Is the timing good to install Tumbleweed?

[bperris]

I think what really only matters here:
Budget - that always matters
GPU related applications - If the OP is only running a web browser, then some older 20 series RTX or even GTX 1000 should be all set, same for some AMD cards that are well supported by amdgpu, even some radeonsi based ones too. If gaming is involved then I would recommend the most modern GPU arch for Vulkan / Proton. Then there is GPU computing, it is always safer to go with Cuda compared to RocM these days, unless you do pay for the latest RNDA3 or RDNA4 line of AMD graphics.
Power Supply / Case - Some of those top of line cards require a high wattage power supply, and good clearance in the case, and even a support pole too.

The only hassle I find with TW nvidia drivers, I usually have to force re-install the kmp default package to get it rebuild the kmod, usually after large updates that also include the kernel upgrade. I have seen sometimes GCC just fail in the kmod build process too. As for amdgpu, updates to that driver ship with the kernel, but with RADV, you hope a newer Mesa will keep on improving support, like it had some issues with Unreal Engine 5, so I had to use amdvlk instead.

There are the Intel Arc cards which I hard just works out of the box with the latest kernel, but I have never touched.

[karlmistelberger]

@jsmith64

Many Linux users don’t know about Phoronix that does hardware reviews using Linux. When I read about the Samsung 970/980 NVMe SSD performance on Linux, I couldn’t believe it. I confirmed it on my wife’s Samsung NVMe SSD. They are not the best choice for Linux but her’s works fine…just not as good as my WD SN850X. We got her’s in a machine that we bought for the Thermaltake Core V71 case. It had an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 board with a i7-4790K and a new Samsung 1TB 980 Pro in it (No CPU cooler, PSU, GPU or RAM). $80 for the whole thing…couldn’t pass it up.

Bought a WD SN770:

n150:~ # inxi -D
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 420.65 GiB (45.2%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WD BLACK SN770 1TB size: 931.51 GiB
n150:~ # 

The WD SN850X has 533% higher Value & Sentiment:

UserBenchmark: Nvme WD_BLACK SN770 vs WD Black SN850X M.2

There is no significant difference in speed when using Tumbleweed, which does heavy caching at some
13 GByte/sec with the Intel n150.

WD Black SN770 SSD Review: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Updated)

[jsmith64]

Yes, I’m aware of the user opinions and actual performance differences in the real world. Using the machine you wouldn’t be able to tell which one you were booted on without checking.

I bought a new 1TB SN770 in March of 2023. I bought a new 1TB SN850X in August 2023. I paid $60 each for them.

The 770 is now $75.
The 850X is $94.
I checked prices yesterday.

I also bought a new Samsung 500GB 970 EVO Plus for just $20 in September of 2023 for use in an external 10Gbps enclosure. Yes, just $20.

Those NVMe drives were all on good sales. I try not to be in a situation where I have to buy something at full price for a new item. I have a couple of cheaper NVMe drives that I use in external enclosures. I’m not worried about life span because they get little use and should last forever so to speak.

I forgot which brand I used when I bought a laptop without a drive for $10. It’s a cheaper brand 1TB M.2 SATA SSD. I cloned my 850X to it and have an exact copy of my main TW drive that also has Mageia on it. Worked great and everything is in the same place and configured the same way etc.

The laptop gets a little use, so if my 850X died I could clone a drive to replace it pretty quickly.

I backup to external hard drives so I won’t lose anything, then they’re turned off. They should last nearly forever too because they’re only on a few hours a year, maybe 30, 40 or 50? It’s not a lot.

This has worked well for me for years. The only drive that just died was a 240GB OCZ Vertex 460 that was in the machine but never booted to or even accessed very often. I have no clue, it just died and the computer wouldn’t boot until I removed it. I have a disk image of it somewhere.

The SN770 vs 850X is a good example of why you need to research yourself. You can save money especially on video cards and SSD drives, without sacrificing enough performance to notice, and you may even gain a little while paying less.

It’ll be a long time before I buy a 4 or 8 TB NVMe. I’m not going to pay that much. I need a good boot drive and the rest is data that’s just fine on a HDD.

Now, if I hit the big billion dollar lotto we’ll all have some nice new stuff. But I don’t get into the lotto. Maybe twice a year I’ll buy a couple of tickets, so my odds of winning is lower than striking oil in my backyard.

I’m going to put Slowroll on that EVO to check it out, if I ever take the time to do it. The EVO drives don’t have the lower performance on Linux that the 980 has and that could’ve been fixed with a firmware update. I don’t know… So research!

GPU 's are a different story. Gamers make up most of the desktop user market now(look at the cases), besides businesses, and they drive the prices up on any GPU worth having. I guess some developers likely have nice GPU 's but I don’t think it’s standard for them to have a $600 GPU. I think Linus still uses a laptop for development of the kennel.

[marel]

@jsmith64

GPU 's are a different story.

Indeed, I do not do gaming and using only a 2560x1440 display and I am perfectly happy with the Internal GPU, UHD Graphics 630.

[knurpht]

@jsmith64

GPU 's are a different story. Gamers make up most of the desktop user market now(look at the cases), besides businesses, and they drive the prices up on any GPU worth having

I think you are forgetting the crypto miners. Never saw a gamer with 40+ high end GPUs, I did see a miner with 48 high end NVIDIAs. And what about the whole AI business?