CachyOS November 2025 released
The November 2023 release of CachyOS is now available, which marks its seventh major update and makes it accessible via the download portal. This new iteration offers several meaningful improvements, particularly in accessibility, system setup, and user experience.
A big step forward was adding Orca and eSpeak-ng to the ISO image and installer tools. These are powerful utilities that will significantly help users with visual impairments access CachyOS more easily during installation, including setting up Orca as the screen reader for visually impaired support, which aims to improve their experience right from the start.
For those using Bcachefs or bcachefs root filesystems, it’s worth mentioning that the mkinitcpio "systemd" hook is enabled by default on supported setups. However, this automatic setup requires the new kernel module bcachefs-dkms instead of a built-in one. This change enhances support for these filesystems.
The installer now features Plasma Login Manager and Cosmic Greeter as login manager options. Although Plasma Login Manager aligns with future plans to replace SDDM entirely (pending full integration), the developers are temporarily pausing its implementation due to incomplete compatibility with KDE Settings. Instead, Cosmic Greeter is the preferred choice for COSMIC installations.
There are also notable hardware enhancements worth mentioning. Support now includes newer graphics technologies, which means it can automatically install specific drivers like intel-media-sdk and vpl-gpu-rt on compatible GPUs. This means better performance from a selection of CachyOS's packages and tools to prevent cache-related issues in the future.
For users with certain supported hardware, such as AMD/Intel processors or NVIDIA Fermi-class GPUs, the developers dropped legacy 390xx drivers. Instead, they are offering Nouveau NvBoost for improved compatibility on Fermi architectures – a move that should benefit older hardware setups and gaming performance.
CachyOS-Hello now improves the way users install software through its graphical interface, opening a dedicated PackageInstaller window instead of just showing instructions in the main window. The GUI also supports command-line interactions where possible, making it more robust. On the settings front, cachyos-settings has disabled recompression for certain pages after realizing it didn't deliver noticeable gains.
Proton-CachyOS saw some improvements too. It now works better with dxvk-gplasync and includes a larger shader cache limit to help manage game-specific graphics issues without running into the previous limitations.
Installation on tricky UEFI systems should be smoother than before, thanks to a correction for broken entry registration during Limine setup, which was causing problems in some cases. Also, users can now update CachyOS with ease using sudo pacman -Syu if they want to upgrade their system from scratch or add the new features mentioned above.
If you're on Steam-native-runtime, please be aware that it's being phased out and replaced by a different approach. The CachyOS team published a detailed migration guide here for those wanting additional information.
For more information and download links, visit the official announcement below:
CachyOS November 2025 Release
accessibility, Cosmic-greeter, systemd-hook
