Tried to use something other than ubuntu

Posted by meow_pew_pew@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 14 comments

TL;DR: I worked for about 23 days, then an update May 5 broke my Python setup (specifically ComfyUI + ROCm)

I’m a web-developer and have been using ComfyUI to generate placeholder images on websites I build for clients. ComfyUI on Mac is painfully slow. In February comfyUI added support for ROCm, so I waited a month for them to work out the bugs then built a PC (Ryzen 8500G, Radeon RDNA 9070, 32GB RAM)

I decided on CachyOS over Arch because I wanted something that JUST worked OOTB. My biggest issues with Arch are

running FDISK to configure my SSD just isn’t fun
running WPA supplicant from the command line to setup Wi-Fi also isn’t fun
and trying get a compositor and Desktop Environment working from the command is error prone and frustrating

CachyOS issues
CachyOS is super cool. I honestly really liked it. But...I had these problems that I didn't know how to solve

CachyOS misidentified my GPU’s ID as gfx1101 instead of gfx1201
VRAM not clearing between model loads resulting in crashes and OOM errors
PyTorch would be super slow on first render with ComfyUI
TensorFlow would error out when running a training set
unable to use the ROCm amdgpu drivers resulted in instability

I use the iGPU to run my display and use all 16GB of VRAM on the 9070 to be used for PyTorch, running LLM inference, generating images using ComfyUI, training image classification using TensorFlow.

CachyOS had a hard time with this - almost every reboot after an update there would be no display out on the iGPU. I’d have to connect the DisplayPort cable to the dGPU, log in, shutdown, unplug for 10 seconds, plug DisplayPort cable back into iGPU then turn PC back on. This worked about 100% of the time. And honestly, things worked pretty decently, certainly faster than my M3 MacBook Pro, so I didn’t complain too much thinking it’d be fixed in some update.

Then May 5 update. I’m not sure exactly what was updated but my system would NOT display anything on the iGPU (not even BIOS/UEFI). ComfyUI crashed with sqlalchemy errors and wouldn’t even run. LlamaCPP using ROCm also failed to run (GPU hang errors)

I lost a day of work. I had to download Ubuntu 24.04.4 and install it. 2 hours later, everything was working fine. I was able to use the amdgpu drivers from repo.radeon.com. Things became super stable, a 1650x1080 render completed in about 17 seconds using z image turbo (down from 27 sec) , longcat image editing took about 30 seconds (down from 40 seconds)

I get why people don’t like Ubuntu, but honestly, I have to use something stable for my work and Ubuntu works. I’m glad I tried CachyOS, it’s cool, but for me, Ubuntu is a better fit

[-]

BillTran163@reddit

This guy have not figured out how to use conda/microconda/micromamba/pyenv for Python. I use micromamba to contains all of my ComfyUI runtime, pinning Python to 3.12 and left system-installed Python alone. Nothing breaks.

Erchevara@reddit

Did you try Fedora? It seems weird that you had to install a GPU driver for AMD, when that's in the kernel. Sounds like a weird quirk of having an older kernel that you might have to manually patch on every driver update.

From my experience, you're right:

Arch breaks in 23 days, but
Ubuntu breaks at the next major update (6 months - 2 years), and
Fedora breaks when your hardware is no longer supported - I had that issue with my GTX 1070 and F44 - but that's fixable the same way you add support for newer hardware in Ubuntu LTS, just in reverse.

GrouchyCranberry8982@reddit

I used eos which is kinda arch. It broke once, permanently, because I was stupid and made an egregious error.

Every other time it "broke" I was able to resolve and learn more about Linux

lo_yak@reddit

Ubuntu breaks at the next major update

Fedora does too.

FryBoyter@reddit

Arch breaks in 23 days, but

I can't remember the last time one of my various Arch installations broke and it wasn't my fault.

itastesok@reddit

Nonsense.

aloobhujiyaay@reddit

This is exactly why Ubuntu still dominates for work setups stability over experimentation

Horsemeatburger@reddit

You say you want stability so I'm curious why you didn't also look at the RHEL side of Linux, i.e. Fedora, CentOS, Alma Linux, Rocky linux?

I mean, when I think "reliability" then CachyOS wouldn't exactly be at the top of my list.

elatllat@reddit

Fedora etc like to exclude wifi drivers and audio / video codecs, so as much as I use them, I don't consider them as easy to setup.

running FDISK to configure my SSD just isn’t fun running WPA supplicant from the command line to setup Wi-Fi also isn’t fun and trying get a compositor and Desktop Environment working from the command is error prone and frustrating

With Arch Linux, you could have used archinstall.

In addition, there are various graphical front ends available for WPA Supplicant.

Everyone should use whatever suits them best.

aZureINC@reddit

running WPA supplicant from the command line to setup Wi-Fi also isn’t fun and trying get a compositor and Desktop Environment working from the command is error prone and frustrating

These Arch myths just need to die man. Getting a desktop environment working is neither frustrating nor error prone, its a single command (e.g pacman -S plasma). Nobody uses wpa_supplicant from the command line, there is a gazillion frontends for it and every DE you install comes with one.

gwildor@reddit

catch 22.

"Arch" does not include a DE - you need wifi to install it.

thats why they tried cachyos - its arch with an included wifi frontend and DE.

natermer@reddit

CachyOS has been the new meme distro for a while now.

The point of operating systems is that they make it easier to run and write software. That is it. That is the whole reason for their existence.

Use whatever works for you.

Quietus87@reddit

If you want to pin your python version, you can use the devenv and direnv of NixOS or a distrobox container for that.