Swapping to Linux, which distro and how is the hardware support these days?

[JensF]

Hello fellow geeks!

 

I am looking for some guidance, as i want to swap to Linux from Win10!

 

The swap is not because of Win11, but because i am fed up with annoying bugs/missing features. Some of my issues are: Can't use the win search for anything anymore, have to reinstall after some windows updates because of BSOD(occurs less frequently now), escaping strings while programming, setting %path variables requires 1-3 reboots for magic reasons, 15 desktops needs to be setup from scratch whenever i reboot and the list goes on..

 

The software i must have available:

Discord

Photoshop (it is fine if it can run okay'ish on a VM as i am not using any of their performance functions)

Google Filestream (might just be called a mounted/mapped Google Drive now)

 

Hardware concerns:

Bose QC 35 II - How is Bluetooth support in Linux now? Tried Mint 3 years ago and took me a long time to get Bluetooth running properly.

 

Current system:

Ryzen 3700x

64 GB RAM (2x32 GB 3600MHz)

Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI

Gigabyte RTX 2060

2TB Gen4 SSD 

 

From looking at different Linux distros i am a bit taken with Manjaro, not sure why..

 

I would love some advice! 

 

I am not a total noob in regards to Linux, have been using Debian(for servers) and Raspian for many years. However, i have never been happy/satisfied with the amount of trouble that has come with Linux desktop environments and this might have been influenced by trying to get docking stations and other non-standard devices to work. 

 

Luckily i don't work on a laptop with "special" requirements anymore and i think that will make the transition better =)

[xAcid9]

2 minutes ago, JensF said:

The swap is not because of Win11, but because i am fed up with annoying bugs/missing features.

Because there's no bugs/missing features in Linux?

 

2 minutes ago, JensF said:

have to reinstall after some windows updates because of BSOD(occurs less frequently now)

You need to confirm the BSOD it not caused by your hardware or else it will the same when using Linux. 

 

4 minutes ago, JensF said:

The software i must have available:

Discord

Photoshop (it is fine if it can run okay'ish on a VM as i am not using any of their performance functions)

Google Filestream (might just be called a mounted/mapped Google Drive now)

Discord ✔

Photoshop - Use https://www.photopea.com ?

Google Filestream -  I've never use it but upon googling https://www.insynchq.com seems to work on Linux. 

 

4 minutes ago, JensF said:

Bose QC 35 II - How is Bluetooth support in Linux now? Tried Mint 3 years ago and took me a long time to get Bluetooth running properly.

Work out of the box for me. No problem pairing with my earbuds and DS4 controller. 

[igormp]

I have a setup somewhat similar to yours:

 

Discord and BT headphones work without any problems (I have an USB BT dongle, fwiw).

 

Photoshop under a libvirt VM should be okaish. Keep in mind that there's no hw accel.

 

As for google drive, I've heard about some programs that can sync stuff, but I've never personally used any of those (other than the native one under gnome).

 

I don't really like manjaro. It tries to make arch easier, but lacks proper QA and the devs often break stuff in dumb ways. I'd recommend EndeavourOS if you want something Arch-based, but that doesn't stray too far from the official distro.

 

Another option would be PopOS!. I've seen many people saying good things about it.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Because there's no bugs/missing features in Linux?

 

You need to confirm the BSOD it not caused by your hardware or else it will the same when using Linux. 

 

Discord ✔

Photoshop - Use https://www.photopea.com ?

Google Filestream -  I've never use it but upon googling https://www.insynchq.com seems to work on Linux. 

 

Work out of the box for me. No problem pairing with my earbuds and DS4 controller. 

Instead of recommending photopea, GIMP would be a better choice

[xAcid9]

22 minutes ago, WickedThunder86 said:

Instead of recommending photopea, GIMP would be a better choice

Nope, GIMP would be my 3rd option because he basically need to learn a new software that kinda look like Photoshop but it's a totally different software. 
1. Photopea

2. VM Photoshop
3. Gimp. 

[KaitouX]

Depends on what Photoshop is used for, but Krita can also be a good alternative.

