Hello,

I m building new PC for software development and coding.

Is it Intel i7 8700 or AMD Ryzen 3600?

My primary concern is-

1. It should be compatible with any Linux Distro out there out of the box.
2. It should be error free without any hardware or driver issue.

Well, if you truly want it compatible with ANY linux distro, then neither of those work. Slackware 14.2 won't support either one out of the box well/at all (it can be made to with kernel from -current).

REALISTICALLY speaking, most any distro will suppport the 8700 at this point (4.14+ kernels, possibly even older ones I'm not sure). Slightly fewer will work with the 3600, as it will require 4.18+ kernel, but that still means anything Ubuntu 18.04 based or newer, Debian Buster based, Fedora, etc. will all be able to function. I know there WAS an issue with kernel 5.0? and 3000 series, not sure if that has been patched yet or not though.

So which CPU do you suggest that will work for most newer as well as older kernels?

Another consideration is it should also work smoothly if I create several VM.

What level of "older" kernel do you want it to work on? How old of a kernel are you likely to use?

I m not sure but
I would like to try different OS
Would like to study them for running server environment.
Would like to learn and understand different features.
Benchmark them for wide range of software.

I would like to study and learn different OS as development environment

Well, most distro's geared towards desktop use will work with either of those processors. As a personal preference, I'd prefer the 3600. Of course, for the price of the 8700, one could easily get a 3700x and have more physical cores, and even more total threads. If paired with a 450/470 board insead of the newest 570 (giving up PCIe 4.0 support), it'd still be overall cheaper as well.

Can I able to use Clear Linux on AMD CPU?
I heard that it the best performing Linux Distro?
Also Ryzen 3600 do not have integrated graphics.
I guess Nvidia and AMD gpus have compatibility issues will Linux? Is it true?

Do you think choice of CPU matters when I use it for development and coding purpose,
Like running web servers,
VMs, db servers, docker etc.

I'd guess probably, but I've never used clear linux myself and know nothing about it so can't say that it definitely works.


According to Arch, it's the best performing distro. According to Slackware, IT's the best performing distro. Most distro's using the same kernel and desktop environement will perform very similarly. There is of course some things that can be done to improve, but with the "generic" kernels in use in most distro's you won't see a great deal of difference.



Newish AMD graphics work fantastic in linux. The amdgpu that all current AMD cards use for their drivers are fully open source, and only require the firmware installed to work lovely. Polaris cards (rx 4xx/5xx) will work with even older kernels (back to 4.15 at least) without issues. No idea the state of Nvidia graphics, I gave up on their stuff years ago once AMD committed to having open source drivers.

Of course it can. A better processor will allow for more VM's (assuming you have sufficient ram), or faster performing VM's. Will the difference between the 2 processors you asked about make a big difference? No. While the 8700 is a superior processor overall, the difference isn't going to be THAT incredible for the things you're looking to do.

none of these concerns related to CPUs, but the hardware (like gpu, network card and a lof of other things). But as it was mentioned there is no hardware which works with anything "out of the box".
In general you can use any CPU and any hardware, most of them should do the job.

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Thank you �� very much.
You are have answered my questions very quickly and patiently thanks.

I'm also going to get a new CPU for my basement mainframe server and I'm def. going with the new Gen. Ryzen. Seems like a step in a new direction TBH.

I hope you'll get the AMD. Just for the sake of it.