I currently use windows 10. I have AMD Threadripper cpu and dual gpu GTX1080ti . If i want to switch to Linux , what do i need to consider ? is the gpu support is better in Linux ? does it render faster in Linux or not ? What the drawback when i do the switch ? what’s the good reason to go to Linux ? Or should i stay on Windows ? Any tips or advices will be great.
Thanks a lot.
GPU support is not as good on linux, as it’s on windows. This is true for nvidia and AMD, with Nvidia giving you better support.
With Windows, your system is locked down every time there is an update. Your system also depends on the internet for usage. With linux it will work even when outdated. You only need internal account to run the computer.
Depending on the distro, linux is heavly documented, just search for it on search engine.
With Windows, there are people watching you. With Linux, you are kept private.
If you go with Linux, forget about your video games, they will not work on Linux. Windows has all the games.
Windows has the best game developer tools and SDK. Linux has game developer tools, the difference is the license. Linux has been used by major game studios for the production of games, because of it’s tools.
Windows requires money, and lots of it. Linux only asks for donations, which most people never give.
Linux is nicer, Windows is more aggressive. Windows takes up processing power and memory for things that don’t matter. Linux only uses what’s needed, which can be fine tuned.
A problem with linux is drivers. You might need some fancy hardware to further your hobby. But after buying the expensive thing, you find out there is no support for it. Windows has better support, but only for new hardware. You cannot save money by getting used in most cases.
Windows is dangerous, Windows has put thousands of people into prison with 1 million dollar fines. Linux doesn’t care if you share. The police think you should only use Windows. Your teachers think you should only use Windows.
That’s not so true these days. I just recently came back from a little sojourn in Linux Land, and of the 250 odd games I have in my Steam library, 140 were supported natively by the OS. With Proton added into the mix, I’d say about 3 quarters of my games would run in Linux without much hassle.
Only true to an extent, definitely not in a way that would make me chose Linux over windows
As long as you’re only using blender, switching won’t be an issue. Drivers weren’t an issue for me since I have an Nvidia GPU.
With the GPU you’re having you even use Pop! OS which already comes with the drivers you need.
For me, there is no alternative for some applications, so I dual booted for a couple of months. Now I am back to windows only, it was just too annoying.
As far as blender itself is concerned I found little to no difference, I could keep on working on the same projects as if it was in windows. Didn’t recognize any performance issues or boosts.
I have very little deeper knowledge of operating systems and how they work, but I got everything to work with a little bit of research in advance.
What was extremely frustrating at the beginning were simple things like getting programs to start (finding out which file to execute, making them executeable in the properties,etc). First time I had to read the manual how to start a program, but once you know it, you know it 
CPU is a bit faster in Linux, not just for Blender. Regarding CUDA in Cycles, generally render times are similar between Linux and Windows. Currently there is a small problem where Dyntopo sculpt has worse performance in Linux than in Windows (developers know the problem).
It is not necessary for you to uninstall Windows, you can run the two in a dual boot installation. It is always recommended that you backup important data on external disk. Windows 10 has things like UEFI and secure boot, so you should look for tutorials on how to install your Linux distribution next to Windows 10.
The safest thing if you are a novice is that if you have a second disk other than where you have Windows installed, you install Linux on that other disk. For Windows disk master boot record to not be written, you must enter to the BIOS and choose the second disk as the main/primary disk to boot. Once you have made sure that your computer boots first with the second disk where you do not have Windows installed, you proceed with the Linux installation in this disk. Then Linux boot loader should recognize both systems. If you had some kind of problem with the installation, to return to Windows you must configure again your Windows disk as the main/primary disk for booting from the BIOS.
I was going to reply with this, but yes, I do exactly this. I don’t trust GRUB. Well, that’s not really accurate, I don’t trust myself to understand how to use GRUB worth a crap, and I totally blew up my access to a Windows install because I tried to use GRUB and didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
So I have a separate drive, that’s only for messing around with Linux, and I access it in the BIOS settings when I want to boot onto it.
Alternatively, if you just want to mess around in Linux before making that kind of commitment, you can do it in a virtual box, something a Threadripper with plenty of memory will excel at.
I have switched to Linux myself recently, and I can’t imagine going back as game devs push for easy cash grabs has scared me away from gaming as well. So there is no reason to.
AMD GPU are supported natively, but only the base functions. You won’t get OpenCL unless you go for a Linux distro which is supported by AMD (research it if you plan to change). It depends on how tech sawy you are. I had very tech sawy friends that was not able to get AMDs proprietary drivers (required for OpenCL to work) to install on Linux Mint Cinnamon.
AMD GPU works well enough for me for regular viewport handling, I just can’t render with OpenCL. However, with Threadripper, why would you even bother? You can explore the fun of OSL shaders if you don’t rely on gpu rendering (I still haven’t gotten there yet though).
