Why Linux?

Looking at the cost to add HDR monitoring and an eGPU to my MBPr makes me once again consider building a dedicated Resolve workspace for the same or less money that will likely perform better.

My assumption has always been this would run Windows, but since I'm starting clean it seems worth asking...is there a compelling, PRACTICAL, reason to choose Linux instead?

Are there meaningful performance or reliability gains?

In high performance systems the Linux version seems to come out slightly ahead of the others, from what I have seen. I think it really depends on your resources, though - if you can dedicate the hardware to becoming a Resolve appliance, Linux is extremely stable, compared to Windows 10. If you need the computer to do other work, it may not be convenient or possible.

pro res is supported on Linux as well as the mac.

pro res is supported on Linux as well as the mac.

Only with the big panel

I think it also depends on what you, personally, are doing with Resolve. Are you doing editing; motion graphics (Fusion), sound recording, editing, and mixing; and color correcting/grading? All of these or just some of them?

The main caution I can think of is audio. If Fairlight doesn't entirely serve your needs (e.g., if you need to use Izotope RX to clean up problems, or if you need to use a more fully featured DAW for certain tasks), your options are more limited in Linux. I've used Ardour and Harrison Mixbus in Linux (Mixbus is built on Ardour), and while they are good tools for music they're not the best for postproduction audio work.

I hesitated a long time myself about this decision; I use Mac, Windows, and Linux daily. In the end I went with the Mac because even though it's more expensive there's my time to consider and that has value: the ability to buy an off-the-shelf Mac (I bought a refurbished 2013 trashcan Mac Pro direct from Apple that had the exact specs I wanted for close to $1,000 off list price) and simply install Resolve and get on with my work was the deciding factor for me. I could have made and configured a more powerful machine in Linux for less money, but it was the time and hassle factor, along with more options in the audio department, that made me lean toward Mac.

Linux has a better task scheduler(above 16 cores/32threads) and it supports upto 8 GPU's in one system for Davinci Resolve.

For most people windows 10 is fine or when you're rich and want to show this, Apple's MacOS is also okay.

This would be a dedicated Resolve workstation. It would literally run nothing else, but be expected to handle large 4K projects, spending meaningful time in every page: edit, color, fusion, fairlight, delivery.

I will still have a nearly brand new MBPr to use other apps and to do ProRes encodes.

What kind of speed/reliability improvements can one expect from choosing Linux over Windows on the same hardware? Less than 10% isn't worth the hassle.

As most of the time, what is your source material and what do you deliver (RAW, bitdepth, codec, fps, etc...). 8k.R3D needs other hardware than ProRes 422.
For upto 6k source material you won't need exotic hardware most of the time, hence windows will do.

Source: Mostly BMD RAW 3:1. Some ProRes, a little h264.
delivery: You name it. Everything from DCP to YouTube.

I'd recommend building something else and use a shared database with remote render to a Mac if you need prores.

"Something else" meaning Windows instead of Linux?

ah, I didn't realize that ProRes needed the panels. When I bought it, you could only run Linux with the panels. Too bad they don't offer it with the medium sized panels as well, as I almost would rather use them then the full sized ones that we have.