I can recommend running it on new hardware. I love that it runs great on old hardware, but it is a bit of a disservice to Linux distros that people always experience it on raspberry pies and other old laptops or otherwise relatively slow hardware.
I’m actually a little scared of running Linux on modern, fast hardware.
How is multi-GPU driver support?
My main machine is a 900 TFlops compute monster (4 GPUs) running ROCM on Windows, and the last time I’d tried Manjaro on Desktop, it seized up for unknown reasons.
I’ve got asynchronous monitors - 1440p@165Hz main display and 4K@85Hz flipped vertical for a side monitor. Occasionally, I plug in a projector which is 1080p, mirrored to the 4K, but flipped horizontal.
I’m not sure what I’d done wrong because it works perfectly on my 11 year old Z575 (Debian+KDE there).
What distro would you recommend for an extremely fast/high RAM machine? I’ve got 128GB of main system memory, and 4TB of M.2 for a system disk running at 7.6 gigabytes/second actual/real-world RW I/O.
I would suggest if you want some up-to-date awesomeness, try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed!
Rolling release sounds scary, but even aside from enabling BTRFS snapshots by default, it’s surprisingly stable, and has proprietary NVIDIA drivers!
Granted, I don’t game (that’s all my Win10 partition is for right now lol), but I do Blender and other creative tasks snd it’s amazingly snappy and fun.
Wayland is “getting there” on a user experience level, but as for buttery smooth frame rates and stuff, it feels like a new machine on my 144hz / 60hz dual monitor setup.
I’m running a single 3090, but I’m sure it could handle dual-GPU!
Tumbleweed is a bit of a spooky name for a distro implying that a gentle breeze sends it, but y’know
Linux Mint as someone suggested, I’ve ran a long time ago for college on an ancient laptop, and it’s an extreme stable OS, similar to Windows 2000 Pro. I can’t remember it crashing or freezing even once on me, and the Thinkpad T42 has an anemic processor., which I ran with the Conservative Governor
Totally feel ya on Mint. I put it on my X230 just now because I wasn’t planning on booting it up too often and didn’t want a massive update causing issues down the line. Super stable, super user friendly. I always recommend it to newcomers. Lovely experience!
Haha yeah Tumbleweed is an interesting name. Suppose it’s because it’s always “rollin’ rollin’ rollin’”. Constantly in motion!
I’d caution against it on low-data capped internet plans for instance, because it updates fairly often, sometimes 1GB or more. But also plenty of people update like once a week and it’s good. I update pretty much every day. It’s kinda compulsive for me and I like to see if anything is fixed or new. :p
So that’s one cool thing it has over *buntu and friends: Newest and shiniest features, but they’ve been tested a bit more thoroughly than on something like Arch, and if it does go bad, you can boot into a “snapshot” and wait until a newer update hopefully fixes whatever borked it.
But I haven’t had to roll back in ages. :)
I like keeping on the edge of KDE6 right now because it’s improving very quickly. Same with Wayland, even though some programs are still fussy with it. (You can have X11 and Wayland both, and choose which to use upon login)
I actually had my most difficult time ever setting up Linux on my 5800X3D and 3070 recently.
PopOS wouldn’t save my resolution on reboot, and then after fixing it all of my games were running at the wrong resolution or breaking in various frustrating ways. All Linux native games too. Jumped to Fedora and every single game flickered like mad and then once I got that fixed my package manager inexplicably broke. I was about to install Ubuntu before saying fuck any chance of instability and going to Debian.
I had to manually install way more than any of the other distros, but everything just worked once I got my graphics driver installed. I was really disappointed given I’ve been using Linux on and off for 8 years, and my Steam Deck has been nothing but solid. I’m honestly just disappointed things have trended in a bad direction, and I hope this was just a one off experience and not the norm now.
I can recommend running it on new hardware. I love that it runs great on old hardware, but it is a bit of a disservice to Linux distros that people always experience it on raspberry pies and other old laptops or otherwise relatively slow hardware.
Linux on a brand new hardware is insanely good.