I’m not very tech sawy though, even if I now run Linux on all my machines. You may get luckier.
if your computer comes with windows stay with it, avoid problems.
continue with your life… 
Hi, to avoid problems with your computer remove Windows! 
I tried to watch HD video and render with Blender was not possible on Windows.
Change Disk to my Opensuse Linux in the laptop and working without hickups.
By the way start compiling Blender was not a problem, too.
The update/upgrade system of Windows 7-10 is a disaster anyway.
Don´t take to serious, Windows has it´s advantages for some hardware and software.
Cheers, mib
Thats not entirely true. I don’t know about Mint but in Manjaro(that is not officially supported) you can install either ROCM or proprietary OpenCL. The hardware that AMD chose to support is limited mostly to Polaris and up. Other than that there should be no problem unless it was a mining card that had its BIOS modified. I don’t know about Blender 2.8 though but its still in developement.
What is ROCM? But yes, I mean that without the AMD drivers you’ll get a working AMD card, except for OpenCL support. We tried installing the AMD drivers, but failed. I saw him editing the install script to change out Ubuntu for Mint, but it still failed to install. Later I found out that this particular hack didn’t work with newer Linux kernels and you had to downgrade the kernel. And I’m there like, wtf is a kernel 
So if you’re tech sawy enough, you can probably get anything to work.
Another thing I like about Linux, is the time it takes to install from a memory stick, like a couple of minutes. And then get all the updates, also only talking minutes. Windows install is a bloody nightmare - a colleague spent two full days doing a couple of faulty installs and/or faulty updates that forced another re-install. I’ve been lucky myself wrt win7 stability, but the install/update procedure still takes a while. And the frequent reboots after updates on windows is a joke. There are things that work better there, sure. And there are software that is not supported on Linux, for me, especially CAD (Solidworks).
This is something that was more true back when than it is nowadays. For me, Windows only takes slightly longer to install than your usual Linux distro, and given that MS now rolls out bi-yearly isos of Win10 with all of the previous laundry list of updates baked in, the usual post-install process is considerably less painful than it once was.
I remember with XP, you had whatever version happened to be on the disc whenever you bought it. You could have 6 years of updates and service packs waiting on you after you installed, necessitating multiple reboots, with a high chance of something screwing up during that arduous process. Now? The latest images of Win10 are easily available to download, so you just grab it, install it, and when you’re done, you’ll have a 5-10 minute update process that’s handled automatically behind the scenes, requiring, at most, one reboot.
It’s not a perfect situation, but it has improved greatly compared to what it was.
It’s only a few weeks ago since they rolled out a kind of big update (win10). It took a long time and required several reboots. It didn’t help that updating the apps afterwards required their own reboots.
That’d probably be one of the big version updates, probably the October one, which is still rolling out to people. Those happen twice a year, and yeah, they can be annoying, especially when they come up on you by surprise.
Though updating an app should never require a reboot. I mean, you can install GPU drivers in Windows 10 without needing to reboot anymore. The only exceptions to this are older programs that still insist you restart after installing, and/or Abode products.
My advise, if you’re going to stick with Windows 10, go for the Pro version or go home.
The reason is the control over updates, big updates can be deferred for a full year (which gives plenty of time for it to become rock stable) and the patches can be delayed for 30 days (which gives you a good chance of avoiding bad ones).
The people who use Home are more or less beta testers as there’s reports of the Insider program not being near as effective as it could be. Home users will get even the big updates almost right away, warts and all.
I see what you did there…
But yes, avoid Home if going win 10.
Not home for sure, and at home I won’t touch it (W7 pro was ok though). Pro or maybe some enterprise stuff, not sure as it is out of my hands at work. Apps are solidworks (servicepacks always “require” reboots) and autocad. But yeah, I try to install any updates late friday and maybe its done my monday morning or at least well prepared.
I haved worked for some time on a Manjaro Gnome Distribution for 3d printing and small graphic design projects… i have nvidia gpu and the only thing i have noticed about windows and linux is a viewport fps-drops on viewport… but overall i haved worked very well with blender on linux (if you want to know i have switched KDE for DE but not sure if it work well atm…)
Another issue with linux distro’s is the adobe package who i really miss when working on linux…
Gimp is ok for raster, inkscape is terrible for me, natron is a lot buggy/laggy but can do the work done.
I have reached a conclusion, working with 3d for graphics industry is doable in linux, but is a pain… so unfortunatly i work on windows 10 for 3d graphic design and so on…
For everything else linux is the best OS!
Now i have dual-boot setup on my desktop pc, Manjaro KDE and Windows 10 Home, windows need more space on my ssd, linux partition has only 64gb reserved of ssd space.
Hope my experience can you help to decide what you want to use for 3d and everything else…
Cheers mate!
Only, and i repeat only sane windows is LTSB-N or LTSC-N
