1 Year Linux Challenge
(math is hard, this adventure began 30th July 2024)
System 1:
Distro: Debian 12 (1 month), Fedora 40/41
DE: KDE/Plasma
Build log
System 2:
Distro: Debian 12
DE: KDE/Plasma
Build log
The Reasoning:
Windows sucks to work with. I do that for a job and hate it, not the overarching problems often discussed. It is the little things that work only half way! The quality-of-life features that are not quality. For example traversing a folder with documents in alphabetical order, and you want to jump to some starting with “Q” so you press Q and it gets you to the first document with Q, another press of the key, next document. And then you briefly use the mouse to check properties or something, now you want to check some document with W and error sound.
In comes paradigm-sidegrade Windows11. I don’t want it. Running an OS that may or may not try to steal my data in order to upsell me on a someone-elses-computer-offsite-storage, not a fan. Since the Steamdeck and my secondary PC have been doing quite well for gaming, why not switch over the main machine too?
First days of full-time Linux:
Most things worked out of the box on Debian 12 (KDE). I thought Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve had Linux support, and Ubuntu being based on Debian, I thought it would just work™. I thought wrong. The FOSS gpu drivers loaded by Debian as shipped worked nicely for browsing the web, writing, gaming and the BlackMagic-RAW viewer, just not Resolve.
After some tinkering I got ROCm to the point BM liked it, and the Nvidia driver install killed Wayland/X11, or Xorg, or both. Took the better part of a Saturday to navigate past some not-quite applicable forum posts from the late 2010s to get back. Solution turned out to be “delete config, let it rebuild itself, job done”.
After this, Resolve continued to pretend neither of the GPUs were to its liking. Anyway…
Moving from Windows-to-Windows is mostly easy, back-up/export/save configs of programs you do not want to set up again, and go. The Windows-to-Linux move is a little more involved, simply because they are different. To say it went perfectly smooth (Resolve…) would be a lie, just takes a little more planning than “copy from here to same”.
Two of my hobbies are quite good at producing loads of data. For this new machine to just absorb data, it has a 4x 12TB HDDs. Setting up ZFS Zraid1 for those HDDs was surprisingly non-difficult. I have been told my setup of “you are a pool, here data” may not be ideal. It is being automatically backed up to what I call “Backuptoaster” (= Odroid HC4).
Everyday use:
I love me my KDE. I love configuring shortcuts that make sense!
For everyone who has not had the questionable pleasure of being fluent in English and working on a German-language Windows machine, enjoy having to guess how M$ in their infinite wisdom translated the keyboard shortcuts! Freaking Crtl+Shift+F for Fett (= Bold) because Crtl+F for Suche (= Search/Find) stuck around…
Plasma “Search” (rebound to Command+Space) with the calculator that calculates instead of asking Bing is nice, and searching among open programs/windows came in handy a few times too.
The Night-Light feature is much appreciated for late-night writing and reading. Bluetooth to quickly use my little radio as a BT-speaker works (which it does not in Windows? Is weird…)
Getting Productive:
The following will come as no surprise: LibreOffice (which I prefer to M$ Office), Blender just works, as did Thunderbird, Strawberry and Steam. Except Steam defaulted to using the non-primary display-less GPU. Workaround continues to be starting Steam via Terminal with DRI_PRIME=0 (which it complains about being invalid, yet, keeps working).
Late Note: Since my Disaster, this is resolved.
Resolve…
At this point I thought maybe a newer Kernel than the one under Debian would fix it. So out goes Debian, in with Fedora 40 (also KDE/Plasma).
ZFS pool imported fine. Steam found all its games again.
Resolve…
Krita, GIMP, Darktable, Inkscape, all fine software in their own right! Darktable and Krita clicked for me from the start, Krita in particular is just not the right replacement for Affinity Designer given the things I want to use it for. No fault of Krita though!
Darktable is probably nice when you use it for it the intended purpose, which I am not so I am struggling a bit here.
Inkscape is perfect for annotating photos and mocking up schematics using photos and colorful lines.
Thanks to ElementalWarrior (absolute MVP here!) there is a customized WINE version that makes Affintiy 2 software work (to 90%). Affinity Suite V2 on Linux [ Wine ] - Resources - Affinity | Forum
During this process I learned that make runs a lot faster when telling it 48 threads, go! And then grabbing a coffee. Custom WINE-version in hand, the installation went very well.
Issues persist with this. Especially the tool-select hover-elements do not get rendered right, which makes some work challenging in all the wrong ways. Passing the secondary GPU into a windows VM works better where it counts though.
Late Note:
Since the above, Serif was bought out by Canva, which… eh?
This made all the steps much easier since there now exists a pretty good install script to get Canva Studio to just work via Lutris. For the life of me, I can not get this to work. Between “install umu to use proton” and “umu_run.py is not a file” (?), this is a big hang up.
Audio:
I work a lot with audio, and I listen to a lot of audio. My previous main-pc supported 3 stereo outs, 2 stereo ins and that before the first USB-device showed up.
Can Linux do that?
Well, sure it freaking can!
Pipewire GUI’s, holy moly, what a world! Depending on your pick, it feels like you accidentally replaced your audio driver with Reason.
Nvidia:
Has been a constant pain! Driver 550 was good. 560 was a mess, 570 is a mess, 580 is a mess.
Linus statement still stands true.
AMD (gpu):
For gaming, perfectly fine! Without user intervention. Just, install, load games, enjoy! Easy!
