CachyOS Topped DistroWatch’s Rankings

While DistroWatch isn’t exactly a reliable way to measure how usable a Linux distribution is—since its stats are just based on how many times a distro’s page gets opened—the numbers it shows have still always been a fun point of interest for Linux fans.

I say this because we’ve got a new leader on the charts — the gamer-focused CachyOS — which just knocked Linux Mint out of the top spot. Mint, for its part, had claimed first place back in November last year, taking it from MX Linux, which had held onto that position for quite a while. So, at the moment, things look like this.

Interestingly, at the end of last year, CachyOS was sitting in eighth place, pulling in roughly 130% less traffic on its DistroWatch page than Mint, which was the leader at the time. But things have obviously changed a lot since then.

We’re not going to get into debates about the ranking itself—that’s not the point here. But this is still a big win for CachyOS, and it’s worth giving it some well-deserved recognition. So, let’s take a moment to share a bit about the distro for readers who might not be all that familiar with it.

Launched in late 2022, CachyOS is an Arch Linux–based, rolling‑release distribution that emerged with a clear focus on performance. It offers a polished desktop experience (KDE Plasma is the default here) on par with Arch, yet more approachable for newcomers, offering a GUI installer, automatic hardware detection, and great flexibility for customizations.

But where the distro truly shines is in its under-the-hood optimizations. The system ships with a custom CachyOS kernel heavily tuned for responsiveness—complete with specialized CPU schedulers like BORE and EEVDF, which enhance desktop interactivity under load.

On top of that, its repositories offer aggressively optimized packages compiled with architecture-specific flags (e.g., x86-64-v3/v4, Zen4), along with LTO, PGO, or BOLT enhancements, resulting in notable performance gains, especially in demanding tasks: gamers have reported FPS improvements of 10–15 %, alongside lower latency compared to standard Arch setups.

Given all these strengths, it’s no surprise that in just a couple of years, CachyOS has become hugely popular—especially with gamers and Linux users chasing the snappiest desktop experience. Its climb to the number-one spot on DistroWatch pretty much says it all.

And finally, one more time—while this ranking doesn’t really reflect the true popularity of Linux distributions (Arch sitting at 49th… seriously?), CachyOS’s achievement deserves recognition. Well done, Cachy!