What a candy!
I mean the machine. Could this be an HP Z640 or Z840? And is there perhaps another one to inherit and potentially ship to Europe?
To be a bit more serious, I have to admit that the list of supported OSs looks somewhat inconsistent. For instance, if Rocky “Blue Onyx” is supported, then probably the corresponding RHEL version is supported as well. Also, stating that RHEL is non-free might not be entirely accurate. As far as I know, there is still a no-cost offering of RHEL available through the Red Hat Developer program. I hope you don’t mind me pointing this out; to be honest, I really don’t know which OS supports Ansys HFSS.
I don’t have much experience with SUSE. I have tried it a few times, but I found it a bit more server-oriented. I recall some articles mentioning that SUSE recently announced plans to fork and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution.
Choosing between Fedora and Debian based distros, in my opinion, is a matter of personal preference, especially for workstations. Basically, Fedora-based distros like RHEL and Rocky tend to be more secure with longer release cycles. While Debian is also very secure and stable, Ubuntu is more targeted towards personal users and small to medium-sized enterprises.
For some reasons, I prefer Podman over Docker, and I really like TOOLBX; thus, in general, I lean towards Fedora. At the same time, on my workstation, which, compared to yours, is quite ancient, I run a slightly older version of Ubuntu due to GPU compatibility issues and native support for MicroK8s. Also, I use input-leap to share my keyboard and mouse across computers, so I prefer Xorg over Wayland because currently Wayland does not support clipboard functionality for this kind of software.
The main thing I would focus on is support for your GPU drivers, and then compatibility with your preferred software.
Moreover, one tip that comes to mind when reading your post, is related to the fact that as far as I know, some of these workstations can be quite noisy. If that bothers you and you have a good network connection, you might want to try Amazon DCV (formerly NICE DCV) or HP Anyware (formerly Teradici). These are excellent RDP clients, and in most cases, you should be able to move the machine to another room and still use its full potential.
P.S.
I wasn’t kidding about my willingness to inherit such a machine, if it is possible, please let me know! 