So a couple of weeks ago, I made this post asking for help from those who used Linux and Davinci Resolve, and their experience. To those who’s response was effectively “I use arch btw”, I hear you, but that wasn’t the question I wanted to ask.
The TL:DR of the responses I got from my last post was
- Pick the Distro with the DE I wanted
- Installing Nvidia Drivers in Fedora is a “fun” experience
- Arch will work if all else fails, but Debain/Ubuntu has community projects to make Resolve work too.
So with a plan in hand, am because Windows is really annoying me with it’s bugs. I decided to swap my 1TB Windows drive out, with a spare 512GB SSD to test Linux to see if I can actually use it.
My Hardware:
- Ryzen 5 1600x
- Nvidia RTX 3050 8GB
- 16GB DDR4
- 512GB Nvme
- 4TB HDD (Personal Storage)
- 8TB HDD (Work Storage)
My Linux Requirements
- Minimal Terminal usage outside of onetime installs
- The Ability to use and install Davinci Resolve Studio from my Work Storage
- The Ability to install and run Steam and Wine (Lutris/Bottles)
- Cinnamon Desktop (best of Gnome with the Window layout I desire)
- Minimal configuration to use, should be good to go out of the box with minor tweaking
The OS’s I tested (in-order of installation)
- Linux Mint DE
- OpenSuse
- Fedora
DebainDebian- Linux Mint
The results
----- Linux Mint DE -----
Installing Linux Mint DE was straight forward and easy. The system looked and ran nicely, though the installation of the Nvidia Drivers did require some work, but wasn’t too difficult.
Davinci Resolve Studio install and ran fine (though I installed it without the deb tool). It alerted me that I didn’t have the nvidia_driver installed. But once it was installed, oh boy was it a fun learning experience. Good News, the “Studio” license means I get access to H.264, yay. Bad News, the “Studio” license doesn’t include a license for AAC Audio, and by default all *.mp4 containers are muted. Uggh. MainConcept has a plugin that might work, but I’ve yet to test it.
What I did test was the FFMPEG script floating around to copy the h.264 to a mov file and convert/strip the audio to pcm16. I played around and found that H.264 in a MKV container with MP3 audio both worked and resulted in more compressed video files. I like this so I made a script, called it a day and installed some games.
Currently I am playing Hogwarts Legacy, a pretty new(ish) game that requires beefy hardware. Good test by my books for this, since not only do I play these kinds of games on my desktop, but I remote play them on my TV with my Steam Link. Sadly I never made it far since after the install process ended and I tried to boot the game in Big Picture on my Steam Link, the display manager freaked out and the desktop started flickering in and out of Big Picture. Yikes I didn’t sign up for this seizure inducing mess.
But this kind of bugginess was a given with Mint DE, as the goal of Mint DE was to "… deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. ". Thus the focus and resources weren’t there for issues like this.
If I had the time and desire it might be worth experimenting with it more, but as this fails a requirement (3), onto the next Distro.
----- OpenSuse -----
I love the idea of enterprise Linux, and OpenSuse sound perfect for my use case. But the last time I used it, by DE of choice was plasma, and during my install I forgot that OpenSuse doesn’t come with Cinnamon by default. No matter I can just choose the Generic desktop and add it in myself… right?
Well 30 min later and my desktop looked like a Picasso Painting. I don’t know how I got here, and I fear if I was to try again, I wouldn’t be able to recreate it. Sorry OpenSuse, I couldn’t even give you fair shake down, but you fail my requirements (4&5) before I could check the rest.
----- Fedora -----
I had high hopes for Fedora. Not only is this the upstream of the recommended Distro for Resolve (Rocky Linux), but it’s also the basis for many Steam OS like distros so gaming should be good on it. I was nervous about the Nvidia driver install, but it can’t be that bad right?
Welp finding a Spin of Fedora with Cinnamon was easy enough, and the install is as painless as ever. I like DNF Dragon, but prefer a proper GUI, so Gnome Software here we go.