Edit: software => hardware
Linux on the t430 is such a smooth experience though
I’m actually a little scared of running Linux on modern, fast hardware.
How is multi-GPU driver support?
My main machine is a 900 TFlops compute monster (4 GPUs) running ROCM on Windows, and the last time I’d tried Manjaro on Desktop, it seized up for unknown reasons.
I’ve got asynchronous monitors - 1440p@165Hz main display and 4K@85Hz flipped vertical for a side monitor. Occasionally, I plug in a projector which is 1080p, mirrored to the 4K, but flipped horizontal.
I’m not sure what I’d done wrong because it works perfectly on my 11 year old Z575 (Debian+KDE there).
What distro would you recommend for an extremely fast/high RAM machine? I’ve got 128GB of main system memory, and 4TB of M.2 for a system disk running at 7.6 gigabytes/second actual/real-world RW I/O.
I would suggest if you want some up-to-date awesomeness, try OpenSUSE Tumbleweed!
Rolling release sounds scary, but even aside from enabling BTRFS snapshots by default, it’s surprisingly stable, and has proprietary NVIDIA drivers!
Granted, I don’t game (that’s all my Win10 partition is for right now lol), but I do Blender and other creative tasks snd it’s amazingly snappy and fun.
Wayland is “getting there” on a user experience level, but as for buttery smooth frame rates and stuff, it feels like a new machine on my 144hz / 60hz dual monitor setup.
I’m running a single 3090, but I’m sure it could handle dual-GPU!
Sure, I’ll try OpenSUSE!
Tumbleweed is a bit of a spooky name for a distro implying that a gentle breeze sends it, but y’know
Linux Mint as someone suggested, I’ve ran a long time ago for college on an ancient laptop, and it’s an extreme stable OS, similar to Windows 2000 Pro. I can’t remember it crashing or freezing even once on me, and the Thinkpad T42 has an anemic processor., which I ran with the Conservative Governor
Totally feel ya on Mint. I put it on my X230 just now because I wasn’t planning on booting it up too often and didn’t want a massive update causing issues down the line. Super stable, super user friendly. I always recommend it to newcomers. Lovely experience!
Haha yeah Tumbleweed is an interesting name. Suppose it’s because it’s always “rollin’ rollin’ rollin’”. Constantly in motion!
I’d caution against it on low-data capped internet plans for instance, because it updates fairly often, sometimes 1GB or more. But also plenty of people update like once a week and it’s good. I update pretty much every day. It’s kinda compulsive for me and I like to see if anything is fixed or new. :p
So that’s one cool thing it has over *buntu and friends: Newest and shiniest features, but they’ve been tested a bit more thoroughly than on something like Arch, and if it does go bad, you can boot into a “snapshot” and wait until a newer update hopefully fixes whatever borked it.
But I haven’t had to roll back in ages. :)
I like keeping on the edge of KDE6 right now because it’s improving very quickly. Same with Wayland, even though some programs are still fussy with it. (You can have X11 and Wayland both, and choose which to use upon login)
Ehhhhhh I wouldn’t say brand new hardware. A lot of times Linux still needs a few months to properly support a new Gen of graphics cards or processors
Though it generally at least works which is a huge improvement over back in the day
I actually had my most difficult time ever setting up Linux on my 5800X3D and 3070 recently.
PopOS wouldn’t save my resolution on reboot, and then after fixing it all of my games were running at the wrong resolution or breaking in various frustrating ways. All Linux native games too. Jumped to Fedora and every single game flickered like mad and then once I got that fixed my package manager inexplicably broke. I was about to install Ubuntu before saying fuck any chance of instability and going to Debian.
I had to manually install way more than any of the other distros, but everything just worked once I got my graphics driver installed. I was really disappointed given I’ve been using Linux on and off for 8 years, and my Steam Deck has been nothing but solid. I’m honestly just disappointed things have trended in a bad direction, and I hope this was just a one off experience and not the norm now.
Nvidia has always been a pain and that’s really Nvidia’s fault not Linux’s