Okay so I’ve been a little bit on a weird path. It’s more to due to mental factors and how I’ve started to work on more draining things like academics while slowly coming from a lengthy period of burnout, than CachyOS itself. I’ve switched to Debian 13 with GNOME now since a month ago. Something that could seem a little odd about this decisions is that I still really like KDE and CachyOS. I used CachyOS KDE for several months and truly felt at home. I LOVE performance tweaking things as I always tried that on Windows (but that’s extremely restricted), and KDE really felt like the thing I could fully make own with all of its settings, and also show off to other people using Windows and not make them confused. But something changed in my circumstance, because I felt like I wanted pure stability for my working environment. And GNOME does attend to my needs well enough and not do much extra. Doing academic work after burnout and mental things is really draining, having everything work a 100% of the time is and is something I felt like CachyOS couldn’t give me unless I was perceptive of my system (like checking Arch news and keeping it a bit updated). And, I also need to have some restraint with Cachy, because: CachyOS makes me adventurous : ) CachyOS makes me exited to update my system CachyOS makes me enjoy the performance of Linux to the max with several tools and options to tweak to my liking Debian doesn’t really have those things, and I do miss that. But I wouldn’t go back now. I discovered something I wish I had discovered so much earlier in my 1+ year Linux journey: cpupower frequency-set and using systemd (because it requires sudo) to create a startup service to restrict the CPU to -u 2100000 , which effectively sets the max CPU frequency to 2.1 Ghz instead of default 3.2 Ghz. I no longer have a hot airplane engine for a laptop. This is also partly what drove me to CachyOS because I achieved this silence without limiting the CPU. And then something else: Generally I feel like Debian users are wise people. They know how restrain themselves, and by using this distro with very little exiting features (although with decent QOL fixes), I inherit a bit of this thoughtfulness. Like, David Revoy , the most famous Krita-only artist, uses Debian. Paul Davis, one of the 2 main devs of Ardour , the best open-source DAW in existence also uses Debian. I feel like with Debian, I focus less on the tool and am able to make small adjustments to my liking (like replacing GRUB with systemd-boot). And then if I went too far, if something is truly broken, I can reinstall the OS and those exact adjustments will work exactly the same with this single release, which is supported until 2030. If I specifically need newer packages I use Flathub, AppImage, and external repos (although external .deb repos are not preferred because that is not the debian way ). And lastly, as I’m not that much of a gamer as I used to be, I do not plan on gaming on this device anymore since resuming academics, so that also played into my decision. I have always dual-booted with Windows, but now the rare occasion co-op game is played on Windows instead of CachyOS. Lowkey I could install Steam on Debian but it’s not fun when my laptop still becomes like an overheated airplane engine on Debian (unlike CachyOS), and the FPS is noticeably lower compared to Windows (unlike with CachOS). Let me know if this post is counterintuitive. I think I just like shiny things too much, that I need the constraint of Debian to keep me focused, and to have low-maintenance around my decisions. If I do ever get a dedicated gaming device, I will most likely pick CachyOS over the other gaming distros. Thanks for reading!