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It doesn't support GPU passthrough only virtual GPU
Thanks for the heads up, Robert, but just to be clear, I can't use the GPU anyway, so would that make any difference in my case?
I'm forced to render on the CPU even on Windows.
The idea now is to install a minimal Debian/GNOME environment to act as my OS. I would install everything I use to that OS and it would serve as my only OS. The only exception being Daz Studio, which I could run from within that OS using GNOME BOXES running Windows 10. So while there's no GPU passthrough, would that even matter in my case, and wouldn't doing it that way also allow me to get around the problem TimberWolf pointed out regards the dForce compilation thing?
Daz Studio would be running in a Windows 10 environment just as it's meant to, and sure, no GPU, but we don't have that on AMD anyway, and at least GNOME BOXES allows dragging and dropping of files between the host OS and the hosted OS, so I was hoping it would just feel like it was running natively on the same OS even though Daz Studio would be running on Windows 10 inside of GNOME BOXES, inside of my main OS.
Most probably wouldn't matter
I hope you're right, cause I'm sorted if that happens to be the case. I suspect I'm going to have some fun gettng DaVinci Resolve Studio to work on that setup, but I've read that others got it working in a Debian/GNOME environment after some trial and error. What I don't understand is why there isn't a minimal download of Fedora, or I would have added GNOME to that and done it that way cause apparently DaVinci Resolve Studio prefers a Fedora base.
DaVinci Resolve Studio nas a version for Linux
Apart from Daz Studio, literally every program I use now has a native Linux installer. The trouble with DaVinci Resolve Studio is just a dependency and configuration thing, so depending on your setup, you sometimes have to dig around and see how others have gotten it installed.
That aside, I'm pleased to say I just found a whole page of minimalistic Fedora downloads. Why on earth this page is not visible from the main menu on the website I have no idea, but wow, this lot could change everything since it looks as if I could install a minimal Fedora, add GNOME and GNOME BOXES to it, and with a bit of luck it will be a case of Ta-Daa!!!
I reckon even DaVinci Resolve Studio would be easy enough to set up in that environment. Perhaps that's why they added the dependency install to Nobara.
For anyone like me who is wanting a minimal install, maybe take a look at this page (which is not shown on the menu of the website):
Downloads for FEDORA MINIMAL and Other Miscellaneous FEDORA ISOs
TimberWolf, 3DIO:
I may have something useful to contribute on that matter. Up until two weeks ago, I've been running Daz3D in Wine-Bottles on Ubuntu (Linux Mint 22) for over a year. Then I decided to replace my aging NVDIA 2070s with an AMD RX 7700 XT. After the swap, I got Daz Studio to render without iRay, but no dForce. Just this weekend, luckily, following a big Linux Mint update, I was able to get Daz Studio to recompile the dForce kernels using the OpenCL drivers for AMD.
How did it all come together and work? Here's what I've managed to figure out.
The diagram below explains the various software and hardware components that enables Daz3D in Wine (source). It may look like a lot of plumbing, but the key takeaway here is that MESA enables OpenGL rendering and OpenCL dForce simulations.
Next, referring to the second screenshot above:
[1] I use Wine (wth sys-wine runner) in Bottles installed and jailed via Flatpak.
[2] GPU Cap Viewer is a free Windows app that inspects and runs tests on the GPU. It's a great diagnostic tool to examine the rendering and compute software stack visible to Windows ... which in turn is made visible by Wine-Bottles ... allowed by Flatpak (in my case) ... and runs natively Linux. As you can see GPU App Viewer "talks" OpenGL with the AMD GPU to render scenes. It does so by means of the MESA software stack, not ROCm. Same for compute jobs (such as dForce) by means of, rusticl, a MESA OpenCL runtime library.
[3] In Daz Studio, the Simulations Settings tab confirms the availability of the AMD GPU. It identifies the MESA OpenCL system: rusticli.
[4] dForce is running, simulating gravity on the dress the G8.1F figure is wearing.