Man I forgot how agonizingly slow DNF is, and I wish they made DNF5 the standard now. Too bad I didn’t find out about DNF5 until after this, but 1 set of updates and package installs later and it’s time for the Nvidia driver install. Which, yikes, no “nividia_driver” package on the Gnome Software, nor DNF Dragon. Just an AKMod driver.
Fine, lets go onto google and find a script. Which I did easy enough., But when I installed it via DNF, it broke my entire distro. The driver install, but the kernel module isn’t working and errors out. Thankfully I have access to a terminal, but yikes, nothing I do works, and on a machine without a TPM or secure boot, I don’t think it’s that Reddit.
KK that’s fine, I can install the driver from Nvidia itself and install it that way. Lets re-install my distro and try again. Take 2 and the driver installation works, but now there is this ugly grey screen slowing down my boot, and when I install Resolve… it doesn’t see my GPU. Fine lets make sure CUDA is install and… still nothing, and the Nvidia driver is still broken…
IBM/Fedora Project, get your stupid heads out of your stupid buts and give us proper verified access to Proprietary drivers. Cuz your distro fails all of my requirements except (4), and I wasted a day. When people point to say that Linux is too difficult to use, this is the distro they are referring to. NEXT!
----- Debian -----
Ah back to familiar territory. Mint DE had issues, but Debian should be fine. It’s upstream Ubuntu and everything supports it right?
Well after 3 install attempts to get GRUB to work. First was my fault and the second time I don’t know what happened, I just kept pressing enter hoping that it’ll work. I installed everything set Cinnamon as my DE, and OMG what did they do to you my sweet summer child.
Where’s the theme control? Where’s my ability to force apps to dark mode? Where’s Papirus Icons? Are they safe?
It’s OK, I can spend a bit of time styling as I install things, like steam… which isn’t in Gnome Software. Uggh I need to enable “Non-free” in settings. At this point I’m just happy it’s a toggle. But I’m starting to not like Gnome Software. It’s slow unresponsive and very touchy.
But with everything install, it’s time for the nvidia drivers. And a Debian guide and terminal later (points marked down), they are installed. And things seem to work. I even tried that MakeResolveDeb program, and while she takes a minute, it’s worth the wait.
And Resolve does work, but my MKV MP3 clever work around doesn’t work? Maybe Mint DE installs some extra codecs for me. Oh well updating the script back to pcm16 fixes it, but I really need to find a proper solution to that. Otherwise Resolve works well enough.
Steam though… sadly does not. I don’t know if it’s because I am in Debian, or because it was the flatpak version. But I couldn’t even boot into LEGO Star Wars. And with how Cinnamon is slowly turning into a Picasso Painting like Fedora, I feel it’s time to bail. Good new I made my Mint installer with Etcher in my Debian install. It was nice.
----- Linux Mint -----
When I hear that modern linux has improved to the point anyone could use it. Mint is the experience I think of when I hear it. Not only was the install process painless. It may have killed my previous Manjaro install on my laptop with it’s bootloader malarkey, but with my Windows Drive not plugged in, I had nothing to worry about.
Booting it up for the first time, not only was it nice and friendly, but the welcome guide was perfect to setup my machine, offering codecs I was missing. Setting up backups, themes (papirus I missed you), and even gasp, install my nvidia driver right on boot, with options for which version I can use.
This is what I am talking about for ease of installation. A+++ Mint team, please do this for DE as well when you have the chance… or just merge the projects, up to you.
Setting up Resolve on the other hand, yeah that wasn’t so easy. Don’t get me wrong the challenge before was getting Nvidia installed, but this time the MakeResolveDeb program ran like a asthmatic pickup truck, and took far too long. I actually timed it, 25 min in Debian, about 45-1hour in Mint. No clue why.
So as I waited, I played some games, and boy howdy can she game. Why do I know this. Well Mint is on my laptop and is my goto to try games to see if they work in a 13th gen mobile i5, before setting them up in Windows.
