Yo linux team, i would love some advice.
I’m pretty mad at windows, 11 keeps getting worse and worse and I pretty done with Bill’s fetishes about bing and ai. Who knows where’s cortana right now…
Anyway, I heard about this new company called Linux and I’m open to try new stuff. I’m a simple guy and just need some basic stuff:
- graphic stuff: affinity, canva, corel, gimp etc… (no adobe anymore, please don’t ask.)
- 3d modelling and render: blender, rhino, cinema, keyshot
- video editing: davinci
- some little coding in Dart/flutter (i use VS code, I don’t know if this is good or bad)
- a working file explorer (can’t believe i have to say this)
- NO FUCKIN ADS
- NO MF STUPID ASS DISGUSTING ADVERTISING
The tricky part is the laptop, a zenbook duo pro (i9-10/rtx2060), with double touch screens.
I tried ubuntu several years ago but since it wasn’t ready for my use i never went into different distros and their differences. Now unfortunately, ready or not, I need to switch.
Edit: the linux-company thing is just for triggering people, sorry I didn’t know it was this effective.
OK, let me fill you with my experience. Now I am on Desktop Linux, and I can’t say how your Double Touch screens will work. But I can tell you about some of your points.
Affinity, canva, corel, and cinema4d are not Linux compatible and you’ll need to run them in Wine/Wine GE via software like Bottles or Lutris. Most will not work, while others like affinity might work, but requires a lot of working around. If these software’s are required, you may want to look at a Mac.
keyshot, gimp, vscode(ium) are all native and have either scripts or can be installed via Flatpak or from the distros app repos.
Davinci Resolve is interesting, You’ve lucked out since you have an rtx2060, but Resolve is quite finicky to get working Linux. You’ll need nvidia drivers and the open source free drivers will not work. All good Linux distros should have easy access, but I found Fedora to be trickier to install. Once you can get Resolve working, you’ll either need to buy Studio if you want H.264 support, and if your videos aren’t using PCM audio then you’ll need to convert it using FFMPEG. I have a script which I use at the end of my injest. Afterwords, it runs and works fine, with no issues (assuming you have the RAM to run it 32GB recommended). If you don’t want to deal with any of this (understandable) Mac OS has no issues out of the box.
Working file explorer: up to taste, and personal preference. Every distro will have one and it’ll be good enough, but some distros tailor theirs to their OS’s tastes. If you are running with a popular Desktop Environment, i.e. KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, then it’ll work.
Now if you want my two cents on all of this. First you should aim for a Ubuntu based distro. While Ubuntu itself isn’t bad, I personally prefer a different Desktop Environment as Gnome is too different for me from what Windows offers. Linux Mint with Cinnamon and POP_OS are good alternative with a more Windows/Mac flavoring, and since they are running Gnome underneath it’ll have the same compatibility as Ubuntu proper with hardware.
Another option is Kubuntu which used KDE’s Plasma. Plasma is OK, but I find it to be a little less refined than it’s appearance lead me to believe.
Now for testing, I’d advise you to get a second SSD and an enclosure and plug it into a USB-C port. It’ll do wonders to quickly go an run everything, without sacrificing you existing install of Winblows. Linux is so efficent I ran my main PC for a week off of it, and only noticed while running games.
Finally, depending on how often you are using your Windows only software. You might get away with running them in a Windows 10 VM, and using a shared folder to the Host machine to move files back and forth.
This is definatly a project you should look into, but I feel you should probably look at more cross platform alternatives to your software first. Since another alternative, if you aren’t playing games, is a Mac.
Quick correction: Canva is web based so you can use it on Linux no problem.
For me, the Windows software I use are:
That’s pretty much it. I could definitely switch to Linux full time, but Musicbee is soooo good that it feels like a sacrifice.
Thank you! DaVinci feels like the bigger problem, but between changing os or changing application, i will change davinci in a second. No more compromises for me, enough.
If i ever buy apple again i hope someone will find me and beat me up until I’m unconscious.
Well your only alternative is Kdenlive, which is a very unstable experience. There are some alternative video editing software on Linux, but they follow the adobe model of, give me your money forever to use it. Resolve works, just need to tune your injest to get the video to work. I have a bash script I can send you that batch fixes videos which I can send you.
As for apple machines. I get the distain as I too don’t like Apple, and feel their locked in software, hardware, and ecosystem is overpriced and unreliable. But the way I see it, if the computer is for work, which this appears to be, I need the best machine for the job, and Apple unlike Microsoft and Google, has very clean software and hardware that I can trust for professional work. No ads, very fast hardware, stable, with no compromises.
That said I will not use them for personal use. Hence the switch over to Linux. I would’ve got a Mac Mini for work if I had the budget for one.