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Gaming on CachyOS

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tagsnote/cachyos

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Part of CachyOS Wiki Notes. From the official CachyOS wiki (last updated 2026-07-26).

Gaming on CachyOS

Prerequisite: working GPU drivers.

Essential packages live in the meta-packages cachyos-gaming-meta and cachyos-gaming-applications (CachyOS Hello → Apps/Tweaks → “Install Gaming packages” installs both).

Proton-CachyOS

Based on Proton’s bleeding-edge: Wine-staging patches, Wine Fullscreen FSR, video/audio codecs for cutscenes, umu-launcher + UMU-Protonfixes support, early game hotfixes. Disable with PROTON_NO_NTSYNC=1.

Steam launch option pattern

[env variables] [wrappers] %command% [application arguments]

Examples:

PROTON_DXVK_D3D8=1

DXVK_HUD="fps,memory,version,api"

mangohud --dlsym

gamescope -W 1680 -H 1050 -w 1280 -h 720 -S fit -F fsr --mangoapp --

__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SKIP_CLEANUP=1 prime-run game-performance %command% -dx11

Only the first %command% counts — everything after it is treated as game arguments. Never chain multiple %command% separators.

umu-launcher (Lutris / Heroic)

sudo pacman -S cachyos/umu-launcher
  • Lutris Runner Options: Wine version = proton-cachyos-slr or proton-cachyos-native; Use System winetricks = Disabled; Enable DXVK = Enabled. System Options: Disable Lutris Runtime = Enabled, Prefer system libraries = Enabled; env var PROTON_VERB=waitforexitandrun (optional).
  • Note: user-defined DXVK/VKD3D/DXVK-NVAPI versions are not applied with umu-launcher.

Anti-cheat (EAC / BattlEye)

sudo pacman -S proton-cachyos-slr

Wine-CachyOS

Standalone (Lutris / Heroic / Bottles — not for Steam). Packages: wine-cachyos (replaces system wine/wine-staging) and wine-cachyos-opt (separate location, lets versions coexist).

Options: WINE_WMCLASS="[name]", WINEUSERSANDBOX=1, WINE_NO_WM_DECORATION=1, WINE_PREFER_SDL_INPUT=1.

Strict env setup:

export PATH="/opt/wine-cachyos/bin/:$PATH"
export WINEDLLPATH="/opt/wine-cachyos/lib/wine:/opt/wine-cachyos/lib32/wine:$WINEDLLPATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/wine-cachyos/lib/:/opt/wine-cachyos/lib32/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
WINE=/opt/wine-cachyos/bin/wine WINEPREFIX=[your prefix] winetricks [verb]

Proton flavours

proton-cachyos (in cachyos-gaming-meta); packages proton-cachyos-native and proton-cachyos-slr (slr preferred). Also Proton-EM, dwproton, Proton-GE, plus Valve’s Proton Experimental / 11.0 / 10.0.

Common fixes

  • H264 codec (run once, then restart Steam normally): steam steam://unlockh264/

  • Steam recorder stutter (breaks the Steam Overlay): LD_PRELOAD="" %command%

  • Proton logging: PROTON_LOG=1 %command% → ~/steam-[AppID].log (CS2 = steam-730.log); upload to paste.cachyos.org.

  • Disable Steam shader pre-caching when using Proton-CachyOS/-GE/-EM: Steam → Settings → Downloads → uncheck “Allow background processing of Vulkan shaders” and “Enable Shader Pre-caching”.

  • NTFS: do not run Proton games from NTFS drives (unsupported by Valve).

  • gamescope session:

    pacman -S gamescope-session-cachyos

    then set it as the default session.

  • Lutris: arguments in Game options → Arguments; wrappers (mangohud --dlsym, game-performance) in System options → Command prefix; env vars in the Environment variables table (no = in the Key field). Logs: Output debugging info = Inherit from environment, plus PROTON_LOG=1.

Performance

  • Do not combine gamemode and ananicy-cpp (both modify niceness):

    systemctl stop ananicy-cpp

  • game-performance uses power-profiles-daemon to switch to the performance profile until the game exits (and switches the active scx scheduler to its gaming profile — see sched-ext Schedulers):

    game-performance %command%

Increase the maximum shader cache size

Old shaders get evicted at the default size, and big games can have >1GB of shaders — which means recompiling on every launch. Create the env file:

mkdir -p ~/.config/environment.d
touch ~/.config/environment.d/gaming.conf
micro ~/.config/environment.d/gaming.conf

Paste the vendor value:

# Increase AMD's shader cache size to 12GB
MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE=12G

# Increase Nvidia's shader cache size to 12GB
__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE=12000000000

Restart for it to take effect. (Credit on the wiki: psygreg’s shader booster.)

Misc

  • DLSS preset via launch option: dlss-swapper %command% — see CachyOS Settings Package.
  • Ray tracing: see the Arch Wiki Hardware_raytracing page. The NVIDIA DX12 performance drop is a driver/scheduling issue, not CachyOS; no known workaround.
  • GPU selection: Dual GPU Setup.

Related: General System Tweaks (NVIDIA Smooth Motion), Dual GPU Setup.

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