Resolve Linux vs Windows

Hey all,

So I am a long time Ubuntu/Linux user, software developer, etc. Love using it for development as it is rock solid and at least to me, faster to develop with.

When it comes to anything that uses hardware, however, such as GPUs, audio cards (internal or USB), etc.. I have found it difficult, at best to get Linux to work as smooth and more so, as fast, as a Windows or Mac setup. I am well aware of ALSA, Jack, and proprietary drivers for GPUs, etc.

That said, I was ecstatic to see Resolve released for Linux, if only for Redhat/CentOS, but it seems others are finding ways with some manual intervention to get it to work on other flavors, at least to some degree.

I have kept a windows machine around for two reasons.. video/sound hardware stuff (e.g. editing, capturing, recording, etc), and video gaming... despite having xbox one and ps4.

So I know it is fresh off the release and this may be too early to provide any concrete information, but I am really wondering if the Linux version of Resolve, with the known hardware limitations, is any faster, better, etc to use than the Windows and/or Mac counterpart? I would love to be able to use my same beastly development box to edit videos and such with as well. However, it seems like just from various reads around the net, there is a severe limitation on the hardware capabilities of Linux. Audio in particular, but even with GPUs.. is the OpenCL implementation for a Linux GPU like the new 1070/1080 or AMDs offerings as good, or better than what is possible on a Windows box?

I also ask this because I recently bought a desktop replacement laptop, that I run Windows 10 on as well, and have been trying to set up as a dual boot CentOS setup, to no avail. I suspect there is some way to get it to boot in to CentOS... I am about to try the RedHat developer edition at this point since it appears Resolve will run on RedHat as well.

But for my editing needs/wants, is there a reason to switch? I mean, I am fine working in Windows or Linux.. the UIs are the same on both platforms, so really for me the primary reason to move would be some sort of large increase in editing/rendering speed that the Linux platform offers. Otherwise, as nice as it is and as much as I want to just install and fire up Resolve on my linux box, I dont see a compelling reason to jump through hoops to get a specific Linux installation working, especially if the drivers for my GPU and audio are problematic at best.

Great question.
We are on a maxed-out Mac Pro and are needing a more powerful system. So we are faced with the same question. We use Pro Tools HD for audio processing, with A UAD card, none of which works on Linux. So, as much as we dislike the "clunky" world of Windows, Linux has drawbacks.

Nobody with enough experience on Linux to provide some help on this choice?

You will find that most top end Post Production software was Linux based at first. DaVinci Resolve itself for instance was initially only offered as a turnkey Linux system that was a few hundred grand. It was a few years later that they offered software only Mac & Windows releases of the software for a grand. Flame, although originally SGI/Irix based, when moved to PC was Linux based. There are still plenty of turnkey solutions that are Linux only.

There really are no hardware limitations as you are suggesting. It is more that you need to know how to fine tune your system. Different software can also cause conflicts, but with advances in Linux this is rarely the case.

As for performance, a supplier of ours tested Windows vs Linux on exactly the same system and incredibly enough, he was almost getting double the performance on renders on Linux over Windows. Yep, double the speed on the same hardware. This is Moto say that would always be the case, and I believe it was a clean install of Linux compared to an existing install of Windows but the results are still conclusive.


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Now if only I could cleanly install Resolve 14 and Fusion 9 on my Ubuntu 17 setup!!

As for performance, a supplier of ours tested Windows vs Linux on exactly the same system and incredibly enough, he was almost getting double the performance on renders on Linux over Windows. Yep, double the speed on the same hardware. This is Moto say that would always be the case, and I believe it was a clean install of Linux compared to an existing install of Windows but the results are still conclusive.

Yeah right... https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... inux-1126/

We wish Linux was faster on the same hardware!

We found those tests to be inconclusive, frankly.

Talked about here => viewtopic.php?f=21&t=71377