Im mulling over installing linux if this is the case… As i dont play video games anymore and my primary use of a PC is web browsing and Blender + a photoeditor, Topaz Studio + Topaz Gigapixel + inkscape
The only thing is can i install linux on my NVME drive that already has windows on it, and have a dual boot?
I’m going to guess it is faster still because Linux has less crap.
In the old days when I played with Linux you could install it in a way where when you started your computer it would ask which os you wanted to boot. I’m sure there are tutorials on this if you do a search on dual boot linux.
Yes, but…
If you are very new to installing OSs or do not know how to backup your data, it is recommended that you install Linux on a different disk/physical drive than where you have Windows. Also, before doing so, choose from the BIOS the physical drive where Linux will be installed as the primary/main boot drive, so that the Linux boot loader does not overwrite the Windows boot loader. Linux boot loader will detect Windows and it will give you the OS options. If something goes wrong, you simply choose Windows drive as your primary/main boot drive again from the BIOS.
You investigate the steps that you must follow with Secure Boot and UEFI to install your Linux distro (Yes, Microsoft does not like that you install other OSs).
But if you are an experienced person, just install it in the same unit/drive by doing a little research first on documentation that is not very old.
Another option is to test Linux in live mode from a LiveCD/USB. If you are an nvidia user, you should try some distro with preinstalled nvidia graphics drivers, such as Pop! OS (download that label with “nvidia”):
This is because by default Linux uses nouveau OpenSource driver, which will not give you the best performance or the possibility of using CUDA.
By the way, here Linux only user for many years. But the reality is that there are situations where Blender can be somewhat faster in Linux (for example in CPU performance), and other times where Blender can be somewhat faster in Windows. Except for a specific problem that exists with Windows 10 in certain circumstances, the performance is on par.
Anyway you will like to learn Linux too.
well i tried Ubuntu for a while back in like 2008 running on a USB stick until i broke the installation somehow and went back to windows… But i had most programs up and running or workarounds and such… it was good and the windows used to do that cool wobble effect when you moved them. Was light years ahead of windows at the time.
Linux and Ubuntu have changed a lot since those times. Before for these effects you had to install an external compositing window manager like Compiz, but currently the effects are handled by default window manager in distros. I don’t even know if Ubuntu still has those window effects by default (KDE/KWin does, but not many of these effects are enabled by default in distributions). At that time we also did not have the Microsoft/manufacturers UEFI and Secure Boot that have complicated Linux installation tasks a bit.
Anyway Live mode is just for quick testing, it is not stable and does not have the best performance compared to a proper Linux installation on disk.
Someone wrote a Gnome plugin for that…
Haven’t heard about this before… any other details, or links to more info on that? Thanks!
gah. I dont have a Titan or Quadro… And this 30% performance loss is the reason im mulling going to linux in order to get a free performance uplift. I might even look into the E-Cycles if its a good enough price and would benefit my non RTX GPU.
I just did a short practical test since i was on Linux (and now am back on Win)
Linux Mint 18: 3:52 minutes
Windows 10: 3:53 minutes
could you please share hardware setup and the scene being rendered? merci)
Sorry, I can’t share the scene. This test was rather arbitrary and random. It just shows that with a relatively simple asset there is no significant difference in rendertime. YMMV
Cool, thanks for the info YAFU.