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I've Installed multiple Linux Distros on my Editing Rig to see how well Davinci Resolve Studio works. Here are the results. (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So a couple of weeks ago, I made this post asking for help from those who used Linux and Davinci Resolve, and their experience. To those who's response was effectively "I use arch btw", I hear you, but that wasn't the question I wanted to ask.

The TL:DR of the responses I got from my last post was

  1. Pick the Distro with the DE I wanted
  2. Installing Nvidia Drivers in Fedora is a "fun" experience
  3. Arch will work if all else fails, but Debain/Ubuntu has community projects to make Resolve work too.

So with a plan in hand, am because Windows is really annoying me with it's bugs. I decided to swap my 1TB Windows drive out, with a spare 512GB SSD to test Linux to see if I can actually use it.

My Hardware:

  • Ryzen 5 1600x
  • Nvidia RTX 3050 8GB
  • 16GB DDR4
  • 512GB Nvme
  • 4TB HDD (Personal Storage)
  • 8TB HDD (Work Storage)

My Linux Requirements

  • Minimal Terminal usage outside of onetime installs
  • The Ability to use and install Davinci Resolve Studio from my Work Storage
  • The Ability to install and run Steam and Wine (Lutris/Bottles)
  • Cinnamon Desktop (best of Gnome with the Window layout I desire)
  • Minimal configuration to use, should be good to go out of the box with minor tweaking

The OS's I tested (in-order of installation)

  • Linux Mint DE
  • OpenSuse
  • Fedora
  • ~~Debain~~ Debian
  • Linux Mint

The results

----- Linux Mint DE -----

Installing Linux Mint DE was straight forward and easy. The system looked and ran nicely, though the installation of the Nvidia Drivers did require some work, but wasn't too difficult.

Davinci Resolve Studio install and ran fine (though I installed it without the deb tool). It alerted me that I didn't have the nvidia_driver installed. But once it was installed, oh boy was it a fun learning experience. Good News, the "Studio" license means I get access to H.264, yay. Bad News, the "Studio" license doesn't include a license for AAC Audio, and by default all *.mp4 containers are muted. Uggh. MainConcept has a plugin that might work, but I've yet to test it.

What I did test was the FFMPEG script floating around to copy the h.264 to a mov file and convert/strip the audio to pcm16. I played around and found that H.264 in a MKV container with MP3 audio both worked and resulted in more compressed video files. I like this so I made a script, called it a day and installed some games.

Currently I am playing Hogwarts Legacy, a pretty new(ish) game that requires beefy hardware. Good test by my books for this, since not only do I play these kinds of games on my desktop, but I remote play them on my TV with my Steam Link. Sadly I never made it far since after the install process ended and I tried to boot the game in Big Picture on my Steam Link, the display manager freaked out and the desktop started flickering in and out of Big Picture. Yikes I didn't sign up for this seizure inducing mess.

But this kind of bugginess was a given with Mint DE, as the goal of Mint DE was to "... deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. ". Thus the focus and resources weren't there for issues like this.

If I had the time and desire it might be worth experimenting with it more, but as this fails a requirement (3), onto the next Distro.

----- OpenSuse -----

I love the idea of enterprise Linux, and OpenSuse sound perfect for my use case. But the last time I used it, by DE of choice was plasma, and during my install I forgot that OpenSuse doesn't come with Cinnamon by default. No matter I can just choose the Generic desktop and add it in myself... right?

Well 30 min later and my desktop looked like a Picasso Painting. I don't know how I got here, and I fear if I was to try again, I wouldn't be able to recreate it. Sorry OpenSuse, I couldn't even give you fair shake down, but you fail my requirements (4&5) before I could check the rest.

----- Fedora -----

I had high hopes for Fedora. Not only is this the upstream of the recommended Distro for Resolve (Rocky Linux), but it's also the basis for many Steam OS like distros so gaming should be good on it. I was nervous about the Nvidia driver install, but it can't be that bad right?

Welp finding a Spin of Fedora with Cinnamon was easy enough, and the install is as painless as ever. I like DNF Dragon, but prefer a proper GUI, so Gnome Software here we go.

