Linux chads, what is the status on these questions?

[hammy]

I think LTT forums may be the only safe Linux haven on the internet. I want to love and use Linux so badly, but I just have never seemingly gotten a smooth experience. ALL of my Linux test runs (even as recently as last year) have been akin to Luke and Linus’ experiences.  
 

With that in mind, the most recent WAN show with the latest Windows screenshotting news garbage is the last straw - it has given me renewed vigor to make this happen. 

I have a few questions, very curious what the current Linux landscape looks like and if there any specific distros that can handle all these:

 

• HDR support? Does it exist?
• Can I use more than one monitor that is NOT VRR/GSync and still use VRR/GSync on my main monitor?
• If still no, can I use 2+ of the exact same monitor and use VRR/GSync?
• I’m not going to even bother with Nvidia this time around, just going AMD GPU, how is the gaming performance differential between Windows vs Linux (generally) between the two? How much performance loss are we talking?
• How do AMD drivers work exactly on Linux? I am only familiar with the Windows AMD world where a notification arises when there’s a GPU update available 
• As a curiosity, Linus mentioned Emily had suggested some major Nvidia changes on Linux, do we know what those changes are?
• Can I setup my Linux OS/programs to just automatically update?
• If so, how automatic is it?
• if so, can I selectively stagger my updates (ie, give me the 2nd latest version of any given software, not the latest)? 
• I did an extensive review of every program I use on Windows vs what is available on Linux, and I think I have every box checked except for literally 1 small program called “Magic Trackpad Utility” that adapts apples fabulous trackpad to Windows - with something like this, is it possible to “emulate” the Windows version?
• Are Ubuntu/Linux Mint still the go-to recommendations for minimal OS tinkering? And/or do you have any recommendations for a Windows user jumping to Linux?

[CosmicEmotion]

16 minutes ago, hammy said:

I think LTT forums may be the only safe Linux haven on the internet. I want to love and use Linux so badly, but I just have never seemingly gotten a smooth experience. ALL of my Linux test runs (even as recently as last year) have been akin to Luke and Linus’ experiences.  
 

With that in mind, the most recent WAN show with the latest Windows screenshotting news garbage is the last straw - it has given me renewed vigor to make this happen. 

I have a few questions, very curious what the current Linux landscape looks like and if there any specific distros that can handle all these:

 

• HDR support? Does it exist?
• Can I use more than one monitor that is NOT VRR/GSync and still use VRR/GSync on my main monitor?
• If still no, can I use 2+ of the exact same monitor and use VRR/GSync?
• I’m not going to even bother with Nvidia this time around, just going AMD GPU, how is the gaming performance differential between Windows vs Linux (generally) between the two? How much performance loss are we talking?
• How do AMD drivers work exactly on Linux? I am only familiar with the Windows AMD world where a notification arises when there’s a GPU update available 
• As a curiosity, Linus mentioned Emily had suggested some major Nvidia changes on Linux, do we know what those changes are?
• Can I setup my Linux OS/programs to just automatically update?
• If so, how automatic is it?
• if so, can I selectively stagger my updates (ie, give me the 2nd latest version of any given software, not the latest)? 
• I did an extensive review of every program I use on Windows vs what is available on Linux, and I think I have every box checked except for literally 1 small program called “Magic Trackpad Utility” that adapts apples fabulous trackpad to Windows - with something like this, is it possible to “emulate” the Windows version?
• Are Ubuntu/Linux Mint still the go-to recommendations for minimal OS tinkering? And/or do you have any recommendations for a Windows user jumping to Linux?

 

 

1. HDR Support is in Pasma 6 and it's gonna be improved for Plasma 6.1. It needs some tweaking to work in games but it does.

2. You should be able to in Wayland.

3. AMD is about 17% faster on Linux. Here's a video with 10 games I recorded.

4. Nvidia driver 555 is out with Explicit Sync support so most problems on Wayland should be fixed. I's a beta driver though, I would wait for the 560 series, coming in 1-3 months. NVK is the completely open source Nvidia Vulkan driver. Most games work but with low performance. Keep an eye out in the future.