If you persevere and try to get OpenCL working to enable dForce, a reasonable goal would be getting Wine to leverage the MESA software stack. As I understand it, various Linux distros pre-bundle MESA according to varying degrees. For example, in my Linux Mint, Flatpak bundled rusticl as an extra component of Freedesktop.
/var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default/x86_64/24.08/4c37b3e42ec09de553a93fe22fa3079ef784beda91aea794563284a25f3f77e2/files/lib/libRusticlOpenCL.so.1 -> libRusticlOpenCL.so.1.0.0
I never had to manually build and install MESA from source code. Later, when I installed Wine-Bottles via Flatpak, and Daz3D afterwards, Daz Studio picked up the OpenGL and OpenCL stacks automatically.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
I got 18.6 running on Ubuntu 22.04 with absolutely no modifications. It just worked.
@TheMysteryIsThePoint
Aha! And that solved it in Fedora 43 as well with MESA 25. As I said earlier I don't have any day-to-day access to AMD hardware and so made the (incorrect) assumption that the ROCm stack was required for Gallium/MESA. It isn't. Rusticl just worked. In fact, the rocm-meta packages just added to the confusion. The default for Fedora is 6.4.something and Studio just reported no OpenCL devices available at all. OK, we thought, the 9060XT is reasonably recent and perhaps unsupported with that release, so we added the Rawhide repo and upgraded to 7.1.something. Studio then identified the GPU as an OpenCL device correctly and we thought we'd cracked it. Nope!
Well, you've probably made @3DIO 's day. Great bit of detective work and makes life for AMD users with a Studio -> Blender workflow a lot easier. Trying to get Blender's cloth simulation to play nicely with Daz assets is not something I'd wish on anybody!
TimberWolf,
Yep, never doubt TheMysteryIsThePoint. Miracle maker!
With MESA-rusticl set up properly, AMD GPU owners can run dForce then export the Daz Studio scene as an obj to Blender. From there it takes just a bit of work to get the clothing object merged into the scene.
Incidentally, deploying both MESA and ROCm in Linux doesn't cause too much problems. I believe the Linux display subsystem ignores ROCm and continues to use MESA. Thus isolated, and with the right shell environment variables configured, ROCm can be used for writing code and for runtime use by local LLMs (managed with Ollama, for example).
Cheers!
@csaa
Apologies, I got my posters jumbled there. Your explanation of the graphics stack cleared up my confusion as to why ROCm was eliciting precisely nothing useful from Studio. It's ermmm not used! Armed with this info it took myself and the last vestiges of a friend's goodwill about 10 minutes to get her 9060XT recognised and working as an OpenCL device.
I'm a Diffeormorpic fan myself as it will export the simulation data and you end up with the scene precisely as it was in Studio. It's a fantastic piece of software.
So, the state of play for Daz Studio on Linux is currently very positive I'd say. I haven't gone back further than Studio 4.21 but anything from there onwards works in virtually every modern Linux distro with full GPU rendering if you have a compatible Nvidia GPU. Debian distros lose denoising - not a big deal for most people. AMD owners can export finished simulations and scenes via Diffeo or any other method they prefer to Blender or any GPU-agnostic renderer.
I doubt Daz could be persuaded to Flatpak their software but that would be my solution to open it up to more people who want to dip their toe into Linux.
Flatpack would definitely be the way to go as it eliminates their to many distros argument
I'm just the layman type when it comes to Linux. Having an AMD system, I'd help out as best I can if I knew what I was doing. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Linux extends to knowing what a distro is and how in general a Linux system is put together. Stuff like compiling, and a whole bunch of the other stuff I see in csaa's post, that level of stuff just goes right over my head.
I agree, it's a shame that Daz don't have a Flatpak. I'm surprised though, that given the knowledge csaa, TimberWolf and no doubt countless other Linux-heads in the thread, that you don't pool your knowledge and create a distro based upon what you know to be working.
