Hi, I've being using Fedora for quite a while now and my main gripe are Nvidia drivers and how they need manual updating everytime I update. I know there is an auto update feature but it rarely seems to work for me!?

I'm after suggestions for swapping distro to something that handles Nvidia out the box and has regular builds for programs like Blender, Inkscape, Gimp, FreeCAD, Arduino, KiCAD, Ultimaker, etc...


Thanks

MX Linux is pretty slick when it comes to making it easy to upgrade Nvidia drivers.
Watch the first couple of minutes of this Youtube video.
It's 5 years old but still relevant.

MX Linux is also currently number one on Distrowatch.

If that's your only issue, is there a reason you've decided to switch distro rather than attempting to fix it?


If you take the Nvidia out of the box most things will work.

Afaik, there is no distro that doesn't support Nvidia - so long as you're willing to use relevant drivers/firmware - but that doesn't mean there wont be a bug that affects you but doesn't others.


Clarification needed - are you after a rolling distro (which packages new releases frequently, but is not regular), or a semi-rolling distro (which releases on a regular schedule), or something else?

If there's a reason you need the latest versions of those things, are you willing to use self-contained methods like Flatpak/AppImage/etc to obtain that, and/or do you require it to come via the distro's package manager?

Have a look at this tool: https://pkgs.org/. The programs you mention are widely available, except for Ultimaker. You also need to consider the GUI and how attached you are to the Gnome desktop. If you actually like it, then Debian would be a good choice. I can't help on Nvidia, having no experience of their products. Many people have problems there, but there always seems to be a solution. Of course, the best solution is not to use them in the first place!

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I was using Fedora for awhile but switched to Debian Stable a few years ago. I have an Nvidia card and it works fine. I had to do some manual work to get the drivers working.

You can check Pop!_OS. It has an O/S ISO download specifically for Nvidia users. Check it out. MX linux and Ubuntu should work just fine as well.

Good luck!

Check out Ubuntu LTS (or one of it spins depending on DE preference) . About as easy as it gets to deal with Nvidia proprietary drivers. Once set, you can forget for a few years. I got off the Fedora update merry-go-round a few years ago now as this was one of my irritations at the time. And all the programs you mentioned are available (I use them too, except never heard of Utimaker).

You obviously have not paid attention to the fedora distro and forums.

Yes, for every distro when using an nvidia GPU and installing the drivers from the nvidia site you must update the drivers manually with each kernel update.

However, fedora has the companion rpmfusion repo that makes it very easy to install the drivers using the package manager (dnf) instead of manually. It then automatically rebuilds the driver with every kernel or driver update so the user is not tasked with remembering and doing that task.

To enable the rpmfusion repo look here. https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
and to install the nvidia drivers look here. https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Most of the other tools you named are also provided either in the fedora repos directly or in associated repos that are compatible.

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