Planning on moving over from Windows 10 to Linux for my Personal Work Station. Can't decide which OS I should switch to.

Dumpdog, 2 months ago

This Lemmy BBQ has been the most entertaining yet… First off, now that the drunk uncles are finally showing up and the conversation has meandered away from OP’s original question, I would like to say thank you OP - I was stoked to find your retro-gaming youtube. So good man!

The next bit of entertainment are the aforementioned drunk uncles scrapping it out on the lawn mid-post. Who has the bitchin’est Camaro? Nevermind that for a moment. Did Uncle Vinnie and Uncle Scotty say their FIREBIRDS are the bitchin’est? Fuck those guys! Linus from the Linus Tuner Garage out on the coast at 138 Richmond and Main said he busted the shit out of the Firebird dashboard that one time. Nah man, that was a Civic, but whatever, Firebirds blow. Pontiac is a shitty company anyway. Um, aren’t they all GM. Yeah, but Firebirds have that shitty design on the hood and crap aftermarket support.

Why don’t we all just sit around the Grill. Pick your steak, have a beer…

And thank fuck we aren’t using Windows 11

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

Yeah I didn’t expect the neighbour 3 doors down with their lifted pickup to show up. But it’s all fun, until someone mentions German cars and how unreliable they are when they start breaking down and how they’ve always been bad.

I got my answer eventually, but it’s sad the OpenSuse guys didn’t show. But that just shows how many people use their distro.

Also I am shocked anyone can find my channel, and happy you’ve enjoyed it. I made a video about ditching Windows and how 11 policies sucks, and would love to do more. But when I try the script becomes dull so I scrap it. Hoping there’s content when I eventually try this but Series 9 first.

Dumpdog, 2 months ago

I will check out the the Win 11 migration vid. Yeah, would definitely like to learn more about OpenSuse. Seems there is a lot of chatter about it on Linux@lemmy.ml
Perhaps will install it on something and tinker with it.

Muffi, 2 months ago

If you need DaVinci Resolve, just know that when you switch to Linux, you will lose the ability to read and render mp4 files. You will need to buy the full version to be able to do this on Linux.

I use my desktop primarily for video editing, 3D modeling, and a bit of gaming, and it’s been running Pop!_OS since December with absolutely zero issues. The only annoyance has been the mp4 file thing in DaVinci.

FluffyPotato, 2 months ago

Pop_OS is a good choice for a gaming machine, it was perfect for like 4 years until I upgraded my 1080TI for a 7900XTX and the Mesa version was too old to run it at the time so I switched to Manjaro.

Personally I hate most Arch based distros with a burning passion. Like I have used arch wiki to install Arch at least 3 times after it had shit the bed during an update. Now if I need to open a terminal to install a distro I’m not installing it. I just wish the people maintaining Manjaro weren’t so incompetent and also include common codecs (h264 and h265) in Mesa like every other distro.

excitingburp, 2 months ago

Do not use Manjaro. It is a known trap. What you can do is install pamac, which is what Manjaro uses for GUI package management. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve used Arch, so here’s a tutorial:

itsfoss.com/install-pamac-arch-linux/

Alternatively you could look at Garuda, which is a solid Arch distro. You’ll either love or hate the theme, but that’s easy to change. It also comes with an interactive kernel by default (most distros use a regular kernel build, which works better for servers).

Whatever you do, please please please not Ubuntu. It’s the lowest common denominator. Emphasis on “lowest”. It was good in the past, but Canonical have really lost the plot.

elfin8er, 2 months ago

Could you elaborate on what you mean by Manjaro being “a known trap”?

Edit: See my reply for some sources I found.

joshcodes, 2 months ago

Not the above poster but Manjaro routinely pushes out broken packages, has had a number of issues with security (not renewing their tls certificates for their website) and is all around not stable. Arch is a predictable unstable, manjaro is an unpredictable unstable attempt at stable.

tla, 2 months ago

“dnf -C …” may change your life!

tron, 2 months ago

EndevourOS (alt Manjaro) Cons: Manjaro has died on me once, and is a hassle to setup right and keep up. EndevourOS has no Package Manager GUI, and is over reliant on the Terminal. Can’t use pacman in a terminal the commands are confusing.

