Uhm, you're new to Linux and you chose to go with an Arch-based distro as your first foray into Linux? That's challenging yourself...

I can't speak to CachyOS (others here can), but, in my experience, Arch-based distros are typically best for intermediate users even when they say they are for beginners. SteamOS is a specialty OS designed for handhelds, not desktops.

Have you taken a look at Bazzite? It has a desktop version and is available with the KDE Plasma desktop. It is based on Fedora immutable (meaning that it is less likely to damage the core OS).

After toying with Manjaro and a number of other KDE-based distros, I went back to Linux Mint. I use Linux Mint XFCE for gaming.

GNOME-based desktop environments cannot create desktop shortcuts. From personal experience, KDE Plasma and Cinnamon can create them. Not sure about XFCE -- I haven't tried. I organize and run my games with a game manager now (Steam, Heroic, Lutris, etc.)

I use Timeshift for backups, myself. For heftier jobs, I use Clonezilla (not built-in). I'm not sure how well Timeshift would work with BTRFS.

I run portable installations of Mod Organizer 2 from within WINE, in the same prefix as the game. I have heard that there is a "global" Linux version but I have not tried it.

Yes, you will have to reinstall your games. Most Linux gamers like to put each game into its own WINE prefix. Steam, Heroic and Lutris do this automatically. Most Windows games have registry settings that are set during the installation process. Better to have the installer do this for you than try to do it manually. Backup your game saves (Steam does this automatically for any Steam games), record where they were located, and place them at the same location within the prefix (again, not necessary with Steam games).

To my knowledge, it is not possible to convert an NTFS partition into a BTRFS partition. You would need to copy your data over from one to the other.

Last edited by Caldathras on 15 Feb 2026 at 7:23 pm UTC

Thank you for the detailed response. From all the benchmarking I've been looking at Cachy looks like it has a real performance advantage over Bazzite. I'm working with older hardware trying to squueze every drop on fps out of it. Really glad to hear your running MO2 on linux that is a huge relief. Also glad to hear the truth that it's best to reintall all my games. I have a slow internet but that's ok i really want this yoke of Microsoft of my neck. "GNOME-based desktop environments cannot create desktop shortcuts." amazing i wish i have known that and hadn't wimped out and reinstalled windows form my precious desktop shortcuts. I'm so glad that gamingonlinux has such awesome users to help with these questions. I'm thinking of seeing when the Steam hardware comes out and it is comes with a new steam OS install for desktops. At least im going to wait till the new linux 7.0 gets incorporated in cachy, i watch the distrowatch web page daily to see when its updated. If it's still to much for me ill give your Linux Mint XFCE for gaming a whirl at least i can get my feet wet and have fun. Thanks again for all the pointers! I'm going to bookmark this for future help for me.

Quoting: shadowofwardThank you for the detailed response. From all the benchmarking I've been looking at Cachy looks like it has a real performance advantage over Bazzite. I'm working with older hardware trying to squueze every drop on fps out of it. Really glad to hear your running MO2 on linux that is a huge relief. Also glad to hear the truth that it's best to reintall all my games. I have a slow internet but that's ok i really want this yoke of Microsoft of my neck. "GNOME-based desktop environments cannot create desktop shortcuts." amazing i wish i have known that and hadn't wimped out and reinstalled windows form my precious desktop shortcuts. I'm so glad that gamingonlinux has such awesome users to help with these questions. I'm thinking of seeing when the Steam hardware comes out and it is comes with a new steam OS install for desktops. At least im going to wait till the new linux 7.0 gets incorporated in cachy, i watch the distrowatch web page daily to see when its updated. If it's still to much for me ill give your Linux Mint XFCE for gaming a whirl at least i can get my feet wet and have fun. Thanks again for all the pointers! I'm going to bookmark this for future help for me.

