Show Us Your Linux Desktop

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

This is the system I am struggling to make viable on Linux. I think it may be something bugged in the ACPI implementation by the dumb-dumbs at ASUS on the Strix ZX690-E. I cannot get the CPU turbo clocks to display correctly in any desirable monitoring tools. CPU-X shows the 12900KS clocks to a fixed 5.4GHz (correct) under load, still not correct at idle, but all of the "normal" things I use show either a fixed 3.4GHz (c-states disabled) or a fixed 4.1GHz (c-states enabled). I have tried KDE, POP!_OS and ZorinOS and all have the same issue. I have tried passing a variety of kernel parameters in GRUB. I have installed different packages intended for monitoring clock speeds and it is hit or miss. The couple that actually work correctly are worthless to me because they are CLI stuff I can't use the way I want to. I also wonder if it is something with the 12900KS not being recognized properly like a 12900K and 13900K. At any rate, this is a classic example of a thing that make noobs  believe that Linux is not a viable replacement for Windows, and on this system it probably isn't solely for this reason. I would not embrace Linux if this were an example of normal, but I have used it enough to know it is an exception (albeit a more common problem than desired).

 

Banshee 

---

The other two systems work exactly as they should... pleasure using Linux on both of them, in contrast. Unfortunate that the ASUS machine doesn't deliver the same quality of experience.

 

Wraith

 

Half-Breed

 

 

 

 

I had no probs with this on the KS as far as I recall on a number of distros I tried on my MSI board, however, with the 13900K there is a minor niggle - temp sensors are not showing up correctly in htop. There are 24 readings, presumably mapping to the 24 physical cores, but they are not mapped correctly to the 2 logical cpus per each p-core. Not a biggie. 

[Mr. Fox]

7 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

I had no probs with this on the KS as far as I recall on a number of distros I tried on my MSI board, however, with the 13900K there is a minor niggle - temp sensors are not showing up correctly in htop. There are 24 readings, presumably mapping to the 24 physical cores, but they are not mapped correctly to the 2 logical cpus per each p-core. Not a biggie. 

It is strange that everything seems kosher for me on the 13900K and when I was running the 12900K on the Strix D4 mobo everything was fine on Linux. It is either the Z690-E or 12900KS, or both.

I installed openSUSE last night with the ACPI=off kernel argument and fewer things are broken than before. I do not get the long list of errors when Linux is loading now and neofetch reports the correct clock speeds. CPU-X reports clocks close (100MHz below actual) but hardinfo still shows them way off (4100MHz instead of 5400 P cores and 4300 E cores).

 

Edit: it could also be the Linux applications themselves that the developers are not updating. Even if the Linux kernel is providing the proper support, if the apps are not updated they may not interpret things correctly. This kind of thing is what holds Linux back from becoming a dominant force in the PC technology realm. 

 

Most people (me included) don't have the knowledge, desire or time to compile code and fix broken Linux code. Being "free" is both a strength and a major weakness. It is probably pretty safe to assume that most of the experienced Linux developers do not own cutting edge hardware, and they're only going to burn calories on hardware that matters to them.

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Mr. Fox
added more thoughts

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

It is strange that everything seems kosher for me on the 13900K and when I was running the 12900K on the Strix D4 mobo everything was fine on Linux. It is either the Z690-E or 12900KS, or both.

I installed openSUSE last night with the ACPI=off kernel argument and fewer things are broken than before. I do not get the long list of errors when Linux is loading now and neofetch reports the correct clock speeds. CPU-X reports clocks close (100MHz below actual) but hardinfo still shows them way off (4100MHz instead of 5400 P cores and 4300 E cores).

 

Edit: it could also be the Linux applications themselves that the developers are not updating. Even if the Linux kernel is providing the proper support, if the apps are not updated they may not interpret things correctly. This kind of thing is what holds Linux back from becoming a dominant force in the PC technology realm. 

 

Most people (me included) don't have the knowledge, desire or time to compile code and fix broken Linux code. Being "free" is both a strength and a major weakness. It is probably pretty safe to assume that most of the experienced Linux developers do not own cutting edge hardware, and they're only going to burn calories on hardware that matters to them.

