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.
It’s some work and will take some learning, but perhaps NixOS.
OP isn’t comfortable using a package manager through the terminal, and you think they’ll be fine to write code and use the terminal…
I think I missed that, but yeah that would make things a little bit difficult, although they could use the web search at search.nixos.org, but you are right, the terminal really could not be avoided.
I don’t even use
nix search, it’s just that bad.You could condense the entire terminal nix interaction to a single alias, but I doubt OP would enjoy figuring out how to get opengl working for example.
Manjaro should not even be considered in the modern distro landscape, the story of manjaro is just a series of incompetent mistakes.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s one of the better distros out there and it’s popular for a reason. I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner but that’s another story.
I have literally years of experience with the distro.
I have installed it for many people, and completely regretted it every time.
It doesn’t sound like it’s for you if it’s doing things in a way that you find anti-productive and “wrong”. Why continue using it then? At some point of course you’ll end up resenting it.
I did stop using it??
Now if you could also stop bitching about it that would be great. It’s obvious that you didn’t understand the first thing about how it works and hated everything about it. Why live your life consumed by hate for a distro you don’t even use anymore?
I’ve had all kinds of bad experiences with other distros, I don’t go around constantly shitting on them. Especially since they could have very well improved since I stopped using them.
Negative feedback is important. The notion that people should only give positive feedback is harmful, and should be reconsidered.
Just read about how they miss very important things time and time again, like they cannot learn from their mistakes. EndeavourOS is what Manjaro should be.
Making a stable distro out of Arch is a pretty difficult task. I think Manjaro is finally in a place where they achieved that goal but it was a rocky first few years. It also requires some cooperation from the user, if you do things like insist to use non-supported kernels or step out of the stable branch then it’s not going to work well.
Endeavour has a less ambitious goal, it tries to improve on Arch with an installer and better defaults without changing how it works. It’s not really comparable to Manjaro. I mean it’s of course up to each person which approach they consider “should be” better but Endeavour and Manjaro are trying to do very different things and I think each has its place.
It’s an ambitious goal without reason, just use fedora if you want a stable distro, why would you hack arch into something it simply isn’t?
You realize their strategy for making it “stable” is just waiting two weeks and hoping it works? That isn’t anything like what any good stable distro does.
The fact is, everything you’re saying that you want the system to do, manjaro isn’t even good at. And all the benefits you’d get from arch, manjaro ruins.
Either use endeavoros and enjoy the benefits of arch, or use fedora and enjoy a stable distro. Manjaro is neither and bad at both.
Fedora is all about being different nowadays, they’re pushing all kinds of bleeding edge stuff and it’s become an extremely opinionated distro. Which is fine if you vibe with what they’re doing but makes it more complicated than “just use Fedora”.
why would you hack arch into something it simply isn’t?
If we thought this way then most Linux distros out there wouldn’t exist. “Why use [insert Debian derivative here]? Just use Debian.”
I’m only going to say it one more time, Manjaro isn’t Arch and doesn’t have the same goals. If you want Arch, use Arch. It’s not a zero-sum game, Arch doesn’t lose anything by Manjaro existing, on the contrary, we all benefit from more distro diversity.
Fedora is all about being different nowadays, they’re pushing all kinds of bleeding edge stuff and it’s become an extremely opinionated distro. Which is fine if you vibe with what they’re doing but makes it more complicated than “just use Fedora”.
It is as simple as “just use fedora, or mint, or debian, or endeavoros, or arch” because guaranteed one of those will be better for your usecase than manjaro.
I’m only going to say it one more time, Manjaro isn’t Arch and doesn’t have the same goals. If you want Arch, use Arch. It’s not a zero-sum game, Arch doesn’t lose anything by Manjaro existing, on the contrary, we all benefit from more distro diversity.
Actually, we do, manjaro is worse than one of those distros for every usecase, meaning manjaro just makes the ecosystem worse by existing, rather than better.
I understand manjaro isn’t arch, but even if you don’t want arch, there’s something better in ONE of those distros for you, every time. Manjaro isn’t the best at anything and it is the worst at a lot of things.
use fedora and enjoy a stable distro
Standard release != stable. Fedora is closer to manjarno than to debian.
True, but it’s still much more stable in the classical sense of unbreaking.
It’s more stable in theory, but I’ve had bad luck with it. Nobara with Fedora 38 worked perfectly fine for the few months I used it. I installed Fedora 39 as a friend’s first distro and it’s still working without issues. For me 39 failed to boot after an update multiple times during the ~month I’ve used it, and there were constant small annoyances. For example it was rewriting journald entries for 5 mins almost every time it booted.
