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)
-
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
-
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)
-
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.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by Manjaro being "a known trap"?
Edit: See my reply for some sources I found.
Not the above poster but Manjaro routinely pushes out broken packages, has had a number of issues with security (not renewing their tls certificates for their website) and is all around not stable. Arch is a predictable unstable, manjaro is an unpredictable unstable attempt at stable.
Even if packages weren't broken, the fact that they make it easy to use the AUR is problematic because the AUR expects the latest packages from the Arch Repos. Often, AUR packages will break on Manjaro for that reason.
Found this file by user "arindas" on GitHub which seems to highlight a lot of the issues that I've been seeing. To summarize:
Package Management
Source: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Manjaro:_A_Different_Kind_of_Beast
Security
Source: https://lists.manjaro.org/pipermail/manjaro-security/2018-August/000785.html
Source: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pamac/-/issues/719
The post also mentioned an issue where the Manjaro updater used bad practices when updating packages such as using the
no-confirmflag. This appears to have been fixed from what I can tell.Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150409095421/https://manjaro.github.io/expired_SSL_certificate/
Changing the system time could have unintended consequences such as with cron jobs not running at the intended time. It's also not a best security practice to use an incognito window to bypass the SSL expiry alert. The correct solution is to not let the certificates expire in the first place, which is not difficult and is done by all secure websites.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20160528135123/http://manjaro.github.io/SSL-Certificate-Expired/
This time the Manjaro developers didn't recommend changing the system time, but they still recommended creating an exception for the Manjaro website.
Source? https://web.archive.org/web/20220102232338/https://forum.manjaro.org/t/expired-certificate-for-iso-download-on-download-manjaro-org/96441
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20221013234550/https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/expiry-2022-08-17.png
Sending Unexpectedly Large Traffic volume to AUR
I think some of the dates and sources in this section were wrong, but I did my best to correct them.
Source: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pamac/-/issues/1017
Source: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pamac/-/issues/1161
Source: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pamac/-/issues/1135
Additional sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/wqzrpl/did_manjaro_just_forget_to_renew_the_ssl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/q85t8n/deleted_by_user/
Can you provide a source about when and what package was broken?
See my reply for some sources I found.
Personally, no, i havent used manjaro in years. However, it's frequently spoken about problem in the community so im sure someone else can help you. Or you could look up people talking about it.
I'm asking because I've used Manjaro for the last 5 years without problems. I think a lot of arguements against Manjaro here are just based on "that's what I've read somewhere".
Fair enough. I used to use Manjaro and it broke, cannot remember why. I moved to ubuntu sometime later and I've never left. Some would say that makes me a bad linux user, I would say I use an operating system that gets out of my way and let's me use it. Use whatever tool gets the job done fastest!
Thanks for the context :)