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# Trying out CachyOS on the new MSI Prestige 14. What do you want me to test?
- URL: https://www.siliconinsights.org/trying-out-cachyos-on-the-new-msi-prestige-14-what-do-you-want-me-to-test/
- Published: 2026-08-15T21:28:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-15T21:28:54.000Z
- Description: Let me know what you want me to benchmark when I use CachyOS on a Panther Lake laptop.
- Author: Matthew Connatser
- Tags: Memos

Hey all, I'm reviewing CachyOS on a Panther Lake laptop, MSI's Prestige 14 with the Core X7 Ultra 358H. I got this laptop back in February and naturally it came with Windows 11 by default. I've been content with the experience since then, as the battery life and performance has been pretty good, but considering it's been about half a year after Core Series 3 and this laptop debuted, I think it's about time I try a Linux distro on it.

I've shared my thoughts on Linux before, but I'll repeat them here. The idea behind Linux is great, the actual experience is a mixed bag. When things are done right with Linux, the results are amazing in respect to performance, support, and usability in general. I love Bazzite on my HTPC (once I switched to AMD) and LinuxMint was good on the 4090-equipped desktop I used up until a year ago.

Windows however does have a considerable advantage when it comes to convenience. Installing new apps is as easy as searching for a website and downloading an .exe, I can configure OS settings without even pulling up the terminal, and I can be pretty confident things will usually work (and if they don't, troubleshooting is rarely painful). With Linux, I find myself forced out of the UI and into the terminal far more frequently. When this happens, it's a big problem considering documentation can be quite poor, and unfortunately interacting with the community can be unpleasant on account of a few people with very bad manners.

That's all to say, when I review CachyOS, I will be coming from the perspective of trying to replace Windows 11 from top to bottom, and on a laptop I do expect this to be a tall order. I'm hoping that I'll be impressed, but I suspect that I'll stick with Windows 11\. Either way, my findings will take into account that this is the hardest use-case for Linux versus Windows 11\. With my old desktop, it was easy to tolerate suboptimal performance because a slow 4090 was still fast, and I had another laptop and a test bench running Windows to fall back on. Today, my laptop is the only PC I own that is used for things other than gaming, so it has to be good at everything.

I've selected CachyOS because I've heard from users who like it that it's got great performance, has a quick update roadmap, and unlike Bazzite it's not an immutable distro, which has been a headache for customization when it comes to my HTPC. It also apparently has the best performance for Panther Lake [according to Phoronix in April](https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-panther-lake?ref=siliconinsights.org), and while this may not be true today, the fact that CachyOS was in first place by a significant margin at any point is good enough reason to select it.

One disclaimer: I'm running CachyOS off of a PNY external SSD. I will say, this is a 1TB drive and it has very good performance [according to my own testing from last year](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeuYHIcXi1I&ref=siliconinsights.org). Thus far, I haven't noticed any performance issues, though I will say I'm frequently running into errors when trying to install Steam games, and maybe that has something to do with it.

With this review, I'm hoping I can answer three questions:

1. How does CachyOS compare to Windows 11 in respect to overall experience?
2. Is CachyOS good enough for a recently released laptop that would otherwise have lots of OEM support in Windows 11?
3. How does Panther Lake perform on CachyOS versus Windows 11?

I've already got a rough idea on how I'm gonna benchmark and use cases I can look at, but I wanna hear from you all on things you'd like to see: specific games or software to test, niche but important interactions, and whatever else you're interested in. You can leave a comment in the section below or send me an email or DM me or whatever.

I will say, so far I'm impressed. Even running off of an external SSD and hooked up to a dock, performance is very good. The Shelly package manager leaves much to be desired considering it seems I need to restart to use newly installed apps, which is kinda extreme.