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Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

> it led me to discover Linux

As someone who is the same boat but hasn't discovered Linux yet, how hard would you say it would be to install a version of Linux that support 3 monitors (using an onboard ATI card and a PCIe card)? Last time I tried installing it this is the part I gave up at.

Also as a person always been aware of Window I find the graphics in Ubuntu lacking some finesse, i.e. the scrollbars, window panes look like that created using Java applets (granted it is a matter of taste and personal choice) but what is the most professional looking desktop to try right now?

Sorry i know this is off-topic but I too really want to switch from windows and don't want to waste money in Macbooks so any advice would be appreciated.

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Fedora[0] might be what you're looking for. There are various "spins"[1] that use different desktop environments if the main one doesn't take your fancy. You can use a live image to try a few before you install.

[0] https://getfedora.org/ [1] https://spins.fedoraproject.org/

The boring answer is that if you have a graphics card with good Linux support, you're going to have a good experience. Otherwise probably less good. So without knowing the specifics of your graphics hardware it's impossible to give a clear answer.

People generally don't fault MacOS for not supporting whatever hardware they bodged together, yet they expect Linux to work with anything because hackers and magic. I guess that's a good reputation to have but it's not very useful if you want something that just works.

In the case of Linux, what just works is generally the drivers that are built in to the system, with vendors that take an active part in Linux development. And since Intel started to make both network and graphics cards, that's usually your best bet. ATI is generally usable too, but performance and power consumption generally lag their Windows equivalent drivers.

With that said, it's quite easy to test. Download the latest Fedora (or Ubuntu) live DVD and boot it. If that works with your display, a native install is going to work too.

Just don't install Linux as an almost-Windows or cheap-MacOS. If you want Windows software then that's what you should run it on. Run Linux because you want a UNIX desktop and the kind of software that goes with it (gcc, bash, rsync, native TCP/IP utilities and those things).

I recommend KDE, it feels a bit more well put together for a desktop these days.

With regards to your question about triple monitors. I mean, I managed to get triple monitors working on FreeBSD without much fuss so I am not sure of how much help I can be when I say "it should just work". I am obviously biased.

But, it's likely that it will just work, the open source drivers for AMD are significantly superior to the open source drivers for nVidia. Although I only have nVidia cards running and I have 2 setups with triple monitors.

Give Ubuntu desktop a try. The installer allows you to run the OS live without installation. You can use this to see if Ubuntu is something you may be interested in.

My experience with Ubuntu (xubuntu 16.04.x) is that you really need a modern Nvidia card to get high/native resolution. Especially for someone who wants to run 3 monitors.

I have a small underpowered desktop running in my house that only has onboard graphics and it runs Ubuntu 16.04 just fine, but its only connected to 1 monitor, not 3.

The Intel integrated graphic card of my laptop does handle 3 screens fine and I dont need to mess with drivers, everything works well out of the box. I would actually advise against NVIDIA cards unless you need powerful graphic processing or to do GPU computation.

Cool. Didn't know laptops existed with 3 monitor ports. Which model laptop are you using, and would you recommend it for programming? :)

Ahhh, doing some Googling shows it's from add-on peripherals and/or docking stations. eg:

http://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukbsdt1/sln115952/...

Don't you need an at-least-mediocre GPU to get high resolution on 3 monitors on any OS? I wouldn't connect 3 high resolution monitors to a Windows or Mac machine with no GPU.

Modern machines that seemingly have "no GPU" have an integrated GPU that's powerful enough for driving multiple monitors, desktop compositing and rendering some 3D (modern games at 720p, older games at higher resolution).

Does AMD do this or is that still just an Intel thing?

AMD's APUs are actually more powerful than almost all Intel iGPUs. The only one that's competitive is Iris Pro 580 with the eDRAM addon, known in a previous incarnation as Crystalwell (not all Iris Pro 580s have this).

The tradeoff is that the CPU half of AMD's processors is kinda bad - they are all derived from either Jaguar laptop processors or Bulldozer, they desperately need to be refreshed with Ryzen. So Intel has the better CPU but a mediocre GPU (unless you splash out for Crystalwell), and AMD has mediocre CPUs but a good GPU...

AMD's non-APU processors (FX, Ryzen, TR, Epyc) do not have iGPUs however, same goes for Intel's lines of server chips (X99/X299/etc). This is something that is only in "client" processors.

Aren't you still limited by the number of HDMI ports anyway?

This Ubuntu user here is driving a 27" 4k Dell with an AMD RX460 that doesn't even have a fan. Works okay.

I'll add the caveat that for HiDPI displays you're still likely to run into scaling issues, particularly if you have differently sized displays. I hear that for some specific cases Ubuntu/Gnome 3 handle things acceptably, but there's still a lot of rough edges (not that Windows doesn't still have problems here too).

This is true. I just installed Ubuntu on a shiny new (to me) Precision 5510 laptop. 4k monitor native. When I hooked it to my 27 inch, 2560x1440 monitor, the scaling became a disaster between the two screens. Setting the scale on the fly can also be a disaster. Best thing I have found is to set the res down on the higher-res monitor, and set the scaling to the same on both monitors. Or just never move things between monitors.