GNOME can have desktop shortcuts with an extension i think. Cachy, Arch and Arch based aren't really that suitable for noobs really. Youd have to probably not always install updates and be aware of some breaking stuff that come with updates. Id say that for a noob that's too bleeding edge.

I personally use Manjaro KDE Stable which is Arch, but with more testing done with packages and not so up to date. Though usage of AUR with it can cause breakage that is not recommended though. Linux Mint probably also suits noobs, but comes with X11 so multi monitor stuff is not so nice if you have to use scaling.

Quoting: TheLinuxPlebI personally use Manjaro KDE Stable which is Arch, but with more testing done with packages and not so up to date. Though usage of AUR with it can cause breakage that is not recommended though. Linux Mint probably also suits noobs, but comes with X11 so multi monitor stuff is not so nice if you have to use scaling.

Manjaro KDE Stable was the first distro I tried for gaming. It was also the most stable KDE Plasma experience of all the distros with KDE that I've tried. Many users complained of updates causing OS instability but I quickly discovered that it was the AUR being enabled that causes the instability (from what I could tell, it allowed incompatible updates from the AUR to be applied to the OS proper).

I left the distro for two reasons. The first was Manjaro's very poor support for legacy Nvidia GPUs (and their rather arrogant response to those that complained). I had a Kepler series GPU. The final straw was the Manjaro team's decision to force telemetry tracking on their users.

Incidentally, when I moved from Manjaro to Pop!_OS, I discovered that Arch WINE prefixes are not compatible with Ubuntu WINE. Had to reinstall all my games from scratch. Pop!_OS 22.04 was were I learned about the GNOME desktop shortcut issue.

Quoting: TheLinuxPlebGNOME can have desktop shortcuts with an extension i think.

I guess I should correct that to "GNOME-based desktop environments cannot create desktop shortcuts by default" then. The GNOME Extension Manager was a pain in the butt to work with in Pop!_OS 22.04.

I can't speak to Pop!_OS 24.04 as I haven't updated yet, but, in my opinion, Pop!_OS 22.04 is another great starter distro for gamers. I just learned to adapt to launching games from the Application launcher and, later, a game management tool (at that time, Lutris), instead of the desktop.

I switched to Linux Mint XFCE only because several GoL members spoke so highly of it (they weren't wrong) and Pop!_OS had gotten temporarily behind on their Nvidia driver updates (I didn't know about the graphics driver PPA at that time -- thanks for that, Liam!).

Linux Mint is especially good for former Windows users as the interface is very similar to what they are familiar with from the Windows ecosystem. That being said, KDE Plasma has a very easy learning curve. It doesn't take long to figure it out. What I like most about Linux Mint is the helpful user community and the dev team itself.

Last edited by Caldathras on 16 Feb 2026 at 6:42 pm UTC

First of all, read my comment knowing that I used arch based distros in the past ( manjaro and endeavour os ), I never used cachy, and most importantly, I'm not an advanced user.

With all of these out of the way, let's begin.

Cachy seems to be a very well optimised distro and I heard mostly good things about it, the game performance improvements seem marginal to me and are not present in all games.

Arch made easy can be a great entry point into Linux for beginners who want to tinker and learn how their system works. The fact that you are more interested in gaming (no judgment, it's just how I understand your computer usage), plus you're hesitating between SteamOS (being immutable, it has not the Arch philosophy), makes me think that you're not going to have a good time with cachy. The real benefits of Arch (the AUR, the OS customization, the package administration, etc.) are, IMO, locked behind a skill level.

As for distribution recommendations, Linux Mint is a great starting point, I'm currently using it with plasma on my desktop. Nobara worked really well for me and is more gaming-oriented. SteamOS would be a yes for me only on a device that I use to play games 90% of the time. Maybe dual-booting Mint + cachy and having a common /home or /data partition could be a good way to start using Linux with mint and tinker with cachy to see what fits your needs the best.

Feel free to correct me if I said anything stupid about arch or Linux in general.