Linux Distro Suggestions

Its strange I have heard that about Ubuntu based distros for some reason. I always just assumed it was people running kernels older then 4.19 or something. But clearly as you say that isn't the only issue. I have built 3 2200g systems at this point .... all running Manjaro and have run into zero issues. 2 are on Asus board and one (the one I'm on now) is on a gigabyte board. Ya if its not kernel or mesa related... I wonder if its some other semi common ryzen board part that is causing the stability issues.

I'm building a 2200g system on an Asrock B450M Pro4 in a few days for my mom. I was going to put Mint on it as it's what I use, but seeing the hiccups that seem to not be resolved with Mint/Ryzen I've decided to go with Manjaro. Did you encounter any issues during the install (drivers/gfx/etc.) that I might run into?
 
I'm building a 2200g system on an Asrock B450M Pro4 in a few days for my mom. I was going to put Mint on it as it's what I use, but seeing the hiccups that seem to not be resolved with Mint/Ryzen I've decided to go with Manjaro. Did you encounter any issues during the install (drivers/gfx/etc.) that I might run into?

Nope... ime should be smooth sailing. Plug in your usb key. Boot and go. I almost always turn off secure boot... but I am not sure that is required if you aren't dual booting. Think all 3 systems I built I was installed and booted off the SSDs in around 5 min.

Be interesting to hear how it goes. Not sure you would have issues or not with Mint or Ubuntu... possibly Mint would be fine. I do know for sure you will have no issue with Manjaro. Rock Stable. My wives machine has been up for a couple weeks now... but I should tell her to update her kernel and reboot that thing, I haven't checked but in general a kernel update a week is standard on M.
 
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Ok, so first I tried Mint but no luck. Got a boot screen but trying to load it just flashed some errors on the screen blazingly fast and then nothing but a blank screen. Next I tried Manjaro and no boot screen, just got error: unknown filesystem, followed by: entering rescue mode... followed by: grub rescue>

Not sure what went wrong. I used unetbootin and a brand new flash drive and had no problems there. Any ideas?

EDIT: Apparently unetbootin was the problem. Used Mint's usb creator and installing now.
 
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Got Mint working....until it froze. Appears freezing hasn't been solved as I've seen others having it on recent kernels (4.18+) so I tossed Manjaro Cinnamon on. So far so good. Not sure why ubuntu appears to be plagued by freezing issues. I remember years ago trying ubuntu out only to have constant freezing and I was fine the last couple of years with Mint, but alas the freezing is back.
 
Got Mint working....until it froze. Appears freezing hasn't been solved as I've seen others having it on recent kernels (4.18+) so I tossed Manjaro Cinnamon on. So far so good. Not sure why ubuntu appears to be plagued by freezing issues. I remember years ago trying ubuntu out only to have constant freezing and I was fine the last couple of years with Mint, but alas the freezing is back.

Ya guess its something with the Ubuntu core that doesn't like the raven ridge chips. I can't think what that is exactly as long as your using newer versions of the kernel and mesa. I have always been more partial to arch and manjaro anyway... not sure if using the right PPA versions of MESA or some other package would fix the raven ridge issues or not.

I wonder if it could also be perhaps a network card or something causing the issue.. as many of the same chipset boards share things like specific network bits. Only board specific thing on my Abit board I know of is the kernel driver for realtek Manjaro has installed kernel drivers for the realtek 8168... perhaps Ubuntu is using an older series driver or something.

Hard to say... anyway I have got a few 2200g systems going and Manjaro has always just worked.
 
Got Mint working....until it froze. Appears freezing hasn't been solved as I've seen others having it on recent kernels (4.18+) so I tossed Manjaro Cinnamon on. So far so good. Not sure why ubuntu appears to be plagued by freezing issues. I remember years ago trying ubuntu out only to have constant freezing and I was fine the last couple of years with Mint, but alas the freezing is back.

I've had issues with Ubuntu and Mint on really new hardware. You can give Pop OS a shot, it's been absolutely flawless on the system in my sig and also runs Cinnamon like a champ (its my preferred DE).
 
I've found that between myself and my hardware- I'm good at breaking Linux.

