I’ve just been reading through Gaming with CachyOS Guide | CachyOS to try and resolve some issues I’m having.
IMHO this page could be massively improved in terms of brevity, grammar, and formatting. E.g:
Welcome to the guide for Gaming on CachyOS. This will guide you through the essential aspects on how to set everything up for gaming.
First of all.
Remember. getting a double digit improvement in FPS is not always possible or possible at all. Sometimes, optimizations can lead to minor improvements or even none at all, depending on the game and hardware configuration.
You can’t expect software optimizations acting like a free hardware upgrade.
New and improved:
Welcome to the CachyOS Gaming Guide. This will provide all the information you need to begin gaming with optimal settings for your PC.
That’s just the opening paragraphs that add so much ‘noise’ it makes it hard to read.
Before I spend a bunch of time on it, can I get an agreement in principle from The Powers Above? Is there a procedure before I git fork / PR?
EDIT: linux-cachyos/CONTRIBUTING.md at master · CachyOS/linux-cachyos · GitHub - I need to email???!!
While I agree that the disclaimer could be written better, I do not understand what you intend to accomplish by rewriting the first paragraph from:
To:
All you are doing is adding strange claims that it provides “all the information you need” and “with optimal settings for your PC” which the first one does not, and in my opinion should not do.
You’ve missed the point. The entirety of the original block is replaced by what I have written.
The intention of the guide is to provide all the information needed for optimal settings. There’s nothing “strange” about that.
P.S. You do understand the “E.g:” means ‘for example’?
As a new user to CachyOS I find the article utterly confusing and don’t really understand what am I supposed to do with 80% of the information on this page. I am not new to linux, been using Fedora for a couple years now and recently migrated my gaming rig to linux. I started with bazzite, which was easy to setup and get the HTPC mode working I was looking for, but it taking ages to deliver new kernels (especially with all the vulnerabilities popping up), I was looking for an alternative to it with faster release cycles. I know that I have gone the extreme opposite to Bazzite with CachyOS, but since AI recommended it as a gaming optimized OS and SteamOS also being Arch based, I thought I gave it a try. But boy oh boy.
I read that using the decky version is not suggested for HTPC usage, thus I went with the regular desktop one and manually installed gamescope, steam and heroic. Things are working so far, except for the seemless switching between gamescope to desktop (without having to re-authenticate) and back. I thought I might find some information on the wiki, but as already mentioned, I have absolutely no idea what all these env var and parameter gibberish mean and where these changes would have to be made (like which files). So in this regard, I can only agree that the wiki could need some improvements to also cater for newbies.
Precisely my reaction when I first read it. There’s a huge volume of verbiage which makes it overwhelming.
There’s a much more concise version of that page available with some judicious editing.
I’ve gaming on Linux for about a year and on CachyOS for the last six months, and chachy is the best distro so far. These are a few things that maybe might help. I might just be lucky, but 8/10 games works about of the box for me. Just download in Steam and press play. That’s the whole point of this distro. These is some of what I’ve gathered so far
- Initially, don’t worry about environmental variable’s, wrapper or even gamescope until you have a problem or wanna see if there’s more performance to be had.
- Same with the kernel, you can change kernel at any time with the “CachyOS kernel manager” application.
- Ask AI, copy paste your system details from “setting->about this system” and ask for a what you need.
But I agree that there aren’t always clear what’s essential and what’s and “advanced tweak”.
with pure desktop gaming it might work just fine, but I want a console like experience (dedicated gaming PC in the livingroom, no fiddling with mouse and keyboard, controller only) and thus was looking into gamescope to get a SteamOS like experience. I would have gone with the handheld version of Cachy, but AI suggested otherwise due to different scheduler and what not. So now I try to replicate this manually and am stuck. Booting directly into gamescope is not the issue, but the seamless transition to desktop and back. And I was unable to fix it with AI - I always get a password prompt when i switch to desktop and switching back to gamescope (steamos-session-select gamescope) I also end up at the login screen and manually have to select the gamescope session and re-enter my password again. When I force “relogin” I end up in a gamescope session loop I can not get out of (in case I need to tweak something in heroic in desktop mode). Tried to fix this for two days, no chance, so I gave up for now, but it is super annoying to me (especially since not everything is running smooth yet and I need to tweak a lot, having to go back and forth).
And one other issue I came across is a joystick drift in only one game so far (StarWars Outlaws). This game worked just fine in bazzite, but on Cachy in my current configuration I always get a joystick drift. I am tempted to switch back to bazzite as it delivers a more polished console like experience, but then I would be stuck again with a outdated kernels and drivers and a ton of bloat I don’t want.