That’s pretty Archy IMO. And that makes sense considering that it’s only the second step in making a stable distro. Centos stream should be far closer to Debian, as it’s basically Fedora LTS.
While I have my own personal gripes with it, it’s has one of the most robust GUI configurations I’ve seen in any Linux distos. As someone who doesn’t want downtime having a gui for things like Kernel config and systemd, Manjaro has its perks.
Doesn’t outweigh breaking my build for touching AUR, but ther is a reason I consider it.
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You always take your chances when using AUR because it’s basically completely unsupervised and anybody can put anything in there. What AUR packages were you trying to use?
Arch-based distros are not usually recommended to beginners for a reason. Manjaro tries to be more stable but you have to work within its proposed safety limits (use its helpers, stay on a LTS kernel, stay on the stable branch etc.) And AUR will always be AUR.
Sorry, but, no. Pretty much any distro can do all of that perfectly well, the fedoras of the world, the mints of the world, but they don’t break constantly.
I have given manjaro to 3 people and used it myself for many years, i got sick of it because the team is incredibly incompetent and just breaks things all the time, i’ve switched to arch and all of these problems have gone away.
let me give you an example of a design flaw that has caused strife for every single person I have given manjaro, how the kernel is handled.
Manjaro does not let you sudo pacman -S linux, instead, you get linux with the version number as the package, this means for the standard user, your kernel will become outdated, unless you think to go out of your way to update it. This has broken every system of every normal person I have given manjaro at some point, and then i’ve had to go through GREAT lengths to resolve the issue for them, all of which I had to do from a terminal. Updating the kernel should be the default of any sane distro, and I have never encountered another distro that made this such a hassle by default.
https://github.com/arindas/manjarno
You can read this for other examples of how incompetent the team is, i’m sorry but there’s just no usecase for manjaro, if you want a GUI, you should simply use something other than arch, like fedora. I see no advantages to manjaro over arch personally, but if you desperately need a GUI, just use something else instead of trying desperately to hack arch into something that it simply is not.
Manjaro takes the good things about arch, the KISS philosophy, throws that in the trash, adds nothing of value and breaks shit. Endeavoros is the same thing but better in every way, and arch even has an installer now.
Furthermore, if you’re in need of a GUI, you’re probably going to hate when manjaro finally does break and you’re dropped in a terminal with no experience whatsoever, which will inevitably happen.
Updating the kernel should be the default of any sane distro, and I have never encountered another distro that made this such a hassle by default.
That’s because you’re trying to do things the Arch way. Manjaro is not Arch.
You have to stick to the stable branch and to LTS kernels. Which are installed by default btw so you don’t have to do anything special, just not go out of your way to ruin it.
LTS kernels are supported for many years and receive constant updates. Debian does a similar thing, it sticks with a certain LTS kernel versions. Manjaro does one better and offers all the LTS versions from 4.x to 6.x.
You can switch to a non LTS kernel on Manjaro but they become EOL periodically and you have to watch for that and switch manually. You can do that but yes, at that point you’re better off using Arch.
why would they not just use linux-lts then? that’s still insanity. and eventually the LTS versions get out of date and you have the exact same problem just later, there’s no need for this, just install both linux-lts and linux like arch does and it’ll get out of the way, and you can easily fall back to linux-lts if something goes wrong, it’s a much simpler system, versioning the packages completely defeats the purpose of updating your system. It’s so much simpler than what you’re describing and this is the distro that’s supposed to be easier to use?
just install both linux-lts and linux like arch does
It’s not Arch. It doesn’t do things the way Arch does. It caters to people who don’t ever want to think about what kernel version they run.
It’s so much simpler than what you’re describing and this is the distro that’s supposed to be easier to use?
Here’s what I consider simple. I install the distro. That’s it, I’m done. I don’t have to tinker with the kernel, or with drivers, or with anything. It just works.
And yes I realize that’s complete nonsense to an Arch user, to whom tinkering with this stuff is the whole point. Which is why I keep saying, Manjaro is not Arch, stop bashing your head against the wall, you’ll only hurt yourself and hate the experience.
It’s not Arch. It doesn’t do things the way Arch does. It caters to people who don’t ever want to think about what kernel version they run.
That is exactly why it should do what I said, on arch I never have to think about this, on manjaro, you have to manually switch it out for no real reason.
Here’s what I consider simple. I install the distro. That’s it, I’m done. I don’t have to tinker with the kernel, or with drivers, or with anything. It just works.
Then endeavoros is simple and manjaro is absolutely not. Manjaro fails to “just work” literally constantly. Remember when linus tried to use it and a steam update uninstalled his DE? shit like this constantly happens manjaro side. It’s a comedy of errors.
