{"id":167629,"date":"2026-05-18T07:03:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/computingforgeeks.com\/?p=167629"},"modified":"2026-05-18T07:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:40:17","slug":"things-to-do-after-installing-cachyos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/computingforgeeks.com\/things-to-do-after-installing-cachyos\/","title":{"rendered":"Things to Do After Installing CachyOS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You have just finished a fresh CachyOS<\/strong> install (or you are still on the way and following the step-by-step install guide<\/a>) and you are looking at a clean KDE Plasma desktop. The install guide walked you through the Calamares wizard, but the actual work of turning that fresh disk image into a daily-driver workstation happens in the first hour after first boot. This is the comprehensive, tested walkthrough of things to do after installing CachyOS<\/strong>: rate mirrors, finish the first update, learn paru and the AUR, add Flatpak, set up the fish shell or swap it for zsh, install the apps you will actually use, theme KDE Plasma, lock down the firewall, and pick up the small set of CLI tools that make Linux less painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every command and screenshot below was captured on a fresh CachyOS install on a UEFI machine, no exceptions. The order matters: do the update first, the AUR helper second, theming and apps after, and the firewall before you take the laptop anywhere public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tested May 2026 on the CachyOS 260426 desktop ISO with linux-cachyos 7.0.8 (EEVDF), KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, fish 4.x, paru 2.x, Flatpak 1.x, and a BTRFS root using zstd compression. Hardware: 4 vCPU host CPU passthrough, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB virtual SSD.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step 1: Rate mirrors and do the first system update<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The CachyOS ISO ships a mirrorlist that was current the day the ISO was built. Days or weeks later, the fastest mirror for your network is almost certainly a different one. CachyOS includes cachyos-rate-mirrors<\/code>, which benchmarks the entire mirror list against your network and rewrites \/etc\/pacman.d\/cachyos-mirrorlist<\/code> sorted by speed. Run it before any pacman command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo cachyos-rate-mirrors<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The tool prints the ranked mirror list as it works and writes the new mirrorlist file. On a fresh install the run takes 30-60 seconds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Terminal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Now run the first system update. CachyOS is a rolling release, so the ISO image is always slightly behind the live repos. The first pacman -Syu<\/code> will pull anywhere from a handful of packages to several hundred depending on how old the ISO is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo pacman -Syu<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
This single command does three things: refreshes the package databases (the -y<\/code>), checks for upgrades to every installed package, and applies them with confirmation. Hit Enter to accept the proposed upgrade. The output looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Terminal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
If a new kernel landed in the update, reboot. The new kernel modules are loaded only on a fresh boot, and skipping the reboot leaves the running kernel and its modules out of sync, which causes weird breakage later. After the reboot, you are on the latest CachyOS stack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step 2: Confirm paru is installed and learn the four commands that matter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
CachyOS ships paru<\/strong> as its default AUR helper, already installed. paru wraps pacman and adds the ability to install packages from the Arch User Repository<\/a>, the community-maintained build-script repository where you find software not in the official Arch repos (proprietary apps, niche dev tools, latest pre-release versions). Confirm paru is there:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
paru --version\nwhich paru<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The four paru commands that cover 95% of daily use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
Command<\/th>What it does<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
paru<\/code><\/td>Alias for paru -Syu<\/code>. Updates official repos AND the AUR packages you have installed.<\/td><\/tr>\n
paru -S package<\/code><\/td>Install a package from either the official repos or the AUR.<\/td><\/tr>\n
paru -Ss query<\/code><\/td>Search both repos and AUR for a name or description match.<\/td><\/tr>\n
paru -Rns package<\/code><\/td>Remove a package along with its unused dependencies and config files.<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
A real example: search the AUR for a chat client, see what is available, install one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