The way I see it is this: As long as there's a single, common-between-us minimalistic distro that contains the only the prerequisits required by us creative types, then people like us would take it up happily. At the end of the day, Blender, GIMP and stuff like that all have a native Linux releases anyway, and stuff like Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve being free are considered pretty much essential to most of us as well.
So what about a minimalist distro that allows selection and installation of (at OS installation point) the following:
- Dependencies (to include most appropriate drivers) for Daz Studio on AMD
- Dependencies (to include most appropriate drivers) for Daz Studio on Nvidia
- Dependencies (to include most appropriate drivers) for DaVinci Resolve on AMD
- Dependencies (to include most appropriate drivers) for DaVinci Resolve on Nvidia
- GIMP
- Inkscape
- Blender
- Choice of web browser
So that basically, you run the installer and the first thing it asks you is whether you use AMD or Nvidia, and depending upon the selection you make, it installs the most appropriate drivers and the correct Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve dependencies based on that selection. Then it ask you which of those first three packages you want to install. Finally, it asks for your choice of web browser. It then sets about installing and configuring stuff in the way you Linux-heads are discussing here, and the really beautiful thing is, that when you select the type of graphics card you have, the installer doesn't just install the relevant driver for their card, it also automatically installes the Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve dependencies based upon the graphics card brand the user selected.
The result (hopefully), is that both Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve would then install and run without fail.
And just to be clear, I don't undertand how much work would be involved in doing somthing like that. For all I know, it could be an insane amount of work or it could be fairly straight forward for someone in the know. But unless we have such a distro, then due to the nature of Linux, I don't see how it is ever going to get universally solved unless that Flatpak thing works, and even then, I'm guessing you would have to depend on Daz to do that for you, whereas as a minimalist custom, bespoke distro such as I've describe here, would be in the hands of the users, namely the Linux-Heads on here!
I just cannot help but think that with the knowledge you have between you, that pulling-off a minimalist, bespoke distro like that would be the answer to all our dreams. The stuff csaa just pointed out sounds amazing. I mean, lol, I cannot even get AMD accelration for dForce in Windows, so what he's achieved there is beyond what is even possible for us on Windows as far as I'm aware!
All of that aside, I managed to free-up my disabled drive. I actually have two physical 240GB drives in this system, but the second was always intentionally disabled, used only to store my ISOs. But what I've done is shuffle the most important off to USB sticks, wipe the drive and can now use it purely for installing Linux on, using the BIOS to diable the Windows or Linux drive at will. I got fed-up of having to re-install Windows between Linux distro tests, so this is much better, should have done it years ago!
So what I've been doing: I couldn't help but notice that further down the page on that link I gave the other day, there is something called "Fedora Everything". It should really be called "Fedora Custom" cause that's exactly what it is, and it's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. And, unlike the Debian variant, this one actually recognises my WIFI dongle and I was able to install a minimal Fedora base with a minimal GNOME desktop. Works perfect so far, but (and this really blows my mind), there is no firewall by default. I thought the Debian and Ubuntu-based distros were bad enough in so far as they do have a firewall, but it's disabled by default.
This one, though, this Fedora/GNOME minimal setup, there is no firewall at all, so I'm currently trying to find out which is considered the defaull firewall to use for that configuration, one that actually has a GUI element to control it. Crazy stuff for sure, and I suppose there's a very good reason for it, but man, you would think that they would at least have one on there to be able to swtich it on!
How To Install Davinci Resolve 20 On Linux Mint 22
Cheers Robert, looks proising. But if I recall, I tried that distro and found it to be bloated with far too many programs pre-installed. I could be wrong though, so I've downloaded "Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.2" and might give it a spin tomorrow.
PS: I forgot to thank csaa for that post of his. Really appreciate the time you spent to explain that to me but unfortunately that stuff goes right over my head. I'd be super-active in helping to get this thing going for everyone if I had the ability to do so. I really appreciate the stuff you Linux-heads do, and I totally get that for most people on here they are going to be using an Nvidia card. If I were better-off financially, I would (sincerely) buy the most knowlegeable two people between you a second-hand AMD RX580 with 8GB, and send it to you to play with.
