I’m thinking about switching to linux,
but everytime I switch I always feel like I’m missing something,(this time it’s actually because lubuntu doesn’t seem to like my graphic card
so… yeah.
since there are so many linux users in this forum, I’m hoping that some of you will point me to some sort of super distro.
Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Other Software”
Personally, I run Arch Linux. It suits me. I can’t guarantee that it suits anyone else.
Manjaro (Arch Variant for noobs 
LXQt
Lightweight and on the bleeding edge.
I’ve always used KDE and I do not feel comfortable using other desktop than KDE. But distro?, I use Kubuntu but I could use either one that has well implemented KDE.
Edit:
@fdfxd, Which is your graphics card? this? GPU: Sapphire R7 240 1GB
Are you using opensource drivers or proprietary?
I have used many distros, Redhat, Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu, and even Mandrake but the one I like best is Linux Mint. It just works for me and it keeps fairly up to date repo wise. If you can afford it, I would get a new Nvidia card. Nvidia has better support for Linux in my experience.
depends
i use OpenSUSE as my main distro but also ScientificLinux 6.7 for software and projects that are LONG term
i work with a lot of nasa/jpl imaging data and some missions are rather long lived
RHEL7 might not be the best choice nor would Fedora , but those two are on the opposite ends of the spectrum
very LONG life support ( 10 years ) to way too short ( 13 MONTHS)
and suse is in the middle
I am also thinking about creating a linux partition for blender when I build a new PC… is Ubuntu any good? It gets a lot of attention (like on Ars Technica) but I don’t know the first thing about which distro would be most straightforward to use.
Literally, I only want it to use Blender and maybe Krita & Gimp. The rest of the time I will be in Windows 10 
… thoughts?
What needs to be considering when thinking about using Linux for blender, I mean quite basic usage, not business.
Thats simple: ease of use, you must like the gui, should fit your hardware and software.
My personal prefs in order: Mint, Ubuntu, Debian. But you see you can ask 10 ppl and get 10 answers.
Jens
Arch - and have for the last three years. Before that LFS, Mint, Debian. However, for someone just switching, Mint is probably the best. I wouldn’t recommend LFS or Arch for a new Linux user.
yeah lxqt does look a bit sexy doesn’t it?
Same reason for downloading linux here
depends
i use OpenSUSE as my main distro but also ScientificLinux 6.7 for software and projects that are LONG term
i work with a lot of nasa/jpl imaging data and some missions are rather long lived
RHEL7 might not be the best choice nor would Fedora , but those two are on the opposite ends of the spectrum
very LONG life support ( 10 years ) to way too short ( 13 MONTHS)
and suse is in the middle
Why opensuse,
also what is scientific linux?
I have used many distros, Redhat, Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu, and even Mandrake but the one I like best is Linux Mint. It just works for me and it keeps fairly up to date repo wise. If you can afford it, I would get a new Nvidia card. Nvidia has better support for Linux in my experience.
Arch - and have for the last three years. Before that LFS, Mint, Debian. However, for someone just switching, Mint is probably the best. I wouldn’t recommend LFS or Arch for a new Linux user.
There’s something about mint I just don’t like for some reason…
It’s not really my graphic card it’s just that I’m not using a real monitor(a tv)
And IDK who coded the driver for the hdmi interface for pcs but it’s clearly outsourced and poorly done(listing incompatible refresh rates,listing incompatible resolutions,etc)
ScientificLinux is a rebuild of the RedHat Enterprise Linux code base from the people at CERN and FermiLab
cern as in Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory with the Tevatron
( the accelerator is now closed)
ScientificLinux like CentOS are FREE rebuilds of the NOT FREE RHEL
if you use redhat you USE it for the support you HAVE TO BUY
a lot of people say mint is a easy to use OS for “New to linux” users
mostly because things like Music and videos have built in support
the music and video formats are VERY VERY VERY patent and copyright ENCUMBERED!!!
and some Corporations are footing the HUGE bill and it is supported “out of the box”
on SUSE one has to use a NON USA software repo “packman” and pirate the music and video codcs
on Fedora this is in the old rpmforge and rpmfusion
and CentOS/SL/RHEL these are located now in i thing linuxman repo
I have a Linux Mint 17.2 since last year.
