :stuck_out_tongue:

My install in a VM takes 2:30 minutes

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Lol!
You have a point. As far as I know, Pop OS does not download packages while installing. So, fair enough, Cachy OS download the freshest packages during installation. BTW, my internet connection is fibre and is pretty good. Ping is 5ms :stuck_out_tongue:
InternetSpeed

Thanks again for your brilliant effort in developing Cachy OS. I am a big fan.

2 Likes
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true i remember how slow it was bcs i would try the other desktop environments in vms and it was slow as hell

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image
image689×525 32.4 KB

Yeah here is my internet speed too

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Thanks for the updates!

This is VERY BAD to sneakily add some google tracking to our systems without our knowledge (I would have missed this if I hadn’t read the blod post). Many of us want nothing of the google tracking/spyware on our systems.

→ we need cachyos to be an OS we can trust (this isn’t the case with such sneaky moves).

With cachy browser being a privacy focused browser, cachyos has positioned itself as a privacy OS. I hope you will find a better alternative.

Where can we change this? Archwiki directs to /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf, but I see nothing there. And nothing in the cachyos wiki.

Thanks.

Edit:
found it in /usr/lib/systemd/timesyncd.conf.d/timesyncd.conf, but this doesn’t seem the location to do it properly. (although it’s the only thing that works).

Overriding it in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf (as per the instructions in that file) doesn’t change it when running systemd-analyze cat-config systemd/timesyncd.conf

What is the proper way to change this?

Edit 2:
Perhaps you could add an option to set this in cachyos-hello. (but still, move away from time.google.com as a default as soon as possible).

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i changed it to time.nist.gov i also dont want google in my system no thanks i am thinking of changing it to smth else
(edit changed it to pool.ntp.org since its much simple)

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@ ptr1337 Yes, Google is not accessible in some countries, is it possible to replace time.google.com with another time synchronisation server?

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How can I install the new release on top of an old one without loosing all games eand settings?

(Handheld edition rog ally)

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why a new install ?
just run an update

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I’m affected by the hhd to inputplumber migration (the rog ally layout is completly messed up)

so I would like to reinstall…

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okay… I see

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Going fine on a fresh install on my end.

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Just wanted to ask for clarification, is the replacement of HHD with inputplumber just for the input rerouting, or did HDD get removed entirely?

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speed
speed858×497 39.7 KB

mwuahahahahaha I HAVE… THE POWER!!!

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You can put a config in /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf.d/timesync.conf

This should overwrite it.