Hogwarts Legacy booted fine, though shader compilation was annoying especially with the double whammy when the game boots with it too. But hey I’d rather be complaining about game performance and load time than the OS, so this is a win here. And no issues with LEGO Star Wars as well.
Now onto Resolve and… I’ve apparently used the maximum amount of authentications for my license and I need to wait week. Drat. But hey it should work on paper since it worked in both Mint DE and Debian… I just really want to try it, especially since MainConcept has a codec plugin for davinci resolve which is suppose to support AAC. It’s $100 but if it works, I’d take it.
----- Conclusion -----
At the end of my Test I had my answer, if I wanted to Game and do Work, I need Ubuntu/Linux Mint. Debian appears to just do Work, while Fedora can find a hole and die in it for the amount of wasted time with DNF and Nvidia installations.
I wish I could’ve given OpenSuse a bit more of a chance, but no Cinnamon by default no go. And I am sure Arch would’ve work, I am just happy I didn’t need to go down that rabbit hole.
While I would like to say that I closed my desktop up and am riding in the sunset with Mint, sadly that’s not the case. Windows 10 refuses to work as an external OS running from USB, and I have ongoing projects there. So one last swap and My desktop is back on Windows.
With that said, my Mint install will work as an external USB, which is excellent since this will be a perfect way to both do a long term test with Mint, and slowly Migrate over from Windows to Linux. In fact I am writing this on Mint right now. Sure it’s load times are slow, but I can easily use my internal HDD for work and it won’t impact my Windows. Win/Win for me.
Though in the long term I need to do some more testing. FreeCAD and Handbrake are running better, but I need to make sure Resolve doesn’t miss behave and the games and accessories I have work well. But I need actual projects to test and right now that work can be done on my laptop.
I’m just happy everything works (for now), and hopeful this transition doesn’t go too long. But you know what they say, there’s no more permanent of a solution than a temporary fix.
TL:DR I tried many distros, OpenSuse didn’t have cinnamon, Fedora broke twice installing nvidia driver, Debian/Mint DE worked but games were wonky, and Mint worked for everything, but I ran out of Resolve Activation so I presume if it worked on Debian it’ll be fine here.
Lol this post is like someone who’s never worked on cars buying several functional beaters, changing the oil on all of them, and then using each one to go through the same McDonald’s drive-thru and review the burger.
Eh, I get what you mean but not really. This person didn’t try Arch or some weirdly specific distro.
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and derivatives all promise to be full desktop solutions to regular users, mostly domestic, some enterprise. And if that’s the promise, you don’t have to have a deep understanding of Linux or even PCs to use them - go ask Mac users what kernel they’re running or what a system daemon is, yet they can use their systems just fine.
If Fedora promises to be a good all purpose distro, having the majority of potential users not able to easily install GPU drivers because “it’s philosophically against our distro to have a simple toggle for proprietary drivers” is just a terrible choice, no getting around that, even if a more experienced user with the right knowledge could install said drivers in less than 5 minutes.
Yes the Fedora external repo setup sucks extremely.
Have a look at this idea to make it better
Enabling external repos is easy, but really, their setup is a pain in the ass. Lets see.
Fedora has a (disabled) present repo for Nvidia drivers from rpm fusion OOTB. Just open the hamburger in gnome software, go to software repositories and enable “RPM Fusion for Fedora <version> - Nonfree - NVIDIA Driver”, and install
akmod-nvidiaas usual. For atomic desktops, you’ll want to use something like ublue, though, because rpm-ostree doesn’t support akmods afaikrpm-ostree doesn’t support akmods afaik
It does and this is the official Fedora recommendation but just dont do that. Ublue has some additional tweaks, and they deal with possible breakages.
I’m disappointed that the post isn’t about davinci resolve on linux but your short distro hopping story.
Well there wasn’t much to say. Other than importing videos requires you to extract the audio first in pcm/mp3 or making a new container. The editing experience is the same for my use case.
I experienced no hick ups before resolve made me wait a week before I can use it again. The only issue I have is that there is no Title Bar so closing and minimizing resovle isn’t straight forward.