Man I forgot how agonizingly slow DNF is, and I wish they made DNF5 the standard now. Too bad I didn't find out about DNF5 until after this, but 1 set of updates and package installs later and it's time for the Nvidia driver install. Which, yikes, no "nividia_driver" package on the Gnome Software, nor DNF Dragon. Just an AKMod driver.

Fine, lets go onto google and find a script. Which I did easy enough., But when I installed it via DNF, it broke my entire distro. The driver install, but the kernel module isn't working and errors out. Thankfully I have access to a terminal, but yikes, nothing I do works, and on a machine without a TPM or secure boot, I don't think it's that Reddit.

KK that's fine, I can install the driver from Nvidia itself and install it that way. Lets re-install my distro and try again. Take 2 and the driver installation works, but now there is this ugly grey screen slowing down my boot, and when I install Resolve... it doesn't see my GPU. Fine lets make sure CUDA is install and.... still nothing, and the Nvidia driver is still broken...

IBM/Fedora Project, get your stupid heads out of your stupid buts and give us proper verified access to Proprietary drivers. Cuz your distro fails all of my requirements except (4), and I wasted a day. When people point to say that Linux is too difficult to use, this is the distro they are referring to. NEXT!

----- Debian -----

Ah back to familiar territory. Mint DE had issues, but Debian should be fine. It's upstream Ubuntu and everything supports it right?

Well after 3 install attempts to get GRUB to work. First was my fault and the second time I don't know what happened, I just kept pressing enter hoping that it'll work. I installed everything set Cinnamon as my DE, and OMG what did they do to you my sweet summer child.

Where's the theme control? Where's my ability to force apps to dark mode? Where's Papirus Icons? Are they safe?

It's OK, I can spend a bit of time styling as I install things, like steam... which isn't in Gnome Software. Uggh I need to enable "Non-free" in settings. At this point I'm just happy it's a toggle. But I'm starting to not like Gnome Software. It's slow unresponsive and very touchy.

But with everything install, it's time for the nvidia drivers. And a Debian guide and terminal later (points marked down), they are installed. And things seem to work. I even tried that MakeResolveDeb program, and while she takes a minute, it's worth the wait.

And Resolve does work, but my MKV MP3 clever work around doesn't work? Maybe Mint DE installs some extra codecs for me. Oh well updating the script back to pcm16 fixes it, but I really need to find a proper solution to that. Otherwise Resolve works well enough.

Steam though.... sadly does not. I don't know if it's because I am in Debian, or because it was the flatpak version. But I couldn't even boot into LEGO Star Wars. And with how Cinnamon is slowly turning into a Picasso Painting like Fedora, I feel it's time to bail. Good new I made my Mint installer with Etcher in my Debian install. It was nice.

----- Linux Mint -----

When I hear that modern linux has improved to the point anyone could use it. Mint is the experience I think of when I hear it. Not only was the install process painless. It may have killed my previous Manjaro install on my laptop with it's bootloader malarkey, but with my Windows Drive not plugged in, I had nothing to worry about.

Booting it up for the first time, not only was it nice and friendly, but the welcome guide was perfect to setup my machine, offering codecs I was missing. Setting up backups, themes (papirus I missed you), and even gasp, install my nvidia driver right on boot, with options for which version I can use.

This is what I am talking about for ease of installation. A+++ Mint team, please do this for DE as well when you have the chance... or just merge the projects, up to you.

Setting up Resolve on the other hand, yeah that wasn't so easy. Don't get me wrong the challenge before was getting Nvidia installed, but this time the MakeResolveDeb program ran like a asthmatic pickup truck, and took far too long. I actually timed it, 25 min in Debian, about 45-1hour in Mint. No clue why.

So as I waited, I played some games, and boy howdy can she game. Why do I know this. Well Mint is on my laptop and is my goto to try games to see if they work in a 13th gen mobile i5, before setting them up in Windows.

Hogwarts Legacy booted fine, though shader compilation was annoying especially with the double whammy when the game boots with it too. But hey I'd rather be complaining about game performance and load time than the OS, so this is a win here. And no issues with LEGO Star Wars as well.