But I don’t want to hijack this thread - I only wanted to point out that I also found the wiki page quite hard to read and understand. It is all low level performance tweaking for pros and less of an overall guide.
I work as a DevOps engineer. Believe me, there’s nothing in the CachyOS wiki that “professionals” would actually do. Everything described in the wiki is just the standard tasks of an ordinary Linux PC user.
If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can always ask in the chat or on the forum. I’m sure they’ll help you.
Or, as a last resort, you can ask Claude 
it is a shame to see that the overall mentality of the linux community still seems to be that the “average linux user” just has to mess with lower level system things in the command line to get around. I mean, sure, once you settled down and would like to tweak things, you at some point will have to go down the rabbit hole to some degree - just like in other operating systems. But it should not be considered a “normal” thing a linux user just has to do in 2026.
But sure, the “graphical” package manager of CachyOS still gives me Y2K vibes, back when I was playing around with Ubuntu and Suse, and Shelly (or whatever the new app is call) is a step forward, but still not as user friendly as something like Bazaar or the Gnome and KDE app store thingies - so it still feels over a decade old. I just don’t get why you would need a low level package list with “cryptic” names in the UI only to see terminal output again when you install things (really?) - power users will use the CLI package managers anyway and beginners are like “WTF is this - linux is not for me”. I get that arch and CachyOS are more enthusiast oriented distros and it is fine for them to have options for more technical features, but those should be options in addition to “fool proof” features and not the default.
As for Claude - I asked AI for a good distro for gaming that is somewhat fast to roll out new kernels and drivers, and it suggested CachyOS, so here I am (the pace of Fedora would already have been fine though, but why not try the hyped new kid on the block). Frustrated Windows users wanting to get away from it might do the same and also end up here and they lack any prior linux experience and probably give up much more easily. I have been “using” linux on and off for like 20 years (dualboot) and only fully migrated to it two years ago. And even though I “got used to” having to search for hours how to solve seemingly simple things, I am still bothered by it. The amount of time I had to put into on getting network shares to automount on boot (fstab) and NOT freeze the entire system when either the server is down or I am away from home is insane. And it is still not working as it should (AI also did not fix it). Sure, there are runtime user space mounts in Nautilus, Dolphin etc which do not have this issue, but not every application (IDE etc) is using the correct portal to use the DEs file manager to browse for files. So system level mounts in /mnt it had to be.
Sorry, seems like I had to vent a bit.
Anyway - I still stand by my statement that the gaming wiki could need improvement. Even if doing the “lower level” stuff is considered to be normal, at least explain where users have to make these changes and not just expect everyone to know where env vars need to be declared. Always assume a noob and provide guiding information or links to related articles, like how to manage env vars. It is always better to guide a user than have him end up with even more questions he needs to research and hope to find the correct search terms for.
Well, Linux is just the kernel. That’s it. And it is primarily developed by mega corporations for use with servers (that are controlled remotely via command-line, with no GUI in sight). Desktops and laptops get the least amount of attention due to their niche nature in the grand scope of where the Kernel is actually deployed at scale (servers and Google Android devices). Steam selling commercial products using Linux genuinely helps push kernel development in useful directions for gaming and desktop use–like the recent color pipeline work.
The Linux userspace is a collection of random projects that are provided as source code which distros package into “repos”. When appropriately combined, these various projects create some semblance of what you might be used to on Windows or MacOS (a desktop environment, and basic apps that run inside them). But unlike those commercial products, or even the Linux kernel itself, there is no captain that drives the userspace as a whole. So… to put it succinctly, there will never be a day when you don’t have to do some low-level tweaking if you are doing more than simply opening up a web browser. Gaming, in particular, will require you to mess with envvars, use graphics API wrappers, tweak various settings, possibly even compile something. That’s just how it is on open-source operating systems. You have to become your own administrator and learn how the system works. And to an extent, much of the tweaking is the same on Windows for older games that require some work to even launch or play / scale right.
Yes For sure the entire Wiki can be improved. Not putting down the developers who put in hours of hard work to include all useful information. But it sure could use a spit polish for all new users. I found it a jumbled read when I first started a year ago on Cachyos. Most of the info you need is in there. But could use some re-organization in my opinion.
Absolutely not a criticism of anyone. It’s hard to write these things, much easier to iterate and refine.
I came at this primarily as a new user. That gaming page is overwhelming for noobs.
I’ve had no response from High Command, so will leave it for now.