I hear this and I highly recommend Bauh. Its a GUI package manager that supports Arch, AUR, Flatpak and Snaps. Will even automatically generate snapshots in Timeshift before you update. Super easy to use. I can’t recommend it enough, I use it on all my desktops.

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

I use Bauh on my VM Endeavor install. Compared to using the terminal it’s amazing, but it feels limited. For example I can’t install multiple packages at once it I can with other distro’s gui.

smb, 2 months ago

sorry if i might repeat someones answer, i did not read everything.

it seems you want it for “work” that assumes that stability and maybe something like LTS is dort of the way to go. This also assumes older but stable packages. maybe better choose a distro that separates new features from bugfixes, this removes most of the hassle that comes with rolling release (like every single bugfix comes with two more new bugs, one removal/incompatible change of a feature that you relied on and at least one feature that cripples stability or performance whilst you cannot deactivate it… yet…)

likely there is at least some software you most likely want to update out of regular package repos, like i did for years with chromium, firefox and thunderbird using some shellscript that compared current version with latest remote to download and unpack it if needed.

however maybe some things NEED a newer system than you currently have, thus if you need such software, maybe consider to run something in VMs maybe using ssh and X11 forwarding (oh my, i still don’t use/need wayland *haha)

as for me, i like to have some things shared anyway like my emails on an IMAP store accessible from my mobile devices and some files synced across devices using nextcloud. maybe think outside the box from the beginning. no arch-like OS gives you the stability that the already years-long-hung things like debian redhat/centos offer, but be aware that some OSes might suddenly change to rolling release (like centos i believe) or include rolling-release software made by third parties without respecting their own rules about unstable/testing/stable branches and thus might cripple their stability by such decisions. better stay up to date if what you update to really is what you want.

but for stability (like at work) there is nothing more practical than ancient packages that still get security fixes.

roundabout the last 15 years or more i only reinstalled my workstation or laptop for:

• hardware problems, mostly aged disk like ssd wearlevel down (while recovery from backup or direct syncing is not reinstalling right?)
• OS becomes EOL. thats it.

if you choose to run servers and services like imap and/or nextcloud, there is some gain in quickly switching the workstation without having to clone/copy everything but only place some configs there and you’re done.

A multi-OS setup is more likely to cover “all” needs while tools like x2vnc exist and can be very handy then, i nearly forgot that i was working on two very different systems, when i had such a setup.

I would suggest to make recovery easy, maybe put everything on a raid1 and make sure you have on offsite and an offline backup with snapshots, so in case of something breaks you just need to replace hardware. thats the stability i want for the tools i work with at least.

if you want to use a rolling release OS for something work related i would suggest to make sure no one externally (their repo, package manager etc) could ever prevent you from reinstalling that exact version you had at that exact point in time (snapshots from repos install media etc). then put everything in something like ansible and try out that reapplying old snapshots is straight forward for you, then (and not earlier) i would suggest that those OSes are ok for something you consider to be as important as “work”. i tried arch linux at a time when they already stopped supporting the old installer while the “new” installer wasn’t yet ready at all for use, thus i never really got into longterm use of archlinux for something i rely on, bcause i could’nt even install the second machine with the then broken install procedure *haha

i believe one should consider to NOT tinker too much on the workstation. having to fix something you personally broke “before” beeing able to work on sth important is the opposite of awesome. better have a second machine instead, swappable harddrive or use VMs.

The exact OS is IMHO not important, i personally use devuan as it is not affected by some instability annoyances that are present in ubuntu and probably some more distros that use that same software. at work we monitor some of those bugs of that software. within ubuntu cause it creates extra hassle and we workaround those so its mostly just a buggy annoying thing visible in monitoring.

turkishdelight, 2 months ago

I was a happy Ubuntu user for more than a decade and I agree that it’s a good beginners distro. I am now using Manjaro, which is also very good. In fact, Manjaro might even be more beginner friendly because it support Flatpak out of the box.

billgamesh, 2 months ago

I used manjaro when I first started, but have had mixed success since then. Some criticisms here about shipping broken userspace (at least with their mobile OS): drewdevault.com/2022/…/PINE64-let-us-down.html

But, ubuntu is great for beginners, and i’ve always had good success with debian, although I’d point beginners to find an installer with non-free firmware until you know what’s going on

Crozekiel, 2 months ago

If you are interested in something arch-based but like having guis for stuff, I highly recommend Garuda Linux. I’ve been using it for about a year on my everyday desktop for gaming and it’s been great. I also have really liked fedora bazzite on my laptop for almost the same time period.