 

 

 

The reality is that standard/full-blown Linux is not an OS for most people yet. It does require a lot more technical knowledge than Windows or MacOS. Actually, there is a very user-friendly Linux: it's called Chrome OS. Of course that OS is  criminally dumbed down. There could also be something from Valve, I'm not sure. 

 

As the old saying goes:  "Linux is friendly, just very particular about its choice of friends", although condescending statements like that are of negative value in terms of encouraging adoption. 

 

Anyway, what kernel version are you running? Most people would give up right upon seeing this question. 

 

The discussion bifurcated a bit:

 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, Etern4l said:

 

 

The reality is that standard/full-blown Linux is not an OS for most people yet. It does require a lot more technical knowledge than Windows or MacOS. Actually, there is a very user-friendly Linux: it's called Chrome OS. Of course that OS is  criminally dumbed down. There could also be something from Valve, I'm not sure. 

 

As the old saying goes:  "Linux is friendly, just very particular about its choice of friends", although condescending statements like that are of negative value in terms of encouraging adoption. 

 

Anyway, what kernel version are you running? Most people would give up right upon seeing this question. 

 

The discussion bifurcated a bit:

 

 

 

I don't recall the kernel versions, but they were all the latest of the distros tested, not the LTS kernels/distros. I know they were in the high 5's and 6's. It was something I was paying close attention to while I was trying to resolve the issue on the Strix Z690-E.  There have been no issues with the Z690 Dark and I believe at least part of the issue is a flawed implementation of ACPI on the ASUS mobo. Newer versions Windows can function fine without ACPI functioning correctly, but that causes significant issues with Linux.

[Etern4l]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

I don't recall the kernel versions, but they were all the latest of the distros tested, not the LTS kernels/distros. I know they were in the high 5's and 6's. It was something I was paying close attention to while I was trying to resolve the issue on the Strix Z690-E.  There have been no issues with the Z690 Dark and I believe at least part of the issue is a flawed implementation of ACPI on the ASUS mobo. Newer versions Windows can function fine without ACPI functioning correctly, but that causes significant issues with Linux.

 

If kernel 6 had the same problem then yeah -  sounds like an Asus thing. Kind of strange, since they have been around forever. Guess that doesn't mean much, companies change, and not necessarily for the better.. AW is a nice example of that. Anyway, good call on my part to go with MSI (so far at least, we'll see about the reliability).

[Mr. Fox]

15 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

 

If kernel 6 had the same problem then yeah -  sounds like an Asus thing. Kind of strange, since they have been around forever. Guess that doesn't mean much, companies change, and not necessarily for the better.. AW is a nice example of that. Anyway, good call on my part to go with MSI (so far at least, we'll see about the reliability).

In my hours of searching for a solution I saw a number of people complain about issues similar to this after a BIOS update, and most of them were ASUS owners. Everything was peachy, they updated their BIOS, and things in Linux didn't function correctly. Some were older posts and some were recent, but I think it is fairly common. I saw similar issues with the Z590 Dark ACPI implementation--one of the reasons I disliked it--causing issues with Windows 7 (some severe, like having to disable NVMe in the BIOS to avoid a BSOD) and Linux instability. Cannonkong (win-raid celebrity) has commented often about issues with various Z390, 490, 590 and 690 motherboard having Windows 7 and Linux issues due to defective ACPI implementation.

[Mr. Fox]

6 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

If kernel 6 had the same problem then yeah -  sounds like an Asus thing. Kind of strange, since they have been around forever. Guess that doesn't mean much, companies change, and not necessarily for the better.. AW is a nice example of that. Anyway, good call on my part to go with MSI (so far at least, we'll see about the reliability).

 

5 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

In my hours of searching for a solution I saw a number of people complain about issues similar to this after a BIOS update, and most of them were ASUS owners. Everything was peachy, they updated their BIOS, and things in Linux didn't function correctly. Some were older posts and some were recent, but I think it is fairly common. I saw similar issues with the Z590 Dark ACPI implementation--one of the reasons I disliked it--causing issues with Windows 7 (some severe, like having to disable NVMe in the BIOS to avoid a BSOD) and Linux instability. Cannonkong (win-raid celebrity) has commented often about issues with various Z390, 490, 590 and 690 motherboard having Windows 7 and Linux issues due to defective ACPI implementation.

