Windows has been a thorn in my side for years. But ever since I started moved to Linux on my Laptop and swapping my professional software to a cross platform alternative, I’ve been dreaming on removing it from my SSD.
And as soon as I finish my last few projects, I can transition. (I want to do it now).
Trouble is which I danced my way across multiple amazing distros, I can’t decide which one to land on since the one software I want to test, Davinci Resolve doesn’t work on my Intel Powered Laptop. (curse you intel implementation of OpenCL).
So the opinions of those of you who’ve used Davinci Resolve, Unity/Godot, and/or FreeCAD. I want it to be stable with minimal down time on hardware with a AMD Ryzen 5 1600x and a RTX 3050. Here’s the OS’s I am looking at.
CentOS (alt Fedora)
- Pro: Recommended by Davinci Resolve for the OS, has good package manager GUI that separates Applications and System Software (DNF Dragon), Good support for multiple Desktop Environments I like. Game Support is excellent and about a few months behind arch.
- Con: When I last installed Fedora my OS Drives BTFS file system died a horrific and brutal death, losing all of my data. Can’t have that. And I personally do not like DNF and how slow it makes updating and browsing packages.
Debain (alt Linux Mint DE)
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Pro: The most stable OS I’ve used, with a wide range of software support both officially in the distros package manager, or from developers own website. I am most familiar with this OS and APT
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Cons: Ancient packages which may cause issues with Davinci Resolve and Video Games. An over reliance on the terminal to fix simple problems (though this can be said for most linux distros). I personally don’t like APT and how it manages the software.
EndevourOS (alt Manjaro)
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Pro: The most up to date OS, great for games with the AUR giving support for a lot of software which isn’t available on other distros.
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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.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
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Pro: Like Fedora but doesn’t use DNF, good game support
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Cons: Software isn’t as well supported.
Edit: from the sounds of thing, and the advice from everyone. I think what I’ll do is an install order while testing distros (either in distro box or on a spare ssd) in the following order.
Debain/Mint DE -> OpenSUSE -> EndevourOS -> CentOS
This list is mostly due to stability and support for nvidia drivers.
Mint is the typical way to get a more up-to-date Debian and if you have something against Ubuntu. This community is pretty anti-Canonical so they’ll never recommend Ubuntu…
I’ve been scared by Ubuntu. Back in the day (10-20 years ago) it worked well its kind of fallen down. I blame snaps.
Oh I don’t like Ubuntu, but unlike this community it’s more an in general distaste for the OS than anything specific.
Mint might do ya then if you want to remain in the .deb system. I ran it for a while and was happy with it. I’m on popos now but it’s based on Ubuntu lts only so it’s not quite as up to date at times.
I think Mint is your best choice. Mint is not Ubuntu, even if the underlying base is based on Ubuntu. It doesn’t have snaps for example, and a lot of the ubuntu fluff and slowness has been cut out. For example, Mint Cinnamon uses 1.2 GB of RAM on a clean boot, but it uses 1.9 GB on Ubuntu-Cinnamon. It’s a cleaner system.
If I’m going mint I’m going mint De since I dislike ubuntu for personal reason
I’d go with Ubuntu lts or Ubuntu neon (lts+latest KDE)
I used Ubuntu happily for many years and found nothing that suited me better.
However, with them pushing more and more updates in my face that I can only install if I register an account, I will try to switch to Endeavour on my main system soon.
Between the snaps crisis and the ads in the terminal ubuntu seems to be doing its best to scare off regular users.
I dislike that kind of people. They are biased, opinionated, subjective and do not have the asker’s best interests as priority.