Using Clear Linux As A Desktop Linux Distribution - It Works Well But With Some "Papercuts"

[Michael]

Am I clear in understanding that there is no capability to install proprietary drivers (NVidia, AMD) at this time, but that they are maybe considering some patches that would make it possible?

That would be a non starter for many professional users looking to maximize performance. (Quadro, Radeon PRO running CAE software)

Michael - have performance comparisons been done running Clear Linux on Intel vs AMD CPUs? Do AMD CPUs take a serious hit? This is an Intel curated distro after all, so that is my suspicion.

There's plenty of Intel/AMD Clear Linux CPU tests if searching Phoronix.

[danboid]

I thought Michael was ripping me off when I saw this article earlier as I posted a similar review of trying to use Clear as a desktop to the Clear Linux github bug tracker on Sunday:

https://github.com/clearlinux/distribution/issues/461

TL;DR

It's not ready for me yet due to its poor media support (no ffmpeg and related tools yet) but I am impressed with the general speed of the OS and the developers have responded in full to the various tickets I've opened against it to detail my current disappointments, which is undoubtedly a good sign.

Clear seems to be very aggressive on power saving on laptops. It seems to sleep my onboard soundcard after its not been used for about 30s which is something I've not seen under Linux before.

[brrrrttttt]

Why don't they have an iso for download? I was going to give this a go for a temporary VM, but Proxmox turns it's nose at anything uploaded to the iso store that isn't an iso.

[arjan_intel]

Am I clear in understanding that there is no capability to install proprietary drivers (NVidia, AMD) at this time, but that they are maybe considering some patches that would make it possible?

That would be a non starter for many professional users looking to maximize performance. (Quadro, Radeon PRO running CAE software)

Michael - have performance comparisons been done running Clear Linux on Intel vs AMD CPUs? Do AMD CPUs take a serious hit? This is an Intel curated distro after all, so that is my suspicion.

we have DKMS for this as a bundle....

[andyprough]

I thought Michael was ripping me off when I saw this article earlier as I posted a similar review of trying to use Clear as a desktop to the Clear Linux github bug tracker on Sunday:

https://github.com/clearlinux/distribution/issues/461

TL;DR

It's not ready for me yet due to its poor media support (no ffmpeg and related tools yet) but I am impressed with the general speed of the OS and the developers have responded in full to the various tickets I've opened against it to detail my current disappointments, which is undoubtedly a good sign.

Clear seems to be very aggressive on power saving on laptops. It seems to sleep my onboard soundcard after its not been used for about 30s which is something I've not seen under Linux before.

You are being extremely kind with your comment here. The vast majority of people wouldn't go through near the work that you put in during your review to get Clear up and running. Having to switch to a UEFI system alone would be a deal killer for many, not to mention the 8 or 9 additional failed installation attempts due to the buggy installer. And to top it off, the lack of software, lack of fonts, lack of codecs, the buggy package manager, the bloated bundles, and having to stitch together a system with a bunch of flatpaks and appimages in place of routine packages? Your review reads like a resounding NO, whereas your comment here is much more kind toward the distro.

[V1tol]

V1tol, you should try with native linux virtualisation tech like libvirt/kvm, instead of proprietary or (worse) made-by-oracle tools. I would recommend you to try virt-manager if you want a GUI, it works great and is easy to use.

Actually I am using VMware or VirtualBox also because I have macOS and Windows machines. I think that ClearLinux cannot gain enough popularity if some Windows user that considers switching to Linux, cannot run it on something that pops up on first line in Google search "virtual machine for windows". Ubuntu, Manjaro etc can run in VMware or Virtualbox without any problems and Clear was the first distro that I faced these problems with.

But anyway thank you for virt-manager - I never thought it has Windows version available. I will play with it tonight on my winbox.

[edwaleni]

You are being extremely kind with your comment here. The vast majority of people wouldn't go through near the work that you put in during your review to get Clear up and running. Having to switch to a UEFI system alone would be a deal killer for many, not to mention the 8 or 9 additional failed installation attempts due to the buggy installer. And to top it off, the lack of software, lack of fonts, lack of codecs, the buggy package manager, the bloated bundles, and having to stitch together a system with a bunch of flatpaks and appimages in place of routine packages? Your review reads like a resounding NO, whereas your comment here is much more kind toward the distro.

Being a cloud OS, not a desktop OS, I was not expecting these capabilities in the least.

But if Clear does want to expose its performance to the desktop, then yes, I agree, they should include these at a minimum.

[Mark Rose]

I used to use ClearLinux on a bunch of machines until I needed CUDA. I'd gladly switch back if and when CUDA becomes reasonably simple to use.

[celrod]

if we're missing R or other stuff please let us know; we've automated a lot of our R stuff so it's easy to add more

While not an R package, how about rstudio(-server)?
Would be nice not to have to build it, and get updates without needing to occasionally rebuild it.

"nimble", "here"?
Also, how about "rjags" and "runjags"? These have a dependency on JAGS, which can be annoying to configure and build.

Really impressed with just how much good stuff is already in there, and I don't have to bother installing.

Also, the Atom text editor from the atom bundle is currently on 1.32.1, while the latest release is 1.34. While I don't mind (if I did, I'd probably just install Atom using flatpak), I noticed a few packages, such as linter/ide-rust have package versions available requiring a later release.

[Royi]

I wish Intel bundled Clear Linux with Intel MKL, VSML, IPP and Intel Compiler.
This would have been a killer move.