First of all, I’d like to apologize for contributing to the constant stream/flow of posts in which the main theme/idea/motive is to find a suitable distro for the OPoster. I wish we’d have a dedicated community that’s active/large to the extent we’d be able to delegate/contain these convos to their designated places, but alas…
With that out of the way, we can get to the actual meat. So, for two weeks, I’ve been reading a ton about different distros. And while I’m still primarily overwhelmed by the amount of choice, I think I’ve finally got somewhat of an idea.
Requirements:
- Software-wise, the only thing I’m worried about is Davinci Resolve. It should work, but it seems to be hit or miss. The distro I wish to use should handle this gracefully.
- I’m a huge snob for security and privacy. As I’m kinda worried that desktop Linux’ security isn’t on par with M$ or macOS, I wish to use as secure of a system as possible to (somewhat) compensate for that.
I like to follow ‘authorities’ whenever I’m overwhelmed. As I’ve known them since their PrivacyTools-days, it was easy for me to designate Privacy Guides as such. Hence, I’ve come to appreciate its recommendations. But, I believe the tailor-made consensus by this communities’ experts is at least equally important.
That’s where I’m coming from, let’s head over to the questions:
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Are PrivacyGuides’ recommendations actually good in the first place?
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From what I can tell, the subset of security-focused distros are (at least potentially) my end-game. But, from what I could gather, they’re not sensible picks for a newb. Is this correct?
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As for what remains, I got the following assumptions (please correct me if I’m wrong*):
- The anonymity-focused distros don’t seem well-suited for general use.
- Hardening Arch or NixOS to the extent we find within the offerings of Fedora or openSUSE isn’t trivial.
- Fedora’s Atomic Desktops offer something tangibly superior security-wise over what we find for traditional Fedora and openSUSE at the expense of convenience.
As such, am I correct to assume that Fedora Atomic Desktops are best for me? Would you happen to know if it plays nicely with Davinci Resolve?
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Are there any other distros worth mentioning within the context? If so, which ones and why?
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Any gotchas or otherwise I should be aware of?
Thanks in advance for your input!
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Fedora. Any spin will do.
Thank you. Could you perhaps substantiate it beyond an endorsement? Like, for a newb, I don’t see how it would be better than openSUSE beyond prioritizing the following:
- “Leading edge” (Fedora) vs rolling release (Tumbleweed) OR ‘stable’ (Leap)
- IBM (Fedora) vs SUSE (openSUSE) - (We might even choose to reframe this as US vs Germany/EU)
Like, for an outsider, the Fedora endorsement mostly just confirms that Fedora is the more popular option. But that doesn’t have to be on merit. If it is on merit, would you so kind to point this out? Especially security-wise*
Fedora is the “new” Ubuntu after Canonical made some bad calls about Ubuntu as a distro. It has little if any weird customizations, and gives you the stock experience of Gnome or KDE.
I don’t have any serious issues with Suse I guess(?), but the community is lacking, and the frequency of issues with updates and packages is way more than Fedora.
So, if I understood you correctly, openSUSE does have weird customizations and does not give a stock experience. Right?
but the community is lacking, and the frequency of issues with updates and packages is way more than Fedora.
Interesting. The first part was something I was expecting, but the latter part actually surprised me.
I suppose that, if it came down to Fedora vs openSUSE, I’d just have to give it Fedora then.
Anyhow, any thoughts on non-atomic Fedora vs atomic Fedora?
If you’re new, don’t mess with immutable distros. They have a purpose, and it’s not for people just getting acquainted with modern computing. It gives you zero benefits, and will only make things more complicated.
So what is the purpose of immutable distros?
Furthermore, my introductory reading would suggest some benefits:
- The read-only base system as well as the containerization might prove beneficial for stability.
- Furthermore, I would think that the read-only base system also contributes for eliminating some attack vectors.
And, with GrapheneOS’ endorsement of secureblue, I find it hard to believe that it doesn’t provide any benefits. But please feel free to enlighten me on this.
Though usability is probably a very legit concern, though. So perhaps not the brightest of ideas to start with as a first distro, but we’ll see.
The entire functional premise of immutable distro builds was for mobile and edge devices. It makes flashing/updating dead simple, and it’s easier to revert to a known good revision if something goes wrong.