I had to wait until I got off work to reboot into Linux. Looks like a current kernel.

neofetch shows correct clock speed, but core count does not reflect E-core presence.

Hardinfo (System Profiler and Benchmark) does not show correct core clocks. They stay at 3400 at idle or under load.

CPU-X gets the clocks (and voltage) right when the CPU is under load, but doesn't correctly identify core count or hyperthreading.

Latest and greatest appimage version from Github has the same issue as the version on the distro repo. Newer isn't better.

[Etern4l]

17 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

I had to wait until I got off work to reboot into Linux. Looks like a current kernel.

neofetch shows correct clock speed, but core count does not reflect E-core presence.

Hardinfo (System Profiler and Benchmark) does not show correct core clocks. They stay at 3400 at idle or under load.

CPU-X gets the clocks (and voltage) right when the CPU is under load, but doesn't correctly identify core count or hyperthreading.

Latest and greatest appimage version from Github has the same issue as the version on the distro repo. Newer isn't better.

 

I don't have CPU-X but I have the same issue with hardinfo, not that I pull that up often. I use htop, shows clocks and temps correctly enough once enabled in the setup menu.

 

 

On 13900K there is a minor issue where it doesn't map P-Core temps to the sibling HT logical cores, but obviously not a biggie.

12900KS was fine.

[Mr. Fox]

17 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

 

I don't have CPU-X but I have the same issue with hardinfo, not that I pull that up often. I use htop, shows clocks and temps correctly enough once enabled in the setup menu.

 

 

On 13900K there is a minor issue where it doesn't map P-Core temps to the sibling HT logical cores, but obviously not a biggie.

12900KS was fine.

Yes, htop (I think, I will have to check) shows correct info. Here's another weird thing.

If I disable c-states in the BIOS, neofetch shows wrong info. CPU-X shows clocks correctly still (but not core count or HT) under load.

But, neofetch does show the clocks correctly if I run the command while the CPU is under load.

 

The part that is extra-stupid about this is the fact that disabling c-states usually causes all cores and cache to run full speed with no power management involved. The exact opposite should be true. Thus, I do believe the firmware (or ACPI) is not being managed correctly by Linux. The firmware should override anything in the OS. It does in Windows but not in Linux (on this particular system). I think the fact that my laptop and the Z690 Dark do not have these problems points directly to the ASUS BIOS and at this point I may reclaim the drive space because I do not want to use Linux when it is not functioning correctly. It just makes me angry and I can't enjoy using it knowing it is malfunctioning.

Side observation, not specific to this system... It seems that Linux has a nasty tendency to force the CPU to run in a reduced power state. That is one thing that I really hate about Linux even when it is working correctly. It can set my governor to Performance mode and it still tries to save power and eventually changes to Power Saver mode without my permission. Because of this I have made it a ritual to manually set the governor to Performance every time I start a Linux session.

---

The only distro I haven't tested yet that *might* behave correctly is Linux Mint "cutting edge" release. I may give it a go just to see if it still has the same behavior. If it behaves the same, then I am going to reclaim the drive space for something else and not run Linux on this system. I am not optimistic and may change my mind about bothering with it because I do believe it is more likely an ASUS firmware issue versus a Linux issue.

[Etern4l]

24 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Yes, htop (I think, I will have to check) shows correct info. Here's another weird thing.

If I disable c-states in the BIOS, neofetch shows wrong info. CPU-X shows clocks correctly still (but not core count or HT) under load.

 

Correct core count showing in neofetch, but clock is 4200 no matter what lol

I'm sure there is an explanation that likely involves the hybrid core architecture. Oh well.

 

Edit: There is also this GUI tool called System Monitoring Center. Shows correct core frequencies, with per core graphs etc. the 4200 is the "max frequency" reported by something (not sure what), but this particular tool, like htop, ignores it. Would use it instead of htop if it displayed temps on the same screen as well.

