Omarchy + CachyOS Hybrid Installer – Can You Get Cachy Performance with the Omarchy Desktop?

In this video, I experiment with something a lot of people have asked about:
running Omarchy on top of a CachyOS base to see if you can combine Omarchy’s polished Hyprland desktop with CachyOS’s heavily optimised performance stack.

Instead of rebuilding everything manually, I create a custom hybrid installer that merges the two approaches into a single ISO — giving you a CachyOS base install, followed by Omarchy layered on top.

This is highly experimental, not an official method, and very much a “let’s see what happens” project.

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🔹 Why Try This?

Vanilla Arch with Omarchy is already fast and stable.
So why bother?

CachyOS pushes optimisation much further — especially for gaming and lower-end hardware. The idea here is simple:
• Omarchy for the desktop experience
• CachyOS for the performance tuning
• One installer instead of building everything by hand

This approach is aimed at people who want results, not a weekend spent rebuilding an OS from scratch.

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🔹 What This Video Covers
• How the hybrid ISO is built by combining:
• The CachyOS installer flow
• Omarchy’s install scripts and setup
• Why this must be an online installer
• How package mismatches and key handling are dealt with
• Encrypted install flow (keeping Omarchy’s security model intact)
• Network considerations (wired strongly recommended)
• Installing and running Omarchy on top of a CachyOS base
• GameScope setup and gaming workflow
• Real-world benchmarks comparing:
• Vanilla Omarchy
• Vanilla CachyOS
• Omarchy running on CachyOS

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🔹 Important Reality Check

This setup:
• Is not officially supported
• May break with future updates
• Depends heavily on your hardware
• Works best with a stable wired connection
• Makes the most sense on older or lower-end GPUs

If you’re running a high-end GPU, the gains can be minimal.
On “potato” hardware, the improvements are more noticeable.

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🔹 Benchmark Takeaways
• CachyOS consistently edges out vanilla Omarchy
• The gains vary wildly by game and hardware
• On lower-end GPUs, small improvements can matter
• On high-end systems, the difference is often negligible

This isn’t about magic FPS boosts — it’s about squeezing every last bit of performance when resources are limited.

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🔹 Who This Is For

This video is for people who:
• Like experimenting
• Want maximum performance without rebuilding everything
• Are curious whether CachyOS is actually worth the hype
• Don’t mind a bit of tinkering if the payoff is there

If you want a clean, stable setup with minimal fuss, standard Omarchy is still the sensible choice.

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💬 Final Thoughts

This hybrid approach really is a case of best of both worlds — but only if you’re willing to accept the trade-offs.

It’s fun, it works, and it shows what’s possible when you stop treating distros as fixed boxes and start treating them as building blocks.

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