Linux

I swear, every time one of these posts/comments pops up, the chances root issues are caused by Nvidia hardware is insanely high.

Windows admin here. It was immediately clear to me how this would end:

1. someone proficient in windows goes back to being a dumb newbie is gonna be frustrating as heck.

2. being a power user/IT professional most likely means non standard setup

3. there are very few windows native admins in the linux sphere to test things from a non dev/non user perspective

4. the companies making „professional“ linux are still not comparable to M$

5. „professional linux“ would probably be RHEL for you.

6. you can try and run a windows vm in your linux to try if stuff works then.

7. your mindset needs to change: you‘re now a guy responsible for implementing rdp correctly, embrace open source and make it work for everyone. See the amount of influence you can actually have.

8. if you can, consider using windows and linux side by side as long as needed, until stuff works. Find the reasons people abandon windows (i.e. you finally have control).

Just a stream of ideas. Hmu if you have any questions.

if someone with 20 years of IT experience gets this feed up with it, imagine how your average user would feel.

The average user just wants to open up a browser to use tiktok, instagram, gmail, and whatever else it is people use these days. Maybe edit a few documents and look at local pictures? The average user isn't going to use RDP or train an LLM.

As others have said: NVIDIA sucks for linux. They have sucked for linux for more than a decade (snippet). And RDP: try Remmina.

Also dualbooting is so-so. Windows likes to mess up the bootloader for no reason during updates. If you switch, it's best to go full linux or try first from a VM.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At this point, I’m just so sick of every little thing being a huge struggle

Suffering is inevitable. This is the first noble truth in Buddhism. Troubleshooting Linux is Tao.

Dont fall for bait guys

You definitely are not a typical user, and you have specific requirements that heavily bias towards Windows.

Just do what works best for you. Yes, you'll have to put up with Windows BS, but your problems with daily driving Linux are worse.

For RDP, i use Remmina, no idea if it will do what you want for your weird monitor layout, but it is a well featured RDP client.

I would say that your experience is unusual, even with nvidia. Ive always used nvidia, and its generally been a significantly smoother experience.

Same as you, in IT forever, ...I switched, and I'm never going back. It's fast, and it's brought the joy back for me. Nvidia needs to do better, but that was the only difficulty I had.

Skill issue

Don't give up too easily friend. I've been slowly moving some of my hone systems away from Window's, and much like you, I've spent close to 20 years as a Windows admin. I have the advantage of using Linux on my always ancient laptops over the years and it is my personal opinion that Debian is the way to go.

Give LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) a go, it is very familiar to navigate coming from Windows and isn't going to have constant updates breaking stuff (looking at you Arch).

First thing after installing run apt-get update, then add the Nvidia drivers (add the source to your sources and install, if you need help, post back and we've got you!) and reboot.

You tried. That is far more than many people. Good for you!

I have had similar experiences, but from Linux to other OSes. The mental models for using them are really different, and those don't get enough discussion.

Hey buddy, no stress, I feel ya! Switching OSes is like trying a new flavor of ice cream – it can be an adventure at times. But, let me share some wisdom from my Linux journey. When we focus on the small stuff, we unintentionally give power to the big guys. Linux is all about flexibility and community support. Sure, it might not be perfect right away, but that's part of the fun! Keep pushing through, you'll soon see why so many of us love this open-source world. Let's rock this Linux life together

i've been using a stick for 20 years of combat. i've seen people use f16 fighters and flew on a plane once. now i am bummed out i can't operate an f16.

I read "boot", "side by side with windows, "ubuntu", Nvidia" and some awfull war flashbacks came back to haunt me.

As someone who grew up toying with both windows, Mac and Linux I think people always underestimate how hard it'll be to migrate to an OS they never tried before. I've seen lots of people getting frustrated that way, regardless of the OS.

So I'd say being an IT guy or a tech illiterate won't change much in that regard. I guess being an IT might at least give you shortcuts but you'll still hit a wall if you don't check beforehand if all your needs will be easy to access and how much pain you'll have to deal with.

At least that's my take on it.

But yeah, Ubuntu can be awfull depending on your needs. Windows and Linux don't make good neighbors, windows is always the one trying to murder the other, and Nvidia is a nasty piece of work.

For RDP, I use Remmina. Multimon only works on X though, not wayland, so make sure that's the graphic server you're running. Idk if it'll work for 2x2 tho, I only have 2 monitors.

For the headaches, I use a magic pill that I'm not legally allowed to view the ingredients of and cry into my Tissues as a Service.

Thank you for sharing your story!

For your kind of use case and issues, I'd recommend finding someone local with a good amount of Linux experience and do a couple of pair sessions. I find this transports a lot more (especially 'soft') knowledge on concepts and how to do things efficiently. Also, it helps to share frustrations ;-)

Linux does not try to be another Windows. While it's fairly possible to treat it kinda as such especially in newer times, it won't feel efficient or convenient that way, in my experience.

