I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid.
Anyways, like most distros these days, Flatpaks show up alongside native packages in the package manager / app store. I used to have a bias towards getting the natively packed version, but these days, I am choosing Flatpaks, precisely because I know they will be the latest version.
This includes Blender, Cura, Prusaslicer, and just now QBittorrent. I know this is probably dumb, but I choose the version based on which has the nicer icon.
I briefly considered getting into Fedora Silverblue, and I still may for this very purpose.
If you switch everything you can to flatpaks and use distrobox for other apps before you switch you’re pretty close (better than toolbox and recommend layering it if you do switch to Silverblue).
Anything can be layered onto Silverblue if it can’t be installed another way. I’ve found it works well.
I’m getting into OpenSUSE Aeon (MicroOS desktop) and it’s been really great with Flatpaks and Distrobox. You should consider that one too :)
Sounds dope. I love OpenSuse. I almost made it my main OS, but got kicked in the ass installing graphics drivers and the fixes were many and too annoying.
MicroOS. Never head of that. I am excited now.
I had a reasonably good time getting NVIDIA drivers installed. I found the instructions here. I installed the newest drivers using the following command + a reboot.
transactional-update -i pkg in nvidia-driver-G06-kmp-default nvidia-video-G06 nvidia-gl-G06 nvidia-compute-G06 nvidia-utils-G06 nvidia-compute-utils-G06The OpenSUSE guide doesn’t include compute-utils, which is needed if you want to run nvidia-smi. I haven’t tried installing a full CUDA SDK, so ymmv there.I think I just need to follow the guides more closely. I must have missed something.