[Etern4l]

10 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Yes, htop (I think, I will have to check) shows correct info. Here's another weird thing.

If I disable c-states in the BIOS, neofetch shows wrong info. CPU-X shows clocks correctly still (but not core count or HT) under load.

But, neofetch does show the clocks correctly if I run the command while the CPU is under load.

 

The part that is extra-stupid about this is the fact that disabling c-states usually causes all cores and cache to run full speed with no power management involved. The exact opposite should be true. Thus, I do believe the firmware (or ACPI) is not being managed correctly by Linux. The firmware should override anything in the OS. It does in Windows but not in Linux (on this particular system). I think the fact that my laptop and the Z690 Dark do not have these problems points directly to the ASUS BIOS and at this point I may reclaim the drive space because I do not want to use Linux when it is not functioning correctly. It just makes me angry and I can't enjoy using it knowing it is malfunctioning.

Side observation, not specific to this system... It seems that Linux has a nasty tendency to force the CPU to run in a reduced power state. That is one thing that I really hate about Linux even when it is working correctly. It can set my governor to Performance mode and it still tries to save power and eventually changes to Power Saver mode without my permission. Because of this I have made it a ritual to manually set the governor to Performance every time I start a Linux session.

---

The only distro I haven't tested yet that *might* behave correctly is Linux Mint "cutting edge" release. I may give it a go just to see if it still has the same behavior. If it behaves the same, then I am going to reclaim the drive space for something else and not run Linux on this system. I am not optimistic and may change my mind about bothering with it because I do believe it is more likely an ASUS firmware issue versus a Linux issue.

 

On this C-state thing: some Linux distros expose the familiar "high-performance, balanced,.." power settings that might help. I don't know how to set this via kernel parans etc. because I didn't have to look - the Clear Linux philisophy is io run everything at full speed. I'm sure you would love this distro from the performance perspective, but getting Nvidia to work properly and keep it that way across updates takes extra work. Other distros woth looking at from this perspective are RHEL variants: Alma, CentOS Stream, and possibly Rocky. Installing Nvidia drivers on those is trivial in comparison, it's supported. Nvidia explicitly supports Rocky. 

 

Windows obviously has vastly better CPU tweaking and monitoring tools, but in the end all you are doing is tinkering around the margins while certain Linux distros give you an outright 30% performance boost. 

 

I've seen a YT review (the one posted in the CL thread) where the guy claimed games run noticeably faster too. I wonder if CB would see a gain, but a first quick attempt to get that to work failed. 

 

BTW if you are interested in giving Clear Linux a try (it supports Plasma), I will walk you through the Nvidia setup, it's actually quite easy because someone wrote a script for this, although one or two extra config tweaks are needed to enable coolbits for instance. 

 

The first question is: is there an actual performance delta between SuSE and CL? Could you post blender and indigobench CPU benchmark results from your SuSE? 

[Mr. Fox]

11 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

On this C-state thing: some Linux distros expose the familiar "high-performance, balanced,.." power settings that might help. I don't know how to set this via kernel parans etc. because I didn't have to look - the Clear Linux philisophy is io run everything at full speed. I'm sure you would love this distro from the performance perspective, but getting Nvidia to work properly and keep it that way across updates takes extra work. Other distros woth looking at from this perspective are RHEL variants: Alma, CentOS Stream, and possibly Rocky. Installing Nvidia drivers on those is trivial in comparison, it's supported. Nvidia explicitly supports Rocky. 

 

Windows obviously has vastly better CPU tweaking and monitoring tools, but in the end all you are doing is tinkering around the margins while certain Linux distros give you an outright 30% performance boost. 

 

I've seen a YT review (the one posted in the CL thread) where the guy claimed games run noticeably faster too. I wonder if CB would see a gain, but a first quick attempt to get that to work failed. 

 

BTW if you are interested in giving Clear Linux a try (it supports Plasma), I will walk you through the Nvidia setup, it's actually quite easy because someone wrote a script for this, although one or two extra config tweaks are needed to enable coolbits for instance. 

 

The first question is: is there an actual performance delta between SuSE and CL? Could you post blender and indigobench CPU benchmark results from your SuSE? 