Sorry to hear about that mess.

I posted here https://lemmy.nz/comment/1784981 a while back about what I went through with the Nvidia driver on Linux.

From what I can tell, people who think Linux works fine on Nvidia probably only have one monitor or maybe two that happen to be the same model ( with unique EDID serials FWIW ). My experience with a whole bunch of mixed monitors / refresh rates was absolutely awful.

If you happen to give it another go, get yourself an AMD card, perhaps you can carry on using the Nvidia card for the language modelling, just don't plug your monitors into it.

The accustomed workflows sometimes don't translate well to other platforms. RDP might be such a case, I don't think it's the standard in the Linux-world, maybe try the standard solution of your distribution, or look up which one is good for multi-monitor setups, there are lots of other VNC solutions. Yeah, and I'd skip Ubuntu as a first choice, but you figured that out the hard way.

I've been extremely happy with Linuxmint the past 2-3 yrs. However I have a higher end AMD card. 97% of games play great under Proton with steam. I use Rustdesk to remote into other Linux machines as well as windows OS servers/desktops even with multiple screens and it works without issue. Just my $0.02 and I know it's heavily Ubuntu based but the stability and usability as a daily driver, also working as an IT professional has been great.

Last piece, it's been a rare occurrence but if I'm messing around using bleeding edge graphics drivers or "playing with fire" messing with deeper system configs, drivers, etc and shit the bed I have had 100% success using TIMESHIFT to completely restore my OS back to its previous state with zero data/config loss or issues. You just need to have the discipline to remember to take a backup before you know you're going to be potentially blowing something out. But, that said, it fully restores everything. I have a 18TB external USB I just use for that and it doesn't even take long either, restoring a 2 & 4TB SSD system that's pretty loaded up with data.

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you :(

To squeeze in a metaphor : Linux is just a hobby project that kind of got out of hand in a previously Microsoft dominated world.

In the BSD world (FreeBSD,NetBSD,OpenBSD etc.) things are actually much worse. I've read that on computer conferences BSD developers come with an Apple Macbook (Running MacOS) to show BSD software development, which is running on servers. And I like BSD, but on the desktop it is still lacking. One only has to look at the amount of packages which no longer have a maintainer. I am not complaining about it, as I realize that maintaining open source software can be a burden.

If you want to play some more with Linux on the desktop, you can use WSL on Microsoft Windows, or use VirtualBox. Wanting to make Linux your daily driver may require more patience, or throwing money at it to speed up code development.

There's an app on Flatpacks called Thincast remote desktop client. I don't htink it's using the free rdp libraries, so it's possible that the bugs you encountered with the other open source apps (that all use the same underlying libs), might not be there.

There are two different RDP implementations in Linux: freerdp (which is the underlying library for remmina as well) and rdesktop. Each has its own set of bugs. No idea if rdesktop offers better support for what you want to do—I use it, but I only have single-monitor setups at both ends. (It has an annoying bug that can make it require multiple attempts to establish a connection, though.)

I need to be able to use my Nvidia 3080 ti for local LLM

Well there's your problem. You've been blindly loyal to a brand that has shown no loyalty towards consumers.

Bummer! Sounds like a pain in the ass.

I wish I had a suggestion for you, but I only use two monitors and all of my work is ssh, no RDP needed.

I am a long time Linux user but even I am struggling recently as I have finally started working towards migrating my last windows machine ( strictly for gaming ) over to Linux with a windows partition for the one off chance I need to play on windows still. Currently only 1.5 of my monitors work ( my left monitor top half is black. ) It is fine in post, bios and windows but not in my fedora distro. Also, my performance tanked even though I can see my GPU is working as intended. My high refresh monitor is also not playing nice and ghosting all over the place, unlike in windows where there is only standard tearing when there is a frame rate mismatch.

Fortunately for me, I like tinkering and solving these issues, but I can imagine for someone wanting to avoid messing with their equipment it is probably more of a headache than a challenge. But I have personally always been of the mindset of using the tool that works best for you, with the exception of any moral considerations you may have. (I am just not a fan of windows or apple as a company.)

Good luck with your issue and I hope you find a resolution, but if not, I would just use what works.

Why Ubuntu?

Its literally the worst Linux

I'm on the ubuntu derivative Pop!_OS. I RDP with multiple monitors of different resolutions using remina. Nvidia is also supported out of the box. All you'd need to do is install pop and then remmina.

Is your problem that you just want one big window across all your monitors? I.e. not multi monitor RDP, or that you want a separate window on each monitor where each is seen as another monitor on the remote system?