Edit: I was more preoccupied with whether or not Resolve would boot.
So if there was anything specific you’d like to know I can check it out and report back.
Got as far as
I can install the driver from Nvidia itself and install it that way
and noped out. Protip, never, ever install the driver from Nvidia, that’s windows thinking. Find out how to install it from your distro (in this case RPMFusion, or better for this person, bazzite). It might even work, but it will break on updates.
Edit: Also foot shooting behaviour with cinnamon, get things working using distro default, then try on cinnamon.
Yeah, this. Bazzite is fedora but done right. I use endevour daily but bazzite on laptop because it just works.
Naive question but what does Davinci Resolve do that Kdenlive does not?
I’m asking for a “normal” user, not somebody who is trying to master the latest Dune for a production environment (even though I’d still be curious).
I think you need to define “normal”.
Normal as in, drag and drop clips and music then output the results. Not much since they are both free, but Kden arguably better is better since it’s compatible with AAC audio.
Normal as in, doing YouTube for fun. Then the workflow is a lot easier, like being able to duplicate entire video tracks, or change the order of the layers. A very robust effects system with Fusion that can be copied to other clips in a timeline.
I personally prefer Resolve for my workflow, as it makes my life easier. But I do usually have Kden on my laptop since (a) Resolve doesn’t work on Intel GPUs… yet (b) I see it as a better MS Movie Maker.
According to news items from a couple of years ago, the proper Nvidia driver repository is available in Gnome Software: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-NV-GNOME-Soft-HDR. Only one click is supposedly needed. Your journey sounds way more complicated. Was the approach to Nvidia changed by Fedora since then?
That said, I never tried it myself because fuck Nvidia.
Its still there, one click, works fine.
I have no clue.
Interesting, I had zero problems with the RPMFusion Nvidia driver on Fedora on two machines that did have TPM and secure boot. In fact, it was surprisingly easy.
Im surprised you didnt try pop os for the ubuntu test and bazzite for the fedora test. They come out of the box with nvidia and everything just works out of the box.
I have a personal distain towards Ubuntu which is why its not installed. With that said, I didn’t install POP_OS because it didn’t have Cinnamon. That said I see it on the same level as Mint since it includes an easy co fig and setup.
I’ve just spent too much time configuring Pop to look like Windows that I just cut the BS and install Cinnamon/KDE plasma and aim for distros that support it.
Ubuntu is a modded Debian, PopOS takes out the weird stuff. They should still use Fedora instead, but cant just switch their paying customers.
You should just keep to Linux Mint if you don’t want to learn distro config inside and out, it’s literally what it’s designed for, don’t listen to trolls who say you should run fucking Arch
(Debian is not easy as well. Ubuntu exists because Debian was too hard to install lol actually if you deep down inside it’s even more complicated)
You may need Wayland though If you get all the screen issues described at the beginning on LMDE
For Fedora with NVIDIA I can just recommend ublue -nvidia images which work out of the box.
Linux Mint DE gave you these problems because of XOrg, in a year or so their Desktop will be ready for Wayland.
No its not the best of GNOME with a traditional Panel etc. Its a far deviation, dasht-to-panel is way better or use ZorinOS which is kinda strange but partly FOSS I dont know really. Their GNOME customizations should work everywhere.
For me the “best of Gnome” was having the online accounts actually be usable in the desktop. In KDE if I was to sign in to my Google account my calendar events wouldn’t show up in my desktop calendar, while one Gnome and by extension Cinnamon it does.
Yes the entire account system actually works on GNOME while I also find the KDE alternatives way worse.
Still, Zorin is modded GNOME so even better.
all you had to do, was enabling rpm fusion cj
I did, I even linked the steps I used both times.
Nobara is a Fedora based distro that specifically targets people that are gaming and using editing suites like daVinci Resolve. There’s a desktop popup that gives you a button to install fixes for daVinci and others. And the non-free repos and nvidia drivers are there by default. You might want to give that a try, it’s relatively painless compared to setting up Fedora manually.