Laptop is an ASUS 2-in-1 ultrabook, Q325UA, with an 8550U (4C 8T), 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, and other mostly middling but serviceable components. A notable complication is that this laptop has Secure Boot and encrypts the Windows partition, which I do not want to unencrypt. It's a portable device, I won't compromise built-in security.

Just tried RHEL 8.0 with a developer license. Sound never worked, which has been a running issue on this hardware; if I run a distro long enough and don't break it another way, the sound will just wig out.

Tried Fedora 29 before that. Never managed to log in as a user, and after a few root reboots, the emergency console would come up. Literally self-destructing.

Ran Fedora 30 for a good while before that. Eventually broke the sound, but hey, it worked alright- except half the stuff I tried to install didn't. Spotify was a pain and never logged in, of the three installation avenues available, DaVinci Resolve never even started (15 or 16 beta), and games that worked on other distros crashed on startup from Steam.

Going to try Ubuntu 19.04, because hey, what else can go wrong?
 
VeraCrypt

That does the encryption part, but it doesn't work with Secure Boot. Which is... the point. That means that stuff like Manjaro and Pop OS are out on this machine (I use them on others, but spend most time here).
 
That does the encryption part, but it doesn't work with Secure Boot. Which is... the point. That means that stuff like Manjaro and Pop OS are out on this machine (I use them on others, but spend most time here).
Why would you need Secure Boot?
 
Because it's built-in security for a mobile device. I could give a rats for most systems, but I'm not turning it off on this one.
Fair enough, I just don't see any practical benefit security wise and there are annoying downsides.
 
Got Mint working....until it froze. Appears freezing hasn't been solved as I've seen others having it on recent kernels (4.18+) so I tossed Manjaro Cinnamon on. So far so good. Not sure why ubuntu appears to be plagued by freezing issues. I remember years ago trying ubuntu out only to have constant freezing and I was fine the last couple of years with Mint, but alas the freezing is back.

When Mint froze, when Ubuntu froze, did you actually go through the log files to see what the issue was? There's not much point swapping distro's when you could very well have a simple driver issue, as freezing isn't common under Ubuntu.
 
When Mint froze, when Ubuntu froze, did you actually go through the log files to see what the issue was? There's not much point swapping distro's when you could very well have a simple driver issue, as freezing isn't common under Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu issue was years ago and was my first attempt at using linux and so I had little knowledge of where to begin to resolve the problem. The Mint issue occurred just recently on a new build for my mom and well, even if I wanted the logs, the system would freeze up before I had a chance to grab logs. The first boot up went okay so I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. Subsequent bootups all froze before I could do anything. I'm sure it'll be resolved in the future, if it hasn't already, but I still use Mint on my system without problems.
 
The Ubuntu issue was years ago and was my first attempt at using linux and so I had little knowledge of where to begin to resolve the problem. The Mint issue occurred just recently on a new build for my mom and well, even if I wanted the logs, the system would freeze up before I had a chance to grab logs. The first boot up went okay so I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. Subsequent bootups all froze before I could do anything. I'm sure it'll be resolved in the future, if it hasn't already, but I still use Mint on my system without problems.
You can access the logs using a live cd/usb at will. You don't need a booting system to do that.
 
You can access the logs using a live cd/usb at will. You don't need a booting system to do that.

Thanks for the tip. I'm still fairly green when it comes to troubleshooting linux issues. The computer in question was a new build for a family member that needed something working immediately.
 
Thanks for the tip. I'm still fairly green when it comes to troubleshooting linux issues. The computer in question was a new build for a family member that needed something working immediately.

Once you get used to Linux, you'll be working on Windows systems thinking "if this was Linux diagnosing this fault would be so much easier!"...

That's what I find anyway. ;)
 
Once you get used to Linux, you'll be working on Windows systems thinking "if this was Linux diagnosing this fault would be so much easier!"...

If only that were the reality...

It's nice to have the logs to diagnose all of the additional faults though. Because here I am with my fifth distro install in a week that has broken sound. Still haven't narrowed it down; it's just an eventuality of running Linux on the hardware. Ubuntu 19.04 this time.
 
If only that were the reality...