I’d stay away from manjaro, I wouldn’t touch it again with a 10 foot pole. Every time I’ve tried to use it, it just breaks itself every 3-6 months. I know some people swear by it, but I just have to assume they either have extreme tier knowledge to prevent trouble before it starts, are so used to fixing problems they are blind to their time spent doing it, or they are just incredibly lucky.

LeFantome, 2 months ago

Choose the OS you want and then use Distrobox to create a CentOS or Fedora environment for Resolve. It will see all the packages it likes.

Absolutely do not use Manjaro.

My favourite on your list is EndeavourOS. You can use pacseek to manage your packages if you really hate pacman ( though you should be use yay on EOS anyway ). If your really want a GUI, use yay to install pamac ( yay -S pamac or yay -S pamac-gtk probably — I cannot remember the package name and I am on my phone ).

If you like Debian, use Debian. The packages in Debian 12 are not old yet. Regardless, the package problem is solved by Distrobox.

I have debated using Debian as a base with access to Arch packages via distrobox myself. I may try VanillaOS for that. You would need to pick a different package source if you do not like the pacman commands.

What DE do you order? An alternative to Debian would be LMDE. That gives you the Debian stability and compatibility with some of the friendliness of Linux Mint and a more up-to-date desktop.

Pantherina, 2 months ago

I dont get the “alt” do you want CentOS (which doesnt exist, but I think Stream is better anyways) or Fedora?

Run Davinci resolve in a container, no internet access maybe, fixed dependencies that dont update. Ublue has a container image that you can run with podman.

jjlinux, 2 months ago

You’ll have the die-hard “XX is the best distros” and the “distros are irrelevant, choose a DE” answers here. The reality is that it will all boil down to your hardware, use case and willingness to tinker, in that same order.

For example, I love PopOS for laptops with Nvidia cards, only because I am used to the Cosmic version of Gnome PopOS has used all these years (looking forward to the proper Cosmic DE once its out), but for PC (regardless of GPU) I’d rather use Fedora KDE (customized to a Gnome feel) because I find it easy to customize to a very granular degree, and I feel Fedora has the best mix of cutting edge + stability.

As you can see, there’s a whole lot of “I” in my comment. That’s the beauty of Linux, whatever you end up sticking with, you get to make it as YOURS as you want it to be.

Arch derived distros require more carefully maintenance than most other base distros (RHEL and Debian), but are also great to actually learn Linux more deeply. RHEL derived distros, IMO, are a better balance between “it just works” and “I can make this happen”, and Debian based are the easiest to maintain, mainly because it tends to be what the most popular distros out there are based on, which makes for a much larger community for when we hit a brick wall (when, not if).

Bottom line is that I believe you would be better off going the route you mentioned, and going through the pitfalls of each until you find that sweet spot.

And of course, once you’re on that road, come and ask anything you want, most of us are always happy to help if we can.

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

Oh I knew I cast a wide net when I posted here. Wasn’t looking for which distros were best, but rather common pitfalls in this communities zeitgeist, as well as the 1 or two users who actually use the software I am using and any issues that they came across.

For example Fedora was high on my list of potentials before it was pointed out that it has issues with Nvidia’s drivers. As I am looking for minimal down time/setup it dropped on my list.

I also heard from someone who is using it on Arch which means I have a fallback if my distros of choice fails.

Dumpdog, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

It sounds like you and JJLinux are on the same page. Their advice about hardware, use case, and willingness to tinker is spot on. I might argue that the Davinci Resolve (Studio) use case make these considerations even more important.

I have been using Davinci Resolve on Linux since DR 15 and know the pain you are going through. Although it looks like you have your solution, I would just like to post what works for me and suggest resources just in case it might help. I know the less painful (to me) route of getting it working in a reasonably reliable fashion.

