The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

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I haven't encountered any frustrating issues with KDE plasma 5.27 and X11 yet but I do use a script with xrandr and a few shortcut keys to change monitors since my layout is very unorthodox. The biggest issue I've found with 5.27 is that the new window tiling feature just isn't ready yet and causes a lot of programs to crash. Wayland on the other hand causes a whole lot of system lockups, especially with Firefox, the desktop itself freezes (the window manager keeps working) and there's microstutters when playing video games on an RX 6600XT. But this was the case before 5.27. It's a shame because I do like wayland for video games since it completely eliminates the weird frame pacing X11 has.

For a last "stable" release before plasma 6 that seems to promote wayland a lot, this hasn't been very stable on wayland at all. Which makes me question if I will return to XFCE since I'm a floating window DE nigger.

pylosurf said:
If you have the resources, another solution to the Windows gaming problem is to just dedicate a machine to that purpose. Don't bother with dual booting, just treat Windows as a malevolent black box dedicated to games, similar to Playstation, Xbox, etc, and use a separate Linux machine for everything else. It saves a lot of pain and keeps your personal data isolated from the intrusive bullshit that closed source gaming entails. If you only use Linux for non-gaming purposes, you may well find that an older machine with unacceptable specs for games is perfectly fine as a daily driver for web / email / etc.
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This is also the best way to go about it if you just want to use your computer without issues as well as Windows will just fuck over your boot manager with the next LGBTQAIPedoBLMFAO "feature" update.
 
pylosurf said:
If you have the resources, another solution to the Windows gaming problem is to just dedicate a machine to that purpose. Don't bother with dual booting, just treat Windows as a malevolent black box dedicated to games, similar to Playstation, Xbox, etc, and use a separate Linux machine for everything else. It saves a lot of pain and keeps your personal data isolated from the intrusive bullshit that closed source gaming entails. If you only use Linux for non-gaming purposes, you may well find that an older machine with unacceptable specs for games is perfectly fine as a daily driver for web / email / etc.
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So the Windows PC effectively becomes a gaming console :lol:
In all seriousness, this can be a solution for games that do not work on Linux but remember kids: if a game is bundled with DRM and/or Anti-Cheat measures then it's not worth buying and/or downloading it in the first place.
 
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I was gonna make a Windows VM for gaming, install QEMU and have it running a debloated and cracked Win 10 just so I can run some games that Proton isn't up to get going. I heard good things about it and how it lets you keep the best of both worlds without having to reboot every time you are done with Windows.

Then I actually started going down the list of what I was gonna have to do and just gave up. It looks so goddamn annoying and finnicky to pass the VM through the GPU and shit has so many steps I simply do not trust myself to do it.

Instead I got my old SSD and plugged it into my PC and am gonna work on having a dual boot but keeping the Win install on the old SSD so it doesn't risk niggering my Linux bootloader. I am pretty sure it should work. Annoying to have to reboot to play some games but it should be only one or two, and it does mean I will be able to run other Win only software if I need it.
 
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General Emílio Médici said:
I was gonna make a Windows VM for gaming, install QEMU and have it running a debloated and cracked Win 10 just so I can run some games that Proton isn't up to get going. I heard good things about it and how it lets you keep the best of both worlds without having to reboot every time you are done with Windows.

Then I actually started going down the list of what I was gonna have to do and just gave up. It looks so goddamn annoying and finnicky to pass the VM through the GPU and shit has so many steps I simply do not trust myself to do it.

Instead I got my old SSD and plugged it into my PC and am gonna work on having a dual boot but keeping the Win install on the old SSD so it doesn't risk niggering my Linux bootloader. I am pretty sure it should work. Annoying to have to reboot to play some games but it should be only one or two, and it does mean I will be able to run other Win only software if I need it.
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Setting up GPU passthrough actually isn't that much work, especially not if you're passing through an Nvidia card and running an AMD/Intel GPU on the host. Essentially you just adjust your modprobe config so that it will attach a special "standby to be passed through" driver to the card instead of the actual driver, and then you specify to KVM which card should be passed through. Assuming you manage your VMs with libvirt, it's very easy to do. Once you have a VM that boots with the GPU passed through, you can use a software called Looking Glass to interact with the output from the passed-through GPU in a window on your host. The latency is essentially zero compared to the conventional method of using RDP to control the guest, so it's ideal for games.