It's nice to have the logs to diagnose all of the additional faults though. Because here I am with my fifth distro install in a week that has broken sound. Still haven't narrowed it down; it's just an eventuality of running Linux on the hardware. Ubuntu 19.04 this time.

There's nothing difficult about diagnosing issues under Linux in comparison to any other operating system. You've been mucking around with this sound problem since forever, aren't you using some form of USB DAC?
 
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There's nothing difficult about diagnosing issues under Linux in comparison to any other operating system. You've been mucking around with this sound problem since forever, aren't you using some form of USB DAC?

Standard onboard Realtek.

What gets me is that when it 'fails', I get about one second of audio, then another second at half volume or one channel, then it's gone. Alsamixer and so on report everything A-OK.
 
Standard onboard Realtek.

What gets me is that when it 'fails', I get about one second of audio, then another second at half volume or one channel, then it's gone. Alsamixer and so on report everything A-OK.

Realtek, that's the problem.

The day Realtek support Linux and we get something better than reverse engineered Windows drivers will be the day Adobe grow a pair and start releasing their CC for Linux.
 
Realtek, that's the problem.

The day Realtek support Linux and we get something better than reverse engineered Windows drivers will be the day Adobe grow a pair and start releasing their CC for Linux.

It'll work extremely well, for months. And then something happens.
 
I have always hated realtek. Even their windows drivers seem crappy and bloated and the icon crab is ugly.
 
I have always hated realtek. Even their windows drivers seem crappy and bloated and the icon crab is ugly.

I find them to be reliable and even competitive when well implemented. Even in Linux. Except on this laptop.
 
I was just about to say I have Realtek sound and never had any problems but then checked to make sure and I have Intel sound. It's an Intel desktop board so it figures. :cool:
 
I was just about to say I have Realtek sound and never had any problems but then checked to make sure and I have Intel sound. It's an Intel desktop board so it figures. :cool:

You actually have both. Intel Azalia (old name) HD Audio (new name) is the platform side of it, and then board / system builders use a DAC chip of some sort, typically and almost exclusively from Realtek, but there are others.

Want to make it more confusing- my Z370 board has Creative audio, but it's actually Creative software playing through the Intel HD Audio --> Realtek chain. It's also pretty good, and I like that it works through optical to my balanced DAC.
 
If not suggested already lxle is what i use on a decent amount of user builds and I go Debian for sever builds.
 
Ok no endorsement here... but if anyone was a fan of Antergos (the arch based distro that wasn't more then a convenient arch installer).

https://www.endeavouros.com/

It sounds like there are some people looking to pick the project up. Might give it a spin on some old hardware just to see how close it is to being a simple pure arch installer. Pretty funny right now to see a countdown clock for a Linux distro. lol

On a semi releated note. I gave solus another spin this weekend. For sure its been improved a bit from when I last used it. Still a bit light on the number of packages. However... its I will say I installed the gnome version and was very impressed. Its fast and fairly well setup. They have made a few odd choices still... like what they have done with their grub config stuff. It seems over complicated at first cause I looked at what was in their /etc/grub.d and what a mess of echo statements and #lines. lol Although I guess its a pretty logical change for new user. They simply add boot paramaters to /etc/kernel/cmdline then either updating clr-boot-manager update or having those paramaters take effect when the krenel gets updated.

Anyway just wanted to say I am a bigger fan of solus today then I was. I'm not sure I would recommend it over manjaro quite yet... but to be honest might be close. Think I'll put it on a computer that is more important to me and give it a real go for a few months.
 
I'll be giving a few distros a shot. Pulled my old gaming DTR out of retirement, but it needs a bigger SSD to dual Windows and Linux.

Did grab a 660p for my ultrabook- going to put more stuff on that. Can't do unsigned kernels in that one (it's that one), but I'll have more room for more substantial KVM instances, and those are so close to native that I could live in most of them.
 
You actually have both. Intel Azalia (old name) HD Audio (new name) is the platform side of it, and then board / system builders use a DAC chip of some sort, typically and almost exclusively from Realtek, but there are others.

Want to make it more confusing- my Z370 board has Creative audio, but it's actually Creative software playing through the Intel HD Audio --> Realtek chain. It's also pretty good, and I like that it works through optical to my balanced DAC.

