CachyOS adds Hyprland Noctalia, DNS-over-QUIC support, and Python & GCC performance boosts

CachyOS has released its June update, marking the fourth distribution release of 2024 and enhancing its focus on CPU-specific package builds and advanced kernel scheduling. The installer now includes the CachyOS Hyprland Noctalia desktop environment, offered alongside a preview video to help users select their preferred interface.

The distribution's package stack gains notable improvements as Python now employs extended profile-guided optimization, boosting performance for Python workloads. The updated GCC introduces better handling for branch misprediction costs on Intel and AMD CPUs, aiming to improve real-world hardware performance. Following these technical upgrades, the pacman package manager now defaults to network isolation for scriptlets and hooks, reducing network access during installations and updates. A regression affecting Phoronix Benchmarks on high core count CPUs when using OpenBLAS has also been resolved.

While Shelly is now recommended for package management, replacing Paru, the onboarding experience gets an upgrade with CachyOS Welcome's new DNS over QUIC support via Blocky, additional troubleshooting resources, and Ptyxis terminal compatibility. MangoWM now utilizes SDDM for display management and switches GNOME System Monitor for Resources. Other enhancements include the addition of real-time-privileges to the audio group and improved keyboard layout detection in the live session.

Hardware and virtualization improvements arrive in chwd, with better vendor ID support, multi-GPU driver conflict resolution, a 32-bit Vulkan driver for virtual machines, and optimized service timeouts for increased system responsiveness.