It’s time to review what has happened recently in the world of Linux distros! We focus on what Linux gamers actually use, thanks to the dataset provided by ProtonDB. As usual, the following disclaimer applies:

• This may not be representative of all types of Linux users. I’m sure this is not what your AWS engineer uses on EC2.
• This may not be completely representative of all Linux gamers either. But I’d wage this is actually a good predictor where the market is going to shift. We saw first that Manjaro was getting the boot here, before progressively going under pretty much everywhere.
• There may be some additional biases, due to whoever used ProtonDB.
• Flatpak is NOT a distro, but that’s what Steam reports when it’s running on Flatpak, and Flatpak being distro independent we report it as a separate environment, if that makes sense. Feel free to ignore it if you wish.
• Arch Linux is Arch Linux on desktop. The Steam Deck’s OS is reported as HoloISO, not Arch Linux, so stop trying to claim that Arch is first because of the Steam Deck!. This is mainly data reported from desktop PCs, so no, SteamOS is not a thing at the moment on such machines.

A Sea of Changes

In our previous episode, we saw a few radical changes:

• Mint overtaking Ubuntu
• Manjaro reaching new lows
• Bazzite growing steadily

You may be wondering what happened since September. Without further due… (click to expand!)

There’s quite a lot to unpack here:

• Mint surpassing Ubuntu was not a fluke. It’s been consistently having a higher share over the past few months. Well done to the green guys!
• Ubuntu is now usually between 9 and 10% market share, and this puts it at risk of going further down, behind Fedora. This past month Ubuntu re-surfaced again, but had we looked last month, Fedora would have been 3rd and Ubuntu 4th.
• Endeavour is now a solid distro in the ranking, with a share between 6 and 7%.
• Bazzite is still growing pretty fast, month after month! It’s still relatively small (less than 5%) but it has potential and people keep talking about it. They have momentum.
• Manjaro reaches a new low! 4%! Soon it will be battling with Debian :-)
• What’s wrong with Pop_OS!? I mean apart the name? It used to be much bigger, and now it’s on a constant decline, and despite COSMIC making it in the news these days, it does not seem to move the needle much. It’s probably because their OS is still stuck on Ubuntu 22.04 in 2025…

And the things that don’t change:

• Arch is still number 1
• Debian and OpenSUSE are still cruising at the bottom, not really going up and down - they are stable as they should be.

And finally, there’s the elephant in the room that I avoided until now. CachyOS. It’s been growing at super high speed over the past 3 months. I did not expect there would be a new contender that would show up so fast, after Nobara, Bazzite and the like.

And yes, it’s Arch based, btw.

CachyOS: Arch on steroids?

CachyOS is a rolling-release distro derived from Arch Linux. It targets users who want Arch’s flexibility and access to bleeding-edge software, but with added performance enhancements and a more streamlined setup process. In order to do that, it comes with a nice installer (GUI based). There’s several reason to consider CachyOS over Arch Linux, actually. As an Arch Linux user btw, this makes me really curious and wanting to find out more.

• Optimized Kernels: CachyOS provides a custom linux-cachyos kernel with performance-focused tweaks, such as the BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) scheduler, which prioritizes responsiveness for desktop tasks. It also supports alternative schedulers like EEVDF and sched-ext, giving users flexibility to tailor system behavior.

• Compiler Optimizations: That’s another super interesting part! Packages are compiled with advanced flags like Link-Time Optimization (LTO) and Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), as well as support for specific sub-architectures: x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4, and Zen 4 instruction sets. These optimizations leverage modern CPU architectures (e.g., Intel Haswell or AMD Zen 4 and newer) for significant performance gains—sometimes up to 10-15% compared to generic builds. The installer auto-detects the correct CPU microarchitecture and optimizes package selection accordingly (e.g., switching to x86-64-v3 or v4 repositories if supported). A lot of automation under the hood.

• File System: While Arch defaults to ext4, CachyOS uses Btrfs by default (with options like XFS or bcachefs during installation), offering features like snapshots and better performance on modern hardware.

• Lots of Desktop environments: You have the choice to install KDE Plasma, GNOME, XFCE, i3, Hyprland and Wayland compositors, at the installation time. Of course it’s possible in Arch as well, but the installer makes it very straightforward.

• Gaming aspects: CachyOS brings a tentative NTSYNC support to Proton which is supposed to give some additional performance and snappiness in some games. As you can see in the thread above, some users are reporting some positive differences in a few games.

The only problem I have with CachyOS is the logo. Not just kidding - I mean it’s bad, but I don’t care. What I care about is longevity. I can bet on Arch because it has critical mass and is not going away anytime soon. The destiny of Arch-based alternatives is not great on paper. Antergos came and went, Manjaro used to be big until they fucked up, look where they are now. You know, I can kind of like my rolling distro to keep rolling.

In the case of CachyOS, if they were to close shop tomorrow, you would not have access to your specific architecture repositories. Could you just switch back to arch repos and call it a day? I have no idea. If there’s a real, tangible backup plan that does not involved a full re-install, this may be my next distro.

Let’s reconnect again in a few months and see if CachyOS keeps riding the wave or not.