Time to geek out again (Linux)

[tae]

Hopefully I find a job soon. In the meantime, I think I'm gonna take up Linux again. I was gonna flash it to one of my drives today but for some reason windows is not letting me partition it. Ignoring that there's clearly something wrong with it but I can't be bothered to fix it; I'm gonna get a drive from my old laptop or maybe buy one and install linux on it.

I tried PopOS when I built my computer, but I used Ubuntu in college, so I'm a bit more familiar with it... I don't know how PopOS has changed over the last year but I think Ubuntu still has better support.

In reality, I want Linux to take up python again, but I also want to actually learn how to use CuPy and the sort. I know I can do 99% of it in windows but I want a sandbox where I don't have to worry if I break stuff.

I'm already used to Ubuntu linux so I'm thinking it's gonna be the one to install. If anyone has a recommendation on how to go about with it (like, programs that could be useful like Wine), I'd appreciate it.

Thus far, I'm probably just gonna go back to the basics; get Ubuntu LTS, get Atom or VScode, and then just dive in. Back when I did use Linux in a daily basis, I worked with C, but I can't be bothered with it right now.

Also, tabbing is better than four spaces.

[ForSweden]

@tae said in Time to geek out again (Linux):

I tried PopOS

First mistake. You should use OppOS

[tae]

@ForSweden I'm not sure I want to listen to crab rave everytime I start up my computer tho.

[aremmes]

@tae Have you considered WSL? It's mostly Ubuntu but on Windows.

[tae]

@aremmes I've heard of it... but I really insist on the sandbox in a different drive partition and stuff but I should probably learn more about it before discarding the option.

[jminer]

@tae I recently put linux on my laptop and dual boot on my desktop. I did Ubuntu Studio 23. I'm liking it quite a bit, the vast majority of things just work, even most games. There is a few things I don't love but it's less annoying to me than windows 11.

Although you can build and run python dev on your windows machine easily and a VM will sandbox even easier than dual boot.

[ike808]

@tae Haven’t done it in years but you can put a bootable Linux distro on a USB drive. That was my go to when family members jacked up their Windows installs.

[drVanTraveler]

@aremmes said in Time to geek out again (Linux):

@tae Have you considered WSL? It's mostly Ubuntu but on Windows.

I've been running this for a couple of years now. It's pretty stable, and WSL gets fairly regular updates from Microsoft along with Ubuntu updates like any distro

[tae]

@jminer I've "de-annoyified" windows 11 so I don't mind it, but I do like the idea of having another OS. I've never given VM's a fair shake so I should think about it too.

[tae]

@ike808 I've done that too, but I don't want to deal with some of the estability concerns. Maybe a USB-C drive using NAND as opposed to other tech but... that would also be quite expensive.

[DucST3]

As others have said, it you just want a sandbox to play around, WSL or a VM is more than enough.

That being said, I daily Fedora on my work machine for light machine learning. As for distro recommendations, my current favorite is Fedora, then probably ubuntu. Modern ubuntu is great (I run it on my home pc for work stuff), but you've got to deal with the snap store. SnapOS is also great if you don't want to deal with Nvidia driver BS, but I haven't given it much of a fair shake as my DD

[tae]

@DucST3 I have an Nvidia GPU... is it an issue with the drivers on Ubuntu?

[DucST3]

@tae It can be. If you're just gaming, the nouveaux drivers work great on 22.04 on my home machine with a 4080. However, if you need to run any CUDA, it can be a hassle. You'll need the proprietary drivers from nvidia, which don't play nice with the built in nouveaux drivers. IIRC, you need to add the nvidia repo+key, disable your desktop, run the nvdia driver and it SHOULD disable the nouveaux driver. I did for me once, and another time I had to futz with it to manually disable the nouveaux. Then just re-enable your desktop. Sounds worse than it is, you just need to be comfortable with the terminal.

[nermal]

@tae Honestly most of the distros are similar enough that you can just pick one and probably be fine. I've used several, all with Gnome, and they look the same once you get them running. Ubuntu is easy to set up and will work on most any hardware.

For gaming and other graphics stuff, I can run pretty much anything with:

Wine
Nvidia drivers
DXVK (DX9 / 10 / 11)
VKD3D-Proton (DX12)

I found that the self-compiled version of Wine works better than the pre-built. Took some fiddling to get it right, and make sure you use the option for more CPU cores so it goes faster.

If you specifically want video editing, the paid version of Davinci Resolve is the best option, but really needs an RHEL based distro.

Never messed with VScode, and Atom is EOL. I have played with some Python using IDLE, along with some LLMs and image generation. Again, takes some fiddling to get everything to work right.

[tae]

@nermal Oh, I didn't know about Atom, it's the one I used!

[tae]

@DucST3 I've downloaded the nvidia drivers, now I need to find out if after rebooting nouveaux will be disabled

[Wrong Wheel Drive]

@tae just remember that wine is not an emulator