I made a post before about running desktop Linux here where I’d just got setup with Manjaro and was pretty happy with it. I’m not particularly religious about operating systems (anymore..) and mainly wanted to use Linux for the better rendering speeds, and because I’m just generally more comfortable in a Linux environment anyway.
Unfortunately that Manjaro installation broke a few times during upgrades, and then finally left itself unable to boot up a few weeks back. Although I’m sure the problems would have been fixable given enough effort, I decided to just try and start fresh and see if there was anything better.
I tried installing a few different distributions, but they either had problems with my monitor setup (Linux Mint) or wouldn’t startup after installing (Fedora and others). Again - probably fixable problems - but I didn’t want the hassle, and decided to give regular old Ubuntu a try.
I decided I’d go even more conservative than usual, and went for the LTS version (since that one was explicitly supported by Unreal Engine 5). It turns out, basically everything works absolutely perfectly:
- Unreal Engine 5 worked on Manjaro but had some display bugs, particularly with tooltips. Not so on Ubuntu.
- Installation for Japanese/Chinese input worked basically out the box and switching is smooth and easy. I found fticx quite buggy on Manjaro.
- Citrix worked perfectly for logging in to work. On Manjaro it was also fine but I had had to manually edit some config options to fix some input problems on the remote side.
- My Veikk drawing tablet works and has native Linux drivers available, with a nice UI for configuring it!
- The only games I really play on Steam are visual novels for improving my Japanese and Chinese, and everything there works perfectly via its Proton compatibility mode.
- I bought both Substance Painter and Substance Designer on Steam because they run natively on Linux too, and of course they also work perfectly.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, but I’ve suddenly found myself in a position where every application I use is installed and working smoothly within Ubuntu. The only exceptions are the Affinity applications but I don’t use those very often anyway, so can probably get by fine with just Gimp.