[el_murdoque]

9 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Nope, GIMP would be my 3rd option because he basically need to learn a new software that kinda look like Photoshop but it's a totally different software. 
1. Photopea

2. VM Photoshop
3. Gimp. 

So you recommend an online photoshop ripoff over the real deal in a VM? 

And all that over GIMP because some of the functions work differently? 

weird reasoning. 

 

I have Gimp in Linux, Photoshop on a VM AND in a native Win10 Install (which requires a reboot). 

From using PS about three times a day I'm down to maybe once a month because I can do most things in GIMP. 

When I get a PSD from someone on a mac and need to need to send a PSD to someone on a mac, I use PS. 

 

All the larger jobs that really require PS usually are done quicker with a reboot into win10 and doing it "properly", 

but I'm no designer so my need for that is limited. 

 

 

[xAcid9]

43 minutes ago, el_murdoque said:

So you recommend an online photoshop ripoff over the real deal in a VM? 

What's wrong with using Photopea for simple editing as Photoshop alt? The shortcut keys and GUI is similar to Photoshop.

 

I personally use shortcut keys most of the times that's why i prefer Photopea over GIMP, heck sometime i use Krita over GIMP because it got preset to change keyboard shortcut to Photoshop unlike GIMP where you need to change it one by one or install GimpPS?

If OP said he want a photo editor, i definitely recommend GIMP 1st. 

[JensF]

Wow, soo many good responses!

 

Really glad to hear the Bluetooth is working out of the box now.

 

Photoshop is the only way i am going to go, i have tons of actions and batch processes for photoshop, but none of them  are heavy. I have been building a game for 3+ years and i have designed the entire UI system based on the .psd format,  additionally artists send me their work in .psd. Swapping is not an option.

 

From what i gather, there are now solutions to all my concerns, what i was hoping for

 

EndeavourOS definitely seems interesting, i haver never actually used Arch so it might be time to try something new.

 

@igormp nice setup!  The best high performance, performance per watt system i was able to build two years ago. 

 

[KaitouX]

2 hours ago, JensF said:

Photoshop is the only way i am going to go, i have tons of actions and batch processes for photoshop, but none of them  are heavy. I have been building a game for 3+ years and i have designed the entire UI system based on the .psd format,  additionally artists send me their work in .psd. Swapping is not an option.

In case you're not aware, a lot of PS alternatives can read and save to .psd, but sometimes there might be some issues. Ideally you will still use PS to do it but if you only need to quickly check something you can open the files in those alternatives and often it will work without issues.

 

Quick example of issues that can happen:

Spoiler

 

 

On the left is Krita, on the right Clip Studio Paint. In this case CSP is correctly showing the original image, but Krita completely butchers it. Gimp looks the same as Krita, and the second image is correctly shown by all mentioned. The first image is one folder of layers the second is another, each done by a different person, the first folder possibly doesn't show properly on Krita/Gimp due to it being originally made on CSP, while the second one was made on PS, but both were saved by PS in the same .psd file.

 

PSD from Saitou Naoki FANBOX, illustration by Houshou Marine(1st), improved by Saitou Naoki(2nd). Character is Mori Calliope.

[JensF]

I have had issues in the past opening GIMP exported .psd by code, the RGBA8888 was dead wrong and swore that i would never touch it again. I tried Krita 4 years ago and when the program was open it killed the connection to my external monitor. I will take Photoshop running in a VM over any other image editor, "it just works", which is why i listed it as a requirement =) 

[10leej]

On 6/30/2021 at 9:53 PM, JensF said:

Hello fellow geeks!

 

I am looking for some guidance, as i want to swap to Linux from Win10!

 

The swap is not because of Win11, but because i am fed up with annoying bugs/missing features. Some of my issues are: Can't use the win search for anything anymore, have to reinstall after some windows updates because of BSOD(occurs less frequently now), escaping strings while programming, setting %path variables requires 1-3 reboots for magic reasons, 15 desktops needs to be setup from scratch whenever i reboot and the list goes on..