These are the distros that currently work for me for use in professional situations:

Laptop with Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU - Pop OS

Pros - Can install Pop OS version with working Nvidia drivers, Battery life is generally better (still not good when Nvidia GPU in use)

Cons - Updates may involve more work (there is probably a better way to update that I haven’t tried) - I used the Daniel Tufvesson method of install originally on Ubuntu and later on Pop OS - www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb. Not even sure if I’m doing updates in the easiest way. I have just been redoing the process. It might have changed lately.

The journey with the laptop was dual boot, Ubuntu, Pop. Would not recommend Ubuntu. The usual drivers, audio, and install issues (to be fair I think they are fixed?)

Desktop with Intel CPU and AMD GPU - Endeavour OS

Pros - Can install directly from Aur

Cons - AMD drivers work for everything but DR out of the box. Drivers take some fiddling with AMD but using Archwiki on DR makes it way easier - wiki.archlinux.org/title/DaVinci_Resolve. It may not apply to Endeavour but I had conflicts when I installed Blender along side Davinci in Garuda.

The journey with the desktop was Manjaro (nvidia), Garuda (nvidia and then AMD), to Endeavour. Generally won’t recommend Manjaro - it worked OK for me but required fixing. Garuda worked (Zen Kernel) until Blender install + OS update (dependencies), was always looking at either Garuda (works well with Aur install of DR and games) or Endeavour. Endeavour OS works…it feels less bloated and open to tinkering. It does need a bit more tinkering, but Pamac and research on arch wiki will help a lot.

There are more pros and cons but these are the ones that helped me to make a choice.

Sorry for wall of text when you may already have the best solution. I have not tried any of those methods that others have suggested so maybe post how it goes! I definitely would be interested in your experience.

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

Honestly your feedback was what I was looking for. While I could trial and error this myself, I would like to skip the hassle if possible.

From what it sounds like, while Debain is stable as a OS, but it might be a lot of trouble to install Resolve. Thank you for the link for the makeresolvedeb project, didn’t know this existed, and I find it funny how Black Magic is trying to treat linux like WIndows.

I was hoping I could avoid Arch, but it does sound like the safest bet for getting it to work.

I can probably dig around and see if Resolve works well in OpenSuse. But from the lack of Forum and debate around it, I am guessing it’s niche.

Welp my install order doesn’t change, but I now have a new challenge. Don’t update the live image packages, install resolve, then update the system. If Resolve lives I can keep the distro.

Dumpdog, 2 months ago

Each way seems like it is difficult but it will work! Determination is the key. It really sucks when you can’t even get the splash screen to work on launch. I had to completely rebuild after Blender dependencies broke DR on Garuda Linux. It was easier to rebuild with Endeavour OS and use all the Arch wiki documentation. I was worried about the driver problems but that was with an AMD GPU and OpenCL drivers. Sometimes you luck out with the hardware you have and it will work right away (I did with the Laptop, Pop OS, Nvidia and makeresolvedeb). It is worth it in the end though! Post an update if you can.

Daniel Tufvesson…if you are on Lemmy. Thanks for your work.

And a big FU to Adobe and subscription models.

jjlinux, 2 months ago

This is why I’ve been spending Kore time in Lemmy than Mastodon. Anyone can provide good help, as long as it needs to be, without worrying about having to split the whole thing.

You two just gave me the courage I needed to try some Arch based distros again. My experiences with Garuda and Endeavour were hideous, so I never looked back.

I have an Intel + Nvidia laptop (S76 Gazelle 16), so I’ll do it on that one. My work PC is AMD with integrated graphics, and Fedora 40 KDE has been flawless so far.

Thank you, for real.

Dumpdog, 2 months ago

I was hoping your thread would make it to the top of the post. I gave my opinion in your thread because it seemed to be the only one that didn’t run with the usual “Intro to Linux Distros” advice. You gave practical advice that listened to the question. @the16bitgamer looks to be Linux savvy but just wanting to avoid frustrating pitfalls. So thanks back to you!

