silly question: ElementaryOS, Pop!OS, or Ubuntu LTS 20.04?
 

I will be home this weekend and will be moving my workstation (AMD CPU with Nvidia GPU, exact specs can be posted later, but they are both new within the last year or so, I think the GPU is either a 1060 or 1070) from Fedora to one of the above distros.

1. Must fully support F@H https://foldingathome.org/

2. Must fully support Nvidia drivers, I have 2x 32in 2k monitors I would love to run them off of DP instead of HDMI.

3. Would be nice if the Citrix client worked for work, else I will continue using the Chrome addin.

4. Easy support for Steam would be nice

I have already moved my old laptop (7-8yr old) to first Ubuntu LTS 18.04, and last weekend updated to 20.04 LTS. I do have full support for F@H on the laptop. It is to old to run Steam and it does not have a Nvidia GPU.

I have installed ElementaryOS and Pop!OS in VirtualBox on the laptop to play around with them.

ElemenataryOS has a great GUI. It has the support of Ubuntu repos as needed. It has a bad rap due to their desire to charge for "support." I am not as interested in philosophical debates as I am with performance and doing what I need.

Pop!OS installed easier than any other distro I've played with in years. Full encryption as a default, also has a fork with Nvidia drivers built into the install ISO. Not sure on the support for other facets I require.

Ubuntu LTS (18.04 and 20.04) Little bit of a fight to get F@H and the Citrix Chrome addin working under 20.04, but they are working.

For Ubuntu is there a way to use the area on the left as part of the desktop. In other words when I maximized an application I would like to cover the icon on the "favorites" column on the left of the desktop. How is that done in Ubuntu. That is the default in Fedora and Pop!OS. Elementary has it at the bottom of the screen just like OSx GUI that it emulates.

Thank you for the debate and feedback. One more note, I have been using Fedora since roughly 2011, just time for a change. Done fighting it for support that is found easier with Ubuntu. My IT days are reducing to a point of more of a user, than an administrator that I used to be. Just not keeping up with IT like I used to thanks to my new career path.

Please keep it clean, this is just for feedback, not a pissing contest. Please respect others opinions and keep in mind that everyone has their opinion and let it be that.

Thank you.

You could try this GNOME Shell extension.

Fantastic link, thank you shruggy

Of the 3 mentioned, I have used Ubuntu and Pop. Never used Elementary. Of those 2, I would choose Pop, despite my loathing of the Gnome DE. Pop was faster and leaner than Ubuntu. Both still use that silly "snap/appimage" garbage but if you use that, then it's necessary. The Pop installer was good and while I used Pop for the relatively short time (1 week maybe?), it never had any issues. Had no trouble with Steam or wine that I recall. I believe I used the Pop version based on 18.x LTS. Can't speak to folding @ home because I don't know what that is.

Thank you for the feedback. F@H is a distributed system that "unfolds" proteins for medical research for illnesses like Alzheimer, Leukemia, AIDS, etc... Think SETI, but for human benefit to cure ills.

Very interesting, thanks for the info! I have heard it mentioned but did not do any research on it.

Ive been folding on and off for more than a decade.

https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/134546

https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/50411

I used to own a martial arts studio. I have not bothered changing my team name. Feel free to join the team and start folding today :D

I ended choosing Pop!_OS for the workstation. So far very happy with it. F@H is running, the Chrome addon for Citrix is running, Steam is installed, but I have not played with it yet, just to busy with work.

I have Ubuntu 20.04 LTS running on 1 laptop, and 18.04 LTS on another. All three are nice. 20.04 has a few idiosyncrasies to get around, but I am liking it so far too.

Working on getting my GPU to start folding, but that could just be something I configured incorrectly. Will be interesting to see how much more powerful the 1070 card is v my CPU.

Maybe this thread will help others in time.

Enjoy all.

Just wanted to add a few more notes on my Pop!_OS workstation.

I have had some free time to play a few games via Steam. Runs better than my Fedora 27 ever did.

I installed VirtualBox, much easier btw under the Ubuntu fork than ever was under Fedora, and it automatically found my VM from my old /home HDD without being directed to the directory. Very nice touch for both Pop!_OS and VirtualBox.

I have been pushing the system while working from home, I have F@H running on Full, so using all 16 cores near 100%, running the Citrix Client for work and sometimes 2 or 3 depending on the job tasks for work, Typically will have 15 tabs open in multiple browsers, Plex streaming something, and the system just never misses a beat.

Temporarily I have PlexMediaServer running on my workstation. One small issue if I reboot for any reason I have to reissue systemclt start plexmediaserver.service manually. I find that a bit irritating. Running PMS local while I upgrade my FreeNAS server.

USB speeds seem to be slower under Pop!_OS than they were under any version I have run for Fedora in the past 7 years. At best they run at less than USB 2.0 speeds. Even my 3.0 ports/devices perform slower than the 2.0 speeds. Not sure what is causing that yet. Have not dug into any research if this is common, or just an oddity on my end.

Still very happy with Pop!_OS and I can not say, yes this is a good choice for a new user or someone like me who just wants most things to work without fighting with the OS to force work-arounds.