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CachyOS ISO Release for March 2026 Is Out with KDE Plasma 6.6, Winboat, and More
Powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.18 LTS kernel series, the CachyOS ISO snapshot for March 2026 ships with the latest and greatest KDE Plasma 6.6.2 desktop environment by default, which is accompanied by the KDE Frameworks 6.23 and KDE Gear 25.12.3 software suites.
Some of the highlights of the CachyOS release for March 2026 include an updated Calamares graphical installer with animated GIF/WebP previews in the Desktop Selection page for KDE Plasma, GNOME, Niri, and COSMIC desktops, along with JPEG XL support to reduce image sizes.
An update (by Roy)
Also by Liam Dawe:
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CachyOS update brings improvements for PC gaming handhelds, the installer and more | GamingOnLinux
CachyOS continues being one of the most popular Linux distributions, and the brand new release comes with lots of welcome improvements to setting it up. Should be smoother, and easier to install it while looking pretty slick too.
Original:
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CachyOS March 2026 Release
Hello CachyOS Enthusiasts,
This is our second release of the year, bringing animated desktop previews in the installer, Winboat integration, a reworked website, and significant handheld edition changes!
First, the installer now shows animated GIF/WebP previews in the Desktop Selection to showcase each desktop environment. This is currently enabled for Plasma, GNOME, Niri and COSMIC, giving users a much better idea of what to expect before making their choice. And also, added support for JPEG XL in the Desktop Selection to reduce image sizes. The Desktop Environment list has also been sorted from easy and accessible setups to more advanced ones like window managers. Cachy-Update is now enabled by default for GNOME and KDE installations. The microcode installation logic has been improved - it will now detect the hardware and install the proper microcode instead of installing both and then removing the unneeded one. The error message when the EFI partition is too small has also been improved.