Background
Like most people, Windows has been my go to operating system ever since I was a kid playing games off CDs on the family E-Machine. My first desktop computer was a 2013 Apple Mac and it didnt take me long to dual boot the newly released Windows 10 to escape the limitations of MacOS and to play games and use software only available on Windows. At the time it seemed like Windows was the operating system of freedom and of controlling your own machine. Nowadays, Ive grown tired of the bloated, buggy, annoying experience that Windows has become and look to expiriment with Linix as my daily driver.
Im not a complete newcomer to Linux as I have had experiences in working on my homlab server and expirimenting with Virtual machines. My homelab server is just a SBC (Single Board Computer) running a headless version of raspberry Pi OS, so it really didn't help with my choice for a distro on an X86 platform Destop. In my experience with virtual machines I used Ubuntu but was not a fan of the desktop enviroment so I decided to look into other distros. As a avid gamer I wanted to find a distro that was optimized for gaming and had a good desktop enviroment. After searching many distros I came across Bazzite as it was recommended for its includes suppoort for Nvidia GPUs but was concerned by its immutable operating system. Then I heard about Cachy OS and was immediately interested by its support for multiple desktop enviroments and decided to try its live enviroment.
Installation Experience
Being familiar with ISOs I already had the most conventient install by using a tool called Ventoy that allows you to boot multiple ISOs from a single preconfigured USB drive. I simply droped the file onto the Drive switched some BIOS settings and was quickly sitting in the live enviroment. I was impressed by the speed of the live enviroment and the modern desktop enviroment was very clean and easy to use. The Installation process was a little scary as the setup was a little more involved than previous Windows installs ive done and as this was originally a Windows machine there was data on the drive that I had to work around. It needed multiple partitions for the root and home directories and as I was still dual booting Windows I needed a Boot Loader to switch between Cachy and Windows. I stuck with the Plasma desktop enviroment not knowing anything about it, but it did look the best in my opinion.
First boot
Almost immediately I managed to stumble across my favorite feature I have ever seen for a desktop enviroment, panel configuration. It has a limitless amount of customization; you can completely remove your task bar or add a few for every side of your monitor, add widgets to it, make it float, and disappear behind windows. After playing with it for about half an hour I settled on having one wiget serve as my floating taskbar and another in the bottom-right corner for the clock, audio panel, and WiFi panel set up similar to how it is on windows. Ive noticed this does have an issue by overlapping with applications but I'm not to bothered by it so far.
Issues - Game Compatibility and Performance
I was a little concerned about game compatibility as it would be a factor in the daily usability and that I have a Nvidia GPU. AMD GPUs are ussually perferred for Linux as they have better support but mine is a 3070 that has been out for a few years so I'm hoping the support for my model is better. Also there have been recent improvements to the Proton compatibility layer that I was also banking on for a smooth experince. The first game I tested was Control. I got into the starting menu fine and loaded my save file but when I booted in my textures were very low resolution and the framerate was choppy. Rather than immediately try to solve the issue I wanted to see if it was just one bad title or if all games were affected. I then tried Sniper Elite 5 to no avail as it was afflicted with the exact same issue however definitly playable unlike Control. The final game I wanted to try was Cyberpunk 2077. This was the most dishearting result as I failed to even boot into the menu.
Issues - Root Partition Size Mistake
I made a mistake in the partition size for the root directory and it was only 20GB. I did not think about programs installing to the root directory and assumed programs would install to the home directory similar to how windows can install for a specific user.