So sitrep:
Newish desktop
- i7-13700K
- 64Gb DDR5 6000Mhz
- RTX 3070Ti
- MSI PRO Z790-P (WiFi is not a factor, permanent ethernet connection.)
Needs:
- Gaming
- Music composing
- Coding (Mostly python)
- Video editing
I've been using Linux on and off throughout the years, but lately I've fallen out of the loop somewhat. Started with Slackware around 1998, Kubuntu in the 2000's, Ubuntu 2010's, Kali and Mandrake 2020's -> on my laptop, Ubuntu server on my RasPi. At work, we have a few Fedora servers I have to maintain. So not a complete novice, but somewhat obsolete info.
I have been looking at the immutable distros, like Bazzite and Pop!_OS as I've done the whole song and dance of constantly repairing my distro because of various issues, and I'd like my main recreational machine & distro to be low maintenance, I get to fix linux servers at work enough already, I don't want to bring that home.
With gaming, I've understood that linux has come a loooooong way since I last tried sometime around TBC Launch for WoW when Wine barely worked with it.
Music composing is a little annoying, since apparently both Ableton and FL studio are not an option. I've heard good things about Reaper, but I'll have to do some more research. Feel free to educate me on this topic if you have some insider info. I don't play live sets, just compose and mix.
Video editing, currently I use Davinci Resolve, and apparently it works fine on Linux, just some limitations and shenanigans with codecs. Alternatives are welcome, I don't need 90% of what resolve offers, I can make do with a simpler software as well.
Thank you kindly in advance for departing thine wisdom.
I would say, that Fedora and Debian are mostly care-free if you go with the defaults. Fedora can enable Flatpak as part of the installation and for Debian the installation guide can be found on Flathub. In both cases you can then install packages using gnome-software.
I have edited videos with Blender, it has a video editor built-in which is very intuitive. And you can explore compositing with it later. Text and graphics for videos I created with Inkscape (export them to PNGs). The graphics are just linked, so if you need to correct a spelling mistake in Inkscape you can overwrite the original PNG and Blender will pick it up. I think with Blender you can use all video codecs that are supported by ffmpeg.
For music you can have a look at Ardour. I did not use it in a long time, but previous version were enough for me to master a track.
Games: Just install Steam through Flatpak (gnome-software). But it depends mostly on the game whether it will be playable on Linux; check protondb.
Thanks for the alternative take. Good to know that Fedora supports Flatpak that easily.
Blender has a video editor?! Geez, used it back in the day for 3D rendering, but didn't even cross my mind for videos. Inkscape is a great idea!
Had a couple of recommendations for Ardour from other folks as well, will have to give it a go. Free is free after all.
Games fortunately I have the most experience with lately, was in another country with my ancient T530, and was bored, so did some gaming on Ubuntu, got mostly everything working pretty quickly.
it is surprisingly good, when i first found out about it i was kinda blown away with how competitive it is with stuff like Kdenlive and the ancient version of sony vegas i used to use