Don’t be scared. CachyOS is a great distro.
I was hesitant to use CachyOS because I saw plenty of people saying it was advanced. I am pretty dumb when it comes to most things It related so I avoided it. But after doing the usual Linux distro hopping, I gave it a whirl and, baby, it’s been three months of bliss.
Gaming wise: it works out of the box. Install the gaming packages and basically everything you need (for most gamers) is there. Likewise for office tools. I have a laptop for study and all the programs you need are there from the installer.
I found using the terminal for everything else no harder than any other distro I used. I could install my VPN and Spotify and everything from the terminal and broke nothing.
I can’t talk about how easy/hard it would be if you’re using it for anything else like music design, programming, or whatever, but for gaming and a work/study OS, it’s great. It’s been three months of everything working and zero issues.
It could be that I picked up more skills and confidence while distro hopping, but honestly it’s pretty simple to set up and go. And the community is pretty active and friendly, so I doubt there’s anything I wouldn’t be able to find the answer to if I did get stuck.