Intel HD Audio is the compressed audio standard used as well as control of the connection method. In the case of my PC the ICH10 chipset provides DMA access between the memory and the 'codec', the codec is the chipset that decompresses the compressed data and converts it into analogue audio.

If you have a Realtek chip on your motherboard, you are using whatever device is the audio DMA controller. Likewise if you have an Analogue Devices chip on your motherboard you are still using whatever device is being used as the audio DMA controller - All conforming to the Intel HD Audio standard. The codec chip is really no more than a decompression chip and an A/D convertor.

I have a Analogue Devices chip on my motherboard, Linux reports I'm using an Intel ICH10 HD audio controller - So obviously the drivers relate to the DMA controller in the chipset as opposed to the chip used to decompress the audio codec and convert it to analogue sound.

I also have an Nvidia graphics card that outputs raw digital data, so no DAC. In that case the Nvidia GM200 controls the audio DMA and is reported by Linux as using the Nvidia high definition audio driver.

Perhaps if your Realtek codec was using digital output it would act as a DMA controller directly to memory, therefore making drivers more important in relation to the Realtek device, not too sure on that one..
 
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Just built a development machine to test KDE Neon 5.16 and I have to say I'm very impressed. Everything about the current state of KDE just oozes polish and productivity.

Might be switching my main PC over to this release as soon as I get the chance. Totally recommended.

Furthermore, I ordered a $20.00 USB 'sound card' and it works perfectly with Linux - In fact it sounds great. Also running fractional scaling at 4k under X and the only application to have a problem is Teamviewer, possibly something to do with the fact that it's running in a Wine wrapper?
 
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Just built a development machine to test KDE Neon 5.16 and I have to say I'm very impressed. Everything about the current state of KDE just oozes polish and productivity.

Might be switching my main PC over to this release as soon as I get the chance. Totally recommended.

Furthermore, I ordered a $20.00 USB 'sound card' and it works perfectly with Linux - In fact it sounds great. Also running fractional scaling at 4k under X and the only application to have a problem is Teamviewer, possibly something to do with the fact that it's running in a Wine wrapper?
So what is the difference between Kubuntu and KDE Neon?
I just moved one of my machines to Pop OS to try it out, as well as to see how well it handles Optimus. Still playing with things, and I am not sure if i like it. It seems nothing does the "auto-switching" of Optimus very well. Might look at this next.
 
So what is the difference between Kubuntu and KDE Neon?
I just moved one of my machines to Pop OS to try it out, as well as to see how well it handles Optimus. Still playing with things, and I am not sure if i like it. It seems nothing does the "auto-switching" of Optimus very well. Might look at this next.

KDE Neon updates KDE to the latest shiny build when released but is Ubuntu LTS underneath. Kubuntu LTS does not update KDE to newer version so to get updates to KDE you need to do it yourself or not use the LTS.
 
I just moved one of my machines to Pop OS to try it out, as well as to see how well it handles Optimus. Still playing with things, and I am not sure if i like it. It seems nothing does the "auto-switching" of Optimus very well. Might look at this next.

Let me know how it goes. It works fine with my M3800 that has a K1000M and Intel integrated. I have to reboot when I switch, but its still switchable.
 
I forget about Pop OS...... Wonder if they'd mind if I experimented on the work box?
 
So what is the difference between Kubuntu and KDE Neon?
I just moved one of my machines to Pop OS to try it out, as well as to see how well it handles Optimus. Still playing with things, and I am not sure if i like it. It seems nothing does the "auto-switching" of Optimus very well. Might look at this next.

I think Kbuntu is still running KDE Plasma? Neon's a little sexier, more cutting edge.
 
KDE Neon updates KDE to the latest shiny build when released but is Ubuntu LTS underneath.

I do want to ask about this- I get that it would be built on the latest Ubuntu LTS (so 18.04.x), but will it receive support for the same period as the base Ubuntu LTS?

Or would one want to install Ubuntu LTS 18.04.x first, and then install KDE Neon libraries for long support?
 
Let me know how it goes. It works fine with my M3800 that has a K1000M and Intel integrated. I have to reboot when I switch, but its still switchable.
The whole rebooting thing is what annoys me. So far, it looks like that is the least objectionable of the options.
 
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