Need some help if you switched Fedora from EOS/Cachy or vice-versa

[Visag3]

Hello everyone,

I’m thinking of switching from Fedora to an Arch-based distro (CachyOS or EOS). Ultimately, the reason for this decision is the fact that I want to dive deeper into Linux and I feel I want something new. Fedora has given me a few RAM, packages and performance issues which I could not always fix. Though, over the three years I have been using it I have actually fixed many issues, and I am at a point where I can reinstall it with closes eyes.

I have looked through reddit posts about people's opinion on both and I have gathered some information which I am not completely sure if it correct, so the reason for this post is to help me confirm if what is actually true about these distributions and any additional comment or opinion about why you made the switch would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I plan to stick with KDE, though I’m open to trying Cosmic. I have been using Linux/Fedora as an undergraduate (close to Master's) student in Physics, mostly coding.

So:

1. Stability: As a rolling-release, I heard Arch-based distros can have occasional issues or rare system breakage. That said, I believe user experience matters. I feel I have learned a lot with all the issues I faced with Fedora, but not sure if that experience matters.
2. +Stability: "Fedora is compiled with CONFIG_UBSAN", which I found out it is one of the failsafe nets to catch bugs, compared to Cachy/EOS. Additionally, its build infrastructure is well-managed and packages are not uploaded by maintainers compared to Arch.
3. Community & Support: I had good experiences with Fedora support for minor issues on Discord, but for more serious problems, not many replies in official forums. I’ve heard that EOS has a very active and helpful community (CachyOS, I’m less sure about) and more post about Arch issues. Also, EOS is considered the “successor” to Antergos, which had a large, welcoming community.
4. Documentation: "The ArchWiki is leagues ahead of anything Fedora offers".
5. Optimization: Arch-based distros tend to be snappier and more resource-efficient than Fedora. CachyOS even has CPU-specific optimized repos, improving performance for CPU-intensive and latency-sensitive tasks like compiling, encoding, or kernel building (though the CachyOS repos/kernel can be added to other versions of Arch-based Linux so not sure that it matters that much).
6. Packages: AUR and Pacman repos are generally better than RPM/Flatpak in size and quality. Fedora also restricts non-free software without extra tweaks.
7. Security: Fedora ships with SELinux enabled and enforced out-of-the-box, which is important. Arch requires manual setup for similar security, and I’m not sure if there are easier alternatives.
8. Package Managers: It appears that a lot of people actually prefer pacman over dnf, even if they remained with Fedora as their distro choice.
9. Kernel: I don’t know much about kernel differences, so I’d love input here. I assume CachyOS is “less stable” because of more tweaks and system-specific behavior.
10. Filesystem: Filesystem & Bootloader: Fedora and CachyOS use Btrfs, which is more modern than EOS’s default ext4, though Btrfs can likely be set up on EOS too. Can bootloaders be easily swapped as well (Limine instead of GRUB)?
11. Fedora builds everything with -fno-omit-frame-pointer, which aids debugging, something not done in Cachy/EOS.

Additionally I have two extra questions!

1. How do you view the situation with the Red Hat / IBM relationship as a Fedora user or ex-user? I am still forming an opinion whether this is good or not as I am technically still new to Linux and the whole ideology.
2. I feel like CachyOS it as the name suggests, "cachy". I feel like it is a temporary thing that at some point will quite down, with people overrating the optimizations it offers. I might be 100% wrong about this, so again I would love some clarifications!


Thank you very much for going through my post!

 

[hrsetrdr]

Visag3, Hello, am new to this forum but have been a Linux desktop user for 20 years. I've used many Linux and several of the BSDs over the years.
Every time Fedora drops an even numbered release I have to download and play with it, in a live session. But I don't use Fedora or Redhat as a daily driver. I'm a long time Debian desktop user, currently have a couple Debian 13 installs, with Mate DE, my preferred.
Also have 2 systems with EOS running(again, Mate). Arch documentation can't be beat, the EOS community is very helpful, there's an extensive wiki there too. Manjaro and Garuda are decent Arch derivatives, I don't think they'll be around for a while.

 

[theLegionWithin]

personally biased towards Arch+KDE as that is what I use - point #4 (documentation) is why I switched to Arch, actually. I've tried a few Arch-based distros as well as Fedora, but on my main rig I went Arch vanilla style and then only installed the packages I wanted. never had any stability issues myself despite the rolling-release model - everything just works, and if it doesnt it's my fault. I use pacman and yay for updates, though there are quite a few other aur package managers - other than the ddos attacks that happen every so often (https://status.archlinux.org/), I've basically run into zero issues.

I dont really have any strong feeling one way or another in regards to RHEL/Fedora, though as an ex-ibm employee I'm sort of biased against ibm.

 

[Visag3]

Visag3, Hello, am new to this forum but have been a Linux desktop user for 20 years. I've used many Linux and several of the BSDs over the years.
Every time Fedora drops an even numbered release I have to download and play with it, in a live session. But I don't use Fedora or Redhat as a daily driver. I'm a long time Debian desktop user, currently have a couple Debian 13 installs, with Mate DE, my preferred.
Also have 2 systems with EOS running(again, Mate). Arch documentation can't be beat, the EOS community is very helpful, there's an extensive wiki there too. Manjaro and Garuda are decent Arch derivatives, I don't think they'll be around for a while.

That is a really long time!

You are have so many Linux systems! How is your experience with EOS so far? Do you do your main work there?

 

[Visag3]

personally biased towards Arch+KDE as that is what I use - point #4 (documentation) is why I switched to Arch, actually. I've tried a few Arch-based distros as well as Fedora, but on my main rig I went Arch vanilla style and then only installed the packages I wanted. never had any stability issues myself despite the rolling-release model - everything just works, and if it doesnt it's my fault. I use pacman and yay for updates, though there are quite a few other aur package managers - other than the ddos attacks that happen every so often (https://status.archlinux.org/), I've basically run into zero issues.

I dont really have any strong feeling one way or another in regards to RHEL/Fedora, though as an ex-ibm employee I'm sort of biased against ibm.

That's why I feel about switching, you basically have every option at your hand and it is your choice what to do about it. I would not have to worry about upgrading versions and there is so much information about it on the Internet!

I did not know about ddos attacks, how does it affect Arch (AUR) ?

 

[theLegionWithin]

That's why I feel about switching, you basically have every option at your hand and it is your choice what to do about it. I would not have to worry about upgrading versions and there is so much information about it on the Internet!

I did not know about ddos attacks, how does it affect Arch (AUR) ?

it's kind of annoying - you'll go to update and it will just fail. I was doing an update recently on my testbench - I maintain a laptop used only for testing distros, it's sort of a backup should my main rig suffer catastrophic failure (doubt it but hey anything is possible) and it's more fun than using a vm - it's currently running Liya --> https://liyalinux.gitlab.io/ - anyway, I was doing an update and yeah, the aur dropped out half way though. irritating. something to be aware of if you're getting any packages from the aur though.