No problems with Blender, Krita, Gimp, Natron and Houdini Apprentice.
Ubuntu used to be my favorite. But I think Linux Mint is preferred nowadays.
I use Linux MInt as well. First of all it is closely tied to Ubuntu/ Debian which means there is a ton of support at hand. The other is that out of all distros I tried in the past Mint Cinnamon is the only one that gave me correct scaling on a HiDPI display.
I’m a part time linux user, I’m booting it live from USB to learn it and have eben doing so regularly for some months while using windows 8.1 at the same time for other things. I’ve worked with linux mint (17.3 MATE). Being able to run blender is one of the crucial things for any operating suystem I run, I can say linux mint 64 bit does a very good job, with 32 bit blender may crash if you try to render an image with too many pixels by pixels. What’s more blender runs at almost it’s normal speed even from the generally rather slow (any live operating system will be slower than an installed one, installed linux should be much faster than live) live operating system. You can download blender via the repoository, or visit blender’s site and download the current or an older version for whichever bit 32 or 64 type of linux you’re using, then extract the archive folder and open certain files from inside and blender should run there and then.
I started with red hat sometime about 1994, moved to ubuntu when red hat seemed to be losing the plot, same thing with ubuntu when I was told I had to have ads, so finally bit the bullet and installed debian, very happy with debian last three or four years, very stable, lots of help available, I use three PC’s and a laptop, one PC has only on board graphics, but with good intel cpu and fast 1300 RAM, my main machine is a phenom 4 AMD with 8gig of RAM and a nice nvidia GTX650 with 2G VRAM, one machine has an ATI Radeon HD6870 1G card. All four machines are running debian stretch. I use spotify for music, and so far use debian on all three machines, win 7 on the last machine, an i5 cpu with 8G RAM, but I have a 500g external esata drive with debian for the laptop too. I have blender 2.77a on all four machines, and use GIMP, scan with xsane, and have a ton of apps… everything seems to run fine, touch wood. I use xfce, MATE, Cinnamon or Gnome desktops, selectable at logon, and run 14 virtual desktops on each of the first three machines, labelled with common tasks, like the first desktop on the first machine is Facebook/mail, the second desktop is file manager/searching, the third graphics ie inkscape/gimp, the fourth blender… etc… I use digikam for image management, and chromium, firefox, and konqueror for browsing. I have three machines with dual monitors via dvi connectors plus hdmi which can be hot-plugged into the big tv… so in my opinion, debian is fine for a reliable alternative to Microsoft or Apple… there can always be issues, but I am extremely blessed to have more than one machine so that I can get online and find out how to fix problems. I have a trillion lovely blender tutorials, which I download via a script downloader to keep my broadband usage to a minimum…
I use a modem, two routers, laser printer, intuos 3 tablet, remote keyboards, skype with two video cameras, two blueray reader/writers, and keep an external 1TB usb backup drive for each machine, two sets of external speakers, so I feel that debian is a completely viable operating system these days… only thing I miss when I get nostalgic about my Windows days is Photoshop, but blender and the GIMP more or less soothe the pain… not to mention the debian software database system for managing installed applications with their software dependencies, and not having to do those endless Windows reboots every time you want to install something…
Having just gotten the Windows 10 anniversary update in place I’m now thinking about a dual boot system with Mint for Blender work. For any of you with Windows 10 I’m sure the reason is obvious. For those without Windows 10 enjoy.
My question is how can work be moved back into Windows 10 for say editing maybe. Maybe a editing program that only runs in Windows. An example might be a file with a thousand PNGs rendered in Mint being moved back into Windows 10. Also with Mint being used for mostly blender work does anyone have any suggestion for the size of the partition. That being after I get my head around how I guess ASUS has partitioned this HD in the first place. Not what I’m used to seeing. Thanks for any help.
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