I’ve been using Manjaro for years, but I’m now considering Cachy. If anyone has experience with this transition, please share the pros, cons, and pitfalls. Is it worth it, and what are the feelings? What habits will I have to give up, and what will be right and new?
Ops original:
Я много лет пользуюсь Manjaro, но сейчас посматриваю в сторону Cachy. У кого есть опыт подобного перехода, поделитесь пожалуйста: плюсы, минусы, подводные камни. Стоит ли оно того, каковы ощущения? От каких привычек придётся уйти и что будет правильным и новым?
You will get better responses if you use English. But the difference between Manjaro and CachyOS is probably the optimization, where CachyOS is a bit better. Manjaro holds updates a few weeks to let them “cure bugs”. This might be a good idea, but it can also result in issues.
You are in the CachyOS forum, so you will probably mostly hear people swear by CachyOS - including me. But the truth will probably be that it is up to you, you will probably enjoy them both.
OK, but it’s don’t help me. I wanted to discuss this with Russian speakers because there are also linguistic and regional peculiarities, and otherwise they won’t notice my post.
I understand, but this forum is for English speaking users. If you are looking for Russian speaking you will have to find an alternative outlet for this purpose.
I don’t see every post. I only mention in the ones I see.
The forum is quite clearly “English” orientated and I’d prefer not to remove it and advise if I can.
I was also directed towards this post, so it had my attention
I have no problems with the Russian language or any other for that matter. Just keeping the forum in English, as asked to by the founders who are both German and Russian.
Understandable, he’s a Founder if he chooses ‘small-talk’ that’s up to him
The use of languages other than English for communication is prohibited unless the convo is a “small-talk” or dedicated language channel exist.
To note: The usage of translation tools should not be relied on for the moderation staff to see if a foreign language contains abusive wording or otherwise.
I’m a catalan speaker and the only problem i had moving to cachyOS was that I selected my keyboard language during the installation and it wasn’t kept after finishing the install, I’m not a longterm user of manjaro and i’ve moved to cachyOS recently.
I picked the hyprland wm and It felt that needs more post configuration than maybe other wm, the keybindings are not as natural, what that actually means… as the defualt i3 keybindings, but this is totally personal.
Probably if you pick KDE plasma it’s fully configured… haven’t tested.
I was thinking about the move from Manjaro to CachyOS mid of 2025 already. I did move now in March26.
Why did I switch? Because I like the idea of an “for the existing hardware optimized” system. And I took these manjaro politics as a kick-in-my-ass to do what I was thinking about to do anyhow.
My main system is an i7 9thGen, Nvidia2070, 32GB RAM,512GBnvme, 1TB ssd.
Not a slow system.
I can see the difference of the faster CachyOS system every day. All is a bit … smoother . Not much, I mean, my system was not slow … but someone can see it.
I did update the notebook of my wife (older system, XFCE) as well - also on this older (but v3 capable) hardware you really can see the difference in performance.
It’s really nice.
Why was I thinking not to migrate?
Because - even if people do not believe: Manjaro is really stable. I use it on my “client facing” notebook that is regulary on a projector - so it just needs to work.
Yes, the politics behind Manjaro is a pain - and yes, that causes energy flow away from the system towards the organizational topics at the moment.
Yes, pamac is a pain sometimes - I used it for searches, installation always with pacman or octopi or flatpak.
I like the idea of getting the updates quick but waiting for a couple of days / weeks to sort out all the nitty gritty errors that are existing in new software. A lot of times …
Believe it or not: Manjaro is stable. Even in the so called “testing or unstable branch” it is.
Why did I made the switch now?
As I said, Because of the politics that are at least getting the power atm away from technical parts. And because I wanted to have a (probably) faster optimized system for my hardware.