 

The software i must have available:

Discord

Photoshop (it is fine if it can run okay'ish on a VM as i am not using any of their performance functions)

Google Filestream (might just be called a mounted/mapped Google Drive now)

 

Hardware concerns:

Bose QC 35 II - How is Bluetooth support in Linux now? Tried Mint 3 years ago and took me a long time to get Bluetooth running properly.

 

Current system:

Ryzen 3700x

64 GB RAM (2x32 GB 3600MHz)

Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI

Gigabyte RTX 2060

2TB Gen4 SSD 

 

From looking at different Linux distros i am a bit taken with Manjaro, not sure why..

 

I would love some advice! 

 

I am not a total noob in regards to Linux, have been using Debian(for servers) and Raspian for many years. However, i have never been happy/satisfied with the amount of trouble that has come with Linux desktop environments and this might have been influenced by trying to get docking stations and other non-standard devices to work. 

 

Luckily i don't work on a laptop with "special" requirements anymore and i think that will make the transition better =)

discord has a native client

 

photoshop won't run well at all and honestly I'd learn gimp or krita (which is a fantastic photo editor) both of which have windows clients and are almost feature complete with photoshop (gimp is just missing keybinds and macros that you can setup to match photoshop)

 

Google Filestream is going to be a pain point, there are clients that work, but google breaks their functionality quite often and the only client that I've used that works consistantly is Insync, which has a terrible UI.

 

You're hardware should run fine.

Bluetooth is much better with pipewire running the show, but that's still very much a tool in development. This is not the fault of Linux, blame the oems who refuse to contribute.

Manjaro is a fine distro, but I'd actually recommend Fedora in this case because it ships with pipewire as default. Bear in mind out of the box Fedora will need some tinkering with setting up flathub and rpmfusion (both of which are not enabled because of Fedora's close ties to Redhat so there's legal concerns with both). Which is fairly simple.

If you want to stick to a somewhat familiar feel to windows you can chase down the KDE Plasma release, but you'll find the Gnome spin a bit more stable audio wise I imagine.

 

If you want to stick to a rolling release, I could also recommend Solus, but it's repos are a bit limited since it's a curated distro. But of the none Ubuntu distro's I do find the steam support best there (though if there is an issue you'll find yourself translating ubuntu/manjaro fixes)

[Roswell]

22 hours ago, JensF said:

I have had issues in the past opening GIMP exported .psd by code, the RGBA8888 was dead wrong and swore that i would never touch it again. I tried Krita 4 years ago and when the program was open it killed the connection to my external monitor. I will take Photoshop running in a VM over any other image editor, "it just works", which is why i listed it as a requirement =) 

The people telling you to switch to other programs likely don't use Photoshop for anything significant as they would not have that opinion if they did. Unfortunately, Photoshop in a VM is a mess. Your only real option is Mac or Windows if you want to run Photoshop.

 

9 hours ago, 10leej said:

photoshop won't run well at all and honestly I'd learn gimp or krita (which is a fantastic photo editor) both of which have windows clients and are almost feature complete with photoshop (gimp is just missing keybinds and macros that you can setup to match photoshop)

Gimp and Krita are nowhere, and I mean nowhere remotely close to Photoshop.

 

Gimp doesn't even have non destructive editing, adjustment layers, CMYK support and a plethora of other glaring omissions. It's absolutely not an appropriate editor for professional work.

 

[10leej]

On 7/2/2021 at 2:10 PM, Roswell said:

Gimp and Krita are nowhere, and I mean nowhere remotely close to Photoshop.

 

Gimp doesn't even have non destructive editing, adjustment layers, CMYK support and a plethora of other glaring omissions. It's absolutely not an appropriate editor for professional work.

 

That's why I also mentioned Krita. But let's be serious here, a professional wouldn't make a thread like this without already knowing some of this.