[godelski]

  >  completely effed on most distributions

How does the distribution make this an issue? You can always freeze drivers and install old ones. I get that it might not work out of the box, especially with rolling-release distros like Arch, but you also don't want rolling-releases for an older machine.

[_79px]

I know it's also me that's the issue. But I just want a Linux distro that works. I've had enough of people saying "Nvidia has been getting so much better recently!" and "It's completely usable now!" when the newest drivers break my whole experience. I would use arch, and have tried about 5 times, but it's too complicated to get the driver I need and I won't even bother at this point. I've just accepted the fact that I'm going to use Mint until I get a desktop. Maybe I'll try to get help on a forum somewhere but idk, I think I would need personal help.

[godelski]

  > But I just want a Linux distro that works.

This is perfectly valid. But I would add that Arch is not that distro. Even though projects like Endeavour and Manjaro are trying that I don't think it'll ever be the case. You have rolling-releases and even though they've done a great job you're never going to be the most stable because of this.

But I think Pop is the best distro for this. System76 is highly incentivized to do exactly this and specifically with nvidia drivers and laptops (laptops create extra complications...). I can't promise it'll be a cure-all but it is worth giving a shot. I would try their forums too.

I totally get the frustration. I've been there, unfortunately. I hope you can get someone to help.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

CachyOS just works for me. Highly optimized Arch working flawless and without hassle.

I know my ways around Arch, and in the about two years using CachyOS I never needed to intervene, with the exception of things like changed configs/split packages. But those are announced in advance on their webpages, be it Arch itself, or CachyOS, and also appear in good old Pacman in the terminal, or whichever frontend you fancy. It's THE DREAM!

What's lacking is maybe pre-packaged llm/machine learning stuff. Maybe I'm stupid, but they don't even have current llama.cpp, WTF? But at least Ollama is there. LM-Studio also has to be compiled by yourself, either via the AUR, or otherwise. But these are my only complaints.

[godelski]

  > Maybe I'm stupid, but they don't even have current llama.cpp, WTF?

I don't understand. It's in the AUR...

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/llama.cpp

  > has to be compiled by yourself, either via the AUR

I don't think I'd call the AUR "compiled by yourself". It's still a package manager. You're not running the config and make commands yourself. I mean what do you want? A precompiled binary? That doesn't work very well for something like llama.cpp. You'd have to deliver a lot more with it and pin the versions of the dependencies, which will definitely result in lost performance.

Is running `yay -S llama.cpp` really that big of a deal? You're not intervening in any way different for any other package (that also aren't precompiled binaries)

[LargoLasskhyfv]

> I mean what do you want? A precompiled binary?

Yes, exactly :-)

Haven't used yay or other aur helpers so far. Maybe that's why my systems run so stable?

Should maybe look into it.

Have used Yaourt on Arch in the far past, with...errm...varying success ;->

[godelski]

  > Haven't used yay or other aur helpers so far. 
  > Have used Yaourt on Arch in the far past,

Yaourt is an aur helper?

  > Maybe that's why my systems run so stable?

Sorry?

  >>> I know my ways around Arch

Forgive me, you said this earlier and I think I misunderstood. What does this mean exactly? How long have you been using Arch? Or rather, have you used Arch the actual distro or only Arch based distros?

I guess I'm asking, have you installed the vanilla distro? Are you familiar with things like systemd-boot, partitioning, arch-chroot, mkinitcpio, and all that?