I’ve been an IT professional for 20 years now, but I’ve mainly dealt with Windows. I’ve worked with Linux servers through out the years, but never had Linux as a daily driver. And I decided it was time to change. I only had 2 requirements. One, I need to be able to use my Nvidia 3080 ti for local LLM and I need to be able to RDP with multiple screens to my work laptop running Windows 10.
My hope was to be able to get this all working and create some articles on how I did it to hopefully inspire/guide others. Unfortunately, I was not successful.
I started out with Ubuntu 22.04 and I could not get the live CD to boot. After some searching, I figured out I had to go in a turn off ACPI in boot loader. After that I was able to install Ubuntu side by side with Windows 11, but the boot loader errored out at the end of the install and Ubuntu would not boot.
Okay, back into Windows to download the boot loader fixer and boot to that. Alright, I’m finally able to get into Ubuntu, but I only have 1 of my 4 monitors working. Install the NVIDIA-SMI and reboot. All my monitors work now, but my network card is now broken.
Follow instructions on my phone to reinstall the linux-modules-extra package. Back into Windows to download that because, you know, no network connections. Reinstall the package, it doesn’t work. Go into advanced recovery, try restoring packages, nothing is working. I can either get my monitors to work or my network card. Never both at the same time.
I give up and decide it’s time to try out Fedora. The install process is much smoother. I boot up 3 of 4 monitors work. I find a great post on installing Nvidia drivers and CUDA. After doing that and rebooting, I have all 4 monitors and networking, woohoo!
Now, let’s test RDP. Install FreeRDP run with /multimon, and the screen for each remote window is shifted 1/3 of the way to the left. Strange. Do a little looking online, find an Issue on GitHub about how it is based on the primary monitor. Long story short, I can’t use multiple monitor RDP because I have different resolution monitors and they are stacked 2x2 instead of all in a row. Trust me I tried every combination I could think of.
Someone suggested using the nightly build because they have been working on this issue. Okay, I try that out and it fails to install because of a missing dependency. Apparently, there is a pull request from December to fix this on Fedora installs, but it hasn’t been merged. So, I would need to compile that specific branch myself.
At this point, I’m just so sick of every little thing being a huge struggle, I reboot and go back into Windows. I still have Fedora on there, but who would have thought something that sounds as simple as wanting to RDP across 4 monitors would be so damn difficult.
I’m not saying any of this to bag on Linux. It’s more of a discussion topic on, yes, I agree that there needs to be more adoption on Linux, but if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.
Of course if anyone has any recommendation on getting my RDP working, I’m all ears on that too.
It faschinates me a lot how a company like Nvidia can’t make working drivers even for xorg despite all the hype Nvidia moving their drivers into firmware. Amd sells gpu’s very low numbers and they never have these issues because they can afford to release their drivers for Linux.
Linux foundation should ban Nvidia. So many headaches and wasted resources cured immediadly.
I read the first paragraph and saw your prerequisites included working with nvidia.
That is a non-starter, right there. You can blame Linux for a whole lot of little flaws, but most of the blame should go to your hardware vendor for providing shitty support for Linux.
I agree. The majority of my issues come down to the manufacturers. I even updated my BIOS to see if it would help with the ACPI issues, but no luck. Motherboard is 3 years old, so it’s not like I’m trying this on brand new hardware either.
Nvidia is by far the most popular dedicated GPU manufacturer out there. If distros can’t figure out how to make it “just work” then Linux will never take off outside of the nerd market.
The problem is Nvidia’s drivers, not the distros.
If someone with no experience installs Linux on their machine, and has to spend 20 hours fixing all of the problems they’re not going to stick with Linux. It doesn’t matter which distro it is, they’re just going to say Linux sucks and never use it again.
There’s a pretty big difference between trying to run software for X OS on Y OS, and trying to just make your computer do basic tasks. The average person doesn’t know that Nvidia are a bunch of assholes, nor do they care.
I know.
But there’s nothing that can realistically be done about it until Nvidia stops being dickheads.
Distros can’t constantly hop about putting out fires that Nvidia starts, and neglect the other work they need to do.
Even when they do that, it doesn’t work anyway. It’s still buggy, systems still break. It really is only Nvidia who can fix their shit drivers, unless the nouveau team make an alternative that’s superior to Nvidia’s proprietary drivers.
And nah, there’s no difference between my Nvidia/Photoshop example. None whatsoever.
Just use Arch.
I like Arch, but a first-time install of Arch for a beginner who doesn’t have a lot of patience for reading documentation and troubleshooting is not good advice.
He said he’s an IT professional for 20 years. That’s like the epitome of patience for reading documentations and troubleshooting
What a fantastically shit idea for a beginner.
I really hope Linus sees this
if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.
The average user just wants to open up a browser to use tiktok, instagram, gmail, and whatever else it is people use these days. Maybe edit a few documents and look at local pictures? The average user isn’t going to use RDP or train an LLM.
As others have said: NVIDIA sucks for linux. They have sucked for linux for more than a decade (snippet). And RDP: try Remmina.
Also dualbooting is so-so. Windows likes to mess up the bootloader for no reason during updates. If you switch, it’s best to go full linux or try first from a VM.
Did you just CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 your comment?
Looks like it, doesn’t it?
Not that you did anything wrong in this process but I think you stacked the deck against yourself by requiring an open-source OS work so seamlessly with a proprietary one.
Like with any unfamiliar tech I find it is probably smoother to start small and work your way up.
