CachyOS August 2026 Rewrites Shelly in Zig and Preps a Server Edition

CachyOS August 2026 Rewrites Shelly in Zig and Preps a Server Edition

By Our editorial standards

CachyOS published its August 2026 ISO on August 8, the project’s fifth release this year, and it carries a notable rewrite underneath the usual package refreshes.

Shelly moves from C# to Zig

Shelly, CachyOS’s default GUI package manager, was rewritten from C# to Zig, dropping the managed runtime in favour of native binaries with lower memory use and faster startup.

Rewriting a working application in a different language is usually a bad idea, and the justification here is specific: a package manager that pulls in a .NET runtime is a strange dependency for a distribution whose entire pitch is performance and minimal overhead. Shipping a native binary removes both the runtime and the startup cost.

The desktop application also gained a first-run welcome screen, list and grid package browsing, AUR PKGBUILD previews with build output, and a Utilities page covering database sync, cache cleanup, and orphan removal.

That AUR PKGBUILD preview deserves a mention, because showing users the build script before it runs is the single most useful thing a graphical AUR frontend can do. Shelly 3.1 has since gone further, adding native PKGBUILD execution with Landlock sandboxing.

Desktop

The release ships KDE Plasma 6.7.4, KDE Frameworks 6.28, and KDE Gear 26.04.3, along with new Noctalia variants for mango and niri, Noctalia v5 support in the Hyprland dotfiles, and an updated Nord KDE theme for Plasma 6.7.

Installer and handhelds

The installer received significant updates, including improved handheld detection and experimental support for upcoming Server Edition installation profiles.

A CachyOS Server Edition is an interesting direction. The distribution built its reputation on desktop and gaming performance tuning, and the kernel work that produces has obvious server applications, but the two audiences want very different defaults. Worth watching what the profiles actually configure when they arrive.

Context

CachyOS’s kernel work has become influential well beyond its own user base. Garuda’s Temeraire release replaced linux-zen with a CachyOS-derived kernel this month, which is a reasonable measure of how far that engineering has spread.

More news

Shelly 3.1 Builds Arch Packages Without makepkg and Sandboxes PKGBUILDs With LandlockCachyOS's libalpm-based package manager now owns the full build pipeline from PKGBUILD review to signed pacman-compatible archive, resolves AUR-only dependencies itself with --sync-deps, and can confine build scripts using Landlock.Garuda Linux 'Temeraire' Drops Zen for a CachyOS-Based Kernel and Rewrites Hyprland in LuaGaruda's first major release in over a year ships Linux 7.2, replaces linux-zen with a CachyOS-derived linux-garuda kernel, swaps SDDM for Plasma Login Manager, and rebuilds the Hyprland edition's config from scratch.Shelly 2.4.1.2 Fixes Key libalpm Bugs as CachyOS Adopts It Over OctopiShelly 2.4.1.2, a graphical frontend built directly on Arch's libalpm library, landed July 6, 2026 with fixes for chroot user passthrough, child process spawning, and an AUR version constraint bug. CachyOS has adopted it as its default graphical package manager, replacing Octopi.

Background reading

Explainers for the concepts behind this story.

x86-64 Microarchitecture Levels Explained: v1, v2, v3, and v4Distributions increasingly build packages for x86-64-v2 or v3 instead of the 2003 baseline. What each level requires, how to check your CPU, which distributions require or offer which level, and how much speed you actually gain.CPU Monitoring on LinuxA practical guide to monitoring CPU usage on Linux, covering top, htop, and mpstat, how to read user/system/wait time breakdowns, per-core versus aggregate views, and identifying whether a bottleneck is CPU-bound or I/O-bound.iostat Explainediostat reports per-device disk I/O statistics, showing throughput, request sizes, queue depth, and utilization. This guide covers installing sysstat, reading iostat -x output, and identifying which disk is actually the bottleneck.