And yes I realize that’s complete nonsense to an Arch user, to whom tinkering with this stuff is the whole point. Which is why I keep saying, Manjaro is not Arch, stop bashing your head against the wall, you’ll only hurt yourself and hate the experience.
If you don’t want to tinker at all, use fedora, it’s exactly designed for your exact usecase. The problem isn’t that manjaro doesn’t do the things you’re saying, it’s that for everything you want, there is a significantly better choice than manjaro.
on arch I never have to think about this, on manjaro, you have to manually switch it out for no real reason.
You don’t have to switch anything. You get a LTS kernel when you install and can sit on it for many years. If you hit EOL on a LTS kernel it will switch it out for you. Manjaro currently ships a wide variety of LTS kernels that are under active support: 4.19, 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.1 and 6.6.
use Fedora
But I don’t want to use Fedora. Manjaro is a much better experience out of the box, and it’s a much less opinionated distro.
The hate is not justified IMHO. I’ve used Manjaro for 5 years now and never had any problems. It just works.
I had the same apprehensions as you against using a CLI package manager, but I have to say it’s grown on me. I used Debian based OSes for 5-10 years and I swore by Synaptic.
After only a short while with Endeavour though, I found that I was perfectly happy to run
sudo pacman -Ssto search for software — oryayfor the AUR. It’s been my daily driver for a couple of years now.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.
Gotta throw my vote in for tumbleweed. Its IMO the best distro to get the latest packages while still maintaining stability. Their built in roll back feature is great.
Software not being well supported is kinda a sticking point. Though honestly its becoming less and less of an issue each day. Flatpaks are available for almost everything, distrobox covers the rest. I really haven’t run into any situation that prevented me from doing what I wanted. I’ve been using it for a few years now across my desktop, laptop, and my computer at work. Suse is enterprise Linux after all, its still got great support
That’s why it’s on this list, but I’m more looking to see if Resolve has issue with it.
What software is not supported? I could find everything I needed working great in the community repos using http://software.opensuse.org/
I’ve tried Ubuntu and pop_OS but had problems with them. But I’ve just installed Mint Debian edition and it’s been going great so far
What was your problem with pop?
I couldn’t get steam to run, it could have been a problem with my nvidia card, it would occasionally hang at shut down or restart needing a forced shutdown, and it really didn’t like waking up from sleep.
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I did replace my 980 with a 6600 at the same time though, so that could have fixed the steam issue.
Were you running Wayland by any chance?
If that was the default. I’m honestly not sure
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
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.
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 [email protected]
Perhaps will install it on something and tinker with it.
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.
Yeah, I bought Resolve Studio when I switched over from Vegas. I’ve been planning this move for a while.
Handbrake if u are still having issues
If you are using davinci on your system a lot, you can try their pre-packaged iso. They recommend rocky Linux nowadays and also provide an iso for it.
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.
“dnf -C …” may change your life!
I was once in the same boat. Here is what I did, put a second drive into my PC and separated my root and home partitions then kept hopping distros until I found the one that worked for me. That way, I didn’t lose my important files while hopping. The distro I landed on was endeavour OS. I have been using it for 3 years now. Not suggesting that you should use it, because every distro works differently for different people depending on many factors. But try this and see if you find your own endeavour OS. Good luck :)
I’d like to do this, but honestly I don’t have the spare storage to let me do this on my desktop. So I’d be cracking it open to swap drives and that’ll be a hassle.
You actually don’t need another drive. You can use the same drive and partition it, just make sure every time you install a new distro to choose “manual partitioning” and make sure you don’t format the /home drive and format everything else. Then assign the existing /home (that has all of your data) as your /home for the new distro.
I don’t think the 64GB of leftover space is enough XD
😆. Not sure then.
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.
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.
Is Buah better than pamac? It’s got to be right? pamac looks great but actually sucks so bad I learned to use Pacman in the terminal.
I’ve used Pamac, and I did like it but had to move off Manjaro for other reasons. Bauh is leagues better. Pamac is really cluttered UI whereas bauh is just search and install. No frills, pure utility.
Cannot say for other programs you mentioned (although I’m sure they work fine as well) I’m using Godot on EndeavourOS and it is perfect. If your only concern is terminal, EndeavourOS has built-in scripts for updating your system. Also using an AUR helper would make your tasks easier, which “yay” is pre-installed. You can basically type “yay package_name” and it will guide you.
You already know why you should pick Debian:
Pro: The most stable OS I’ve used
About your “ancient packages” that’s an easy fix, just install all your software using Flatpak/Flathub and you’ll get the latest software on your rock solid base system.
