I have slower internet than normal when I hop on to CachyOS Linux, I have two SSDs (one of them has CachyOS Linux on it, the other has Windows 10. I’m transitioning to Linux because of Microsoft’s “you need to buy a new computer for Windows 11” b******t). CachyOS internet is running slower than my Windows 10 internet. How do I fix this? I haven’t seriously tried any suggestions online yet because I am concerned of messing something up (when those suggestions could have been for a specific system that I don’t have).
CachyOS should not affect the speed of your internet unless you are running behind a firewall. You may check your internet connection, how you connect to the internet, or even with your internet provider.
Also make sure you’re connectng to the same SSID,etc, network parameters,etc.
They use the same internet, it is slower on Cachyos Solid State Drive than Windows Solid State Drive. What things should I be looking for exactly? I’m REALLY new to linux, so I have no idea what I’m looking for (and I have little to no idea how to deal with the internet connection, not at this level).
I see a firewall, it is a ufw. It has a default incoming policy: ignore. Default outgoing policy: allow. No firewall rules have been added.
Same SSID, don’t know how to check network parameters though.
Well I would suspect that you can get the linux info from the ‘ip’ command and probably the Windows info from ‘Properties’.
Are you using a firewall to connect to your internet provider ?
When you install CachyOs as default system (no making picks or preferences as a new user) if it detects a firewall for connecting your Internet provider, CachyOs installs by default a firewall program manager called UFW, for dealing with your Internet Firewall.. and it is activated or enabled since your first boot. Check this UFW status and disable it like this: open a terminal and copy this command (press Enter key and add your password ) : sudo ufw disable
Then check if your speed shows changes to connect.. if the same slow speed is still.. you can revert your order from terminal with this command : sudo ufw enable
And discard previous change, and keep searching other possible sources of this slow speed situation in the above link there’s CachyOs specific post install setup steps to check. Good Luck
As far as I know, the presence or absense of the firewall isn’t going to actually affect communication speed/throughput at all. It will just (with default policy) prevent incoming connections.
Welcome to Linux!
How are you measuring the internet speed on Windows vs CachyOS?
What are the exact speeds you’re seeing, along with exact units given? Could it be as simple as getting the units confused? There’s a difference between MB/s and MiB/s, not to mention Mb/s aka Mbit/s.
Are you on a wired ethernet or wireless connection?
If wireless, some things that could impact speed are:
- Bluetooth could be interfering. If not using bluetooth, it’s best to disable it.
- Just start typing “bluetooth” in the start menu, the system settings page where you can disable it should show up.
- Setting the correct regulatory domain for your region can sometimes help.
- Disabling the firewall isn’t likely to help, but it doesn’t hurt to try. On a home network, there’s little to no reason to have it running at all.
- Same as with bluetooth, you can disable it in system settings.
Disabling power saving on my network card made a massive difference in my case, I was noticing discrepancies in speed in windows vs linux, its worth a shot:
sudo iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
I was going to add that in some browsers you can hunt for the DNS server settings and use either a custom public DNS server or use one from the drop-down list. I think this year has been a difficult year for CloudFare, and when I stopped using CloudFare as the (default) DNS server, my web speed went up on those browsers.
Internet search results can get you a list of alternative public DNS servers in case you have a similar issue.
Lastly, if you share your internet with somebody else, check with them to find out when they’re using the net or not. Maybe they are gaming or downloading or watching videos and it’s causing a traffic jam.
Also, check your cachyos / arch / pacman mirrors (i forget what it’s called) to speed up updates and downloads with a recalibration. but bear in mind that internet traffic patterns vary according to the time of day and location, so it’s not perfect.
I once had this problem on Cachy via a wired network through a switch. Either the switch reported a bad handshake or cachy did but somehow the network transfer speed in Cachy got set to 100TX instead of the 2.5Gb that both the switch and the motherboard support. That was some REAL slow internet. Manually set it to 2.5Gb in the network settings and no problem since.
I have an important detail that I forgot to mention, which is: the internet is slow particularly when downloading. If it is multiplayer games, it runs the same. I have only seen this slow internet problem with downloading, I don’t recall anything else being affected in that way.
So you mean downloading .. games ? .. and maybe steam?
So steam downloads specifically?
Downloading in general. Steam, firefox, CachyOS updates, etc.
What WiFi card do you have? There are issues with MediaTek Wi‑Fi chipsets; like MT7921, MT7922, and MT7927. MediaTek drivers break often on new kernels and since CachyOS is a rolling release you always have the newest kernels.
lspci | grep -i network
to see your card.
I don’t have a Wifi card. I have a Panda Wireless Internet USB Plugin (PAUO6).
PAU06 uses a very old Ralink/MediaTek RT5372 chipset, and its Linux driver (rt2800usb) is quirky, unmaintained, and fragile on modern rolling‑release kernels.
Sorry USB WiFi is going to more difficult to use. Maybe look at a bridge, WiFi to Ethernet or find one that uses a chipset that is better supported by Linux in general. What country are you located? I might be able to point you at some better usb solutions.
United States.