Now onto Resolve and.... I've apparently used the maximum amount of authentications for my license and I need to wait week. Drat. But hey it should work on paper since it worked in both Mint DE and Debian.... I just really want to try it, especially since MainConcept has a codec plugin for davinci resolve which is suppose to support AAC. It's $100 but if it works, I'd take it.

----- Conclusion -----

At the end of my Test I had my answer, if I wanted to Game and do Work, I need Ubuntu/Linux Mint. Debian appears to just do Work, while Fedora can find a hole and die in it for the amount of wasted time with DNF and Nvidia installations.

I wish I could've given OpenSuse a bit more of a chance, but no Cinnamon by default no go. And I am sure Arch would've work, I am just happy I didn't need to go down that rabbit hole.

While I would like to say that I closed my desktop up and am riding in the sunset with Mint, sadly that's not the case. Windows 10 refuses to work as an external OS running from USB, and I have ongoing projects there. So one last swap and My desktop is back on Windows.

With that said, my Mint install will work as an external USB, which is excellent since this will be a perfect way to both do a long term test with Mint, and slowly Migrate over from Windows to Linux. In fact I am writing this on Mint right now. Sure it's load times are slow, but I can easily use my internal HDD for work and it won't impact my Windows. Win/Win for me.

Though in the long term I need to do some more testing. FreeCAD and Handbrake are running better, but I need to make sure Resolve doesn't miss behave and the games and accessories I have work well. But I need actual projects to test and right now that work can be done on my laptop.

I'm just happy everything works (for now), and hopeful this transition doesn't go too long. But you know what they say, there's no more permanent of a solution than a temporary fix.

TL:DR I tried many distros, OpenSuse didn't have cinnamon, Fedora broke twice installing nvidia driver, Debian/Mint DE worked but games were wonky, and Mint worked for everything, but I ran out of Resolve Activation so I presume if it worked on Debian it'll be fine here.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm disappointed that the post isn't about davinci resolve on linux but your short distro hopping story.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well there wasn't much to say. Other than importing videos requires you to extract the audio first in pcm/mp3 or making a new container. The editing experience is the same for my use case.

I experienced no hick ups before resolve made me wait a week before I can use it again. The only issue I have is that there is no Title Bar so closing and minimizing resovle isn't straight forward.

Edit: I was more preoccupied with whether or not Resolve would boot.

So if there was anything specific you'd like to know I can check it out and report back.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Got as far as

I can install the driver from Nvidia itself and install it that way

and noped out. Protip, never, ever install the driver from Nvidia, that's windows thinking. Find out how to install it from your distro (in this case RPMFusion, or better for this person, bazzite). It might even work, but it will break on updates.

Edit: Also foot shooting behaviour with cinnamon, get things working using distro default, then try on cinnamon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah, this. Bazzite is fedora but done right. I use endevour daily but bazzite on laptop because it just works.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

all you had to do, was enabling rpm fusion cj

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I did, I even linked the steps I used both times.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Im surprised you didnt try pop os for the ubuntu test and bazzite for the fedora test. They come out of the box with nvidia and everything just works out of the box.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If you try something like this again, use ventoy, it let's you just drag and drop iso files onto USB and when you boot up you select which one you want to use, so no need to make USB a bunch of times.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Making the iso was never an issue but its always food to know.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have it installed on a 500GB laptop hard drive that lives in a USB-C case. It's a little slower than an SSD but I had the hard drives to spare for it and it works well enough. It's got more than enough space for a complete Medicat plus a dozen other isos along with Windows 10 and 11 (those two only for Swiss army knife purposes) and a separate big partition for programs and other files thar can be mounted and used in the live environments.