Oh, you may need to dump the ROM for your GPU first, for the VM to load. The easiest way to do that is to just boot from a Windows drive and do that with GPU-Z.

You can message me if you want me to walk you through the process, I've done it a few times now.
 
@General Emílio Médici two SSD’s is what I use. One for windows and one split between two distros (I like tinkering with stuff). Only problem I had was when I forgot to check what was updating and updated grub on the none primary one and it caused some fuckery. It fixed okay.

In fairness though, I could probably wipe the windows SSD. I don’t use it.
 
snov said:
Setting up GPU passthrough actually isn't that much work, especially not if you're passing through an Nvidia card and running an AMD/Intel GPU on the host. Essentially you just adjust your modprobe config so that it will attach a special "standby to be passed through" driver to the card instead of the actual driver, and then you specify to KVM which card should be passed through. Assuming you manage your VMs with libvirt, it's very easy to do. Once you have a VM that boots with the GPU passed through, you can use a software called Looking Glass to interact with the output from the passed-through GPU in a window on your host. The latency is essentially zero compared to the conventional method of using RDP to control the guest, so it's ideal for games.

Oh, you may need to dump the ROM for your GPU first, for the VM to load. The easiest way to do that is to just boot from a Windows drive and do that with GPU-Z.

You can message me if you want me to walk you through the process, I've done it a few times now.
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I appreciate the offer but I am too much of a retard. It literally sounds like you are speaking greek. I should clarify that I only ever dabbled on VMs using VirtualBox and never once used QEMU. I checked some tutorials on how to do it and it simply is beyond my current skill level to pull it off.

I am gonna just do the SSD thing and tinker with trying to do a pass-through some other time when I am just fucking around.
 
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If you're courageous you can actually get by with one graphics card and handle it back and forth between OSes. You must win the parts lottery for that though and GPU initialization might go entirely wrong and crash your entire system.

A better bet these days is to get a CPU with iGPU and a dedicated GPU on top. Saves a lot of headaches, and at least with X you can also use the dedicated GPU as slaved GPU device, basically just running some select software on the dedicated GPU via DRI PRIME, which means when you just do normal desktop stuff it's all done on the iGPU and your computer basically can turn your dedicated GPU (almost, depends on hardware) off, but if you run specific games you can instruct to run them on the dedicated GPU and have it seamlessly shown on your desktop which is still done by the iGPU. This can keep heat, noise and power consumption down as pretty much any iGPU these days is more than enough for desktop stuff and light gaming, but gives you always the option to bring out the heavy guns for the heavy games, and that all without the added complexity of a VM or monitor switches or the like. It's a feature originally intended for gaming laptops but works just fine on pretty much any reasonably modern hardware and doesn't need specific hardware extras.
 
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Speaking of GPUs, does anyone have any ideas on how the state of Wayland is? I been using X11 forever on my daily drivers (I have compiled a wayland machine before) but everyone keeps pushing me to use wayland and I'd prefer to not have a repeat of systemd retardation when the distros were mostly transitioning to systemd.
 
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♂CANAM productions♂ said:
Speaking of GPUs, does anyone have any ideas on how Wayland is? I been using X11 forever but everyone keeps pushing me to use Wayland I prefer to not have a repeat of systemd retardation.
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If you're on NVIDIA, chances are you should forget about it. NVIDIA and Wayland are not friends at this point in time, for a large variety of reasons (that are all NVIDIA's fault).
 
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♂CANAM productions♂ said:
Speaking of GPUs, does anyone have any ideas on how the state of Wayland is? I been using X11 forever on my daily drivers (I have compiled a wayland machine before) but everyone keeps pushing me to use wayland and I'd prefer to not have a repeat of systemd retardation when the distros were mostly transitioning to systemd.
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I’ve been running Plasma on Wayland for years now. It’s mostly fine. You’ll definitely want AMD or Intel graphics though, Nvidia’s drivers are still garbage.
 
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WINE is a lot like RetroArch in that you will have a vastly different experience based on small differences in hardware setup. Your opinion of it will be entirely based on which side you see more.

