Distro fever VI

For a l-o-n-g time, I have been using Manjaro (Arch)/Gnome,
and most of the time, it has worked quite fine. Except that I have
an Nvidia GFX, which needs a proprietary driver (because of openCL).
And as soon as Manjaro wants to update, openCL disappears :frowning:

On distrowatch I found another distro, still using Arch, but which sounds
like a real ā€œmodernizationā€: an Indian distro, named Garuda.

Will be fun to test its different flavoursā€¦

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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I hope it greats you with a login sound saying ā€œhelloooo, how can I help you doodeh ?ā€

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Salut, Mon PĆØre!

No. It says Namaste, Bapudji.
[spelling absolutely uncertain!]

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But wonā€™t using an arch based distro cause the same issues, with updates disabling OpenCL?

No it should not. Normal arch is still using 465 driver. For some reason Manjaro thought it would be a good idea to push 470 because it fixed other issues people had. The side effect was Nvidia broke OpenCL on that driver. Bad part is Manjaro only ships one new driver and one old driver so you canā€™t roll back after you update if you have a newer card not supported by 390. Only way to fix is to manually bring in a older driver or wait for them to bring in the fixed driver which is not even in the testing repos yet.

On another note once Manjaro broke Nvidia I myself am hopping looking for a different distro. Hard to do because I am not 100% on board with neither LTS or Rolling distros. I am trying to find a happy middle ground of not too old and not too new. Which means I am probably going to have to go with something like Fedora that updates every 6 months.

Ubuntu also has a 6-month upgrade cycle, unless you go LTS.

Yea a Ubuntu is also a possibility. For me I guess the biggest issue is I wish I had the ability to have specific versions of packages. Some I like having up to date while others I may want to keep frozen to a older version for longer. Just as a example keep blender at a specific version for a period of time. The current distribution styles make that challenging to maintain. I guess that is really where flatpak shines but the sandbox brings about its own issues.

But sure, you can run into library incompatibilities over time.

??

I am running ā€œnormal Archā€, and I got the 470 driver two or three days ago.

Last I checked they were not on 470 yet it that was more then 3 days ago Manjaro pushed it first. My apologies :+1:

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Fedora is ā€œcutting edge but stableā€, and uses flatpaks alongside rpms. Also thereā€™s a way to stop rpms from updating as I found out via Google just now

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Fedora (or normal Ubuntu based distro rather than LTS) might be something Iā€™ll switch to, especially since my new hardware may not be fully supported by LTS based distros.

So while my Linux Mint Cinnamon install (20.2) did pick up my new hardware without any noticeable issue, I still think I would be best served with a fresh install.

However I canā€™t decide whether a regular Kubuntu release, or the LTS release would be best.

At least with the regular (21.10) release, more chance of my hardware being fully supported? Although I somehow fear that the normal releases will be less stable and will require a reinstall every 6 months when the new version comes out.

Hi Brian ā€¦ I have had only pain trying to keep up with bleeding edge ā€¦ be it for a particular bluetooth chipset, or a wifi dongle. Inevitably, when it comes time for a kernel upgrade, something breaks. If it is the video driver, it can make fixing challenging, time-consuming and frustrating.

My compromise is to run LTS (i.e. Iā€™m on 20.04.1) but take a risk on very few packages that I particularly care about having up-to-date versions of: I pull the latest master of darktable every few days and compile locally, and I keep Rapid-Photo-Downloader up to date also. Again, I have needed to use Citrix for remote-login to my work environment. Everything else, pretty much, I go with what the Ubuntu repositories offer.

Using the intermediate *buntu releases may work for you. I donā€™t believe that they are inherently less stable, rather the individual software packages are likely less stable, precisely because they will be the newest versions. Your mileage may vary.

Do let us know how you get on. :slight_smile:

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One other consideration which is making me stick to the LTS is there does not seem to be any packages for the latest darktable for 21.10 yet!

I believe *buntu 20.04.3 uses the 5.11 series of kernels, so perhaps less of an issue with my new hardware (Ryzen 7 3700x with B550m motherboard)

ā€˜Normalā€™ Ubuntu releases are not inherently less stable than ā€˜LTSā€™. The only difference is the support length (9 months vs. years) and immutability of the programs (ā€˜stabilityā€™ in the sense of ā€™not changingā€™). Of course, if you change programs more frequently the chances of hiting a bug are higher, but itā€™s not different than running the LTS and upgrading the apps by hand, or upgrading an LTS after two years. In fact LTS users are only upgraded to the next LTS something like 6 months after its release to iron out the (normal) bugs.

If you are worried about stability you can use the normal Ubuntu releases, but only upgrade after a couple of months (some apps will take time to support it, anyways). Another option would be to stay on LTS but get the latest hardware support by using their Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE), which ships the newer kernels and firmware more frequently.

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Hmmmā€¦ Now major issues with Kubuntu 20.04.3 (clean install) hanging at the motherboard splash screen, unless I select recovery mode from the grub menuā€¦ Maybe some sorta issue with Kubuntu 20.04, my motherboard and my Nvidia GPU!

*buntu based distros never used to be this difficult!

Just as well Iā€™m having a year off from entering club competitions with my photography club, itā€™ll probably be next year before I have a working system again at this rate!

Remember I said I was going to return to Linux and even bought a newer than my old laptop refurbished laptop to give it a go. Nope, job and volunteer and job applications are swamping me. No time to spend on Linux or open source, which is yet another time sink. Yeah, it definitely will take time to get back into. Building and setting things up is so very fun. Keep at the fever pitch @Brian_Innes and @Claes!

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To be honest, I think Iā€™m better served by sticking with what I know, which is good old Linux Mint Cinnamon.

After all if itā€™s good enough for @Bruce_Williams itā€™s good enough for me!

Enough distro hopping, and now time for me to get back into using my system, and getting stuck into catching up with all the changes in Darktable.

@afre OK, Iā€™ll try :slight_smile:

@Brian_Innes might the new thread be of interest to you?

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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