CachyOS April Release Brings Shelly Package Manager

CachyOS has rolled out its April 2026 ISO, marking the third update of the year and shipping with the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel. One of the most notable changes is the switch to Shelly as the default GUI package manager, replacing Octopi in the installer.

Fresh installations now automatically create a permanent system snapshot, giving users a reliable restore point right after setup. GRUB’s os-prober is also enabled by default, allowing the system to detect and integrate other installed operating systems into the boot menu.

The installer has been refined as well. The UKUI desktop option has been removed, while the GNOME package selection has been streamlined. MangoWM is now offered as an optional desktop environment complete with dotfiles and can also be installed via the DMS shell. For AMD GPU users, a new Plymouth theme resolves previous display issues, particularly on laptops with secondary monitors.

The Welcome application has received several upgrades, most notably the addition of DNS-over-HTTPS support through blocky. Users can now test DNS performance, automatically select the fastest server, view server details like region and filtering type, and even configure custom DNS entries. A DHCP status indicator and reset function have also been added.

Further enhancements include a VRAM management toggle for AMD and Intel GPUs using dmemcg-booster, with KDE systems also installing plasma-foreground-booster. The interface has been improved with full keyboard navigation, better SVG icons for HiDPI and dark themes, and support for wezterm in the terminal helper.

Hardware detection capabilities have been expanded through the chwd tool, which now supports native USB detection via libusb and sysfs, identifies chassis types, integrates fingerprint readers for sudo authentication, and detects CPU family and model for intel-lpmd.

NVIDIA support has also been reworked. CachyOS now offers separate profiles for laptops and desktops, improves kernel detection, removes the kms hook on non-portable systems to avoid conflicts, and drops the forced Xorg session in older 470xx profiles to enhance compatibility with modern login managers.

At the system level, cachyos-settings changes the default NVMe I/O scheduler from “none” to “kyber” for better responsiveness under mixed workloads. It also removes S0ix power management due to issues with newer NVIDIA drivers and disables AggressiveVblank to address VR-related problems.

Finally, this release addresses several issues:

Virtual machine profiles now remove the outdated WaylandEnable=false setting for GDM.
The installer now logs the selected partitioning method and correctly removes outdated microcode packages when reusing an existing boot partition.
CachyOS-Welcome resolves connectivity issues, fixes dark theme link icons, prevents duplicate app launches, and improves desktop window matching.

For additional details, see the announcement.

Existing CachyOS users do not need any manual migration steps. A standard system upgrade with a simple sudo pacman -Syu command is sufficient to receive all improvements.

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