CachyOS's latest update brings Linux kernel 6.14, new bootloader & many other enhancements

CachyOS, a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux with a focus on speed and performance, has released its second update of the year, bringing a range of enhancements and bug fixes. The update is based on the latest Linux kernel 6.14 and includes GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6.3.3, and Mesa 3D Graphics Library version 25.0.2.

A notable addition in this release is the new bootloader, Limine, which supports both BIOS and UEFI, and offers theming options similar to GRUB. Direct BTRFS snapshot support has also been integrated. Moreover, responding to user feedback, a new package, cachyos-samba-settings, has been introduced for configuring and setting up Samba support.

In collaboration with NVIDIA, CachyOS has re-enabled the GSP Firmware for the closed-source kernel module. The kernel update also includes support for the ASUS Armoury driver, catering to devices like the Rog Ally and certain laptops for fan and power management.

The update reverts the default use of the NTFS3 kernel driver for mounting partitions due to user-reported issues, opting instead to respect user defaults. A customized Wine package now utilizes WoW64 to reduce dependencies on lib32 libraries, with Wine and Wine-Staging defaulting to NTSync instead of Winesync for improved performance.

Additionally, support for RDNA4, RTX 5070 Ti, and 5070 graphics cards has been added, along with various other enhancements and bug fixes.