Obviously I'm biased since that's the card I use, but it's an amazing card even now. It's a well-sorted, well-loved and largely used card even today. It's like with the Nvidia cards. Every so often one card stands out as exceptionally good for the price, and that was exactly the same for the AMD RX580 8GB model. So for that reason, along with it being so affordable to buy these days, I think it would make the perfect test-bed of a card as far as AMD goes. I saw a video just the other month where AI fanatics were building AI processing farms with them, so there ya go, need I say more!
"Old but Gold" as they say!
Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.2 did not go well. The live mode worked great, but as suspected there was far too much software included, and when I tried to install it to SSD, I had a bit of a struggle with it due to having two physical drives and not understanding a lot of the jargon they were using in the partitioning utility. Eventually I figured it out, but got no further than a black screen after booting in to the installed distro.
I suspect I'm to blame for that one due to the partitioning thing, but nevertheless it didn't go well and like I said, way too much software installed with that one anyway. I do like the interface, though, the Cinnamon interface is something I could get along with very easily if only they would quit pre-loading their distros with all that software, and unfortunately, I cannot find the equivalent of "Fedora Everything" among the Mint distros. Something I did notice during the live version running, is that it does at least have a firewall, but again, as with other Ubuntu-based stuff, it was switched off by default.
Have you tried Bazzite? Mentioned frequently for gaming along with CachyOS these days. Would assume it can't be wrong for general 3D.
I haven't, but I intend to and just took a more thorough look at their website after seeing your post. Must admit it does sound good in theory, and it's great there's a GNOME version, so I'll see how it goes. I'll likely give it a spin tomorrow, or if not, I'll probably do it over the weekend.
I'm referring to Bazzite by the way, not CachyOS. I need to look deeper into CachyOS before I try it.
@3DIO
I'm still not sure why you are so concerned about essentially running a barebones version of Linux with the bare minimum installed. It's not Windows with its performance-destroying bloat and any programs, drivers, sub-systems you don't need or want can be sequentially removed once you've got to grips with the distro. The removal process is 'smart' - only dependencies that are unique to the particular application you remove will be deleted, leaving other applications with shared dependencies fully operational. Until, in turn, you remove them. Honestly, give up this idea of creating your own minimal installation (essentially your own fork of a Linux distro) as, and I hope I'm not being unkind here, you don't really have the knowledge yet to be doing this and it's not necessary - certainly not from a performance perspective. You are painting yourself into a corner and manufacturing artificial difficulties.
I do understand the thought process of making something ultra-efficient and I actually admire it but perhaps you are starting this project from the wrong angle.
Get a distro you like up and running. Forget the bloat. It's there, it doesn't really impact anything except disk space and even then it's minimal. Get Daz Studio installed on it and any other applications you need. Get OpenCL working. Backup your finished setup so you can come back to square one if you make a mistake later. Then, and only then, should you think about stripping out everything you don't need or want. I really do think you are starting your project from the wrong end.
Bazzite is an Atomic Fedora distro - it's immutable. You cannot make any changes to the core system files. No tinkering, no changing, nothing. It's a great choice for someone who just wants Linux to work reliably as updates are generally yearly and the kernel is optimised for 3D/games. However, if you want to do something like install a system-wide WINE that isn't part of the supplied package (or anything else really), you'll need to layer them using rpm-ostree which is a topic in its own right and if you want any of your packages to be updated regularly, forget it. You swap flexibility for reliability with Atomic distros.
CachyOS is what I call the acceptable face of Arch :) It's the distro I use at home. It's very, very flexible and very fast but be aware that Arch-derived distros don't come as discrete releases every year or six months. They get rolling updates and will, on occasion, happily destroy your entire OS. It's been a while since that's happened and Cachy is probably the best Arch distro for newer users, but be aware that you're entering into a very self-sufficient world if you go down that path. It's essentially the polar opposite of Bazzite: You swap reliability for flexibility and very fast updates.