So find a laptop that people have no issues running Linux on. Get one and then install just Linux on that and play with it.
The thing is, Linux has a small user base and so it probably isn’t realistic to expect it to support every conceivable hardware configuration on top of dual booting on every one with Windows. It’s way better than it used to be but sometimes people run into problems. Like me trying to get 5.19 kernel to work properly with my specific newer AMD GPU (any 6.x kernel is fine so like Fedora? No prob).
One of the things I try to do is research what network card chipsets, sound chipsets, and video card models work easily because some just don’t.
It sucks I know. Linux doesn’t have a gazillion dollar market behind it providing significant incentive for vendors to get their shit straight. Even so Linux does pretty well.
Anyway. When you’re fighting with several things at once it is easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated. Dual boot with windows, alone, can be iffy in my recent experience. Then add Nvidia, more headache. Then add some less common use cases like rdp… Etc.
Best of luck if you try again.
You tried. That is far more than many people. Good for you!
I have had similar experiences, but from Linux to other OSes. The mental models for using them are really different, and those don’t get enough discussion.
Sound like fun 🙃 frustrating fun, but hopefully you get something that works when you come back to it. Unusual setups always pay the price.
I would suggest trying a remote desktop solution other than rdp… Although I can see how that may not work since it would involve installing software on your work machine.
Multiple mistakes:
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You went with a very old distro, Ubuntu 22.04 is almost 2 years old. You could pick a non-lts ubuntu instead. Thankfully you ended up picking Fedora.
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A single google search could’ve given you better alternatives to FreeRDP like Remmina. You can always ask people stuff like this on Lemmy or elsewhere (“what’s the best rdp client on linux?”) rather than waiting till you run out of patience.
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You shouldn’t need to compile software by yourself, you can use flatpak to install newer versions of software and flathub even has a beta repo you can add for even newer software.
It’s not against you, we all learn from mistakes. Just try to be more social about your linux journey if you don’t want to struggle
Tldr: you made the classic mistake of going head first into this without a friend to help you or at least documenting yourself properly on the current state of Linux desktops through various medias like Youtube. It doesn’t help that you suffered from the ol’ “I’m a windows expert so this should be similar/easy and if it fails it’s not my fault”
Ubuntu 22.04 is not “very old”. It’s the latest LTS release of Ubuntu. I do not, at all, fault an IT professional for picking the LTS release instead of the absolute latest latest release.
I think it is a communication failure for Linux to not communicate that the jump between Linux distro versions (e.g. from Fedora 38 to Fedora 39) is not the same as a jump from Windows 8 to Windows 10. It is similar to the jump between the different Windows subversions, like from 21H2 to 22H2. Most people don’t even know what those numbers mean, and for most people, it doesn’t matter. A distro upgrade is nothing more than a big update, and that’s how I think it ought to be presented. People should be encouraged to use the non-LTS version as a default, and gently nudged to upgrade once a new one comes out. It shouldn’t be presented as a conplete change in operating system versions, but rather as a feature update. That’s what Windows does, and Windows versions are practically invisible!
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Its sad but linux is still a second class citizen. Nvidea drivers have improved greatly over the years, but it can be still flaky especially newer ones.
Multi moniter support too, it has a history troubled with challenges. Its much much better than it used to be but sometimes there are setups and usecases which have problems. It used to be multiple monitors, just having them as a desktop, was impossible. Nowaday I can daily drive Linux and expect to have a good desktop experience across multiple monitors.
Mindyou, every windows update its a dieroll what breaks for my work surface labtop. Often my display or dock behaviour breaks or my bluetooth, or my networking. Not to excuse the bugs in linux, but to show that even MS on their own hardware have bugs like that. Pcs are hard and even MS can’t do it flawlessly.
What you describe as simple multimonitor RDP might actually be a very complex task from a technology and display standpoint.
That being said, it totally sucks having a usecase and finding out that for you have problems getting there. I agree that Linux still has major hurdles for general adoption, (although again, it is so much better than it used to be). Look at it this way: if desktop linux had the same amount of money and development time thrown at it as Windows or MacOS, we’d have a very different experience.
As for tips. I recommend to dualboot. Use MS for your usecases that are not a good experience and use Linux for the other things. Keep checking in with the multiple RDP tech/workflow to see if it works. I did the same thing for years. The only reason I used windows was my games. For other things I used Linux and learned my way around the desktop while doing that. Eventually Proton came along and I could switch entirely.
News Flash!
“Linux is still a pain in the ass, even for experienced IT professionals.” More at 11…
I’ve run Linux for a great many things over the years. Running 2 AWS LightSail instances for my own use. Running dozens of Ubuntu Server instances at work. Shit just works.
But Linux is a hard fail for a daily driver. Maybe not for you, but for most of us it sucks.
I’ve tried and tried and tried, for 20+ years. Of course I can make it work, but it’s a pain in the ass. I got work to do on my daily driver, and fucking around as well. I need a desktop that just works. With everything.
It’s more like Linux is a pain in the ass, especially for IT professionals.
How many people are trying to use 4 monitors with weird configurations and admin software? Most people open up their laptop lid and run some programs, that’s about it.
Point in case, much like OP I do personally use 2 monitors + Nvidia GPU + LLM and it worked out of the box on Arch Linux, but Wayland crashes my setup so I need to be aware of that.
For rdp take a look at remmina
Yep, Remmina is awesome. I wish I had it at work.
Weak
Skill issue
