6 mo. ago • 81%

Little help here linux guys? Trying to figure out what distro to use

Yeah. It's another one of these. But! Here me out! So I have some experience using Linux. Run some VMs for services I run in my home, I switched my surface book 3 (funnily enough) to ubuntu for my work computer as I was getting more and more frustrated by windows 11 and it turned out really good. Was able to completely get off windows and i didn't miss out on anything. Now. Ive been trying to migrate my gaming rig to Linux with... Not a lot of success. I have 3 monitors plugged into it, a Samsung crg49 and then 2 small no name brand monitors I like for websites and discord and stuff while I play on the Samsung monitor. On windows it works flawlessly. No Linux distro I've used has been able to handle it and I'm not sure how I should be approaching this. Running games has been fine. I use lutris and have been able to play pretty much everything I've wanted to with some tweaking. But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out. I have a ryzen 3700x, and a Nvidia 2080ti. 64GB of RAM. all my storage is nvme. I have tried most major distros. Mostly Ubuntu is what I have experience with. I have tried some others like nobara, but performance was awful, and display management was an issue. Ive never really installed other desktop environments other than what comes with those distros, so if it's a matter of "use distro x, but you need to install weyland" then sure. Just let me know that's something I need to do. 😋 So... What do you suggest I run? I really dont want to go back to windoze. It's just awful these days.

47 comments

If gaming with Nvidia hardware is your primary concern, then maybe Bazzite would suit you. It's based on Immutable Fedora, with tweaks to give it a SteamOS like experience. It offers Gnome or KDE for the desktop, and supposedly has everything dialed in for gaming. I've heard a bunch about it doing great with Nvidia cards and gaming in general, I suspect that you'd be able to do everything else you might need via the desktop it provides, but I have no knowledge of how it handles multiple monitors so maybe therein lies the fatal flaw.

18
- +1 for Fedora Atomic.
  Especially Bazzite comes with Nvidia drivers already built in and everything should just werk™.
  It's very modern and reliable. If it doesn't work with that, nothing will.
  
  To be fair, the use case is very demanding. Just 2 years ago, we were glad that we can play more than one game on Steam, and now, we're complaining that our triple monitor setup with Nvidia and VRR/HDR doesn't work perfectly. I'm happy we're at this point, but some things, like that, may hinder the wide spread adoption...
  
  14
  
  Thats fair. And for that reason i just keep going back to windows after trying out linux and waiting for it to catch up. Its come a looooooong way. I guess with the accelerated enshitification of windows i feel like i would like to get out asap. :P
  
  6
- Never saw that one before. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.
  
  3
  
  I'm now deeply curious if it works for your use case. Hit me back if you give it a go and let me know if it works out or not.
  
  2
  
  You should, it's amazing for gaming. Especially steam, everything just works.
  
  1
- Gave this a try today and actually am pleasantly surprised. So far its been pretty solid and i'm enjoying the feel of it.
  
  2
and a Nvidia 2080ti

Do you know which Nvidia driver you're using currently?

There's an established open-source Nouveau driver that Ubuntu & Mint probably defaulted to, a bleeding-edge open-source NVK driver that is still very early in it's development, and a proprietary Nvidia driver that Nobara probably tried, as it's kinda what you'd want for gaming.

The other question would be if you're using Wayland or X11 underneath your desktop environment?

It should be listed in Settings > System > System Details, under the heading "Windowing System" if you're using GNOME.

Wayland has better multi-monitor support than X11, but the proprietary Nvidia driver has a few teething problems with Wayland at the moment - a new 555 beta driver update should be coming this week with proper fixes for the sync/screen-tearing issues people have been experiencing.

17
- I never used the nouveau driver. Always the proprietary or the one bundled with nobara. One of my first headaches under proxmox was gpu pass through on a Nvidia card that necessitated blowing away all the nouveau drivers in the system. Basically scared me away from every using it. 😋
  
  4
But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out.

This sounds more like a hardware issue than software. Can you provide more detail? Have you done basic troubleshooting steps like trying different power cords and surge protector/power strip? What is the full list of hardware for your system? Have you reseated the RAM? Replaced the CMOS battery? (a dead CMOS battery will prevent system boot)

11
- I honestly never tried this because everything worked perfectly when I would eventually switch back to windows.
  
  10
  
  Huh... and that's repeatable? How long could you go on Linux before the blackouts, and did you run on Windows for a similar amount of time with no issues? also, when the blackout happens does it recover after a little time, or do you have to reboot to get video back? (is it just a screen blackout, or has the system crashed?) When the screen is black, can you reboot with busier backwards?
  
  One issue that I've had on Linux installs is that the system doesn't recover properly from hibernate. I've seen this on laptops and desktops over more than a decade. When this happens the screen goes black and the system doesn't respond to any keyboard or mouse input, the only way to recover is to force a reboot. Maybe check your power management profile and disable hibernation.
  
