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.
You sound like you'd be pretty capable, I personally use arch, less perceived limitations. Endeavour is the better choice between endeavour and manjaro.
MX if you just want a os with beautiful theming.
Either way good luck.
Mint or MX for a standard windows converter distro?
Web surfing and gaming.
Depends on the person, I didn't get on well with many distros, I like tinkering, arch afforded me that.
Some people are happy jumping in the deepend and having converter distros may alienate some new users.
MX might be slightly easier due to MX Tools. Otherwise it's a matter of taste: xfce vs cinnamon, thunar vs nemo, etc.
Both should work great, just take care to install packages like steam or lutris through flatpak. And if you're setting it up for someone else, install some pm frontend like discover or software centre, so that they can have unified updates through a gui.
It's for me for starters.
Distro would be mint vs MX.
Cinnamon vs xfce is DE/Gui right? That's the front end?
Eventually I plan to make HTPCs basically like a console replacement similar to/like steamOS
I've got some family that's stuck on consoles and I want a gateway into PC gaming for them.
Yeah, and each distro has a DE they spend most of their time on. You can for example install mint with xfce, but it's going to be far less polished.
For just surfing and gaming, it's not really going to matter much. Try both of them out, and pick the one you think looks better. Ventoy will help you out with that.
You can just autostart steam in big picture mode.
Thanks.
For the HTPC I was thinking of something like plasma-bigscreen so it's a media center.
Kodi, steam big screen, gog(?), etc
I'll make one for myself to see if I can streamline it.
Damn, that looks pretty nice.
Good luck!
Is there much different between MX and Debain Stable it’s built on?
MX has a ton of tooling and a newer kernel. It also doesn't use systemd for some reason.
by default. You can set it to default to systemd instead
Not sure to be honest, my experience with MX and Debian are limited, I like how MX looks, had no issues using in in the small amount of time I had used MX linux and I'm a sucker for good theming
Saner defaults for a desktop, useful gui tools to manage and maintain your system, better looking
Garuda is my arch distro of preference. Easy install and better default capabilities.