CachyOS has taken the Linux world by storm lately. It’s currently one of the most popular Linux distros, and for good reason — it’s fast, polished, and, most importantly, reliable. I’ve used it myself, and I can see why so many people, especially Linux gamers, are fans of it. That said, if I were building a Linux gaming system, I’d choose Bazzite over CachyOS, and it boils down to one key reason.

CachyOS is a solid gaming distro

Giving credit where it’s due

CachyOS is an Arch-made-easy distro, giving you all the benefits of Arch without the technical hassle. You get a proper graphical installer to streamline the setup process, while the CachyOS Hello app offers one-click access to routine maintenance tasks like updating mirrors, installing gaming packages, adjusting system settings, and more.

That said, the real reason behind CachyOS’s astronomical rise to fame is its performance. The distro ships with its own custom Linux kernel, aptly named the CachyOS kernel, which is optimized for modern x86-64 processors. The official repositories also contain packages compiled for these architectures to take advantage of the CPU-specific optimizations.

All these optimizations help CachyOS squeeze more performance out of your hardware, making it a great choice for gamers. With the same hardware, you may see higher frame rates, better 1 percent lows, and more responsive gameplay compared with other Linux distros. Granted, the gains aren't anything extraordinary — CachyOS won't magically make a game that was otherwise unplayable run smoothly on your hardware — but the extra performance is certainly nice to have.

But it’s still an Arch-based distro

Performance matters, but so does reliability

CachyOS is based on Arch Linux, and there's a reason Arch isn't generally recommended for Linux newcomers. You see, Arch is a rolling-release distro, which means package updates become available as soon as they're released. This is usually good news for gamers because they get quick access to the latest features and performance improvements. However, it also introduces additional maintenance overhead.

You're expected to update your system regularly, ideally weekly or at least every couple of weeks. If you put off updates for too long, you might run into problems when you finally update, including keyring errors, outdated mirror lists, and other technical conflicts.

There's also the fact that constantly dealing with cutting-edge software can affect system stability. While most updates go smoothly, a buggy update can occasionally break something when you least expect it. It might be a driver, your desktop environment, or even a package dependency that causes your games to stop launching. When that happens, it's on you to figure out what went wrong and fix it.

Granted, CachyOS does provide a safety net for buggy updates and system breakages. It uses the Btrfs file system alongside Snapper to take snapshots before every system update. This way, if an update introduces bugs or breaks your system, you can roll back to a previous working snapshot. It's certainly a useful feature, and one that makes many rolling-release distros more viable for daily use.

Reliability by recovery vs. reliability by design

It's worth pointing out that snapshots are a recovery tool, not a way to prevent breakage in the first place. You still have to deal with a broken system and know how to boot into the appropriate snapshot. There's also a limit to what snapshots cover. By default, Snapper only takes snapshots of the preconfigured subvolumes, which typically include the root file system — not the home directory where your games live.

Now, yes, you can technically configure snapshots for your home directory, but doing so requires a lot of care and attention. Depending on your setup, rolling back personal files could also revert game saves, settings, and other documents alongside the changes you're trying to undo, which is a disaster in its own right.

For someone who's comfortable with Linux, all of this is manageable. However, for someone who has just switched from Windows to Linux to play games, it's a lot of unnecessary technical hassle.

Bazzite is far more reliable and beginner-friendly

It’s a distro designed to be fool-proof

Bazzite is another popular distro for Linux gaming. However, unlike CachyOS, it uses Fedora's Atomic Desktops as its base, offering a balance of stability and up-to-date software. These desktops use an image-based approach to system updates. Instead of updating individual system packages, Bazzite downloads an updated system image, prepares it as a separate deployment, and activates it after a reboot.

This sort of atomic update ensures that system updates are applied as a whole. If something goes wrong during an update, you can boot back into the previous deployment. This reduces the risk of partial updates and dependency conflicts, significantly lowering the chances of system breakage caused by failed updates.

What's more, Bazzite is an immutable distro, which means its core system is read-only. You can't freely modify the base system files as you would on a traditional Linux distro. This prevents applications and packages from casually modifying the underlying system, making Bazzite more resilient to accidental changes and the resulting breakages that can occur on other distros like CachyOS.

Bazzite's immutable nature also means you can't install apps and packages as freely as you can on other distros, since doing so involves modifying the core system. However, this generally isn't a problem for gaming since Steam and Lutris come preinstalled, and you can install your games through these launchers.

Furthermore, you can install system-level RPM packages using rpm-ostree, although this approach is generally discouraged. Instead, you're expected to use Flatpak for traditional desktop apps, Homebrew for command line apps, and Distrobox for software that needs a traditional package manager.

Overall, for someone who just wants to install Linux and play games without worrying too much about maintaining their OS, Bazzite is the more beginner-friendly choice.

Bazzite gives you the console experience

The way I see it, Bazzite offers more of a plug-and-play console gaming experience, which is perfect for casual gamers who aren't interested in worrying about the technicalities of Linux. In fact, you can install Bazzite's HTPC variant, which boots straight into Steam Gaming Mode, giving you a console-like experience based on Steam's Big Picture Mode. From there, you can simply install your Steam games and play them without ever having to worry about the Linux distro underneath.

In comparison, CachyOS is closer to traditional PC gaming. It gives you plenty of options but expects you to be tech-savvy enough to make the most of them and patient enough to troubleshoot problems if and when things go wrong. It certainly gives you more control over the OS, and if you enjoy that, CachyOS is going to be the better distro for you.

However, I just want a system that works. I have limited free time, and I'd rather spend it playing games than optimizing a system for gaming.