There is no “stability” benefit, because the running system is unchanged, only the filesystem operates differently. I’m not sure where you read that. Also, containers aren’t inherently more stable than anything, so that’s extra confusing if you read that somewhere.
The filesystem being read-only doesn’t help reduce your attack surface at all? If you’re vulnerable to a zero-day on any running service on stock distros, you’d be vulnerable on immutable as well.
Distro’s are not like picking between windows or mac, Nearly all linux distributions are based on the same linux kernel and many of the base GNU packages. The main differences between distributions are philosophical.
Some distro’s will focus on free as in speech over free as in beer meaning if something has closed source, or proprietary code they may or may not include it. You can still download and install proprietary software and drivers regardless of this initial choice.
Some distro’s will have a preferred package manager which is like their software or app store, but if you dont like the one they picked you can install a different one.
As for security, linux is as secure as you make it, its vastly more secure than Windows out of the box, and probably more secure than MacOS but we dont really know because both Apple and Microsoft dont publish their code so we cant review or audit its security. Setting up a secure linux install is dead simple and you can find dozens of guides for every distribution and edge case.
Since the main tool you want to run is Davinci Resolve it makes sense to see what distribution they test against and go with that, rather than pick an arbitrary “secure” distribution. It will be simpler to harden their preferred distro than to take a hardened distro and make their software work on it.
I suggest checking their website and going with their top suggestion.
Thank you for your comment! It contains many gems to benefit from*
It will be simpler to harden their preferred distro than to take a hardened distro and make their software work on it.
This is what I found to be particularly curious. So, would you say that the (extra) security/hardening provided by the likes of Qubes OS and secureblue is trivial to apply elsewhere? If so, would you be so kind to give me some pointers? I did try to find it myself but failed. Perhaps I’m not using the correct search terms OR perhaps I don’t even know where to look.
I suggest checking their website and going with their top suggestion.
Excellent. Why didn’t I think of this before 😜 . Uhmm…, based on their instructions, I believe installing the Rocky Linux 8.6 image that they provide is the safe bet. Right?
Finally, I’m left with two questions:
- What does Rocky Linux’ absence from Privacy Guides list suggest? Would you happen to know how it’s (perhaps supposedly) tangibly worse than their picks?
The easiest distros to run Resolve would probably be Rocky Linux 8, Alma Linux 8 (both are based on RHEL 8). Instead of the EOL Rocky/Alma 8.6, you should use release 8.10 (8.6 would update to 8.10 anyway). However, while still currently “supported”, these are still shipping (mostly) 6-year-old (!) packages. Also, only a small number of packages is actively supported by Red Hat. IMO, this implies that these distros offer a lower level of security. The most critical parts (browser, kernel) are still well-supported, so the difference is probably not too large for most regular users. However, you may also struggle to run some other software (although Flatpaks are available). It’s unfortunate that Resolve only supports an ancient version of Rocky (Rocky 10 is now out)…
Oh wow. Thank you so much for that information! Much appreciated!
Hmm…, so I suppose both Rocky Linux and Alma Linux are out of consideration then. Which is definitely a pity considering Davinci Resolve. What would you suggest instead?
Debian
I did not read the post, I just came here to say Debian since that’s the answer to the general question. 😄
Firstly tell what ur GPU that u wanna use it for davinci resolve ,secondly tell what ur threat model because comparing directly security of Mac os and windows doesn’t make any sense ,tell what u want exactly to achieve
Firstly tell what ur GPU that u wanna use it for davinci resolve
An Amd GPU from 7 years ago
secondly tell what ur threat model
I haven’t properly formalized my threat model yet. But assume that I want protection against any and all untargeted attacks.
tell what u want exactly to achieve
A general-use OS that I’d use to replace my Windows 10 installation. There’s a ton of software that I use and for which I have to find replacements (eventually), but Davinci Resolve is probably my biggest worry.
Is Vega 64? Or rx 580 if that so u will need to ready fight for opencl drivers cause davinci not working without them at all ,u will have to use something like opecl-mesa with rustcl RUSTICL_ENABLE.
It’s vega. So, how exactly should I proceed? Thank you so much for the help!
Trial and error as long as it isn’t a professional need. At some point you just have to try and see what works for your machine and needs.
You’re probably right. I just hoped to receive some valuable input. Thankfully, I did get some of that; so this wasn’t an exercise in vain.