5. AMD drivers are included in the kernel, you don't need to install or do anything at all.

6. Fedora has this option. You could set a chron job with the appropriate command in any distro though.

7. Completely automatic in Fedora. Changes are not applied unless you manually reboot.

8. You cna disable automatic update and reenable them.

9. It's not possible to emulate an app that talks to Windows drivers.

10. Mint is really good. I also recommend Fedora and Bazzite since they are more up to date and Bazzite in particular is ridiculously easy. Fedora is a bit more advanced.

[BoomerDutch]

I'd have to agree with @CosmicEmotion

 

Bazzite os is way to go also about tinkering you don't have to because it's included with distrobox with extra feature called distrobox-export which you can export these programs into your host and be able to use as a program.

 

In this way you can reach most programs.

 

And yeah fedora is red-hat but damn they made bazzite OS that's so good it works with and or nvidia out of the box thanks to their customisation images.

 

Heck you can switch to different image with current installation as in download page mentioned.

 

I've accidentally downloaded basic Bazzite and installed it so I've attempted to switch to different image and it did need couple minutes and next boot its now launched with nvidia supported image and it worked without losing anything and works out of the box.

 

I'm so impressed that I'm using bazzite as my main gaming pc.

 

You may find minor bugs like webapp not launching brave from taskbar but it does open in GUI menu, funny right?

[10leej]

1 hour ago, hammy said:

HDR support? Does it exist?

Yes but it's very new and still a WiP

1 hour ago, hammy said:

Can I use more than one monitor that is NOT VRR/GSync and still use VRR/GSync on my main monitor?

Yes on wayland only not X11

1 hour ago, hammy said:

If still no, can I use 2+ of the exact same monitor and use VRR/GSync?

Yes

1 hour ago, hammy said:

I’m not going to even bother with Nvidia this time around, just going AMD GPU, how is the gaming performance differential between Windows vs Linux (generally) between the two? How much performance loss are we talking?

That is more dependent on the game developer. Some games see massive performance increases, others see a loss of performance. This is not really linux's fault but more the game devs fault on how well they support the Linux runtimes such as proton, wine, dxvk, and ect. overall if you buy a relatively powerful GPU you should still see 60+ fps on most games.

1 hour ago, hammy said:

How do AMD drivers work exactly on Linux? I am only familiar with the Windows AMD world where a notification arises when there’s a GPU update available 

The amdgpu driver is built into the kernel and should just plain work out of the box. There is no 3rd party driver you should need to install except a few firmware libraries that your distribution of choice mihgt simply choose not to preinstall for you.

1 hour ago, hammy said:

As a curiosity, Linus mentioned Emily had suggested some major Nvidia changes on Linux, do we know what those changes are?

yes

1 hour ago, hammy said:

Can I setup my Linux OS/programs to just automatically update?

Yes in fact many distros or considering doing this out of the box and some gui software frontends like gnome software set this up by default. On debian/ubuntu you can install the unattended-upgrades package and on fedora/RHEL based systems you can use dnf-automatic

2 hours ago, hammy said:

If so, how automatic is it?

as automatic as you want it to be and when you want it to be

2 hours ago, hammy said:

if so, can I selectively stagger my updates (ie, give me the 2nd latest version of any given software, not the latest)? 

Yes and no, it's dependent on your package manager

2 hours ago, hammy said:

I did an extensive review of every program I use on Windows vs what is available on Linux, and I think I have every box checked except for literally 1 small program called “Magic Trackpad Utility” that adapts apples fabulous trackpad to Windows - with something like this, is it possible to “emulate” the Windows version?

yes in fact I believe there are drivers built into libinput which 99% of distros are actually shipping by default, As for setting up swipe gestures and such like that it's dependent on your Desktop Environment choice. Gnome for example has actually pretty decent gesture support where KDE you might need to do some configuration. I've never used a apple trackpad so i can't really give you a 100% confirmation.

2 hours ago, hammy said:

Are Ubuntu/Linux Mint still the go-to recommendations for minimal OS tinkering? And/or do you have any recommendations for a Windows user jumping to Linux?

