Hi. I’m not sure if I’ll get 12th gen, 13th gen, or a new amd pc.
Which distroses would you recommend for Blender?
It’d be cool if it’s
a free one.
so, apparently, my Os only has OpenGL 3.3. So I can’t even open Blender 4 Alpha. But my Radeon HD 5770 Gpu should have 4.4. I don’t wanna buy a new gpu, only to find out my Os only allows up to 3.3
lightweight: I think Blender’s slower on Ubuntu than my current Zorin Lite Os
uses Cpu to its full potential. It sounds like Ubuntu can use all cores/threads, including efficiency cores. Is there a lightweight distros that can do this, too?
simple to use. I’m no Linux expert. Whenever something goes wrong, I have to ask on forums when using Terminal.
Or… Should I just use Windows 11? I switched to Ubuntu because I kept having to reinstall Windows (though this was on a previous, really slow laptop). Ps I don’t have windows rn. Guess I’d have to buy a new pc that comes with it.
I gotta say, it seems like Ubuntu is exactly what you’re looking for- GUI, fairly lightweight, modern drivers, and full CPU potential. You don’t need to use the terminal at all. What’s not working for you with Ubuntu?
Like i said, I tried a custom renderer (Beer/Malt) on my current Os, Zorin Lite. Very slow, probably wasn’t working properly.
When I tried it on Ubuntu, it was even slower.
I didn’t check the openGL version on Ubuntu tho. Apparently, it’s only 3.3 on Zorin Lite for me, when it could be 4.4
So I installed Unity Os, Lubuntu and Xubuntu.
(Skipped Kylin cuz it’s not 64-bit afaik, and I don’t know Chinese).
All of them give me OpenGL 4.5! Yay!
And can open Blender Alpha 4 (but with issues. Still a step up from in Zorin Lite 16.3)
Fps playback in Blender 3.6 is all similar.
I haven’t checked Beer/Malt renderer on all 3 OSes tho.
They all have some issues, though:
e.g. Unity Os can’t start up Balena Etcher app image. If that doesn’t work, then what else doesn’t work?
Edit: Someone told me to open the app image in terminal.
Terminal said I needed Fuse, and provided a link.
After carefully installing Fuse, the app image opens now!
(p.s. the link said if u install the older version of Fuse to a newer Ubuntu Os, it can break your system!)
Installing this Os was also wonky. I had to force quit the installer that wasn’t very reassuring.
Xubuntu keeps having Internal Errors. Sometimes, randomly for no apparent reason. One time, it happened after I unzipped a file
Much smoother Os installation iirc? I forgot.
Lubuntu, I tried opening a torrent for one of the OS iso images. And it kept saying it was corrupted. But I downloaded all 3 images perfectly fine on Zorin Lite.
And you can’t drag a window to the left or right or to fullscreen. Also, the “upgrader” (which I think is the software updater) is confusing. I’m never sure if everything’s up to date or not.
For now, I guess I’ll just go back and forth between using Unity Os and Xubuntu, keeping my files on my backup Hdd. Hopefully there will be an update soon that will fix the random internal errors. Cuz I don’t wanna
If you use a recent , standard linux version you should be fine in any cases, or I’m completely mistaken.
Linux Mint is a good alternative to Ubuntu, easy to setup and should work fine, that’s what is installed at work and blender runs fine on it.
At home I use debian stable, sometimes testing. It’s simple to use but a bit less user friendly when it comes to setting things up, you’ll probably have to learn a few tips and tricks, basically just like with any OS.
Obviously you should make sure you have official drivers installed , it might not always be the case.
On Debian for instance they don’t come installed by default and you have to do a few operations to make that work.
I think Ubuntu and Mint simplifies this but in any doubt it’s best to double check !
Last thing that is worth paying attention to is the windows manager, I use MATE desktop which is a good compromise between something lightweight and user friendly.
If you are very low on computer specs you might look into XFce which is even lighter, and there are a few other out there. But I’d look into that only if it’s really necessary.
Modern desktop like KDE and Gnome 3 got a lot of fancy eye candies stuff that uses GPU resources and while they provide a fun user experience, I prefer much more the stable and boring UX that Mate provide.
From there, it’s very possible that some distros are slightly more performant, but the time and energy invested in these should really be worth it. It’s useful if you are building a very low spec server but in any case you’ll have to investigate a lot and spend a lot of energy in the process, for nearly no benefits with blender.
