I’m looking for a specific distro to handle some tasks.
I got a second hand rig with Nvidia GTX 1050 that I want to use as a home server. I wanted to use HoloISO but it doesn’t support nvidia. If someone says “do it anyway, it’s fine” I’ll install it though.
The idea is to support a Jellyfin server and Steam Link gaming but steam is not big on Nvidia so it’s hard to narrow down “black screen” issues etc. I’m also planning to manage it via VNC and SSH.
I’m familiar with Ubuntu based systems since I develop software on Ubuntu based KDE distro but never had a graphics card.
So it boils down to:
- Ease of setup including nvidia drivers
- Ease of update via command line (I’m not going to download nvidia drivers from their website to update proprietary drivers)
- Graphics performance
- Prefer Ubuntu based
I’m up for Gnome, Xface, Cinnamon, KDE or whatever DE.
Edit: Changed title to better reflect requirements and not have misleading “headless” and “server” in it
I think many here misunderstood your intention. The combination of “server” and “what DE?” is a weird thing for most of us, especially since you said headless, which usually means no desktop, only ssh and stuff.
But I think I understand what you are up to.
You want something mainly for gaming, where the PC acts as “brain” of the games, and you only stream them to a low-power device, similar to what Stadia was planned. Right?
For that, I’ll recommend Bazzite with Moonlight or how it’s called.
Bazzite is a gaming oriented Fedora Atomic spin that has Nvidia-drivers already baked in, updates itself (you only need to reboot once in a while) and gives you a great experience, even offering to boot straight into Steam’s BPM.
Moonlight/ Sunshine/ whatever is a screen sharing protocol or software that allows you to stream games without latency or much quality loss.
I’m no pro tho, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt :)
I would personally avoid any of those “gaming oriented” distros. They are very small and lack the support of a larger entity.
For Nvidia I would go with Pop os and or Linux Mint
Generally speaking, you’re right.
But Bazzite is different. It’s built on uBlue/ Fedora Atomic and therefore barely needs maintenance, both for the devs and the users. Keeping a distro secure and updated is a huge burden normally, but here, it’s done from upstream via Github-actions.
Also, community wise, it already has a big one AND Fedora Atomic guides also apply to that, e.g. install scripts.
Another pro is that the Nvidia drivers are baked into the image, so if they break, they’re instantly fixed by the devs, because then everyone has a broken system. But that’s no problem, since you can just roll back in seconds.
For a pure gaming focused device like this one, a special distro makes sense. You’ll get a better experience and performance compared to Mint for example, due to kernel patches, built in tools, etc.
You’re spot on, I’ll give Bazzite a shot and see where it goes. Booting straight into BPM sounds very good. :)
If you want to also go down this route I heard that using a HDMI dummy plug allows GPU acceleration with Moonlight. It’s $2 on Aliexpress.