2024 will be the year I finally be the year I ditch windows.
I am not exactly new to linux, yet I am far from an expert. I made my journey over the years form trying Ubuntu (many many major revisions ago) and have found myself down the rabbit hole of going Arch. I run Arch with KDE on my laptop. I want to fully ditch Windows on my desktop, however I feel this will be a much bigger hurdle to overcome.
Build Specs: i7-12700KF Copper Modded EVGA RTX 3090 64gb of 3600mhz DDR4 ASUS Tuf Z690 Wifi D4
I could go into more detail about my specs, but the specs aren't what has made this journey a bit tougher. I use a Line 6 Helix and a Line 6 PowerCab 112+ and both have usb connections to my computer for integration with, you guessed it; windows or mac software only. Now I don't have a problem running wine, and a number of other solutions to run windows programs, I do however have a gap in knowledge in order to try to use these specific programs with specific USB peripherals.
Now, I am not sure if this is the best way, but I had heard the idea of USB passthrough. And I have no clue where to begin with that. Would this be the direction I should be going for programs such as those?
The only other software that I am going to struggle replacing is the RGB lighting software for all of my hardware. Most of it is corsair (Fans, RAM, Water Cooler, and plugins for the asus motherboard.) And my Steeleseries keyboard which uses GG.
I have looked into using OpenRGB but I was unable to figure out how to get those setup as it wasn't as plug and play as the manufacturer software, but understandably of course.
The absolute biggest hurdles is my Nvidia problem. I have always had issues with Nvidia on Arch. I would gladly take an suggestion. For reference, I would be using this mainly for my gaming. I occasionally dabble in Stable Diffusion.
I will be running Arch with KDE preferably, but every single time I have had issues.
I suppose any feedback anyone may have would be helpful.
Checklist of things I need to get working on in Arch, any help would be welcomed:
- Helix Guitar pedal and PowerCab 112+ (USB Passthrough or any other alternatives people may suggest)
- RGB for SteeleSeries Apex Pro (GG software on windows, open to alternatives)
- RGB for Corsair (iQue on windows, open to alternatives)
- Nvidia Drivers
Use whatever you are comfortable with and works for you. At the moment it sounds like Windows might be the path of least resistance. Fine, go with that.
For me, I finally ditched Windows altogether around 15 years ago. Well, I say ditched - my customers and staff ... haven't.
The list of stuff you have problems with might be tricky on Linux simply because the vendors of music gear are unlikely to give a shit. Nvidia should be fine. I have a VMware VM at home which runs Zoneminder on Ubuntu, with a passed through Nvidia GPU. Surely it should be easier on physical hardware. I wrote this: https://wiki.zoneminder.com/GPU_passthrough_in_VMWare
You mention gaming so you'll probably not be bothered with CUDA. You'll need https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA If that doesn't do it for you, hit the Arch forums ...
The forums can be a bit intimidating but if you keep your query concise and show some evidence of effort, someone will probably get you over the line.
I definitely appreciate your response. I truly want to ditch windows, it would be easy without my music hardware though a VM with USB passthrough may be the ticket. The issues I had with Arch and my 3090 were really with trying to go the wayland route. Though that was over a year ago I gave that a shot. I could try again, but since then I have gotten more familiarized with running arch on other systems. I have tried many other distros, and none quite catch me quite like arch.
For my server I have already ditched windows, and went with a ubuntu server. Though I will be changing distros to something else due to differences in opinion with the way Ubuntu and Canonical conduct themselves. I would still rather see people use Ubuntu over windows, but that's not much of a bar to pass.
I may eventually check the forums if this time doesn't pan out with using arch on my main rig.
The logical replacement for Ubuntu is probably Debian. I have quite a lot of Ubuntu servers at work. I am quite seriously considering going upstream. I do like the LTS to LTS promise and that fits well for my customers who like to see enterprisey features without going RedHat or Oracle. You may not have had to deal with "enterprise grade" stuff which loosely translates to bloody expensive and often horrible.
I'm an Arch fan too - actually I'm a Linux fan. I used to do Gentoo (10+ years) but I got tired of my lap overheating. Before that Slackware, Mandrake (Mandriva), RH, Yggdrassil oh and a fair bit of SuSE, not to mention everything Novell did since NetWare 3.1. Whoops, sorry, mind wandering 8)
Wayland and Pipewire will probably do everything eventually but for now, you have functionality gaps. Pipewire is quite amazing and being developed at nearly indecent haste. It might be worth diving in to their community. At worst you will find a lot of like minded people to you.
I haven't exactly decided on what distro for my server, but I have used forks/offshoots of debian, namely Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS for my Pis. I understand the hurdles and such that come along with enterprise related products, as I am an IT professional by trade. I haven't worked with RHEL or Oracle's offerings yet.
I love Arch, but I too love linux. I never got into Gentoo, but I wanted to try it out just for the experience. I do get annoyed with having to compile everything from source with Arch on my laptop for exactly that reason; lap overheating. I also haven't used Slackware, Mandrak/Mandriva, Tggdrassil, or SuSE but I have at least heard of them. And I absolutely love the conversation, mind wandering is alright by me!
The tough pill to swallow with linux for me has been the functionality gaps between different offerings, but I love the choices I am given.
I appreciate your time in responding!