There are a couple of replies in this thread validating my thoughts about it being ASUS firmware-related goofiness. (They didn't know my thoughts and assumptions, but their replies validate what I have been posting in this thread.) https://forums.extremehw.net/topic/2433-post-your-desktop/?do=findComment&comment=31395

 

I have always wanted to try Clear. So, yeah, I am open to that because I think it is worth investigating. Running everything at full speed is definitely my modus operandi. I like Plasma and Mint DEs because they closely resemble the classic Micro$oft Windows GUI. (I prefer Mint over Plasma.) I do not like the aesthetic of most of the other alternative DEs. The default Ubuntu DEs with tiles, crApple-ish docks and sidebars are repulsive to me.  I also do not like the Windows 95-ish look of default Gnome shells. Give me a panel and menu that look and feel a lot a dark-themed Windows 7 shell and I'm happy.

 

I will do the blender and indigo benchmarks after work. I have found good success using Lutris to run Cinebench (R11.5, R15, R20 and R23) very effective. Cinebench scores are usually within 1-2% of Windows, but always slightly less. I am assuming that is because of the WINE layer adding overhead. But, it would still be useful for comparing performance between Linux distros.

 

[Mr. Fox]

4 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

I will do the blender and indigo benchmarks after work.

@Etern4l here is the Blender benchmark. Indigo is still downloading. Will update the post after I run that.

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

@Etern4l here is the Blender benchmark. Indigo is still downloading. Will update the post after I run that.

 

Yeah, kind of as expected. I did look into SuSE, as this is one of the first distros I've ever used, but didn't find any benchmark evidence of outstanding performance.

 

I presume those CPU scores are just a sum of the 3 component benches: junkshop, monster and classroom, if so then the total CPU score I was getting with stock 12900KS running something like 4800Mhz CL38 RAM was 493. I presume your scores were obtained on an extensively OC-ed system, if so the real gain to be realised is somewhere between 10 and 30% vs Win11 in blender, depending on how much RAM speed weighs into this, otherwise it's "just" ca. +10% here. In Indigobench the first scene score was over 4k. I remember this clearly, was a jaw-dropping result - over 30% faster than on Win11. The second scene was closer. GtG, will check tomorrow. (GPU scores are virtually identical BTW).

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

Yeah, kind of as expected. I did look into SuSE, as this is one of the first distros I've ever used, but didn't find any benchmark evidence of outstanding performance.

 

I presume those CPU scores are just a sum of the 3 component benches: junkshop, monster and classroom, if so then the total CPU score I was getting with stock 12900KS running something like 4800Mhz CL38 RAM was 493. I presume your scores were obtained on an extensively OC-ed system, if so the real gain to be realised is somewhere between 10 and 30% vs Win11 in blender, depending on how much RAM speed weighs into this, otherwise it's "just" ca. +10% here. In Indigobench the first scene score was over 4k. I remember this clearly, was a jaw-dropping result - over 30% faster than on Win11. The second scene was closer. GtG, will check tomorrow. (GPU scores are virtually identical BTW).

Here is the Indigo info... the other thing to keep in mind is my Windows installations are modded and tweaked. I don't allow Micro$lop's filth to run amok. I physically remove Cortana, Defender, Edge, removed some services and manually stop many others. Massive difference and makes a direct comparison between Linux and Windows more difficult. The comparison is  Linux against Mr. Fox's Windows, not what most people use.

 

You can see from these results that do have other Linux distros, openSUSE performance is poor compared with Ubuntu-based distros.

 

[cucubits]

Ubuntu here as well. Not quite 100% qualified for this thread as this is my work ...workstation. Not doing much on it lately except test various GUIs and work on remote kubernetes deployments.

 

 

[Etern4l]

19 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Here is the Indigo info... the other thing to keep in mind is my Windows installations are modded and tweaked. I don't allow Micro$lop's filth to run amok. I physically remove Cortana, Defender, Edge, removed some services and manually stop many others. Massive difference and makes a direct comparison between Linux and Windows more difficult. The comparison is  Linux against Mr. Fox's Windows, not what most people use.

