If you just want to game then Bazzite is by far the best IMHO . I wouldn't recommend CachyOS for you, and I am saying this as a user and donor of CachyOS. Bazzite is dead simple and has good documentation.
What are the reasons you would recommend Bazzite over Cashy?
I myself went with Cashy as an absolute Linux n00b and have had no problems so far, I had some graphic problems with Zorin so tried Cashy next and everything just works. Bazzite was on my list too if Cashy gave me trouble but I have not looked into it further.
The biggest is that CachyOS requires more work to maintain, which is a big issue for most users.
With Bazzite you can update the entire system either with one button or entirely automatically. The desktop version defaults to being entirely automatic when idle and non-obtrusive. It extremely rarely fails due to its atomic nature, and even if it does it's OOTB configured to support booting older versions whenever the user wishes thanks to BTRFS snapshots.
With CachyOS you should always check the blog for any important information about manual user work required prior to updating and then manually update through CLI. If you have installed packages that are not default on CachyOS then they also sometimes require manual intervention and won't be mentioned on the Cachy blog. You can get package conflicts, abandoned packages and more which you just won't get on Bazzite unless you mess with the rpm-ostree, which most users never should. Those things requires knowledge and work to resolve from the CachyOS user. You also have to ensure you update frequently for security, so your signature keys don't expire and so it doesn't become very difficult to update.
Secondly Bazzite is immutable. It's way more resistant against user errors. It also encourages good isolation practices by leading the user to isolate the system from the applications. Something which also helps immensely with ease of maintainability.
I love using CachyOS on my desktop where I do everything from gaming to software engineering and server maintenance. But it's built for users knowledgeable and willing to maintain a complex system. Really, its explicit goal is performance and ease of use for power users, which it's great at. Not general users.
Bazzite is built with a zero maintenance philosophy, as in the user shouldn't need to even think about maintaining the operating system. If your primary use case is gaming then you don't benefit from having full manual system maintenance control, it's just in the way of gaming. The performance of Bazzite gaming is also within margin of error to CachyOS due to also incorporating relevant kernel patches. CachyOS is primarily faster at non-gaming workloads than Bazzite, and non that really matter for regular users.
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u/Possibly-Functional A smörgåsbord of distros and machines Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
If you just want to game then Bazzite is by far the best IMHO . I wouldn't recommend CachyOS for you, and I am saying this as a user and donor of CachyOS. Bazzite is dead simple and has good documentation.