Ubuntu and Mint both have the benefit of the google search result as they're regarded as the most popular choices. Really at the stage where you are at it really doesn;t matter which distro you pick as realistically they all use the same kernel, system libraries, shell utilities, and mostly it's just graphical application choices you might be picky about.

And yes I will fight anyone on that. For the record I use Gentoo which i will never recommend to anyone new. But do suggest to anyone that's curious on what a source based distro is like (aka your compiling all your software yourself so there's no equivalent for firefox.exe you just grabbing the firefox source code and turning it into a binary)

[goatedpenguin]

16 hours ago, hammy said:

• HDR support? Does it exist?
• Can I use more than one monitor that is NOT VRR/GSync and still use VRR/GSync on my main monitor?
• If still no, can I use 2+ of the exact same monitor and use VRR/GSync?
• I’m not going to even bother with Nvidia this time around, just going AMD GPU, how is the gaming performance differential between Windows vs Linux (generally) between the two? How much performance loss are we talking?
• How do AMD drivers work exactly on Linux? I am only familiar with the Windows AMD world where a notification arises when there’s a GPU update available 
• As a curiosity, Linus mentioned Emily had suggested some major Nvidia changes on Linux, do we know what those changes are?
• Can I setup my Linux OS/programs to just automatically update?
• If so, how automatic is it?
• if so, can I selectively stagger my updates (ie, give me the 2nd latest version of any given software, not the latest)? 
• I did an extensive review of every program I use on Windows vs what is available on Linux, and I think I have every box checked except for literally 1 small program called “Magic Trackpad Utility” that adapts apples fabulous trackpad to Windows - with something like this, is it possible to “emulate” the Windows version?
• Are Ubuntu/Linux Mint still the go-to recommendations for minimal OS tinkering? And/or do you have any recommendations for a Windows user jumping to Linux?

1) It is in the process of being developed, kde supports it I think a bit

2)You can use xrandr

3)It happens when you update the system, the drivers and everything are taken care of as long as the system is updated when needed or prompted. 

4)idk

5)command line yes by using cron jobs(you can set when you want it, each week, month etc.), gui maybe I am not sure(Linux mint probably supports it).

6)You can exclude apps you want to update on arch linux and on other distros by temporarily blacklisting them but usually on distros that are debian based, you don't have to worry about package stability.

7) Not sure the driver might have to be ported but the devs will figure it out. What exact trackpad do you use?

8)Ubuntu is shit and snakeoil, go with linux mint or go with fedora(if you want more bleeding edge, it requires command line to update afaik so you might have to have some knowledge)

[Ralphred]

On 5/27/2024 at 2:11 PM, CosmicEmotion said:

5. AMD drivers are included in the kernel, you don't need to install or do anything at all.

I'm gonna be "that guy" and pull you up on this: You do need the firmware installed, and OP is talking about gaming, so the vulkan libraries will need to be installed too, they probably will be as a dependency of something else (maybe mesa, possibly steam?), but it's still worth knowing.

 

[goatedpenguin]

1 hour ago, Ralphred said:

I'm gonna be "that guy" and pull you up on this: You do need the firmware installed, and OP is talking about gaming, so the vulkan libraries will need to be installed too, they probably will be as a dependency of something else (maybe mesa, possibly steam?), but it's still worth knowing.

 

He should also install proton GE 

[Ralphred]

20 hours ago, goatedpenguin said:

He should also install proton GE 

TBH, I think GE should be in the "steam library", so you can just click 'install' on whatever version you want and have it show up in your list.

[10leej]

21 hours ago, Ralphred said:

I'm gonna be "that guy" and pull you up on this: You do need the firmware installed, and OP is talking about gaming, so the vulkan libraries will need to be installed too, they probably will be as a dependency of something else (maybe mesa, possibly steam?), but it's still worth knowing.

 

That also depends on the distro you use. Ubuntu for example installs the 64 bit versions by default.

[goatedpenguin]

On 5/29/2024 at 10:43 AM, Ralphred said:

TBH, I think GE should be in the "steam library", so you can just click 'install' on whatever version you want and have it show up in your list.

Its not made officially made by Valve themselves so maybe that's why....