I could not get a 1TB USB NVME drive to boot no matter what I tried but that hard drive worked right away and on every machine I've tried it on since. 🤷

tl;dr: This.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Some hardware just have the gift of gab!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I would recommend you to use Fedora Atomic, namely universal-blue.org.
It's the stock Fedora Atomic, but they offer a Cinnamon spin with baked in Nvidia drivers.
If you don't know why you should choose an immutable distro, especially as content creator, who wants everything to be always working, check out my post here: https://feddit.de/post/8234416

With that, you can use Distrobox and create a CentOS/ whatever container, which DVR officially recommends and will work best.
You can also check out my post here: https://feddit.de/post/8018330

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, I had zero problems with the RPMFusion Nvidia driver on Fedora on two machines that did have TPM and secure boot. In fact, it was surprisingly easy.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I don't have nvidia hardware, but 15 years ago the proper way to setup the drivers on fedora was via rpmfusion.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Thanks for the write up. I also looked into running Resolve but the lack of AAC/MP4 support was the kicker.

Funnily enough, my personal experience aligns with yours - Fedora and I just seem to fundamentally dislike each other. I've tried it several times, as it looks good on paper, but I've had significantly had more issues with it than I ever have with Arch/EndeavourOS.

Mint and Endeavour are pretty much the only distros I'll ever need, I've come to the conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Endeavour with KDE is honestly godlike. It simply works. occasionally nvidia drivers break initramfs and there was the broken grub issue, but the only other distro I have around is Pop on a laptop I dont want to update frequently and I can only just tolerate it since I dont play games or record/edit on it, anything with no AUR would just be painful otherwise

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, same. Whenever I try out another distro I find myself having to work harder to get things to set up the way I want, compared to Endeavour. Having the AUR at your fingertips makes you spoiled, for sure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wish there was a non rolling release distro that supported AUR, but it wouldn't really work. Some computers just need to work _every_time I turn them on though. Pop! does that (school laptop so no difficult stuff like games on it)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Understandable, although in my experience Endeavour has been as stable and easy to maintain as any point-release distro by simply 1) using the LTS kernel instead of the latest Arch kernel, and 2) using snapper/btrfs-assistant for backups, just in case.

Before I did #1, the most common problem I had was something breaking after a kernel update, but now my system has been running as a daily driver without any breakages or failed boots for over 8 months straight.

One of the devs over at the Endeavour forum did a write up that I think are some great tips to follow if you want to run a stable Arch installation:

https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/how-to-run-a-stress-free-endeavouros/49769

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Reading this post makes me so happy that I instantly gravitated towards Linux Mint for my Framework. I've been using that distro on it for a while now and I almost forget that it's not Windows at times with how much it just works (actually it feels more stable than the Windows install I have on one of my other machines).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Fedora has a (disabled) present repo for Nvidia drivers from rpm fusion OOTB. Just open the hamburger in gnome software, go to software repositories and enable “RPM Fusion for Fedora - Nonfree - NVIDIA Driver”, and install akmod-nvidia as usual. For atomic desktops, you’ll want to use something like ublue, though, because rpm-ostree doesn’t support akmods afaik

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Lol this post is like someone who's never worked on cars buying several functional beaters, changing the oil on all of them, and then using each one to go through the same McDonald's drive-thru and review the burger.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eh, I get what you mean but not really. This person didn't try Arch or some weirdly specific distro.

Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and derivatives all promise to be full desktop solutions to regular users, mostly domestic, some enterprise. And if that's the promise, you don't have to have a deep understanding of Linux or even PCs to use them - go ask Mac users what kernel they're running or what a system daemon is, yet they can use their systems just fine.

If Fedora promises to be a good all purpose distro, having the majority of potential users not able to easily install GPU drivers because "it's philosophically against our distro to have a simple toggle for proprietary drivers" is just a terrible choice, no getting around that, even if a more experienced user with the right knowledge could install said drivers in less than 5 minutes.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

According to news items from a couple of years ago, the proper Nvidia driver repository is available in Gnome Software: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-NV-GNOME-Soft-HDR. Only one click is supposedly needed. Your journey sounds way more complicated. Was the approach to Nvidia changed by Fedora since then?

That said, I never tried it myself because fuck Nvidia.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Its still there, one click, works fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I have no clue.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I do not know what you did to debian to make steam not work. Since that have been flawless on my debian for half a decade. And ocasionally glitchy the half decade before that.

