Don't want to see articles from a certain category? When logged in, go to your User Settings and adjust your feed in the Content Preferences section where you can block tags!
Suggest a (non Ubuntu/Unity ) distro for me
Guppy Feb 5, 2017
Background ( Bit of a rant, just skip to requirements below if you get boored ):
Spoiler, click me
After my new 525gig SSD had been sitting idle in my computer for 3 weeks I decided to migrate to it. To this end I backed up everything, exported system config with aptik and went to download an ubuntu ISO.

16.04 or 16.10 ? well with 16.10 I wont need to keep a manually built cmake around - so why not!

After struggling for several hours with the live DVD going black as soon as it boots ( classic or EFI both ), even when it was just doing the commandline self check I came across a post suggesting that my graphics card migth be too new and that I had to use custom bootparameters to cuircumvent it.



Ok one problem solved, next up repeatedly failing to install the boot manager;

Long story short; it turns out that Ubuntu doesn't bother marking /boot as bootable,efi even if you choose the 'delete everything' mode and the manual partition tool doesn't even have the option - you need to launch gparted, reboot and try again. That's quite possibly the most user hostile linux install I've ever encountered and that includes the first gentoo I ever installed (2004.2) !


Finally I got it to install and boot successfully - aaand blackscreen; yep gtx 970 is still not supported even with the most updated packages from canonical, you need to enable modeset 0 for nouvea to even get a console. -.-'

after installing ppa, re-importing my packages with aptik and desperatly trying to combat the 'lets make ubuntu look and act lika macOS' trend I finally got it working to the point where I could re-import my steam games from the old disc.

Time to sleep

Next day boot up, update the system, go though a stack of old cds & dvds to figure out what could be erased or thrown out, power off the system to prepare lunch for the kids.

later I boot the system;

"no disc detected"
(reboot)
boots to Ubuntu 16.04 on the old disc.

I check and the disc along with all it's data is there, okay thats odd..

I reboot the system to check again, still doesn't work.

boot back to Ubuntu 16.04:

mouse & keyboard stops working as soon as the login manager comes on, sshd isn't responding.

dafuq?

several desperate reboots later I boot up the 16.10 livedvd to try and sort out the problem

googling for 'repair efi boot' got me

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

'nothing ventured...'

I follow the commands up to the point where it tells you to paste the commands in a shell, except I cant see that I'm supposed to do that because it's not visible at 800x600 resolution...
moving the window around I spot that and paste it.

it doesn't work - --force-yes is deprecated.. -.-

https://bugs.launchpad.net/boot-repair/+bug/1647726

okay I modify the commands

still doesn't work because grub is still installed

fukit

*reboot*

the 16.04 disc now has a grub menu offering 16.04 and 16.10

I boot to 16.04

Unity crashes everytime I try to log in, .xsession-errors just says it gets killed - no amount of of apt magic can fix it.

Desperately I try the 16.10 option from the grub menu - because maybe just maybe it will work.

sure enough it boots and I can login.

At this point I don't dare rebooting and I've quite frankly had enough of ubuntu, I hate Unity with a passion the only reason I didn't switch back to gentoo when they introduced it was that the Leadwerks developer refused bugreports that wasn't from ubuntu lts with unity. but since I no longer have anything to do with that I can choose any other distro - but I need a bit of help, since I don't really have the free time to test out hundreds of distros to figure out which one is the best match.

/end rant

Hopefully you guys can help me narrow the field down a bit :)

Requirements:
- Recent gcc, glibc, and devtool versions
- steam support
- non ancient version of blender, gimp, krita
- wacom setup support
- out of the box support for Gtx 970 ( no manually adding 'nouveau.modeset=0' every boot during install, nor needing to add 3rd party repositories just to get basic rendering! )
- ability to disable mouse accelration completely and permanently ( no 'xset m 0 0' every login )
- ability to automount drives as user on login
- support for deja dup ( since my current backups are in this format, so it would be nice to be able to restore them ;) )

apt / debian based would be nice but isn't a requirement

would also be nice to be able to specify uid when creating the user ( to avoid having to redo ownership/group on my extra data discs )

I use LMDE2 w/Cinnamon at work and rather enjoy that quite apart from the positively ancient packages, so Linuxmint is the obvious candidate but still maybe there is an even better distro out there.

