Workstation grade Linux?

Cromulent · 19 Jan 2020 at 12:54

I know there is technically no such thing as a workstation-grade Linux, but I'm talking about distributions with long support cycles and possibly commercial support. Things like RHEL, Ubuntu LTS and SUSE Enterprise Linux.

Which would you use? Which has the best commercial support? I need a base distribution that supports AMD FirePro or AMD Quadro graphics cards and allows for the sharing of the GPU with virtual machines running KVM and QEMU. I'd probably be using an AMD Threadripper CPU or an AMD EPYC CPU. I haven't made up my mind yet as to which would be best.

Hades · 19 Jan 2020 at 18:49

I would expect Red Hat Enterprise Linux to have the best support in the enterprise. It's also now owned by IBM. So maybe look at Fedora or CentOS for a free compatible version.

Another option would be SuSE which is also used in some enterprises.

From what you describe I would probably try CentOS first.

Cromulent · 19 Jan 2020 at 22:41

Hades said:
I would expect Red Hat Enterprise Linux to have the best support in the enterprise. It's also now owned by IBM. So maybe look at Fedora or CentOS for a free compatible version.

Another option would be SuSE which is also used in some enterprises.

From what you describe I would probably try CentOS first.

I ended up going with OpenSUSE Leap 15,1 which can be upgraded to the commercial version at any time. So far I am pretty impressed with the distribution. I have also changed web browsers to Firefox in the move so a few things to get used to. I haven't used KDE in years, I've been a GNOME user on Ubuntu for most of the time so that is a nice change. I'm pretty impressed with how fast things run on my laptop.

Hades · 20 Jan 2020 at 06:19

Cromulent said:
I ended up going with OpenSUSE Leap 15,1 which can be upgraded to the commercial version at any time. So far I am pretty impressed with the distribution. I have also changed web browsers to Firefox in the move so a few things to get used to. I haven't used KDE in years, I've been a GNOME user on Ubuntu for most of the time so that is a nice change. I'm pretty impressed with how fast things run on my laptop.

I use Kubuntu and really love the KDE Plasma desktop. I find it much more responsive than Gnome, probably because Gnome relies in a lot of javascript extensions.

opethdisciple · 20 Jan 2020 at 10:40

Fedora / Ubuntu - If you want a current distro or go Centos 8 if you want more server grade distro or even Debian

SupraWez · 20 Jan 2020 at 17:00

CentOS is my goto distro, mainly because most of our production Linux installs use RedHat.

Cromulent · 29 Jan 2020 at 07:21

I'm just updating this thread. I'm enjoying OpenSUSE Leap 15.1. It is taking me a little while to adapt from Ubuntu, but I think this is the distribution I'm going to stick with for the foreseeable future. I'm even thinking about purchasing the commercial support and converting to the commercial version of SUSE proper for a bit of added safety.

Hades · 29 Jan 2020 at 11:24

Cromulent said:
I'm just updating this thread. I'm enjoying OpenSUSE Leap 15.1. It is taking me a little while to adapt from Ubuntu, but I think this is the distribution I'm going to stick with for the foreseeable future. I'm even thinking about purchasing the commercial support and converting to the commercial version of SUSE proper for a bit of added safety.

Good on you. Not enough people contribute financially to open source projects. Many years ago I paid for SuSE Professional before moving on to various other distros. I've settled on Kubuntu for a while so periodically donate to KDE.

Cromulent · 29 Jan 2020 at 22:47

Hades said:
Good on you. Not enough people contribute financially to open source projects. Many years ago I paid for SuSE Professional before moving on to various other distros. I've settled on Kubuntu for a while so periodically donate to KDE.

£75 a year for full technical support 5 hours a day seems to be a pretty good deal to me. At least I'd have someone able to help me if I get into any problems.

memyselfandi · 30 Jan 2020 at 07:55

Personally, for a desktop I'd probably run Fedora, (if its good enough for my friends at Red Hat to run on their work laptops ...). Don't really find RHEL a great desktop due to its focus on being a stable server over a desktop experience (hell probably nigh on 100% of my installs don't have the desktop elements even installed).

As for CentOS ... its fine but why not get a free Red Hat Developer account which comes with access to run RHEL with self support (which gives you access to their very good knowledgebase) for the same cost.

Cromulent · 30 Jan 2020 at 08:56

memyselfandi said:
Personally, for a desktop I'd probably run Fedora, (if its good enough for my friends at Red Hat to run on their work laptops ...). Don't really find RHEL a great desktop due to its focus on being a stable server over a desktop experience (hell probably nigh on 100% of my installs don't have the desktop elements even installed).

As for CentOS ... its fine but why not get a free Red Hat Developer account which comes with access to run RHEL with self support (which gives you access to their very good knowledgebase) for the same cost.

For some reason I've never got on with Red Hat based distributions. It is probably ignorance on my part but I've tended to avoid them. I also want to be able to run the same distribution on my laptop as I am running on the server so that I get comfortable doing lots of different tasks on the same distribution. OpenSUSE really does feel like a good choice so far.

Cromulent · 30 Jan 2020 at 20:24

I've just installed the latest Nvidia drivers, and it has made a huge difference in how things feel. It is a shame the open-source Nvidia drivers suck so badly and that you need to install the latest binary drivers but since I want to use this computer for gaming and virtualisation, I need to have the official Nvidia drivers running.

opethdisciple · 3 Feb 2020 at 16:05

This guy opts for Ubuntu. In my experience working in the industry it's the OS I see on most devs workstations.

I find Ubuntu to be quite a heavy distro. When you load up Fedora your see just how sprightly it is in comparison.

opethdisciple · 13 Feb 2020 at 16:50

I'm now leaning towards Ubuntu LTS. It probably offers the best balance for a workstation distro.

I like Fedora more but.... the whole snaps/flatpacks are a mess.

I find Ubuntu 1910 heavy and also buggy, I have experienced an endless boot more than once as well as buggy system apps.

I am the type of person that needs cutting edge, but I think it makes sense for me to use the LTS version of Ubuntu for my workstation.

It is also quite snappy in comparison to 1910 version.

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Cant stop distro hoping at the moment. But Fedora is nice. I like the stock Gnome over the Ubuntu theme.

gpuerrilla · 14 Feb 2020 at 23:28

I have always found Ubuntu LTS good but do not try near enough other distros to offer a balanced overview. By the time I get used to one flavour I'm two years behind something else lol.