+1 for this. Try before you "buy" so to speak. In a very similar vein, Linux Mint also allows you to do this. Both OSes work very well out of the box and there are large communities for help.

> how hard would you say it would be to install a version of Linux that support 3 monitors (using an onboard ATI card and a PCIe card)?

As a data point, the development desktop I'm using runs 3 monitors on Linux (Fedora 25). They're hooked into a single AMD R9 390 graphics card (overkill, but it was hanging around spare when putting together the pc).

The monitors are 1x Dell 30" in the middle, with 2x ASUS 24" monitors (one each side). No HiDPI stuff, and everything works fairly well. Using the "Xfce" spin of Fedora.

Didn't need to do any complicated setup. The monitors were all detected fine without mucking around, and I just needed to drag them into position in the Xfce4 gui tool so it knew which one was on the left, middle, right.

Lacking details, so nobody can promise anything, but I have run my current desktop with three monitors on two video cards. I currently run it with two monitors and two cards, with one bound to a Windows VM. That is somewhat trickier to set up, but multiple monitors should be fine.

My advice echoes others - you can try before you buy (install) with a few flavors of Linux; see what happens. If you have trouble, try to find a fellow human who can help - X is a little surprising to configure, if you haven't done it before.

How long ago was it, and what GPU did you try it with? Most relatively modern AMD GPUs (especially Polaris/RX 4xx and newer) work great out of the box these days, but that's a relatively recent phenomenon.

It was about 2 years ago. I'm using a multi monitor setup where i'm clubbing my onboard graphics card with the PCIe card (both ATI, though the onboard card is a very old model). On windows it works seamlessly but on Linux I couldn't do it. Thanks for the advice, I will try it again today.

Ubuntu makes this pretty easy. Also solus 3 would be a good choice. And there are a number of resources and tutorials for this very thing. You can also customize your desktop environment so the critique of scroll bars and such can be resolved.

ElementaryOS [0] prides itself in it's UI. Granted, this is very much a matter of taste, but if you're into the whole Mac look-and-feel, you might like it.

But frankly I find the Gnome-Shell desktop to be beautiful. Maybe try Ubuntu-Gnome? [1]

[0] https://elementary.io/ [1] https://ubuntugnome.org/

Elementary os looks beautiful. This is exactly the kind of stuff i found missing, will definitely install it today.

Great! If Elementary ends up not being to your tastes, do try Gnome-Shell. The UI is a bit "different", in the sense that it tries to innovate in quite a few places, but it's definitely pretty.

I found the animations on ElementaryOS to feel....clunky, to say the least.

That being said, the majority of UI animations in Linux are like that, so meh.

Um what did you install? Personally I have been an OpenSUSE guy for almost 10 years now. I would be surprised that you would have a problem. Ubuntu should also be found.

Stay away from Fedora and Arch unless you don't mind getting into some set up files. Personally it is fun getting things setup for me and so I enjoy Arch and Fedora and sometimes it they are just as quick and simple as OpenSUSE and Ubuntu.

I tried Ubuntu only. Couldn't get the third monitor to work. As per another comment I will give it another try and see if things have changed now.

After trying a number of distros, I settled on Ubuntu and a while ago switched from Unity to Gnome. Most of the time I use two monitors without any problem and I live in a terminal.

KDE has that modern look, so install Kububtu, then figure out how to set up multiple monitors through kde

Don't go down that rabbit hole. Linux is not for desktop despite many years of efforts. Even the distro with the greatest focus on UI (elementaryOS) looks like a toy. That Linux is hugely successful everywhere EXCEPT in the desktop should tell us something.

Just my honest opinion after 15 years of continuous use in university and work.

XKCD still relevant today: https://xkcd.com/456/

Lets be real; as much as I shit on systemd, since it released the desktop experience for people is much more well-rounded and I think it has helped distro maintainers really push usability.

Usability of Linux in the past 10 years has been exponentially increasing.

They're going to need something else. X11 and GNOME/KDE/etc will never be mainstream. Ubuntu made a mistake not contributing to Wayland but they were right to try Unity.

Ironically, Canonical is making money mainly with cloud services. Meaning servers - what Linux is good at.

It's like driving a car you have to work on all the time or something. I have fond memories of doing it but I no longer have the time or inclination to spend that much time configuring my desktop.

I don't know... I have been on Xubuntu for about 4 years now, and love it. Just got a new touchscreen laptop with win10 on it and hate the experience. Switched the wife over to Xubuntu as her win10 laptop was running like crap, and she barely notices any difference in the experience except the Linux system is faster.

I think for a lot of people who want to just browse the Web and watch movies, Linux is more than up to the task. And suit, recently even libreoffice is working fine for my simple needs for word processing and spreadsheet work.

> XKCD still relevant today

and I wish this to be true for any *nix system.

The ability to venture down the rabbit as far as you want, without black-boxes.

I think a lot of us sit here today because of that privilege.

It absolutely has its place. That place just isn't the mainstream desktop consumer.

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