LinuxLinks has kindly given me the space to publish a semi-regular blog where I share my thoughts on open source, the Linux ecosystem, Windows, and other topics. It’s a place for my opinions and personal perspectives. As you might expect, everything I write here reflects my own views and prejudices.
I’ve been using Manjaro on and off for the past six months. There’s a lot to like about the distribution, but I decided to jump ship. After doing some research, I decided to try CachyOS, partly because LinuxLinks also seems to have moved over to this distribution.
Here are some of the reasons why I decided to switch.
1. Better performance defaults
CachyOS recompiles packages for x86-64-v3, x86-64-v4, and Zen 4/5, and its docs claim a 5 to 20% uplift for x86-64-v3 versus generic x86-64, depending on workload. It also uses PGO, LTO, and BOLT selectively for some packages. For desktop apps, the performance uplift is on the lower end from my testing. Small savings are still worthwhile.
2. Better tooling choices
There are lots of examples I can give. For example, CachyOS uses Shelly as the default GUI package manager. It’s so much better than Manjaro’s Pamac, which gets little development. CachyOS has chwd, its hardware detection tool, which installs needed packages and drivers during installation or post-installation.
CachyOS gives you a proper GUI Kernel Manager for installing, removing, configuring, and building CachyOS kernels. It exposes options like scheduler choice, tick rate, preemption model, BBR3, LTO, NVIDIA/ZFS module builds, and sched-ext profile management. That’s a big plus if you like experimenting without manually maintaining custom kernel builds.
3. Fresher Arch-style packages
Manjaro’s default Stable branch deliberately holds packages back after Testing; Manjaro’s own wiki says Stable can lag Testing by one to four weeks. I did try its Unstable branch, but ran into issues. CachyOS is built around optimized Arch package rebuilds rather than Manjaro’s delayed Stable branch model.
4. Gaming
I’m a big gamer on Linux, so maybe this reason should be at the top. CachyOS ships performance-tuned kernels and scheduler choices, including BORE, sched-ext, BMQ, and RT options, with kernel builds optimized for modern CPU targets.
5. Infighting at Manjaro
The Manjaro infighting is a real concern, and it’s more serious than the usual “people on Reddit don’t like Manjaro” noise.
The big recent issue is the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto, posted on the official Manjaro forum on 9 March 2026. It was written by Manjaro team/community members calling for organizational restructuring. They argued that Manjaro had “stagnated”, lost contributors and trust, and that the project had become too centralized around one person, with insufficient shared access to infrastructure and maintenance. They also proposed splitting the community project from Manjaro GmbH & Co KG into a nonprofit German association, an e.V.
For users, the immediate impact seems limited so far. Forum participants clarified that the “strike” was aimed at nonessential forum functions, not blocking package updates or abandoning user support. One post explicitly said no support requests had been ignored, and another said blocking updates would be very damaging and unlikely.
The founder/leadership side pushed back somewhat. Philip Müller described the situation as feeling like “Mutiny on the Bounty”, said a transfer could not happen overnight, and said a new entity and transition plan needed to exist first.
Even a few of their forum moderators continue posting hostile comments about the founder. Very unprofessional, to say the least.
There’s also older baggage. The 2020 “treasurer/community funds” dispute and the so-called “€2000 laptop incident” remain part of Manjaro’s reputation problem.
For me, this does strengthen the argument for leaving Manjaro, but not because an install will suddenly break tomorrow. It’s more about confidence. I’ve lost all confidence in Manjaro.
6. Better recovery defaults
Recent CachyOS ISOs create a clean snapshot immediately after installation and retain it as a baseline restore point. That’s useful on a fast-moving rolling distro because you have a known-good state to roll back to after the initial installation.
7. Feels less "forced by Manjaro-specific policy"
Manjaro’s identity depends on its own branch model, Manjaro-specific tooling, Manjaro-specific kernels, and Manjaro-specific package flow. CachyOS feels more like Arch plus performance tooling and convenience layers, rather than a separate downstream ecosystem with delayed packages.
How much of a rolling-release distro’s appeal comes from raw performance, and how much comes from trust in the project’s governance and long-term direction?
I’m unsure about this decision. Manjaro is the main OS on my machines for years and came after Kubuntu. I think it is still the best choice between actual packages and stability. A bleeding edge OS can’t deliver this stability. And for me 2-3 weeks of waiting for new updates is not a problem.
I don’t think it’s necessary for a stable system if the packages are from today or coming in 3 weeks. Simply I don’t want updates every day, I want to work with my OS.
Complaining about Manjaro’s leadership and decisions is the one side of the coin. CachyOS is somewhat younger, and what is known about them.
Manjaro’s package delay buys time, not certainty. It can catch obvious bugs before they reach Stable users, but older packages aren’t automatically safer. For users who rely on the AUR, new hardware support, or the latest desktop stack, that delay can be as much a liability as a benefit.
Manjaro tries to protect users by slowing updates down. CachyOS protects users by making recovery easier. For many desktop users, a quick rollback is more useful than waiting weeks for packages that still might not be problem-free.
Users who want maximum day-to-day predictability, use Ubuntu LTS, Debian Stable, Linux Mint, or another fixed-release distribution. If you use Manjaro or CachyOS, you’re choosing a more current system with different safety mechanisms, not the same kind of stability.
From my own experience, Manjaro’s delayed package model hasn’t delivered any obvious practical benefit. Holding packages back for a couple of weeks may catch some problems, but it’s not the same thing as a genuinely conservative release model.
I’ve run Manjaro and CachyOS on two desktop systems over the past 18 months, and CachyOS has actually given me fewer issues. In fact, I haven’t had any CachyOS-related problems in that time.
If stability is the main priority, I’d skip both and use something like Ubuntu LTS.
I’m not sure about some of the decisions made by CachyOS though.
Choosing fish as the default shell. Oh hum! And Shelly is not ready to be the default GUI, it’s got more bugs than an entomologist’s carry-on luggage.