  Otherwise there are a lot of reasons that the screen might black out:
  
  power issues - what is your PSU model? Linux installs are frequently not as power efficient as Windows on the same hardware, generally because Windows does a lot more throttling by default.
  
  overheating - Windows (and the Windows hardware drivers) might be configured to throttle the CPU and/or GPU to manage the temperature automatically without telling you, while Linux might be giving you the full unthrottled system power and overheating.
  
  video drivers & multimonitor - as others have said already, this could be an issue with the Linux video drivers. You should verify which driver you're using as EccTM@lemmy.ml said. Are all your monitors the same resolution? I've definitely had trouble with mulitple monitors if they were mismatched.
  
  bad CPU core - this one's a long shot, but Windows tends to be a lot more single-threaded while Linux is more likely to try to balance operations across all CPU cores. Maybe one of your cores has an issue, and when Linux tries to use it it triggers a system crash, while Windows just never gets around to using that particular core for anything critical (and so never triggers the crash).
  
  SSD/swap file issue - most Linux distros will configure a swap partition on the root hard drive by default, which is used as an extension of the RAM. Windows doesn't use a swap file. You have plenty of RAM so there's not really a need for it, so you should try just disabling swap.
  
  4
Just use Mint.

I'm on Mint 20 and had an unreasonable number of monitor configurations. Initially tallscreen + square, then tallscreen + square + 32-inch HDTV, then tallscreen + widescreen + TV, then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV (because I ran out of desk), then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV + widescreen on the floor as a dedicated AGDQ window, and now I'm only using an enormous 4K TV.

I've had issues, but never "it can't handle it" issues. My little RX 580 occasionally produced a black frame on one monitor or other - I assume because none of them ever had identical refresh rates. The larger issue was instantly forgetting my monitor configuration every time one of them was unplugged or lost power. As if losing the square monitor caused the rotated screen to fall over.

9
- Mint or Zorin for those with windows experience, Ubuntu for those used to Macintosh, are all great "just works" distros. Don't overthink it, OP!
  
  3
  
  Ubuntu for those used to Macintosh
  
  Still sour about one fucking guy deciding to flip the interface to left-handed the day before a long-term feature freeze.
  
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Can you list the distros that you tried?

Monitor handling will mostly depend on the desktop environment and X11/Wayland, but different distros will ship with different defaults for these.

Ubuntu and Nobara both come with the GNOME desktop environment, which uses Wayland by default.

If you've tried anything with e.g. KDE Plasma as the desktop environment, that would already tell us a bit more...

7
- Ive tried nobara, I've tried Ubuntu, I've tried popOS, and I think also tried mint. I'm not 100% sure on that one tho... I feel like alot of my attempts have just blurred together at his point...
  
  2
  
  Well, Pop!_OS uses COSMIC, which is a customized GNOME, and Linux Mint uses Cinnamon, which is kind of GNOME under the hood, too. (In technical terms, Cinnamon is a "fork" of GNOME.)
  
  So, yeah, that doesn't allow ruling out that you're always running into the same bug.
  You should still try what the others are suggesting, though, before you go reinstalling or installing a different desktop environment. You're certainly not the first person to use GNOME et al with 3 monitors. This should work.
  
  2
- Honestly the desktop environments is where I kinda get spacey with linux. The cli makes sense to me. Installing different desktops hasn't been very successful for me. Which distros use KDE plasma?
  
  1
  
  You can kind of think of a desktop environment as everything that's needed to turn a server OS (which has only a CLI interface) into a desktop OS.
  
  So, it contains (or pulls in) all the stuff for displaying any graphics at all, but then also a panel/taskbar, audio support, icons, global keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Tab, a settings menu and some utility programs like a file manager, a text editor, a calculator etc..
  
  Switching desktop environments is kind of like switching between Windows 7 and Windows 8.
  You can still run the same programs, all the CLI stuff and OS internals work the same, but the UX for interacting with that is different. Admittedly, though, different desktop environments usually have more differences than there are between Windows 7 and 8.
  
  As for KDE Plasma, it's available on lots of distros, but to name a few:
  
  Kubuntu is just Ubuntu with KDE preinstalled.
  
  Nobara has a KDE version.
  
  Personally, I'm on openSUSE. It is a somewhat more niche distro, relatively different from Ubuntu and Fedora. They really make KDE shine, though (with lots of detail work).
  
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I always opt for Pop!_OS if NVidia is in the mix.

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- Ive been using 3 monitors on gtx1060, runining popos
  
  1
Try Fedora's KDE spin (which uses Wayland).

I always thought it has the best hardware support.

I run a dual monitor setup, with no issues, and game often.

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5
The monitors blacking out and the system not booting is suspicious.

I think you've said you tried a few distros. Does the exact same behaviour happen on all distros?

If possible, I would suggest giving it all another go with x11 instead of Wayland. Nvidia is still the worst for using with Wayland. It's gotten a lot better, and it's almost there for complete support, but there are still some issues here and there.

