7mo ago

Should I use a rolling distro?

Currently, I use Debian on my server. I have an Intel Arc GPU that I use for transcoding, however hardware encoding doesn't work. I am able to get a slight performance benefit from decoding, but encoding would be much better. I have an A750 in my desktop (not server), and was able to get hardware acceleration working, but only with openSUSE Tumbleweed with the stable kernel (6.9.4). While I would love to have encoding, (I am limited on upload speed and av1 encoding isn't practical on the CPU for multiple streams), I doubt it would be stable using a rolling distro and non-standard kernel. Has anyone else tried anything like this? Are there any arc + jellyfin users out there who know any way to make this work, or any openSUSE self-hosters could vouch for its stability? I am willing to try almost any distro (except ubuntu) to make this work.

Edit: fixed. There was some firmware I needed to work on debian. I will link and such in a bit when I have time.

16 comments

You can use Debian Testing.
- One downside of debian testing is you don't get security patches when the package is freezed under testing.
  Rather use sid, but comes with it's own share of troubles !
  Edit: I'm currently on Manjaro, wich is somehow a "semi-rolling" release based on arch. It takes a few weeks before it hits the stable branch. But while I love it as daily drive, don't know if I would recommend it as server.
  Servers need to be stable, that's why I use debian stable on my server.
  Maybe give fedora server a try? Which is more uptodate than debian and maybe more stable as a server OS than a rolling release !
- I believe that I've tried that. I currently use the backports kernel anyway.
  
  I see. I recommended that because it's kinda like rolling release. I haven't used openSUSE as a server but I remember people who use from Reddit self-hosted.
  You can also try Void Linux.

Which kernel do you use on Debian? IIRC support for Intel Arc was added in 6.0 or higher. I am using Proxmox (based on Debian) and I had to upgrade from 5.15 to 6.2 kernel to get hardware decoding to work. Have you checked the Jellyfin manual? It's pretty elaborate on how to get Intel QSV working.

I ran sid for 6 years without issue. You might like it :)
EDIT: I only switched after my employer mandated an Ubuntu flavor

Use of hardware enablement package kernel might help here? It is called linux-generic-hwe or something like that. It will install a much newer kernel with more support for newer hardware.

Are you saying that it does work with open suse tumbleweed with the stock kernel?
I havent run opensuse much as a server but am always looking at it and Arch.
Probably going to switch to Arch eventually because the arch wiki is just the best docs I've found.
If you're not relying on say a closed source driver that needs to compile for each kernel update you should have no issues there.
If you set up btrfs snapshots to run on updates then you could always just roll back if there's a bad one. That's how my arch laptop is set up.
Personally wouldn't use Debian testing over arch or tumbleweed though. I think there's something to be said for being on the same packages as the maintaners and not a testing version.

I am running an Arc A40 on an Ubuntu VM for Plex. They only problem I have is VM not booting after it is restarted. Restarting the host fixes the issue.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000091844/graphics.html
- How did you manage to get an A40?
  
  Someone I know organized a group buy and bought a box of them.

You can use slackware current
- Serious question - does Slackware offer any special features that make it more attractive?
  I stopped using Slackware back when Corel Linux released, and when CL died I switched to Debian and never looked back.
  
  I find building packages from source to be easier cause thats their preferred method for third party software.
  i treat it as a stable base that i can build on top of.

16 comments