I would also file Gnome in the dusty archives of yesteryear. It works, there's nothing wrong with it per se but it might hold you back. You want good performance in Windows apps under Linux? KDE/Wayland.
@TimberWolf
Thanks for that. I'd say a lot of what you wrote it pretty much an explanation of a lot of the stuff I've often wondered. Sounds like I will have to give Bazzite a miss then (although I appreciate the suggestion, bluejaunte). And looking at the CachyOS website just now it does look promising, but then it almost always does. What you said about installation on Linux being smart and it not being a problem to remove the stuff you don't want, that's at least some consolation, but I still strongly believe that all major distro creators should at least make availability a bare bones version of their distro by default, regardless of any other 'flavours' they release.
Without that, it's getting to feel like Windows all over again.
But ok, you do make sense and I can see why you're pointing this out. I'll try CachyOS next for sure, although I must admint that the name I keep seeing brought up, "Wayland", is something I don't fully understand. From your message, I'm guessing it's something invisible that is newer and better than X11. I don't know the technical jargon so that's the best way I can explain my understanding of it. And since you also mention that GNOME (good as it is) is yesterdays news, and mention KDE, I suppose this might have something to do with GNOME being based on X11, while presumably KDE uses this new "Wayland" thing.
Really haven't had time (or even the mental energy to be honest) to start learning about Wayland as well, but at the moment that's what is currently floating around inside my head.
This is a very good explanation of what Wayland is without being overly technical:
https://kevinboone.me/wayland_ground_up.html
Gnome uses the Wayland protocol and, inevitably, every desktop eventually will. Do bear in mind that what I write is my opinion - it isn't established fact or law - and there are as many opinions on any particular aspect of Linux as there are distros. Pick a distro you like working with and get everything you want up and running in it. If you start from the other end and build it from the ground up to avoid a problem that doesn't really exist you will be very much on your own if you run into a snag; you will undoubtedly be missing components and infrastructure that other folks will assume you have. Get it working out-of-the-box, join a forum or two and take it from there.
You said you liked Mint - it's a great choice. The Cinnamon desktop is not the snappiest when it comes to Studio in WINE but it works fine. Again, this was my experience with my hardware under my testing conditions. You may find none of the lag that I encountered but you won't find out unless you get something actually installed rather than diving into the weeds from the outset and dismissing everything because they happen to come with some applications pre-installed. I recommend the KDE desktop for Daz Studio users because, again in my testing and my experience, it worked flawlessly. So did Fedora/Cosmic, but Arch/Cosmic was appalling so there's no hard and fast rules here! There are other considerations that may apply: Studio is not the only application you will need and this may influence your choice in another direction - perfectly valid.
Haven't read it all yet, but the opening paragraph at the link already tells me that I'm probably better off going for a Wayland-based install, so I'm really pleased you pointed that out. It's something that was nagging at the back of my mind "... Look into Wayland ... Look into Wayland ... Look into Wayland ...".
Actually though, I really like the idea of CachyOS being based on Arch. Because a lot of the stuff I've read, and a lot of the videos I've seen, have often lead me to looking at Arch's website with great determination, only to be put off by how complicated it all looked. So with a bit of luck, CachyOS could be just what I need if it gives me the goodness of Arch without having to be one of those Linux Terminal wizards!
Will definitely give CachyOS a spin tomorrow. But just a quick question about removing stuff. I've noticed that depending upon the base distro, they each tend to go with their own version of a software installation (and removal) manager. Since these are GUI-based things and not done directly in the terminal, does that mean that removing software via one of these things would be not as proper-like as doing it in the terminal?
The reason I ask is because if I'm going to have to start removing lots of stuff, I'm obviously going to want to do it via the GUI. You mention Linux software removal being smart, but is the smart part of it still respected, if a GUI-based software remover is used?
