Windows has been a thorn in my side for years. But ever since I started moved to Linux on my Laptop and swapping my professional software to a cross platform alternative, I've been dreaming on removing it from my SSD.
And as soon as I finish my last few projects, I can transition. (I want to do it now).
Trouble is which I danced my way across multiple amazing distros, I can't decide which one to land on since the one software I want to test, Davinci Resolve doesn't work on my Intel Powered Laptop. (curse you intel implementation of OpenCL).
So the opinions of those of you who've used Davinci Resolve, Unity/Godot, and/or FreeCAD. I want it to be stable with minimal down time on hardware with a AMD Ryzen 5 1600x and a RTX 3050. Here's the OS's I am looking at.
CentOS (alt Fedora)
- Pro: Recommended by Davinci Resolve for the OS, has good package manager GUI that separates Applications and System Software (DNF Dragon), Good support for multiple Desktop Environments I like. Game Support is excellent and about a few months behind arch.
- Con: When I last installed Fedora my OS Drives BTFS file system died a horrific and brutal death, losing all of my data. Can't have that. And I personally do not like DNF and how slow it makes updating and browsing packages.
Debain (alt Linux Mint DE)
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Pro: The most stable OS I've used, with a wide range of software support both officially in the distros package manager, or from developers own website. I am most familiar with this OS and APT
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Cons: Ancient packages which may cause issues with Davinci Resolve and Video Games. An over reliance on the terminal to fix simple problems (though this can be said for most linux distros). I personally don't like APT and how it manages the software.
EndevourOS (alt Manjaro)
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Pro: The most up to date OS, great for games with the AUR giving support for a lot of software which isn't available on other distros.
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Cons: Manjaro has died on me once, and is a hassle to setup right and keep up. EndevourOS has no Package Manager GUI, and is over reliant on the Terminal. Can't use pacman in a terminal the commands are confusing.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
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Pro: Like Fedora but doesn't use DNF, good game support
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Cons: Software isn't as well supported.
Edit: from the sounds of thing, and the advice from everyone. I think what I’ll do is an install order while testing distros (either in distro box or on a spare ssd) in the following order.
Debain/Mint DE -> OpenSUSE -> EndevourOS -> CentOS
This list is mostly due to stability and support for nvidia drivers.
sorry if i might repeat someones answer, i did not read everything.
it seems you want it for "work" that assumes that stability and maybe something like LTS is dort of the way to go. This also assumes older but stable packages. maybe better choose a distro that separates new features from bugfixes, this removes most of the hassle that comes with rolling release (like every single bugfix comes with two more new bugs, one removal/incompatible change of a feature that you relied on and at least one feature that cripples stability or performance whilst you cannot deactivate it... yet...)
likely there is at least some software you most likely want to update out of regular package repos, like i did for years with chromium, firefox and thunderbird using some shellscript that compared current version with latest remote to download and unpack it if needed.
however maybe some things NEED a newer system than you currently have, thus if you need such software, maybe consider to run something in VMs maybe using ssh and X11 forwarding (oh my, i still don't use/need wayland *haha)
as for me, i like to have some things shared anyway like my emails on an IMAP store accessible from my mobile devices and some files synced across devices using nextcloud. maybe think outside the box from the beginning. no arch-like OS gives you the stability that the already years-long-hung things like debian redhat/centos offer, but be aware that some OSes might suddenly change to rolling release (like centos i believe) or include rolling-release software made by third parties without respecting their own rules about unstable/testing/stable branches and thus might cripple their stability by such decisions. better stay up to date if what you update to really is what you want.
but for stability (like at work) there is nothing more practical than ancient packages that still get security fixes.
roundabout the last 15 years or more i only reinstalled my workstation or laptop for:
if you choose to run servers and services like imap and/or nextcloud, there is some gain in quickly switching the workstation without having to clone/copy everything but only place some configs there and you're done.
A multi-OS setup is more likely to cover "all" needs while tools like x2vnc exist and can be very handy then, i nearly forgot that i was working on two very different systems, when i had such a setup.
I would suggest to make recovery easy, maybe put everything on a raid1 and make sure you have on offsite and an offline backup with snapshots, so in case of something breaks you just need to replace hardware. thats the stability i want for the tools i work with at least.
if you want to use a rolling release OS for something work related i would suggest to make sure no one externally (their repo, package manager etc) could ever prevent you from reinstalling that exact version you had at that exact point in time (snapshots from repos install media etc). then put everything in something like ansible and try out that reapplying old snapshots is straight forward for you, then (and not earlier) i would suggest that those OSes are ok for something you consider to be as important as "work". i tried arch linux at a time when they already stopped supporting the old installer while the "new" installer wasn't yet ready at all for use, thus i never really got into longterm use of archlinux for something i rely on, bcause i could'nt even install the second machine with the then broken install procedure *haha
i believe one should consider to NOT tinker too much on the workstation. having to fix something you personally broke "before" beeing able to work on sth important is the opposite of awesome. better have a second machine instead, swappable harddrive or use VMs.
The exact OS is IMHO not important, i personally use devuan as it is not affected by some instability annoyances that are present in ubuntu and probably some more distros that use that same software. at work we monitor some of those bugs of that software. within ubuntu cause it creates extra hassle and we workaround those so its mostly just a buggy annoying thing visible in monitoring.