CachyOS's August 2026 Release Rewrites Shelly Package Manager From C# to Zig, Previews Server Edition
CachyOS's August 2026 release rewrites the Shelly package manager from C# to Zig, moves the kernel-manager backend and Cachy-Update applet to Rust, and adds experimental Server Edition installer profiles.
Overview
CachyOS, the performance-optimized Arch-based Linux distribution, shipped its August 2026 release on August 9, according to Phoronix and Linuxiac. The release rewrites Shelly, the project’s default graphical package manager, from C# to Zig, and lands the first experimental installer profiles for the upcoming CachyOS Server Edition.
What We Know
According to Linuxiac, the release is powered by Linux kernel 7.1 and marks CachyOS’s fifth ISO refresh of the year. Phoronix similarly describes it as the project’s “latest media refresh of the year,” noting that CachyOS continues working toward the planned CachyOS Server Edition.
Shelly’s rewrite is the release’s headline change. Both Phoronix and Linuxiac report that the default GUI package manager moved from C# to Zig. The official CachyOS release announcement says the switch drops the managed runtime in favor of native binaries, aiming for lower memory use and faster startup. Per Linuxiac, the redesigned app adds a first-run welcome screen, list and grid views for browsing packages, and lets AUR users preview PKGBUILD files and inspect build output directly in the interface. Shelly’s command line was also expanded, gaining integrated search across official repositories and the AUR, a combined update check spanning repository packages, AUR packages, AppImages and Flatpaks, and TOML-based backup import and export. Flatpak support is no longer bundled by default and now ships as an optional shelly-flatpak-backend package, Linuxiac reports.
The CLI installer picked up fixes and internal refactoring, and, according to both Phoronix and Linuxiac, gained its first experimental installation profiles for the upcoming CachyOS Server Edition. Phoronix frames the CLI installer work as explicit preparation ahead of that future Server Edition release.
Two other components moved to Rust in this release. Phoronix reports that chwd, CachyOS’s hardware-detection tool, had its kernel-manager backend rewritten from C++ to Rust; the official announcement adds that the new backend was integrated directly into chwd-kernel. Separately, Cachy-Update’s system tray applet was also rewritten in Rust, according to both Phoronix and Linuxiac. Linuxiac reports that Cachy-Update was rebased on Arch-Update 4.x, gained a new --check --enable option to turn on automatic update checks and launch the tray applet in one step, added configurable pagination through a TrayUpdatesPerPage option, and raised its default update-check interval to six hours.
Desktop-facing changes round out the release. Linuxiac reports that Hyprland installations using Noctalia now use noctalia-greeter instead of SDDM, Cinnamon switched from lightdm-gtk-greeter to lightdm-slick-greeter, GNOME installs now include gvfs-dnssd, and cosmic-monitor was added for the COSMIC desktop. CachyOS also added new Noctalia variants for the Mango and Niri window managers, Noctalia v5 support for its Hyprland dotfiles, and an updated Nord KDE theme for Plasma 6.7, per Linuxiac. CachyOS-Welcome received a DNS-handling fix so its speed-test-based server ranking correctly picks the fastest DNS server, and the cachyos-rate-mirrors tool now draws on the CachyOS mirrorlist API, which Linuxiac reports developers say should improve ranking of outdated and regional mirrors. CachyOS also updated its gaming documentation, removing launch options no longer needed with current versions of proton-cachyos-slr, Linuxiac reports; Phoronix likewise notes updates to the CachyOS Wiki’s gaming guide.
Existing users do not need to take any manual migration steps. Both Linuxiac and the official announcement note that a standard sudo pacman -Syu is sufficient to update. New Desktop and Handheld edition installation images are available from CachyOS’s mirrors, according to Linuxiac.
What We Don’t Know
Neither the official announcement nor the outlets covering it give a release date or feature scope for the CachyOS Server Edition itself — only that this release’s CLI installer changes are experimental groundwork for it. Benchmark figures for Shelly’s memory-use or startup-time improvements after the Zig rewrite were not published alongside the release.