I hope this time around Arch is a better experience. When Garuda breaks it seems to break hard! Endeavour seem easier to fix. I lasted about a month with just the terminal then installed Pamac. One EOS laptop is still terminal only tho.

jjlinux, 2 months ago

Awesome. Then that’s the word. I’m going to go with Endeavour again, this time I’ll do it over the weekend and stick to it for a few weeks even if it breaks. I have to confess that, in both cases, I jumped ship afyer just 3 or 4 attempts to fix broken stuff and those turning into a slight headache, and that’s no way to learn. And, you are falling short by saying that Garuda “breaks hard”, for me it was just frustrating. On Endeavour I recall being able to roll back some of the damage I made by just removing some software I should have read more about before installing, but Garuda is unforgiving 🤣🤣

jjlinux, 2 months ago

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/e86b7820-e499-441c-b3d8-b7716f21b149.jpegGetting ready to make this happen. I know, I said “during the weekend” but I just could not help myself. I may need therapy for my ECDHM (Extreme Case of “DistroHopping” Madness) 🤣

Dumpdog, 2 months ago

Hahaha. This is so awesome… I do the same thing. Just jump in and stay up all night getting it done instead of waiting for the weekend. Definitely do an update!

jjlinux, 2 months ago

Did too 🤣🤣. Have slept 7 hours summing up the last too nights 😪

BananaTrifleViolin, 2 months ago

I think an important consideration is which desktop environment you want to use as you’re more likely to get better graphics support with a distro that defaults to your favourite de.

I used to use Mint, but I recently switched to OpenSuSE as I have decided I prefer using KDE. I could install KDE in Mint but I had a few graphical glitches and annoyances with it’s apps being designed for cinnamon/gtk. Meanwhile no issues with OpenSuSE. I also have an Nvidia card and AMD CPU.

The other thing to consider given your graphics needs is a more gaming focused distro. I use Nobara on my living room PC which I use for gaming; it’s pretty good although that machine is an AMD iGPU. I have considered moving that to OpenSuSE for consistency with my desktop but I like it as it is tbh.

I tried Mamjaro in the recent past - it’s nice but I didn’t like the Arch packaging system. The AUR is good but I’ve found everything I want via other routes on other systems, and Mamjaro failed on me soon after I started using it. May have been coincidence buf I decided I couldn’t use a system like that - I just didn’t want to be problem solving so much on my daily driver.

I’ve also tried Fedora. I really didn’t like that system - again it was the package management system and the BTRFS file system caused me endless issues.

I like OpenSuSE’s Yast and Zypper package management tools. I also like the debian Apt package management system.

Last consideration: Debian systems have a lot of support available due to it being the base to lots of derivatives like Ubuntu and it’s own derivatives like Mint etc. OpenSuSE has less of that generic support - it’s there but it’s not the same scale, ubiquitous support.

jjlinux, 2 months ago

Maybe I’ve been extremely lucky, but I’ve had nothing but good experience with BTRFS. However I do see a lot of comments where something broke catastrophically. Is this one of those things where I can’t feel the pain because it hasn’t happened to me?

BananaTrifleViolin, 2 months ago

Difficult question to answer. For me the biggest issue with BTRFS was the unexpected behaviours as a user which were a headache to problem solve. I didn’t have a catastrophic data loss but I did have issues with permissions and mounting which were opaque and at the root of errors I was getting with software I was installing and using (and I only got to the file system of the cause after a lot of head scratching and frustration). I’m don’t think BTRFS is necessairly a bad filesystem, I just don’t think it’s a very user friendly one? However it may also be more to do with my own ignorance of the filesystem. That said, most guidance for end users when dealing with software is either around Ext4 or assume use of an Ext4 filesystem. It was quite difficult getting to the root of my BTRFS issues.

Fedora moving to it as default kind of makes sense as it’s essentially a testing system for an enterprise system, but it wasn’t much fun to deal with as a home user.

jjlinux, 2 months ago

I’m glad I have everything backed up regularly to my NAS, and then my NAS is mirrored weekly at another exact copy I set up at my brother’s house in another country altogether. I never had an issue with ext4, but chose to try BTRFS about 2 years ago, mainly because of it’s compression capabilities, and I’ve never looked back since then. My UnRaid servers run on XFS, so no issues there either. Also, I’m no “File System wizard” or anything, but I’ve been reading pretty regularly about BTRFS getting increasingly easier to use and much more solid. Don’t know what they look at to say that, but in my experience, it seems to be true enough. What O have read constantly, and never been able to find anything to counter that, is that BTRFS is a nightmare when it comes to any type of RAID. I’ve been wanting to get my feet wet on ZFS (mostly because I want to built a TrueNAS server to play with), but I need to have some money burning a hole in my pocket before my wife approves of such an expense just for fun, he he.

