• @[email protected]English
    5•9 months ago

    The last time I tested the waters it was with Debian, Mint, and Ubuntu. Each one had some kind of issue on my system that made me give up.

    I usually check in once a year or so to see if things have improved.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•9 months ago

      These are all Debian based. Debian is notorious for using old kernels and spotty hardware support. I had similar issues trying to install Ubuntu on a new-ish PC recently. Fedora worked like a charm though.

      I was tempted to try Nobara since it was a gaming pc but I was discouraged by opinions from the community telling me it was not exactly the best idea.

      Next time I might go for Bluefin though. It’s based on Fedora Silverblue (immutable OS) and I’ve heard great things about it. Apparently also has GPU drivers for NVIDIA baked-in, which I need.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•9 months ago

      If it helps, I’ve been running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my main 3D/gamedev production rig for a while. Yes, using NVIDIA too!

      It’s a “rolling release”, so it’s cutting edge with supported hardware and all the software updates. It’s surprisingly stable because of the automated testing they run through.

      I’ve had bad updates before, BUT, if you install your system using the BTRFS file system (default), you get something called Snapper that works similar to “Windows System Restore”. You can just roll back to a previous snapshot and either re-update or wait until things are more stable.

      Nvidia has proprietary drivers for OpenSUSE as well, and since I’ve used those, I haven’t had very many problems.

      The biggest issue I have is that my machine has trouble waking from suspend. It’s a tricky one to nail down, from what I understand.

      Multiple monitors with different refresh rates is iffy, but I disabled “Kscreen” and have had no problems. (Don’t worry about this but wanted to mention it just in case)

      KDE is pretty neat and I felt at home coming from Win10. Now I only dual boot into Win10 for occasional games. I’m not touching Win11 at all, so I’ll migrate my games over once 10 is no longer viable to hang on to.

      Lastly, the community is really helpful and kind. They’ve helped me out a lot and I’ve learned a ton. Maybe I’m a nerd but I found “computing” to be a lot more fun on Linux. The biggest hazard being getting distracted cozying up your computer instead of whatever you signed on to do.

      Sorry for the long post, but hope you might find it useful. :)

      • @[email protected]English
        2•9 months ago

        It’s nothing crazy. All built within the last 3 years. I know the biggest issue is caused by having an Nvidia card. I can get the exact specs for you once I get home.

        • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻English
          3•9 months ago

          That is odd. I’ve been using NVIDIA and haven’t really had any issues apart from just installing the proprietary driver through the package manager. People like to make out that NVIDIA is really bad on Linux, but lately it’s been pretty good. My Quadro ~10 year old Quadro M2000 is still supported by the latest driver. Same cannot be said for more recent AMD APUs (looking at you Vega 10).

          Maybe next time you try Linux try Fedora since it has more recent drivers, etc. Just make sure you follow the instructions to install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers from RPMFusion. https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

          Otherwise PopOS is apparently good since it bundles the NVIDIA driver with the iso. It’s just been a bit buggy in my experience.