 

You can see from these results that do have other Linux distros, openSUSE performance is poor compared with Ubuntu-based distros.

 

 

Thanks. I'm sure the main benefit comes from the OC/WC. So my windows score in Bedroom was basically dead on 3000 on stock, so your +10% due to OC sounds about right.

 

My 12900KS CL indigo scores were  bedroom 4142,  supercar 9061: basically, correcting for OC: Bedroom +30%, supercar +10% on CL vs Windows.

The 13900 bedroom score with +200Mhz on E-Cores was kind of insane: 5980 (+45% vs 12900KS on CL). 

 

The snappiness of this distro is palpable just during normal interaction with the GUI/window manager, and doing the same work on Windows 11 just feels very noticeably laggy. But yeah, the Nvidia drivers support situation is not pretty. The initial setup was actually bearable, but I've been unable to normally update the OS for several versions now (actually only tried like twice). Just keeping it as is on the "don't fix it if it ain't broken basis", but eventually I will need to update and that will probably involve some tinkering unless they fix whatever broke either X or the the Nvidia dynamic kernel modules. A number of updates prior worked fine, so there is hope. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot with this Nvidia thing. Nobody likes Nvidia, they are def the enemy of the people now, but they are the market leader in GPUs so they should just support the drivers for the sake of their users until Arc or something else takes over. CL adoption would go through the roof that way.

 

[Mr. Fox]

13 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

Thanks. I'm sure the main benefit comes from the OC/WC. So my windows score in Bedroom was basically dead on 3000 on stock, so your +10% due to OC sounds about right.

 

My 12900KS CL indigo scores were  bedroom 4142,  supercar 9061: basically, correcting for OC: Bedroom +30%, supercar +10% on CL vs Windows.

The 13900 bedroom score with +200Mhz on E-Cores was kind of insane: 5980 (+45% vs 12900KS on CL). 

 

The snappiness of this distro is palpable just during normal interaction with the GUI/window manager, and doing the same work on Windows 11 just feels very noticeably laggy. But yeah, the Nvidia drivers support situation is not pretty. The initial setup was actually bearable, but I've been unable to normally update the OS for several versions now (actually only tried like twice). Just keeping it as is on the "don't fix it if it ain't broken basis", but eventually I will need to update and that will probably involve some tinkering unless they fix whatever broke either X or the the Nvidia dynamic kernel modules. A number of updates prior worked fine, so there is hope. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot with this Nvidia thing. Nobody likes Nvidia, they are def the enemy of the people now, but they are the market leader in GPUs so they should just support the drivers for the sake of their users until Arc or something else takes over. CL adoption would go through the roof that way. 

 

As expected, Linux Mint was worthless in terms of correcting the issue. I honestly do not believe it will be corrected unless ASUS does something right on the firmware side.

 

I do not like NVIDIA as a company. They deserve to be hated, but I love their products and they are what I want to own. It's almost like the opposite with AMD. I don't like AMD products and avoid owning them, but I want to like AMD as a company. I do not believe they are honest or good, but they're the lesser of two evils on the GPU side of the business. Intel is kind of in the middle. I don't hate them, I like their products, I want their products, and I do not find them as easy to dislike as the other two. AMD's presence in their digital ménage à trois keeps everyone on their toes and I am thankful for it.

---

Edit: here is an example of a newer CPU, same chipset, functioning correctly. I think pointing the finger at ASUS is appropriate. @Etern4l

[Mr. Fox]

I forgot to show... even this application works correctly on the Z690 Dark motherboard. Can adjust CPU frequency on the fly.

 

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

I forgot to show... even this application works correctly on the Z690 Dark motherboard. Can adjust CPU frequency on the fly.

 

 

Nice. I guess Assus is not ideal for Linux. What's that application you used to adjust clocks? 