The most important requirements are steam - I'd never hear the end of it if my sons would not longer be able to stream their games to the TV ;)
Guppy Feb 5, 2017
holy crap that was a massive wall of text.. maybe I should delete it? edit: spoiler tag to the rescue \o/
tuubi Feb 5, 2017
Quoting: GuppyHopefully you guys can help me narrow the field down a bit
I'd go with Mint and a choice of PPAs if you already know you like it. You can use usermod/groupmod to change your uid/gid after the install. Steam support is just as good as for the Ubuntu release it's based on, so 16.04.1 for Mint 18.1.
wolfyrion Feb 5, 2017
With all these you are mentioning the only distro I can recommend you is Manjaro or Antergos ^_^

Personally I prefer Manjaro

Dev Releases
https://manjaro.org/manjaro-preview-releases/

Stable Releases
https://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/
slaapliedje Feb 6, 2017
Debian testing is what I always roll with. Unstable if you're feeling a little braver. Though Debian should be going into Freeze soon for Stretch's release, so you could just set your repos to Stretch and leave it at that.

Besides enabling non-free and contrib in the repo, it's simple as 'apt install nvidia-driver' for to get proper video. I haven't had to do the nouveau nonsense for a long time. Adding contrib and non-free definitely aren't 3rd party repos either. That's always been my complaint about Ubuntu based distros, so many PPAs and they are mostly just random crap.
killyou Feb 6, 2017
I always recommend either Fedora or Antergos. The other one sometimes gives me headaches especially when they are changing GPG keys of the package maintainers and some of the software dependencies might be broken during updates in AUR. Otherwise it's pretty solid and I recommend Fedora for more casual users or those who don't want to get too deep into it and Antergos to everyone else. You can'g to wrong with either one of them. I wouldn't recommend Manjaro as it breaks with the Arch by maintaining their own repos and for me there is no point to it.
Guppy Feb 6, 2017
Quoting: slaapliedjeDebian testing is what I always roll with. Unstable if you're feeling a little braver. Though Debian should be going into Freeze soon for Stretch's release, so you could just set your repos to Stretch and leave it at that.

Besides enabling non-free and contrib in the repo, it's simple as 'apt install nvidia-driver' for to get proper video. I haven't had to do the nouveau nonsense for a long time. Adding contrib and non-free definitely aren't 3rd party repos either. That's always been my complaint about Ubuntu based distros, so many PPAs and they are mostly just random crap.

I'm quite tempted to go with LMDE ( mint flavored debian ) - as I already use if on my work computer. But I think the reason it's so stable there is because I use nouveau, so I'm prop going to just stick with Mint 18.1.


As for gentoo - I love the idea of ebuilds, but having to compile standard packages got to be a bit much in the end.

Thanks for the help everyone o/
bent Feb 18, 2017
Quoting: slaapliedjeDebian testing is what I always roll with. Unstable if you're feeling a little braver. Though Debian should be going into Freeze soon for Stretch's release, so you could just set your repos to Stretch and leave it at that.

Besides enabling non-free and contrib in the repo, it's simple as 'apt install nvidia-driver' for to get proper video. I haven't had to do the nouveau nonsense for a long time. Adding contrib and non-free definitely aren't 3rd party repos either. That's always been my complaint about Ubuntu based distros, so many PPAs and they are mostly just random crap.

Side question on the 'just set your repos to Stretch' - Do you know if this way can be used to update from Jessie to Stretch too?
Vuko2000 Mar 17, 2017
Another question about distro. :-) The most advanced Linux distro ??
tuubi Mar 17, 2017
Quoting: Vuko2000Another question about distro. :-) The most advanced Linux distro ??
There's no such thing. Every distro can be just as advanced, whatever you mean by the term. Some distros just require more customization to get there.

Unless you mean the one requiring the most from the user, in which case it would be a "distro" like LFS.
JudasIscariot Mar 17, 2017
I went with Antergos and I never looked back :D All the benefits of Arch with none of the hassle :D
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register


Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.