i finally dumped windows and moved to cachyos. should have done it years ago.
windows is bloated
fresh install and there’s already copilot, onedrive, xbox stuff, widgets and ads in the start menu. i didn’t ask for any of it. the os is busy doing its own things instead of mine.
the ram situation
windows eats 4-5gb of ram doing literally nothing. cachyos sits under 1gb after boot. same laptop, feels like a new one.
it just sucks
updates reboot whenever they want. settings are split across two menus since forever. everything nags you. i was tired.
the real reason: dev environment
this is the big one. on windows every dev setup is a fight. wsl, path issues, slow file io, tools that half work.
on cachyos:
sudo pacman -S nodejs npmthat’s it. real terminal, real package manager, everything native. my servers run linux anyway, so now my laptop and prod speak the same language. setup that took a whole evening on windows takes minutes here.
verdict
fast, arch based, leaves me alone. not going back.