paru -Ss visual-studio-code-bin\nparu -S visual-studio-code-bin<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
paru shows you the PKGBUILD before installing, asks if you want to edit it, and only proceeds when you say yes. That review step is the single biggest reason to use paru over yay<\/code> on a serious machine: the AUR is unaudited, and an AUR helper that quietly auto-builds anything is an attack surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Terminal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Step 3: Add Flathub and use Flatpak for sandboxed apps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Flatpak is the third package source on a CachyOS box (alongside the official pacman repos and the AUR). It ships sandboxed apps from Flathub<\/a>, the cross-distro Flatpak registry. Flatpak is not in the default install, so pull it in first. The Flathub remote needs sudo<\/code> for a system-wide install:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo pacman -S --noconfirm flatpak\nsudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https:\/\/flathub.org\/repo\/flathub.flatpakrepo\nflatpak remotes<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Now Discover (the KDE app store) and the flatpak<\/code> CLI both pull from Flathub. Install an app from Flathub:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
flatpak install flathub org.signal.Signal\nflatpak run org.signal.Signal<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The captured output of the Flathub setup looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Terminal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The general rule for which package source to use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • pacman<\/strong> for everything in the official repos. Always first choice. Native packages, lowest overhead, full pacman snapshot integration.<\/li>\n
  • AUR via paru<\/strong> for software not packaged in the official repos: latest pre-release dev tools, proprietary apps (Visual Studio Code, Slack, Zoom), niche utilities, anything that builds against a specific upstream.<\/li>\n
  • Flatpak from Flathub<\/strong> for sandboxed graphical apps, especially ones you want isolated from the rest of the system (browsers, chat, media players). Discover surfaces both pacman and Flatpak versions; pick the pacman one when both exist.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    Step 4: Install the apps you will actually use<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    CachyOS Hello has an Apps\/Tweaks<\/strong> button at the bottom that launches cachyos-pi<\/code>, a Qt GUI that bundles categorised app picks (browsers, dev tools, multimedia, office, gaming, fonts). It is a reasonable shortcut if you do not want to learn pacman flags first. Click into it once to see what is on offer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"CachyOS<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    For everyone past their first day on Linux, the terminal is faster. Here is a curated set of native pacman packages that covers most of what a developer or power user needs on day one. Split into logical chunks so you can pick what fits your laptop:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    # Browsers and chat (pick one of each)\nsudo pacman -S firefox chromium thunderbird\n\n# Office and PDF\nsudo pacman -S libreoffice-fresh okular gwenview\n\n# Dev essentials\nsudo pacman -S base-devel git github-cli docker docker-compose neovim\n\n# Languages and runtimes\nsudo pacman -S python python-pip nodejs npm go rust\n\n# Multimedia\nsudo pacman -S vlc mpv obs-studio audacity gimp inkscape\n\n# CLI quality-of-life\nsudo pacman -S htop btop fastfetch micro eza bat ripgrep fd fzf zoxide tmux<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    The “CLI quality-of-life” line at the bottom is the one most users skip and then regret. eza<\/code> replaces ls<\/code> with a faster, prettier alternative; bat<\/code> replaces cat<\/code> with syntax highlighting; ripgrep<\/code> replaces grep<\/code> with one tool that handles every file type; fzf<\/code> adds fuzzy finding everywhere; zoxide<\/code> replaces cd<\/code> with a directory-jumper that learns your habits. Install them now, build the muscle memory later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Captured output of installing the CLI tools and a quick version check on a few of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"Terminal<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    For proprietary or AUR-only apps, paru is the path. The common ones for a fresh laptop:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    paru -S visual-studio-code-bin slack-desktop zoom google-chrome 1password<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    paru will show each PKGBUILD before building. Read them on first run, accept on subsequent updates. None of those packages take more than a minute or two to build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Step 5: Get to know fish, the default shell<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    CachyOS sets fish<\/strong> as the default user shell, which is a meaningful departure from bash and zsh that you will hit immediately. fish gives you three things that “just work” with no config:<\/p>\n\n\n\n