this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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CachyOS Is Now the Most Popular Desktop Distro on ProtonDB (boilingsteam.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Nils@lemmy.ca to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
119 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It is also first in the Distrowatch rank

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=cachyos

I distro hopped to it from Bazzite a couple of months ago, and I could not be happier.

If you try the installer, be careful when selecting multiples DE/WM as the conflicts were not listed anywhere for the installation process.

Picking a single environment and then adding the others later was what worked for me.

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[–] cyberfae@piefed.social 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

My local LLMs also seem to be slightly faster and for some reason now need less V-Ram.

This is likely due to zram being setup by default

[–] gothic_lemons@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

The hell is zram?

[–] cyberfae@piefed.social 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You know how you can compress files? It work for ram as well.

[–] cholesterol@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Downloaded more ram, got it

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

Oh god the meme is true

[–] Captain_Stupid@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Basically it compresses your data in the RAM. Needs a little more work form the CPU but it is still faster than swap. fyi

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

They should have called it cram. Lost opportunity.

[–] gothic_lemons@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Interesting thank you!

[–] KneeTitts@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

The hell is zram

It something than claims to handle swapping better on low ram systems.. I never noticed much difference on the lower spec machines I tried it on.

[–] Captain_Stupid@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I had zram setup on my previous OS as well and on cachy the LLM didn't need to use it while on my old OS it did. My guess would be that the driver had a little less overhead.

[–] cyberfae@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It would still use zram if it's setup, only way it wouldn't is if you gone out of your way to disable it. Combine zram and the bore scheduler and it's going to run better for sure.

[–] Captain_Stupid@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But if the LLM stays in the V-RAM or even just stays in normal RAM does it still benefit from zram? I thought that only helped when the ram was not enough.

So I'd say it is more likely the bore scheduler + better drivers.

[–] cyberfae@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's all three! Cachy OS sets it up where it applies to both regular ram and vram. Even if just using a swap in ram, it will still be much faster than swapping to disk. Plus to the application, it looks like it has more ram/vram than there is physical ram/vram.

[–] Captain_Stupid@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yes but my previous OS had zram setup as well, unless PopOS was using a worse compression algorithm, zram was not the main player here. Also there is no such thing as zram for vram unless you are talking about hardware compression.