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, Etern4l said:

 

Nice. I guess Assus is not ideal for Linux. What's that application you used to adjust clocks? 

https://github.com/vagnum08/cpupower-gui

[Eban]

A new version of Zorin OS with working Nvidia drivers out of the box 

 

[kojack]

On 3/15/2022 at 10:49 AM, Mr. Fox said:

I don't see a huge difference between the flavors of Debian and Ubuntu, but POP_OS! is developed and support by System76 for their pre-built performance-oriented /gaming systems. It is a better fit for my performance PC hobby. It is mostly configured and ready to use out of the box (with the exception of installing Cinnamon DE because I despise Unity DE).  I use their option that includes NVIDIA drivers so I don't have to fuss with that, and overall I have fewer packages to install than I would with another distro. Linux Mint is almost as good, but not quite. For example, I really like ZorinOS. It looks and feels great, but my CPU Turboboost clock speeds are never displayed correctly in any of the system monitoring programs and the power management of the OS is more aggressive. I have to do more work after installing the OS to get everything working to my satisfaction, and I don't like wasting time like that. I know that some people derive satisfaction from setting up a time consuming Linux distro from scratch (like Arch) but that is not me. Even though I am fairly competent and comfortable using a terminal, I do not enjoy spending my time that way with Linux or Windows.

System 76. What awesome machines they build. I love the wood on the cases. Very organic and modern unlike most cases today. I just priced a MASSIVE.  Ha ha.  Maybe when I get more work on the creative side of things.  56k ha ha.  I am giving zorin OS a try very soon on my old acer!

[Mr. Fox]

On 12/9/2022 at 10:28 AM, Eban said:

A new version of Zorin OS with working Nvidia drivers out of the box 

 

Zorin is a really good distro. It works well for me, and 6.2 is the best one yet. The only thing I do not care for with their default DE is the menu is not configurable. I usually install Cinnamon along side the Zorin DE so I can tweak the aesthetics more to my preferences. I do really like the Zorin OS dark theme. I think it looks and feels great.

1 hour ago, kojack said:

System 76. What awesome machines they build. I love the wood on the cases. Very organic and modern unlike most cases today. I just priced a MASSIVE.  Ha ha.  Maybe when I get more work on the creative side of things.  56k ha ha.  I am giving zorin OS a try very soon on my old acer!

Yes, System 76 is a great company with innovative products, not the least of which is Pop_OS! Another excellent distro with working NVIDIA support out of the box. I wish there were more companies like them that gave preference to Linux and furthered the development of Linux as a complete and outright replacement for Winduhz. I think you will love Zorin OS. I am impressed enough that I went the next step and purchased the "Pro" version of 5.9, 6.1 and 6.2. The chances of Linux getting better improve when we support those efforts.

 

I find I am using Linux less (temporarily) because of poor NVIDIA driver support on kernel 6.X and some of the more recent 5.X kernels. I have reliability issues relating to NVIDIA drivers with the newer 5.X kernels and above, and my two Z690 systems do not have full and proper CPU functionality on 5.X kernels. Clocks are not read correctly, etc. So, I have temporarily paused my zealous pursuit for replacing Winduhz with Linux until that gets sorted.

[Etern4l]

36 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Zorin is a really good distro. It works well for me, and 6.2 is the best one yet. The only thing I do not care for with their default DE is the menu is not configurable. I usually install Cinnamon along side the Zorin DE so I can tweak the aesthetics more to my preferences. I do really like the Zorin OS dark theme. I think it looks and feels great.

Yes, System 76 is a great company with innovative products, not the least of which is Pop_OS! Another excellent distro with working NVIDIA support out of the box. I wish there were more companies like them that gave preference to Linux and furthered the development of Linux as a complete and outright replacement for Winduhz. I think you will love Zorin OS. I am impressed enough that I went the next step and purchased the "Pro" version of 5.9, 6.1 and 6.2. The chances of Linux getting better improve when we support those efforts.

 

I find I am using Linux less (temporarily) because of poor NVIDIA driver support on kernel 6.X and some of the more recent 5.X kernels. I have reliability issues relating to NVIDIA drivers with the newer 5.X kernels and above, and my two Z690 systems do not have full and proper CPU functionality on 5.X kernels. Clocks are not read correctly, etc. So, I have temporarily paused my zealous pursuit for replacing Winduhz with Linux until that gets sorted.

 

Just be aware that Zorin may contain some opt-out telemetry:

 

https://www.linux.org/threads/zorin-os-15-and-privacy-concerns.26415/