CachyOS, a performance-focused Arch-based Linux distro, now officially supports Windows Subsystem for Linux, letting Windows users run it without a traditional Linux installation or virtual machine.
The news was confirmed by Craig Loewen, Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for WSL, who announced that Microsoft is working with the CachyOS team to add the distribution to the official WSL list. For now, users can install it manually using the image provided by the project.
According to the official CachyOS documentation, installation requires WSL 2 version 2.4.4 or newer. Users can download the .wsl image from the project’s GitHub releases and install it by double-clicking the file or running wsl --install --from-file in PowerShell. After installation, CachyOS can be launched from the Windows Start menu or by running wsl -d cachyos.
On the first launch, CachyOS automatically initializes the pacman keyring, selects package mirrors, configures its optimized repositories, and prompts users to create an account with sudo privileges. Fish is configured as the default shell.
One important feature is support for CachyOS’s CPU-optimized packages. The installation image works on any x86-64 processor, but the initial setup automatically selects the best repository for the hardware, including znver4, x86-64-v4, and x86-64-v3. Older processors use generic packages.
However, there are differences compared to a regular CachyOS installation. Since WSL uses Microsoft’s Linux kernel, the distribution cannot use the custom linux-cachyos kernel, its CPU schedulers, or sched-ext. The WSL version also excludes the boot manager, CachyOS Hardware Detection, and zram.
Finally, because CachyOS follows a rolling-release model and WSL images are built periodically, developers recommend running sudo pacman -Syu after the initial setup to ensure all packages are up to date.
For additional installation instructions and troubleshooting, refer to the project’s CachyOS on WSL guide.