The transition was not difficult:
switch to the “unstable branch” in Manjaro,
sudo pacman -Syu
timeshift or snapper: make a snapshot
change to the CachyOS repos,
update the system again,
sort out the mirror topics (cachyos-rate-mirrors),
install the cachyos tools e.g. via octopi
install the cachyos kernel via kernel-manager, reboot and delete the manjaro kernels
get the pacman keys updated
replace manjaro-settings with cachyos-settings
Reboot and fine-tune via the tools integrated in CachyOS-Hello
remove everything that is pamac related with octopi
install cachyos-rate-mirrors and remove the manjaro mirror parts!
switch to a TTY to remove mhwd and install chwd, followed by chwd -a
make sure that the nvidia drivers are updated towards the cachyos repos / dkms (if you have nvidia)
sort out the “greenish layout” of manjaro gnome (it did not like that at all), but that is a very personal view
update the fastfetch config (Minor but I see it so many times a day when I start a terminal)
thats it
So, yes, it takes some time, but it is really not difficult, as both distros are arch based. And in case of an error you always can easily switch back via timeshift/snapper.
Benefit (for me): really no need for re-customizing my heavy customized gnome.
Hope that helps.
PS: Write down in an editor what you are doing - just in case you need to step back …
PPS: I still have some “manjaro hooks”, pacnew checker etc. on my system - works quite well.
PPPS: and probably leave the manjaro-zsh config installed … at least I really like it
I have some sympathy for you, 'cos I’m such a warm and fuzzy kinda guy - as a Russian native it’s possibly tough to find a forum with a section or a considerable population to feel truly at home with.
For me, this would be a huge hurdle, imagining any kind of distribution that I might need forum support…
For sure, already with Manjaro you’re expected to have some beans (the old story of ‘Arch for noobs’ wasn’t a clever one, you’re expected to have some smarts and be able to work out some things for yourself).
Manjaro is engineered more for stability and accessibility… and depending on the user… extremely stable for most users… Currently they’re getting re-structured for the future, so most of the criticisms should soon evapourate.
CachyOS is more opinionated - it’s like switching from a Porsche Panamera to a Ferrari that’s possibly anything from 0 to 20% faster - depending on the circumstances.
You don’t buy a Ferrari to go cruising Europe, you buy a Panamera. Ferraris are more for playing and having fun.
When all’s said and done, it’s best to suck it and see - if you’re not broke, you could just grab a 120G SSD and plug it in for the kicks.
With Manjaro, you could optimise your main tools - ffmpeg could gain a bit from a rebuild, but with CachyOS this is already done in the repos.
As for stability - for sure what you learned in Manjaro will apply here, but with a few extra bells on.
Ever the Devil’s Advocate - might it be an idea to extend an extra part of the forum to allow people with no English skills to participate in their own niche it would allow an outlet for some folks who really couldn’t manage too well in the main forum…
Other Languages: discuss topics in your native language and help others…
Just asking for a friend but there are likely a fair few multilingual folks who would be able to help in a native tongue sometimes.
Once there is enough people around and sections can be moderated effectivly, im sure native language forums will be a thing. But people do this for free.
We don’t even have enough moderation staff to monitor all English discussions let alone foreign languages, this is unlikely but I will of course forward this to the people in charge.
Yeah, that’s a very interesting experience. You didn’t do a clean install. I’ll probably consider that option. It obviously has a lot of advantages: I won’t have to reconfigure the entire suite of programs. With this approach, just making a snapshot allows me to try things out without any risk. I definitely like that. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I fed your plan to the AI agent, gave it root access, and it did the migration for me. It wasn’t without its challenges, but all is well. Now I have CachyOS, thanks for the inspiration. My first impressions are that it really does work more smoothly. And everything I’m used to in Manjaro remains with me. Thanks again, friend.
You are very welcome, and many thanks for your feedback. Highly appreciated.
btw: my “plan” was without AI - my AI knowhow is very low …
What AI did you use for this and how? Just for my interest …
Make sure that everything the AI did is correct … sometimes AI is wrong - it just can not lie and or say “I don’t know”. All the time AI “does not know”, it is just stating something - like a young child … a young child often does not say " I do not know" - it just states something …
Means - you need to prove that what the AI did / wants to do, is correct …
it would allow an outlet for some folks who really couldn’t manage too well in the main forum…