CachyOS is what I installed a couple of months ago and it's been great. The only major challenge I've had so far have been with my Windows 11 VM which I need for work. For anyone who doesn't need Windows-exclusive software to work (Excel 2024, in my case), Linux is easier to use than Windows... But it does have a bit of a learning curve if you need to install specific things.

Another example: Omada Controller is needed for my wifi mesh network. Took me a while to figure out that I need to use Podman or Docker for it (after several failed attempts at installing different versions from AUR.) But once I figured that out, it was easier to get running than the official software was on Windows. I think 1 app to install from Cachy Hello (Podman) and 2 commands in the terminal to get and run the container in Podman. (I even ignored the instructions to use Docker and it worked 100% smoothly on Podman on the first try.)

All my hardware just works without manually installing drivers. Updating almost everything on the system took 1 GUI command a few minutes to run, then less than a minute to reboot. It mounts my old Windows drive no problem.

And it's so fast. No random slowdowns for Windows search indexing, antimalware executable, "System". No hours spent needing to debloat and reconfigure Windows 11 to hide all the bullshit... It took me longer to configure Windows 11 in my VM than it did to set up everything in CachyOS.

That said, I'd only suggest CachyOS to someone who can tinker and wants/needs cutting edge (gaming stability/performance improvements, in my case). I'm leaning towards an immutable distro for my wife's laptop—old hardware, and won't be used for gaming. Maybe Fedora Kinoite? Windows 10 runs like shit on it, now, even though it used to be plenty fast.