Debian +KDE is just the best i can get. But may be just me beeing used.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

You should just keep to Linux Mint if you don't want to learn distro config inside and out, it's literally what it's designed for, don't listen to trolls who say you should run fucking Arch

(Debian is not easy as well. Ubuntu exists because Debian was too hard to install lol actually if you deep down inside it's even more complicated)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You may need Wayland though If you get all the screen issues described at the beginning on LMDE

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Yup, this is my work desktop with the sole purpose of it being for work. The last thing I want to do or desire to do on it is configure my machine to get to the point I can start working. Mint does that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Naive question but what does Davinci Resolve do that Kdenlive does not?

I'm asking for a "normal" user, not somebody who is trying to master the latest Dune for a production environment (even though I'd still be curious).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I think you need to define "normal".

Normal as in, drag and drop clips and music then output the results. Not much since they are both free, but Kden arguably better is better since it's compatible with AAC audio.

Normal as in, doing YouTube for fun. Then the workflow is a lot easier, like being able to duplicate entire video tracks, or change the order of the layers. A very robust effects system with Fusion that can be copied to other clips in a timeline.

I personally prefer Resolve for my workflow, as it makes my life easier. But I do usually have Kden on my laptop since (a) Resolve doesn't work on Intel GPUs... yet (b) I see it as a better MS Movie Maker.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Windows is really annoying me with it's bugs

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ok I feel like I need to say something because it wasn't just a one-off mistake. You're spelling Debian incorrectly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

With my Dyslexia, and hunt spell having an issue with certain words. Its always hard to tell if I spelt something right or not.

Thanks for catching that and I edited the correct spelling. And left one in but crossed out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

❤️lm xfce for my main laptop. Gaming pc pop os nvidia, too scared to brave LM for gaming, I'm not sure what I need to do with the whole nvidia drivers /apps requirements.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

For Fedora with NVIDIA I can just recommend ublue -nvidia images which work out of the box.

Linux Mint DE gave you these problems because of XOrg, in a year or so their Desktop will be ready for Wayland.

No its not the best of GNOME with a traditional Panel etc. Its a far deviation, dasht-to-panel is way better or use ZorinOS which is kinda strange but partly FOSS I dont know really. Their GNOME customizations should work everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

For me the "best of Gnome" was having the online accounts actually be usable in the desktop. In KDE if I was to sign in to my Google account my calendar events wouldn't show up in my desktop calendar, while one Gnome and by extension Cinnamon it does.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I don't really recommend people who don't like tweaking their os to use fedora because contrary to popular belief it isn't "redhat ubuntu" or something like that, it is the distro redhat uses to test feautures and push development on new things (like wayland for example) so that the users of their corporate distros can have a seemless experience on well tested code

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My pc only has 1 nvme slot so I used an $18 sabrent pcie to nvme adapter to add another nvme and keep my Linux and windows separated. Just wanted to put this out there in case you want an easier way to switch between OSs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I am currently using a NVMe to USB-C adapter right now. And while loading is reminding me a bit of the early 2010's, it's fast enough to play games on it. I am aware that there are NVMe to PCI adapter, I'm just being cheap. Though when I hit the point of editing I'll probably move over to that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

If you want to give Fedora a test drive, try Nobara. I believe it has an option to auto install the Nviida drivers on first boot like mint. It's basically Fedora tweaked towards gaming.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Nobara is a Fedora based distro that specifically targets people that are gaming and using editing suites like daVinci Resolve. There's a desktop popup that gives you a button to install fixes for daVinci and others. And the non-free repos and nvidia drivers are there by default. You might want to give that a try, it's relatively painless compared to setting up Fedora manually.

It also has Steam and Lutris installed by default, and the option to enable various versions of Glorious Eggrolls Proton patches for better gaming compatibility. It sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

I came to it after trying to get Arch and/or Manjaro to work correctly for gaming with various levels of success. Nobara just worked right out of the box and has been flawless since. And it's already on Plasma 6 unlike a lot of other "cutting edge" distros.

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