I need recommendations for a stable release distro for OBS Studio livestreaming and light video editing. This machine will be shared between several users who are techies, although not necessarily Linux (they’re coming from Windows). I don’t want to worry about things breaking because of an update, or to start a shoot only to find problems once we’re live.
Nvidia and nonfree codecs should be treated as first-class citizens. H.264 w/ AAC will be everywhere with this workflow.
Some thoughts:
Linux Mint Debian Edition: Currently my top choice. It just works?
Fedora Bazzite: My second choice, maybe with auto-update disabled. Seems a bit risky though in the case of security updates to packages.
OpenSUSE: I run Slowroll on my laptop and work desktop, however recent package management errors relating to codecs and the packman repo have spooked me away.
Debian: Release cadance seems too slow for my preference.
I can vouch for Linux Mint / LMDE; their pre-installed software and defaults seem very sensible and I need far less set-up, fixing and fiddling (esp. with NVidea hardware; the open-source driver refused to make anything run on GPU with my Asus ROG Strix GTX 970) then on bare-bones Debian or Ubuntu LTS.
All four mentioned here have very stable and safe release schedules.
Bazzite’s defaults help a lot with gaming (and that stupid NVidea driver) and the initial welcome-screen helps you install the Steam, Lutris, OBS, etc. you want and leave out anything you don’t. It’s actually helpful, really!
I do want to add Bazzite’s team seems to have only one person who can sign releases, and they did misplace a key at least once leading to nobody receiving updates until they replaced the key in their installation.
Their team management does not seem the best; assuming this was a one-off thing Bazzite can still be a great, stable choice.
Not to be “that guy,” but I would like some sources on this. As far as I understand it, the signing happens automatically in GitHub via the private keys during the automated build process.
Additionally, they didn’t misplace a key; they didn’t yet have a process in place for pushing a new key to end-users (they had/have a plan to rotate their signing keys from time to time). Details about what happened can be found here. In my year of using Bazzite, I haven’t seen this issue reoccur, so I am writing under the assumption that they’ve indeed fixed the internal process that caused the problem.