So sitrep:
Newish desktop
- i7-13700K
- 64Gb DDR5 6000Mhz
- RTX 3070Ti
- MSI PRO Z790-P (WiFi is not a factor, permanent ethernet connection.)
Needs:
- Gaming
- Music composing
- Coding (Mostly python)
- Video editing
I’ve been using Linux on and off throughout the years, but lately I’ve fallen out of the loop somewhat. Started with Slackware around 1998, Kubuntu in the 2000’s, Ubuntu 2010’s, Kali and Mandrake 2020’s -> on my laptop, Ubuntu server on my RasPi. At work, we have a few Fedora servers I have to maintain. So not a complete novice, but somewhat obsolete info.
I have been looking at the immutable distros, like Bazzite and Pop!_OS as I’ve done the whole song and dance of constantly repairing my distro because of various issues, and I’d like my main recreational machine & distro to be low maintenance, I get to fix linux servers at work enough already, I don’t want to bring that home.
With gaming, I’ve understood that linux has come a loooooong way since I last tried sometime around TBC Launch for WoW when Wine barely worked with it.
Music composing is a little annoying, since apparently both Ableton and FL studio are not an option. I’ve heard good things about Reaper, but I’ll have to do some more research. Feel free to educate me on this topic if you have some insider info. I don’t play live sets, just compose and mix.
Video editing, currently I use Davinci Resolve, and apparently it works fine on Linux, just some limitations and shenanigans with codecs. Alternatives are welcome, I don’t need 90% of what resolve offers, I can make do with a simpler software as well.
Thank you kindly in advance for departing thine wisdom.
So I’m a sceptic when it comes to immutable desktops. What you gain in stability you sacrifice in flexibility and control. If you want to use software outside of Flatpak and your distros repos, immutable can be very annoying to work around.
If you want more control and flexibility, a standard install with a Long Term Support distro will be fine. I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed; I wouldn’t recommend that as it’s a rolling distro but I would recommend OpenSuSE Leap the point release distro. It has good user tools in YaST, it’s secure and it’s reliable, and it has a sensible update schedule. It is also a decent distro for coding. It has multiple versions of Python available which I believe are configured to coexist well, deliberately to make coding and version control easier.
I’d avoid anything directly Ubuntu related due to the reliance on Snap. But Linux Mint is a good variant which has loads of support available online if you want to ease back into Linux. Make no mistake, although it’s user friendly, it’s a full distro and capable of being as powerful as you want.
If you really do want to go down the immutable route, then probably Fedora Silver blue and variants is the way to go at the moment. I second the Kaionite recommendation - KDE is great. It’s well established and popular in the space, so there will more support out there should issues arise (most commonly installing something not in the repos and not on Flatpak). Immutable distros from other big names aren’t really there yet in terms of the user base as far as I’m aware.
While I don’t completely agree on flexibility, I can at least understand where you’re coming from; there’s simply stuff you can do on traditional distros that have yet to be properly supported on the ‘immutables’. However, even after giving it some genuine thought, I still don’t quite understand how control is sacrificed. Would you mind elaborating?
Thanks for the POV. Mint I tried back when it was step up from Damn Small Linux, like early 2000’s, no clue how it is now. I’ll keep it in mind.
I got interested in the immutable concept, since it wasn’t a thing back when I was more of a linux user, and I’ve gotten lazy and burnt out on fixing my OS when I just want to do something fun. But you do make a good point of sacrificing flexibility, and I might get annoyed at that later.
Yeah I totally understand that, I’ve played around with immutable distros inside virtual machines and they’re interesting. Also if you like tinkering, Linux is a great OS.
If you do go immutable have a play with KVM - Kernel Virtual Machines - they’re easy to set up and give near native speeds for guest virtual Linux machines (or decent performance for other OS like Windows) It’s a great way to play with Linux inside a sandbox while keeping your host clear; but also a very useful way to run custom software in a flexible Linux guest while on an immutable desktop. E.g. Create a Mint VM to run something that’d be a pain to set up on Silverblue.
Immutable desktop plus KVM guests might be the best of both worlds. Even if you don’t end up on immutable distro, KVM is cool tech that has really advanced in the last few years. It’s better and more powerful than VirtualBox imo, and I use it a lot even on my rolling release distro (I have a VM to run work Microsoft Office, plus a few Linux VMs for a torrent stack and just for tinkering).
Oh yeah, I was thinking about that today, too; get a “for most stuff” distro as the baremetal, and VM specialist distros (like Kali or something) on top of it when needed.
I will definitely check out KVM at some point! I was just gonna chuck VBox at it, but your salespitch convinced me to try at it. Been mostly working with Azure and ESXi for the past 10 years, had no idea KVM was so advanced now, I saw something about it back in the day, but it was a tech demo -level back then.
Thank you kindly for the insight!