This seems to be unpopular, but I wouldn't entirely write off WINE. It's great when it works, and there's no way of knowing until you actually try programs with it.
 
pylosurf said:
If you have the resources, another solution to the Windows gaming problem is to just dedicate a machine to that purpose. Don't bother with dual booting, just treat Windows as a malevolent black box dedicated to games, similar to Playstation, Xbox, etc, and use a separate Linux machine for everything else. It saves a lot of pain and keeps your personal data isolated from the intrusive bullshit that closed source gaming entails. If you only use Linux for non-gaming purposes, you may well find that an older machine with unacceptable specs for games is perfectly fine as a daily driver for web / email / etc.
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Funny thing is I actually do have a Windows 7 laptop that I use for this purpose, but getting it to work on the Linux PC would be convenient for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I take that PC whenever I visit my niece and nephew because I often use it to show them anime or old cartoons. So if I could also show them old games, sweet.

Second, that windows 7 laptop always produces scratchy sound through my HDTV's speakers (it doesn't have an actual HDMI port, I have to use a USB/VGA-to-HDMI adapter).

That said, Wndows 7 laptops that would fulfill my purposes are not even that expensive to get so I could always just get a new one if I needed to.

.........

So another thing that came up is, I realized recently I may want to play RPG Maker games like Ib, the Crooked Man, and several others (and I'd prefer not to play remakes that might have undesirable changes.... such as costing money. I know Ib has such a remake). Is there an ideal Linux solution for that?

Just asking because I mean, I didn't even know about ScummVM (I knew it was a thing on Windows but...) so I figured I'd get the facts before beating my head against a wall like an idiot again.
 
skykiii said:
So another thing that came up is, I realized recently I may want to play RPG Maker games like Ib, the Crooked Man, and several others (and I'd prefer not to play remakes that might have undesirable changes.... such as costing money. I know Ib has such a remake). Is there an ideal Linux solution for that?
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If you have Steam you can add non-Steam games to your library then launch them from the client with Proton installed (via the Steam client of course).
Or if you really don't want to install Steam you can just use Wine, but the Steam former solution is less of a pain because it manages different Proton releases for you.
 
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Sperg Coalition said:
Or if you really don't want to install Steam you can just use Wine, but the Steam former solution is less of a pain because it manages different Proton releases for you.
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I've been Steam-free for little over 6 months now, because of Bottles you can easily switch runtimes (including using soda for proton fixes to wine and GE Wine for Glorious-Eggroll) and manage Wine prefixes with it.
You can easily manage your DLLs and keep dependencies like DXVK and VKD3D always updated.
The included app installer makes setting up FL Studio/Ableton/Blizzard launcher a breeze and can do much more.
The only cons I found with this programs is GTK4 sometimes being shitty with KDE and that for command line .exes you're better of running raw wine.
 
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The Ugly One said:
If you're trying to run enterprise applications, especially in science & engineering, go with a RHEL or SUSE derivative, because that's where all those applications actually get tested. Ubuntu's a much smaller fraction of the enterprise space.
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Like what? Most of the data science stuff I've seen has Ubuntu as the primary target.
 
Finally went to 32gb because I got tired of Linux's inability to run out of ram and not shit itself (16gb previously). Even after trying to put in as many things in place that I could to prevent RAM usage, I would still reach my limit because of the stuff I do.
As an aside, Bunsenlabs just had it's new release. I recommend it. Bunsenlabs is historically great and they're finally off Debian 10.
 
Short Circuit said:
I've been Steam-free for little over 6 months now, because of Bottles you can easily switch runtimes (including using soda for proton fixes to wine and GE Wine for Glorious-Eggroll) and manage Wine prefixes with it.
You can easily manage your DLLs and keep dependencies like DXVK and VKD3D always updated.
The included app installer makes setting up FL Studio/Ableton/Blizzard launcher a breeze and can do much more.
The only cons I found with this programs is GTK4 sometimes being shitty with KDE and that for command line .exes you're better of running raw wine.
Click to expand...
Bottles is a really good idea for newbies, it just needs work. Every time I give it a shot, it works great for a short while, and then just shits the bed. Last time it stopped downloading wine releases out of nowhere, and the logs didn't show any details. Can't recommend it in that state.
 
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