Things to do after installation
1. Update your system
There are two ways to update your system :-
- Discover (Software Update)
- Terminal command
For the first option you have to open Discover (in KDE , also called software update) and then choose the option update.
The second option is to open your terminal (shortcut : ctrl+alt+t
) and type the command sudo pacman -Syyu
and hit enter, and follow the instructions, if any.
It is advised to reboot your computer after a big update (especially if kernel version changes).
2. Reduce Swappiness
The goal of swappiness is to make the best use of Swap and RAM. And it allows establishing the balance between both. By default when cachyOS uses a lot of the RAM memory it starts writing some files into the Swap partition on your hard drive. The problem with this is the hard disk is slower than the RAM, soo this makes the system slower. You can reduce the use of Swap and use more RAM instead.
First, check the default swappiness value. Run in a terminal:
cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
or sysctl vm.swappiness
The default value is 60, which is too conservative. So recommend changing the value to 10 if you have more than 4GB of RAM.
To temporarily set the swappiness value:
# sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10
To set the swappiness value permanently, create a sysctl.d(5) configuration file. For example:
/etc/sysctl.d/99-swappiness.conf
vm.swappiness=10
Then save the file.
In order for the changes to take effect, reboot the system.
Then, check the swappiness value again. And you’ll see it’s 10. So this way cachyOS will use your RAM memory more efficiently.
3. Enable Firewall protection
-Things to add
4. Install the Apps That You Use
By default, CachyOS comes pre-bundled with tons of useful apps for your everyday use. But these might not be the apps you are accustomed to using daily. As such, the next thing you should be focused on is to install all the apps that you use to recreate your workflow.
Now, if you are new to Linux and don’t know what apps to install, here is a list of some of the must-have Linux apps that you should consider having on your Manjaro system.
GIMP – Image processor. Alternative to Photoshop.
VLC – Media Player. You already know what it is.
Stacer – System monitor.
Skype, Telegram, Discord, Signal – Almost all popular messenger apps are supported.
Steam – All you gamers already know what it is.
Spotify – For your music needs.
MailSpring – Email Client. More feature-rich than the default ThunderBird.
Super Productivity – An awesome to-do list manager and Pomodoro timer app.
Visual studio code - An awesome code editor
You can easily install these softwares by running one of the command sudo pacman -S nameofapp
or paru -S nameofapp
or yay -S nameofapp
For eg : paru -S vlc mailspring spotify gimp
can be used to install some of these apps
Note : If you get and error saying ‘error: target not found: appname’ you should try the other alternative pacman -S appname
and vice versa. You should also check if the name you are using is the name of the app in the database, for eg. vscode can be installed using paru -S visual-studio-code-bin
. Google it, if in confusion.
5. Global Menu
For some apps (like VSCode) the global menu doesn’t seem to work or is attached to the parent app instead of being attached to the panel, Hence to enable global menu support for GTK and Electron, you need to install some packages :
Run this command -> sudo pacman -S appmenu-gtk-module libdbusmenu-glib
and restart the app.
6. Set up Bluetooth headphones
If your current headset doesn’t auto connect you would need to configure your device to auto connect to your headphones, The Arch wiki gives a comprehensive guide on the same - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth_headset#Headset_via_Bluez5/PulseAudio , just read and follow the steps and you would be good to go.
For some headphones Pulseaudio doesn’t seem to work and you’d need to reconnect the headphones manually each time you restart your computer. To solve this issue replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire, using this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bluetooth_headset#Headset_via_Pipewire
7. If bluetooth seems to be off
Bluetooth need running service, you need to switch on, if you want to use bluetooth.
sudo systemctl start bluetooth.service
sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service
You should see bluetooth icon in the KDE panel.
8. If Wi-Fi/Ethernet seems to be off
sudo rfkill unblock wifi
sudo rfkill unblock ethernet
sudo systemctl restart --now NetworkManager
You should see Wi-Fi/Ethernet icon in the KDE panel.