It also has Steam and Lutris installed by default, and the option to enable various versions of Glorious Eggrolls Proton patches for better gaming compatibility. It sounds like exactly what you’re looking for.
I came to it after trying to get Arch and/or Manjaro to work correctly for gaming with various levels of success. Nobara just worked right out of the box and has been flawless since. And it’s already on Plasma 6 unlike a lot of other “cutting edge” distros.
I don’t have nvidia hardware, but 15 years ago the proper way to setup the drivers on fedora was via rpmfusion.
That’s what I did the first install and it borked my install. Most troubleshooting said it was a TPM thing, but nothing I tried could recover the desktop so I had to resinstall.
steam does not work
Do not install the flatpak version of steam, it’s not worth it.
Why not? And how would you use steam on immutables without flatpak?
Because steam is fundamentally a package manager and you wouldn’t install a package manager from flatpak either.
You can find your solution for making steam work on an immutable distro if you want, but the fact of the matter is that using steam on flatpak is not recommended because it is famously broken.
Never had a problem with Steam as Flatpak. It solves those 32bit dependencies perfectly without polluting the rest of the OS with 32bit crap.
The only downside I found was the lack of installing games outside the home directory.
Experience might be different for Nvidia users but using Radeon I had a smooth experience with Flatpak Steam.
(Disclaimer: currently my main gaming platform is Steam Deck, so I don’t experience Steam Flatpak every day nowadays but just past new year’s eve friends had trouble getting to install some Jackbox Party Pack on some weird Xubuntu version using the Steam .deb package and then I installed the Flatpak and it just worked.)
The only downside I found was the lack of installing games outside the home directory.
Make additional locations like
/mnt/cavailable to the Steam flatpak with e.g. Flatseal or the raw flatpak cli then
That’s quite the interesting take buddy.
All you have to do is granting file access to the directories you want the games/applications to be installed. That’s all I had to do atleast.
Thanks for the write up. I also looked into running Resolve but the lack of AAC/MP4 support was the kicker.
Funnily enough, my personal experience aligns with yours - Fedora and I just seem to fundamentally dislike each other. I’ve tried it several times, as it looks good on paper, but I’ve had significantly had more issues with it than I ever have with Arch/EndeavourOS.
Mint and Endeavour are pretty much the only distros I’ll ever need, I’ve come to the conclusion.
Endeavour with KDE is honestly godlike. It simply works. occasionally nvidia drivers break initramfs and there was the broken grub issue, but the only other distro I have around is Pop on a laptop I dont want to update frequently and I can only just tolerate it since I dont play games or record/edit on it, anything with no AUR would just be painful otherwise
Yeah, same. Whenever I try out another distro I find myself having to work harder to get things to set up the way I want, compared to Endeavour. Having the AUR at your fingertips makes you spoiled, for sure.
I wish there was a non rolling release distro that supported AUR, but it wouldn’t really work. Some computers just need to work _every_time I turn them on though. Pop! does that (school laptop so no difficult stuff like games on it)
Understandable, although in my experience Endeavour has been as stable and easy to maintain as any point-release distro by simply 1) using the LTS kernel instead of the latest Arch kernel, and 2) using snapper/btrfs-assistant for backups, just in case.
Before I did #1, the most common problem I had was something breaking after a kernel update, but now my system has been running as a daily driver without any breakages or failed boots for over 8 months straight.
One of the devs over at the Endeavour forum did a write up that I think are some great tips to follow if you want to run a stable Arch installation:
https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/how-to-run-a-stress-free-endeavouros/49769
To be honest, after my past few months of experience I would also go with endeavour on the laptop, but before then with a nvidia gpu it would occasionally just break in random ways (initramfs, dolphin wouldn’t open, KDE desktop/panel config completely shot, font rendering randomly broken), but all those haven’t happened lately so it probably would be fine now.
Ah yeah, I have an AMD GPU so no issues. For Nvidia, you’re better off with Pop.
