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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Little help here linux guys? Trying to figure out what distro to use (self.linux)

submitted 6 months ago by riccochet to c/[email protected]

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Yeah. It's another one of these. But! Here me out! So I have some experience using Linux. Run some VMs for services I run in my home, I switched my surface book 3 (funnily enough) to ubuntu for my work computer as I was getting more and more frustrated by windows 11 and it turned out really good. Was able to completely get off windows and i didn't miss out on anything. Now. Ive been trying to migrate my gaming rig to Linux with... Not a lot of success. I have 3 monitors plugged into it, a Samsung crg49 and then 2 small no name brand monitors I like for websites and discord and stuff while I play on the Samsung monitor. On windows it works flawlessly. No Linux distro I've used has been able to handle it and I'm not sure how I should be approaching this. Running games has been fine. I use lutris and have been able to play pretty much everything I've wanted to with some tweaking. But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out. I have a ryzen 3700x, and a Nvidia 2080ti. 64GB of RAM. all my storage is nvme. I have tried most major distros. Mostly Ubuntu is what I have experience with. I have tried some others like nobara, but performance was awful, and display management was an issue. Ive never really installed other desktop environments other than what comes with those distros, so if it's a matter of "use distro x, but you need to install weyland" then sure. Just let me know that's something I need to do. 😋 So... What do you suggest I run? I really dont want to go back to windoze. It's just awful these days.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (3 children)

But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out.

This sounds more like a hardware issue than software. Can you provide more detail? Have you done basic troubleshooting steps like trying different power cords and surge protector/power strip? What is the full list of hardware for your system? Have you reseated the RAM? Replaced the CMOS battery? (a dead CMOS battery will prevent system boot)

[–] riccochet 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I honestly never tried this because everything worked perfectly when I would eventually switch back to windows.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Huh... and that's repeatable? How long could you go on Linux before the blackouts, and did you run on Windows for a similar amount of time with no issues? also, when the blackout happens does it recover after a little time, or do you have to reboot to get video back? (is it just a screen blackout, or has the system crashed?) When the screen is black, can you reboot with busier backwards?

One issue that I've had on Linux installs is that the system doesn't recover properly from hibernate. I've seen this on laptops and desktops over more than a decade. When this happens the screen goes black and the system doesn't respond to any keyboard or mouse input, the only way to recover is to force a reboot. Maybe check your power management profile and disable hibernation.

Otherwise there are a lot of reasons that the screen might black out:

power issues - what is your PSU model? Linux installs are frequently not as power efficient as Windows on the same hardware, generally because Windows does a lot more throttling by default.
overheating - Windows (and the Windows hardware drivers) might be configured to throttle the CPU and/or GPU to manage the temperature automatically without telling you, while Linux might be giving you the full unthrottled system power and overheating.
video drivers & multimonitor - as others have said already, this could be an issue with the Linux video drivers. You should verify which driver you're using as [email protected] said. Are all your monitors the same resolution? I've definitely had trouble with mulitple monitors if they were mismatched.
bad CPU core - this one's a long shot, but Windows tends to be a lot more single-threaded while Linux is more likely to try to balance operations across all CPU cores. Maybe one of your cores has an issue, and when Linux tries to use it it triggers a system crash, while Windows just never gets around to using that particular core for anything critical (and so never triggers the crash).
SSD/swap file issue - most Linux distros will configure a swap partition on the root hard drive by default, which is used as an extension of the RAM. Windows doesn't use a swap file. You have plenty of RAM so there's not really a need for it, so you should try just disabling swap.

[–] riccochet 2 points 6 months ago

Had the hibernate issues on my work laptop so I have run into those before. I made sure to disable it. It's a custom built Watercooled rig so I have a Corsair 1200 watt power supply in it. Heat has never been an issue. It's getting a bit old but it's been pretty rock solid. This machine was only ever a gaming machine. It ran steam and that's about it. It was even powered off most of the day. Only ever turned it on when I was playing something. So the wear on it hasn't been too intense. I have only really used the proprietary Nvidia drivers so I'm not sure what the alternatives are (nobara I think has some custom ones but had lots of performance issues with nobara). My monitors are different sizes/resolutions/refresh rates. One is 5120x1440 120hz and the others are just generic 1920x1080 60hz When it would happen, It would boot to a screen that wasn't the default. At least one screen would be black. So I would log in and try to get it to recognize whatever monitor or monitors were missing. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes a reboot would fix it. Sometimes the system would hang or take several minutes to boot. It's been a couple weeks since I got frustrated and tried to use it so I can't remember what was making the boot hang. When all I use it for is to play games and I get random monitor disconnects it quickly becomes useless when something doesn't work right on every boot. I really don't know what changes tho. When it's first installed everything works. It lets me set up everything. All I really do is updates and then start setting up steam. Install some games through lutris and then will shut down. Sometimes I'll get a day or two of working fine out of it, then monitor issues start popping up. And I haven't really used Linux for entertainment before so I switch back to windows for a while and everything works. But. Windoze. So every once in a while I try Linux again and am not really sure how to deal with it as a gaming device. Read it would be better if I was running an AMD video card but just not in the budget for a rebuild right now, but I am due for one.