CallOfTheWild, 2 months ago

Don’t pick a distro, pick a desktop environment. Look up KDE Plasma, gnome, cinnamon, xfce, etc. Then pick the largest most stable distro that uses that environment.

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

I’ve given this advice in the past too. I’m probably sticking with Cinnamon, which is why Mint is in the options.

midnight, 2 months ago

Yeah I would say you might as well just go with mint then. Debian based distros are popular for a reason.

EndeavourOS is really probably the best overall option though, as you have the best software availability, but if you're not comfortable using the terminal, I might avoid it. (Although I will say that package management with yay is super easy, just yay [packagename] to search and install interactively. Also to update your system just alias yay -Syu to "update" if you have trouble remembering the right flags. I'd really recommend learning to use the terminal regardless of distro, though.)

CallOfTheWild, 2 months ago

Cinnamon is my favorite so I have mint at home. All the computers at my work have Ubuntu (gnome) and it’s ok but I don’t love it.

the16bitgamer, 2 months ago

Gnome (default) has it’s place for someone who doesn’t want a conventional desktop environment or doesn’t like the contemporaries desktop look a likes. But man, I’m 20+ years of using Windows and it’s the way I like my Desktop Environments.

kyub, 2 months ago

Choice of distro isn’t as important anymore as it used to be in the past. There’s containerization and distro-independent packaging like Flatpak or AppImage. Also, most somewhat popular distors can be made to run anything, even things packaged for other distros. Sure, you can make things easier for yourself choosing the right distro for the right use case, but that’s unfortunately a process you need to go through yourself.

Generally, there’s 3 main “lines” of popular Linux distros: RedHat/SuSE (counting them together because they use the same packaging format RPM), Debian/Ubuntu, and Arch. Fedora and OpenSuSE are derived from RedHat and SuSE respectively, Ubuntu is derived from Debian but also stands on its own feet nowadays (although both will always be very similar), Mint and Pop!OS are both derived from Ubuntu so will always be similar to Ubuntu and Debian as well), and Endeavour is derived from Arch.

I’d recommend using Fedora if you don’t like to tinker much, otherwise use Arch or Debian. You can’t go wrong with any of those three, they’ve been around forever and they are rock solid with either strong community backing or both strong community and company backing in the case of Fedora. Debian is, depending on edition, less up to date than the other two, but still a rock solid distro that can be made more current by using either the testing or unstable edition and/or by installing backports and community-made up to date packages. It’s more work to keep it updated of course. Don’t be misled by Debian’s labels - Debian testing at least is as stable as any other distro.

Ubuntu is decent, just suffers from some questionable Canonical decisions which make it less popular among veterans. Still a great alternative to Debian, if you’re hesitant about Debian because of its software version issues, but still want something very much alike Debian. It’s more current than Debian, but not as current as a rolling or semi-rolling release distro such as Arch or Fedora.

OpenSuSE is probably similar in spirit and background to Fedora, but less popular overall, and that’s a minus because you’ll find less distro-specific help for it then. Still maybe a “hidden gem” - whenever I read about it, it’s always positive.

Endeavour is an alternative to Arch, if pure Arch is too “hard” or too much work. It’s probably the best “Easy Arch-based” distro out of all of them. Not counting some niche stuff like Arco etc.

Mint is generally also very solid and very easy, like Ubuntu, but probably better. If you want to go the Ubuntu route but don’t like Ubuntu that much, check out Mint. It’s one of the best newbie-friendly distros because it’s very easy to use and has GUI programs for everything.

Pop!OS is another Ubuntu/Mint-like alternative, very current as well.

For gaming and new-ish hardware support, I’d say Arch, Fedora or Pop!OS (and more generally, rolling / semi-rolling release distros) are best suited.

Well that’s about it for the most popular distros.