Arch-based CachyOS is working on a new Server Edition aimed at NAS, workstations, and hosting providers, featuring hardened defaults and optimized packages.

Here is some news that both excited me and gave me pause. In its annual 2025 retrospective, published today, Arch-based CachyOS, widely popular among Linux gamers and heavily focused on performance optimization, reveals plans I did not expect: an expansion into the server space.

“In addition to our ongoing PGO and AutoFDO optimizations, we are developing a specialized ‘Server’ Edition for NAS, workstations, and server environments. We intend to provide a verified image that hosting providers can easily deploy for their customers. This edition will ship with a hardened configuration, pre-tuned settings, and performance-optimized packages for web servers, databases and more!”

  • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
    32·
    1 day ago

    That’s why I’m asking, what’s the difference? Which defaults? I have never used CachyOS and have no idea what it brings to the table. I use Arch for ~7 years, and I’m no looking for a replacement. Especially an Arch based one. Yet, I’m curious of the difference, and why one would want Cachy, especially as a server.

    • adminofoz@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      2·
      13 hours ago

      I used vanilla arch as a daily driver for about 3 years and I loved it. but started to need a more ephemeral OS and switched to atomic fedora and centos/Alma precisely for the defaults. So i know you asked about cachyOS and I dony have an answer there. So you can skip the rest of this if that is all you wanted. Im not saying RHEL or bust. Each person has their own needs and i highly recommend just going and doing the hard things yourself to learn, but I get it that it isnt possible for everyone.

      What defaults? Several. 1st SELinux. 2nd ability to select old kernels on boot. 3. Firewall enabled out of the box.

      Sure you can do a lot of additional hardening and nothing is to stop a simple bash script from setting these up on Arch, but I figured I only know a little bit and those have saved my ass multiple times. So there are probably other things the folks in that ecosystem have figured out that I dont know about yet.

    • Vorpal@programming.dev
      41·
      1 day ago

      I too run an Arch and am happy with it, and I would like to know why Cachy. The only reason I can see is having x86-64-v3 packages instead of baseline. That is nice, but on it’s own doesn’t feel worth the effort of switching over.

      Defaults don’t matter to me much, as I automate and manage my system config in git (using a tool I wrote myself: https://github.com/VorpalBlade/paketkoll/tree/main/crates/konfigkoll inspired by https://github.com/CyberShadow/aconfmgr). It makes it a breeze to set up a new computer as I want it.

      • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
        11·
        24 hours ago

        I don’t want to spill some memes worth Arch elitism here, but I just doubt Arch derivatives crowd knows what x86-64-v3 thing is. Truth be told, I barely understand that myself. So I guess the difference should lie somewhere else. My previous research showed that the crowd is afraid of no installer installer, but these days Arch has some kind of installer, doesn’t it?

        I’m just struggle to grasp what does it have, what those defaults are? A DE and whatnot? Is it just an opinionated Arch? Looks quite popular for everyone and their dog to have their own opinionated Arch this year, isn’t it?