For productivity: AMD hates me personally, Fedora and RHEL sharing a dad but having different mothers, one of them being a cow and the other a lizard, holy hell I want a refund on those weekends, vacation days and sleepless nights!
Resolve…
Gaming on Linux:
The Steamdeck proved this for good: Gaming on Linux is absolutely viable, and if your game does not support Penguin, your game is bad and you should feel bad!
• Super Tux Cart – Lets be honest here, it is the only game anyone ever needed! Sine no other game even has Blender Default Cube as a playable character, no discussion
• Steam – Most titles with whatever Proton-version Steam picks for them just start and work. Sometimes a short glance at ProtonDB is needed to optimize whatever the game thinks it is doing.
One exception remains, in this case the Windows-build of the game defaults to CPU-rendering somehow?! Linux-native-build has performance issues…
• Battle.net – Lutris, Wine, go! Easy! Just be careful when doing the old Alt+Tab routine, it may not return to full-screen
Late Note: Scratch this, Microslop product bad
• GoG – Second-Class Citizen number 1. While the games can be downloaded and installed from the website, which some may prefer, the browsing features of GoG-Galaxy are not nearly as nice on the website. Cyberpunk2077, Witcher3, etc. work nicely through Wine though.
VM?
I thought I would do some GPU-passthrough Win10-VM setup, so I did all the work for getting that working. Which thanks to the plethora of guides and forum posts is mostly straight forward.
Since I got that working, I use it exclusively to play Besiege (which has some strange GPU-affinity issues in Linux, I think?) and use Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher.
Nvidia is being a pain here (Code 43) and AMD has bugs.
Intel B60 could be fun, but did not have the guts to yolo 700€ yet.
Passing a virtual function of my network card was a fun experience.
The Disaster:
While trying to make Resolve behave and do GPU-passthrough, I updated, and either boot took a kick to many, or the kernel args went belly up. I found help on this very forum, got it slightly working… and then it broke for good.
Live boot to copy my home folder, reinstall, copy everything back, point various things at various places. Actually, easy!
Lost about 6 hours to this, could have been just 1 had I given up quicker.
Why this stings so bad:
Before this, Resolve in OpenGL-mode worked fine!
Now it only sees the Nvidia card, something is fucky with amdgpu so I can’t get AMD-Pro drivers to work and my old notes are useless.
RDP/VNC/remote rendering/alternative software/other workarounds:
I still have my Win10 machine. I actually moved it to a new case so it would integrate nicer with my setup. I got a dedicated mouse and keyboard since just toggling over the monitor for the occasional job is quick and easy.
A stupid fast network connection means files essentially live between the Linux daily driver and the windows crutch.
The crutch takes care of image editing and CAD. Despite my efforts at git-gud in Blender, Krita and Inkscape, my old go-to’s Affinity and Solid Edge are just too comfortable to leave behind.
• Remote rendering for Resolve is a bit mid.
• Remote Desktop for Affinity has issuess with the drawing tablet.
• Kdenlive is nice for a simple video cut (but so is ffmpeg).
• GIMP takes patience I do not have spare.
• FreeCAD is extra special, the recent update made it less extra, but it remains extra special!
The Good:
- Search works, and actually finds things, instantly! Windows without voidtools- verything is pain…
- KDE is chefs kiss, Folders open in windows with tabs like browsers is amazing, split view makes it even better when looking for “that file that must be somewhere here”
- It is quick. Not as in “tons of compute”-quick, just snappy for the little things.
- Community support for the “Dozenzs of us”-problems is amazing (eg. ElementalWarrior)
- Gaming works out of the box in 95% of the games I play.
- Multi-Monitor with weird resolutions and frame rates works nicely (except…)
- Audio worked out of the box, 2 different USB-interfaces (Focusrite and MOTU) and a ProJect DAC
Note: Audio got a lot better recently, it is now as good as the early Win10 (1703) builds, in other words a lot better than Win11 wishes it was - Bluetooth interactions are so much more streamlined than Windows 11
The Bad:
- Resolve…
- Multi-channel audio via one interface is extremely fiddly to set up right, and updates tend to unmake these setups.
- Running a Big-Boy CPU (24c/48t) with an AMD + Nvidia GPU configuration on a not as widely used desktop OS confuses some software, which makes it difficult to figure out who is being stupid if stuff falls over.
- Relying on tech-savy users to make software that just works™ on W also work in Penguin-land remains a problem.
- Multi-Monitor with weird resolutions and frame rates sometimes causes abnormally high GPU power, and then gets stuck at “full FPS” instead of falling back down to idle.
- Finding ones path through the permission jungle makes Windows Vista UAC-hell look like a well oiled machine
The Ugly:
- Software quality is an issue. What good is choice when all 23 options aren’t ready for prime time?
- Screen-Sharing or Screen-Recording often runs into unexpected hurdles, and stayes there
- [Bonus Round] Community gripe: “Just use Windows” as “help” when asking if anyone has an idea what causes this or that error is… humans suck and need to go away!
The Weird:
- WebProxy/Web-Cache – Discover and DNF seem to sometimes land in the cache, and sometimes draw from it too.
- Some applications start where I closed them (as in the window-position), others randomly spawn where they feel like it, some default to center on screen 1, others are anyone’s guess.
- Programs sometimes cause a “sorry for that crash”-notification after being closed normally.
- The less common settings dont just get hidden options or command-line, they get arcane, mythical interfaces. Why is changing what driver/kernel-module gets loaded such a pain?!