5
- Kinda the conclusion I reached as well. Next build I intend to go with Radeon specially so i can try and get rid of windows but that's not really in the budget right now
  
  2
Don't use Wayland. I've had a very awful experience with Wayland and external monitors on an Nvidia with the proprietary driver. Because Wayland is the default in most modern distros it might be that all of the ones you tried used it. Try Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, it's using X11 as the default and it's Ubuntu based so it should be familiar grounds.

4
- Yeah. Wayland + Nvidia seems to = sadness it seems. Might be worth a go.
  
  4
Set up a usb with ventoy and try a bunch of distros. If you have 64gb ram you should even be good to download a game and try it out from the live environment

4
Have you tried Mint, specifically LMDE¹? It (Mostly) Just Works™ like Ubuntu, but without the Canonical baggage. It handled my weird Lenovo Carbon X1 slate out of the box. Stable like Debian, progressive like Debian isn't.

¹ Linux Mint Debian Edition

3
- Never tried that one. Might be worth a go.
  
  2
Are you using Wayland when you run into these monitor issues?

2
- I believe so. That is used by default in Ubuntu yes?
  
  2
All distros are free -- just choose whatever you find interesting, give it a spin, see what happens.

2
Once again for gaming I'll vouch for Nobara, not because I've tried too much else but everything just worked out of the box. No monitor issues, no driver problems, fixes, patches and tweaks pre-applied. Just all around a good experience.

2
What about using workspaces instead of extra monitors? You can use Linux Mint EDGE for that.

1
- Eh. I like what I like. Being able to glance down for a guide or look at who is messaging me on discord is preferable to having to do key presses to switch to a new workspace, then switch back. Maybe im just too old to learn new stuff. 😋
  
  2
  
  I'm with you on liking multi-monitor set-ups. I also have several workspaces and activities (a KDE thing—you can think of it as another set of workspaces accessible via a shortcut key), which means I've got tons of "space" to play around with.
  
  I‌ could have my e-mail program run on one workspace, then switch to my main workspace with one screen for VSCode (or whatever) and another for the browser window with lots of tabs that I can just refer to while doing work. And then in a different activity, a multi-media program might be playing a podcast or just some music to help me focus.
  
  My discord is usually on the same activity as my multi-media program though, as I don't really need to refer to it as often. If there's a new message for me, my system gives me a notification and an icon in my system tray lights up or something, indicating a new message.
  
  But yeah! You do you with your preferred workflow!
  
  1
Trial and error.

Distro hopping and land where you like the most.

You can try most distros from bootable usb.

1
I can't really give you advice but maybe my current set-up can give you some ideas.

My desktop has an AMD Ryzen 5 3500 for my CPU and an AMD‌ Radeon RX 7600 for the GPU and some 16GB of RAM. I have two cheap monitors both connected via HDMI and are 1080p 75Hz. My desktop runs Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 6 Wayland, and aside from some minor keyboard-related issues, it's running fine. My desktop set-up could be just bog-standard that things just work, but there ya go.

I am not telling you to install Arch Linux, not unless you're willing to dive into the Arch Wiki, lots of forum posts and the occasional Stack Overflow thread whenever you've got a problem—not to mention dive into the command line and read lots of arcane logs to even start to know what to search for online. However, if your problems are due to lack of software support or something similar, then with Arch (or really, Arch-based distros, just stay away from Manjaro) and its wide array of packages, you might just be able to make things work for your hardware.

1
- Honestly arch always sounded exhausting to me. I'm fine with cli interfaces but arch always came across as requiring a lot of personal investment that I wasnt really ready for. Might be my best option at this point tho
  
  4
  
  Regardless of what distro you do end up using, the Arch Wiki is a great bookmark to have. The info is like 90% relevant to Linux in general, and at worst you might need to figure out what a file path or package might have changed to in the likes of Ubuntu or Fedora.
  
  4
  
  Yeah, using Arch is a commitment. On top of having to keep your system relatively up-to-date (this is probably the easiest part though), you also have to be ready to do some work in resolving problems when they do crop up (usually after an update, lol).
  
  However, I think most of the work in using Arch is the installation process, making sure things run smoothly after installation, and hammering out the kinks that may arise. After that, so long as you keep your system relatively up-to-date (and having resolved any issues resulting from updates), it's mostly hassle-free.
  
  The only other distro (or rather, OS) that I think has as wide a source for installable software is NixOS, but not only I haven't any experience with it, it's still relatively new and wouldn't recommend it for daily-driving, much less gaming.
  
  But yeah, Arch is definitely not for the faint nor half-hearted, but it might just work out for you. Good luck and may you be able to find a Linux distro that works with your hardware.
  
  1
Wait for NVIDIA 555 driver release, use a bleeding edge rolling release distro (like Arch or OpenSuse tumbleweed) to get explicit sync support and use Wayland instead of X11. Soon the pain will be over…

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