Valve Has Been Developing A New Mesa Vulkan Shader Compiler For Radeon

[Veto]

Haha, I hope Valve start putting Arch first ;-). I've been using it for years now, fantastic distro.

What would you recommend for an Arch newbie: Manjaro or Arch proper?
Is it stable enough to use for a server also or is it mainly for desktop use due to the rolling distro nature?

Thanks.

[SpyroRyder]

What would you recommend for an Arch newbie: Manjaro or Arch proper?
Is it stable enough to use for a server also or is it mainly for desktop use due to the rolling distro nature?

Thanks.

Antergos tbh. Really it depends on how much of a set up system you want. Pure arch is setup just from the pure cli and it's easy to miss some packages if you don't just blanket install some groups (Gnome Keyring always gets me there because it's not a hard dependency of anything else). Both Antergos and Manjaro provide you with a fully set up GUI Desktop fro mthe get go but Antergos is fully compatible with Arch, requiring just changing a couple of lines in the pacman conf IIRC, vs Manjaro which has all it's own repos and packages.

Edit: I just rememberexd that Antergos shut down. There is a successor called EndeavourOS which is launching soon but until then the slightly older Antergos ISO's will probably still work fine enough to install and jump in

[LeJimster]

What would you recommend for an Arch newbie: Manjaro or Arch proper?
Is it stable enough to use for a server also or is it mainly for desktop use due to the rolling distro nature?

Thanks.

I use vanilla arch as I wanted to learn the process of installing it from scratch, it certainly helped me fix any issues ive run into as I'm more familiar.

For a newbie Manjaro is a good starting point. Like the other guy said, Antergos is excellent (I have it on my parents machine) but they're dropping support for it.

I'm not sure I would use Antergos for server, but its doable of course.

[skeevy420]

A RX 460 (can be flashed to a RX 560) goes for around $60 on eBay and handles 1080p pretty nicely; that's probably the lowest-end GPU I'd consider getting today though.

That's where I bought my 4GB RX 580 for $130...and I'm very happy with my purchase. Actual 580 and not a flashed one. While I'd like an 8GB model, 4GB is just fine for 16:9 1080p with damn-near maxed out settings (21:9 1080p might need the 8GB model since that's close to the same amount of pixels as 2K). I'll have to get an 8GB+ card whenever I upgrade my monitor (it's a TV).

I did get ripped off on a $75 Vega 64 by some Chinese dude pretending to be an Australian...eBay/PayPal refunded me so it's all good. I knew it was too good to be true going in, but with all the consumer protections in place I took the gamble and used the refund money on the 580.

[skeevy420]

What would you recommend for an Arch newbie: Manjaro or Arch proper?
Is it stable enough to use for a server also or is it mainly for desktop use due to the rolling distro nature?

Thanks.

Manjaro. It'll get you comfortable with the Arch tools and upgrade processes while giving you a bit of protection from shooting yourself in the foot.

A lot of people are saying Antergos, but no, ignore them because that's just an easy-mode Arch installer that will leave you with no support. In its current state, it's better for someone with a tiny bit of Arch experience because, if something goes wrong, you don't have the Manjaro community to help you out, the Arch community won't help you (because it isn't Arch and they're assholes), and Antergos doesn't exist anymore.

I'm a bit torn on switching from Manjaro to EndeavourOS when it's released. I like Manjaro, but it can be a little noobish until one removes some of their helpers...but once that's done it's essentially Arch running from the Extra Stable repository and that's a good thing...

[skeevy420]

I use vanilla arch as I wanted to learn the process of installing it from scratch, it certainly helped me fix any issues ive run into as I'm more familiar.

For a newbie Manjaro is a good starting point. Like the other guy said, Antergos is excellent (I have it on my parents machine) but they're dropping support for it.

I'm not sure I would use Antergos for server, but its doable of course.

Pure Arch is what I started using 12 years ago. Switched to ArchBang and then Antergos for quick reinstalls for the times I shot myself in the foot; switched to Manjaro on and off over the past 4 years and Arch was what I went to after I played around with Suse for a little while...a week later I got hit with a systemd bug that slipped into Arch Stable that left my system unbootable and I've been on Manjaro since.

Once some of their more annoying helpers are removed it is like running Arch with an extra layer of testing for the stable branch because Manjaro's Testing is Arch Stable with the Manjaro stuff -- I like Arch, but I also like a stable and very well tested system and Manjaro, due to being downstream from Arch to catch random Stable Repo bugs, is just a more stable OS.

[humbug]

And that is why I have no problem with Steam's monopoly. They are a good company that cares about the whole community and not just about profit. Screw all the other launchers who just want a piece of the pie.

Steam doesn't have a monopoly though. They are the most dominant PC store but nothing close to a monopoly. There are lots of other PC stores and it's a multi billion dollar industry even outside of steam. And they are not gate keepers of the platform.

[L_A_G]

I can definitely see the idea behind this, but what worries me somewhat is that this will further fragment AMD drivers on Linux creating something akin to the infamous (and untrue) FUD about how you have to test and debug for loads of different distros if you want to release software on Linux.

Discounting long since discontinued hardware we've already got Mesa with LLVM for those who want as much of their graphics driver stack to be open, AMD's own AMDGPU-PRO for those who want certified drivers and their ROC stack for those who want to do compute with an open stack. As such I hope that this either ends up as a learning experience used for those whose job it is to optimize the LLVM-based stacks or then that it becomes part of the de-facto stack, at least for the open source AMD graphics.

[skeevy420]

I can definitely see the idea behind this, but what worries me somewhat is that this will further fragment AMD drivers on Linux creating something akin to the infamous (and untrue) FUD about how you have to test and debug for loads of different distros if you want to release software on Linux.

Discounting long since discontinued hardware we've already got Mesa with LLVM for those who want as much of their graphics driver stack to be open, AMD's own AMDGPU-PRO for those who want certified drivers and their ROC stack for those who want to do compute with an open stack. As such I hope that this either ends up as a learning experience used for those whose job it is to optimize the LLVM-based stacks or then that it becomes part of the de-facto stack, at least for the open source AMD graphics.

I agree. When I was using my R7 260x, for a while there my choices for drivers were RadeonSI and AMDGPU (or AMDGPU-Pro, but I'm an Arch/Manjaro person); with Vulkan, and every thing past this is true of my RX 580 as well, there's RADV, AMDVLK, and AMDVLK-Pro to choose from; then there were/are still environment variables, configuration files, kernel command lines, driconf, Wine with and without DXVK and other such Wine stuff, and more.

Thank goodness AMDGPU worked really well for me with the games I was playing from 2015+ which allowed me to quit using RadeonSI. I'm glad we have all the choices available, but, honestly, some days it does feel like there are too damn many but they've also saved my ass a few times so I'm not gonna complain that much

[bridgman]

Thank goodness AMDGPU worked really well for me with the games I was playing from 2015+ which allowed me to quit using RadeonSI.

When you say "quit using RadeonSI" what are you using for OpenGL ? AFAIK your options are either Mesa with RadeonSI or our closed source OpenGL driver from the -PRO packages. I suspect you are using amdgpu kernel driver plus Mesa/RadeonSI GL driver.