GUI just does terminal commands in the background. Doing it in the terminal is simple enough though.
Update all packages: sudo pacman -Syu
Remove package: sudo pacman -R <package_name>
Google pacman commands, it's not rocket science.Do it a few times and it becomes second nature.
Thanks for the heads-up. I used to know a fair few terminal commands but it was all Debian-based stuff. I would have to re-learn at this point so it's good to hear it does the same terminal commands in the background. I'll definitely be using the GUI for now, at least until I get into it again.
I never used a pacman command, ever. It was always apt get on the Debian-based distro I had installed, and had gotten used to.
I've very seldom had to use the terminal
Well I hope it's the same for me. I got it downloaded yesterday, but spent too much time on the Daz store and forum, so will get it installed today.
This is a momentous occasion! I'm pleased to say I'm writing this message from the comfort of my shiny new CachyOS install. Not only does it work 100%, it's as clean, crisp, snappy and bloat-free as a person could wish for. Everything runs as smooth as butter, and the installer alone was so good it was like someone asked me how to make it, and they did it that way!
Not only was I able to select my GUI, but also cherry-pick each and every element of the GUI to install. You know me by now, so I selected GNOME as my GUI, but not just any old GNOME. On CachyOS. my beloved GNOME is now Wayland based. I was able to select and deselect every element of GNOME, right down to whether I want the calculator installing or not (done by expanding the little arrows). And what about those browsers they usually install by default? Nope, none of that sort of behaviour going on, either! I simply deselected the web browser it had recommended, so it never got installed in the first place!
So then I finally clicked Install in order to put the installation into moton. Even that was a joy, really. During the installation, I double-clicked the install window to maximise it, and enjoyed the rolling demo that was advertising the features of CachyOS. Everything from the CPU-specific optimisation system that CachyOS uses, right up to them demonstrationg they have the sense to install a firewall and actually turn it on by default. As you can imagine, I was impressed enough by the selection process, and it just got better and better and better!
But could it get even better?
Yes, it could. And it did. Because once installed, the only stuff visible on my OS was the stuff that I specifically allowed it to install. Wow, I'm in OS heaven right now! CachyOS with this Wayland-based minimum install of GNOME is the future as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I need to do now, is get Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve Studio Installed and running on it. I've not installed anything other than my choice of browser, and I did that using their official software tool.
No WINE or anything like that on here yet, so I'm hoping TimberWolf is still up for that step-by-step on how to get Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve Studio running, because if that happened, that would be the end of Windows comple!ely and permanently for me, and it cannot come soon enough. Not even going to bother going back to Windows while I learn this stuff. No point, I already feel like I'm finally (and permanently) at home here on CachyOS - I'm that happy with it!
My only criticism of CachyOS is the live version with it's KDE GUI and associated software. It's important that beginners are not put off by it. So my biggest tip for beginners is to remember that when you actually install it, you will end up with something completely different to that live version (unless that is what you want), because you get full control over everything, and that's exactly the way it should be, you in control, where if you want something specific, then that's exactly what you get and nothing more.
I just think it's (very) important that beginners remember this when they're presented with the live version of CachyOS. My install looks nothing like the live testing version, it looks (and behaves) exactly how I want it to. That is all thanks to the insane amount of customisation you get when you come to install it. I spent ages expanding those little arrows in the installer, just to see how customisable the installer was!
It's really good, it's really quite something!
Cool, grats. CachyOS is pretty neat. Though your no-Wine comment confuses me. I thought that was partly the point of CachyOS that it comes with these game optimizations like Proton which would of course include Wine? Did you disable it during the install or something?
Keep in mind you're essentially now on Arch. That means you have to tell everyone every chance you get: I'm on Arch btw. But joking aside, you're now on the bleeding edge of things. Just keep that in mind when you update, some things may break at least in theory. Good idea to get some kind of daily backup system in place that you could fall back to if the worst case happens.