Why does EndeavourOS XFCE feel smoother than CachyOS XFCE on my old Chromebook?

[u/Able-Farm6295]

Hey guys 👋 I have an old Lenovo N23 Chromebook with 4GB RAM and 16GB eMMC, and I’ve been trying different Arch-based distros on it.

I tried EndeavourOS XFCE and CachyOS XFCE, and somehow EndeavourOS feels much smoother on this old Chromebook.

CachyOS XFCE doesn’t feel as smooth for me.
This kinda surprised me because both are Arch-based. 🤔

So I’m wondering, what makes EndeavourOS feel so smooth on old/low-end hardware?

Is it because of the kernel, XFCE settings, services, packages, CPU optimizations, drivers, or something else?

I thought CachyOS was supposed to be performance-focused, so I’m curious why EndeavourOS feels better on this particular hardware.

Is there some configuration or “secret sauce” in EndeavourOS that I’m missing? 😂

Would love to hear from anyone who knows about this stuff.

Thanks! 🙏

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[u/LBTRS1911]

I think CachyOS is "performance focused" on newer hardware. They are not optimizing for old Chromebooks. CachyOS seems to have more stuff going on so older/slower hardware it seems would struggle with these extra things. I know for me, CachyOS boots slower than EndeavourOS on my Ryzen AI Max+ 395 machine. Everything else seems close to the same but boot is definitely longer on CachyOS in my case.

[u/CostalCaster → u/LBTRS1911]

That's what I got as well, as I originally wanted Bazzite or Cachy. I went with EndeavourOS because I found the platform to be similar with connections to Arch but also with a lighter profile and connections to AUR and YAY. Also with native driver support for Nvidia also helps greatly as well

[u/CostalCaster]

It's almost entirely down to the optimization. Cachy is meant for gaming systems, and Chromebooks most definitely aren't. You have less storage than mine but the same RAM and I was able to actually put full KDE Plasma on my end with ZRAM and it feels just as fast as it did on native ChromeOS

[u/jeroenim0]

The secret sauce is probably your confirmation bias ;-)

Happy that you like it though!

I'm always chuggin when people think they can magically make an old system faster by installing <insert type linux> on it. Realistically the CPU's and RAM do not get a boost and the differences are reall minimal (Read the maximum performance of your rig especially when older has been reached)

Now if you have a bleeding edge latest CPU there is a bit of difference that can be optimized, but that my friend is not what you have!

Keep on using EOS though it's really awesome, even if it's unmeasurable faster then <insert distro>, remember feelings cannot be denied!! And that is a good thing...

[u/yevelnad]

Endeavor performs the same as vanilla arch. Mine has a celeron and can run KDE just fine. In all the distro's ive tried, kubuntu and arch/endeavor are the smoothest on kde. Now im running hyperland with noctalia on arch. I really though it was difficult to install but "archinstall" change the game.

[u/aksak11]

I wouldn’t use something arch based on that weak hardware but choice is yours.

[u/Daniel_mfg → u/aksak11]

I am curious what your reasoning behind that is? I think that something like EndeavorOS is rather minimal and thus "light"... (Not as super light as a pure arch install but still...) And a light system that doesn't use much ram should thus also help out older hardware...

Or at least that is my thought process behind this.

[u/aksak11 → u/Daniel_mfg]

Arch is indeed light on system resources. But if I had that kind of system I wouldn’t choose a rolling release distro, because if something breaks it’d be pain in the ass to fix it, considering how painfully slow system is. Something like Debian stable would be way to go in my opinion. Just install and forget about it. Don’t update even kernel if there is not absolute necessity.

[u/Daniel_mfg → u/aksak11]

Apart from that that in my opinion arch isn't as fragile as people meme it to be... If you go with a "don't update" stance then you might as well not update an arch system as well in a case like this..

But i do at least understand what you were thinking here 👍

Edit: typo

[u/Any_Fox5126 → u/Daniel_mfg]

Supposedly, maintainers of non-rolling release distros select the most stable versions for freezing, so it is not a fair comparison to just randomly pausing updates on a rolling release.

[u/iwouldbeatgoku → u/Any_Fox5126]

That's not necessarily the case. Non-rolling distros are "stable" in the sense that they're static, not necessarily in terms of reliability, and if the frozen version they ship stops being supported by the upstream developer they typically won't ship bug/security fixes for it anymore. This is especially an issue on LTS distros like Debian stable or Ubuntu's LTS branch, but if you choose a stable distro with a 6-month release cycle you'll typically get reasonable support as long as you keep upgrading as new versions of the distro become available.

On a rolling release distro, as long as the software you're using is becoming less buggy over time, you'll always have something theoretically more reliable than an LTS distro. You might get "breaking changes" at any time (as in, the new version of the software you're using might become incompatible with projects made on older versions), while a stable release distro will ensure these only happen when you upgrade between major versions. Personally I find rolling release distros are easier to maintain on my own computer, but I also don't do any professional work on Linux so I have no need to postpone breaking changes to a set date once or twice a year.

[u/aksak11 → u/Daniel_mfg]

Yeah. He wouldn’t be taking advantage of using arch anyway. So in my opinion minimizing facing a problem in the first place is the safest approach.

[u/Consistent_While_483]

El problema no es la distro. El problema es tu hardware y sus limitaciones. Qué procesador tienes?