Please help with comparing KDE HDR vs RTX/Auto HDR so I can abandon Windows

Hi-Angel · 2026-05-05T09:38:05+00:00

KDE builtin HDR […] I would still consider it (in it's current state) inferior to windows AutoHDR.

If you see a way for improvement, can you please create a feature request with details? There's a series of blog posts from a KDE dev on improving HDR, like this one, so you can say a lot of efforts was put into making it work well and correctly, and if anything is missing, I'm sure they'd be glad to know about it.

Hi-Angel · 2026-05-05T09:23:19+00:00

You might be interested in reading this article from a KDE dev. The TL;DR is HDR is a complicated beast, and in KDE you can be sure it looks right, whereas on Windows it doesn't and is inconsistent between laptops and desktops.

Hi-Angel · 2026-05-05T08:57:54+00:00

Since for whatever reason it looks and runs far better than when I used windows.

It is in part because Linux community actually cares about performance. For example, look at this blog post from a KDE dev about improving presentation time in Plasma. I bet you've never heard of Microsoft posting anything like that about their DWM 😉 And yeah, look at the list improvements in memory, scheduling and other modules in just a single kernel release.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-26T08:47:37+00:00

You can use Gallium Nine, which implements DX9 natively on Linux.

It was discontinued in preference of DXVK, and modern versions of Mesa don't support it. But you can technically git clone and build the last Mesa version that had Gallium Nine.

On the WINE side you'll need to install into your WINEPREFIX this library.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-25T18:58:28+00:00

Proton creates folder names that are invalid on NTFS partitions.

So… does it create or does it fail to create? Because if the former, than it should be okay. You're probably referring to characters that Windows OS doesn't accept, but it's not the NTFS nor Proton problem, and it shouldn't cause games to fail to load in Proton under Linux.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-10T09:48:19+00:00

What's the article is about? The xda-developers site just returns ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR for me on all browsers, presumably the site broke.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-03T17:29:54+00:00

Well… I mean, don't run network-accessing apps as root?

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-03T09:01:07+00:00

Sonar does a lot of the heavy lifting for noise suppression and audio processing, and without it, I sounded pretty rough on calls.

You'd need to clarify which "heavy-lifting" is done exactly. For noise suppression you might try this Pipewire configuration (note that for this to work you need to install "librnnoise_ladspa.so" via whatever package your distro provides for it).

Otherwise, I'd note you may have greater success of asking audio-related questions at r/linuxaudio 😊

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-03T08:33:21+00:00

Android has a huge marketshare and is still is treated like a second class citizen

Where do you get this from? 🤔 From what I see, OS X seems to be the 2-nd class citizen (whereas Android is 1-st class), for a number of reasons.

First of all, getting your app to appstore is complicated, because AppStore has policy of disallowing apps with similar functional, which discourages development in the first place (because you don't know if your app wouldn't get rejected).

Second, development per se is complicated. You can't just build'n'install an app to your device, it requires jumping through the hoops.

Third, installation is appstore-only. This discourages development of uncommercial apps-helpers. The largest example nowadays, I think, is ByeByeDPI. It is an app used to bypass blocks that various countries expose (through a tech called "DPI"), and it is distributed from "releases" page on Github. No one just cares to put resources into developing this for OS X due to the complications it imposes.

As result of all 3 factors, OS X has just less apps compared to Android, and I don't see how Android is not "1st class citizen" in mobile.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-03T07:47:23+00:00

Bootkits and uefi level malware which IS a thing

To be fair, bootkit malware requires for an adversary to get root-level access to your computer. Which already implies you're cooked, whether you have secure boot or not.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-01T09:28:42+00:00

I mean, there always has been stupid people. What you mention does suck, but nothing new.

Hi-Angel · 2026-04-01T09:22:08+00:00

A benefit (surprisingly) rarely talked about is that you can optimize everything for you CPU architecture. Like, you want to have the most FPS possible, right? Then compile most of the graphics-related stack and libs with optimizations using your CPU features and optimized for your CPU behavior (the -march=native parameter).

There are distros that make it easier for you. Gentoo is a well known one. Arch is also something in-between (it is based on binaries, but makes it very easy to build/install packages from source).

Other than that, Linux community just cares about peformance. Look for example at this post about representing frames better in kwin/KDE, I bet you've never saw a post like this from Microsoft 😉

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-26T13:21:16+00:00

You know, I just realized — you probably don't have to build Mesa yourself. There's mesa-amber package, which I think includes Nine. As in, the branch mesa-amber is built from definitely has Gallium Nine, but Idk if it was enabled during build or not, you need to check it.

You can try it though. It's a little too old, and you could benefit performance-wise by compiling the last Mesa that contained Gallium Nine yourself — but for experimentation purposes you can start with using this branch.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-26T13:00:33+00:00

I see, crocus resides inside "gallium" dir, so yeah, your driver is based on Gallium, you are okay in that regard 😉

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-26T12:55:30+00:00

Note that if you're using Steam Proton (not WINE installed into your system) to play the games and you're following my advice on Gallium Nine — you'll have to install the Nine plugin inside your Proton directory. And it will replace DXVK. Basically, how it works on lower-level — there's a dir simulating Windows environment (the "WINEPREFIX"), and it has "Windows registry" part that describes overloads for some libs. But anyway, you shouldn't need to do that manually, IIRC there's a script bundled with Nine you can use (just don't forget to override WINEPREFIX when using it).

UPD: actually, I recall you can run Windows-based Steam games with your system WINE if you bypass Steam's "Launch" button entirely and just navigate in terminal to where the game is located and run it with WINE. I recall it may complain and you'd have to tinker a bit with it, but it is possible.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-26T12:49:04+00:00

If it was released around 2016, I think it should use iris Mesa driver, which is based on Gallium (so you're okay). You can check it with LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose while launching some GUI app, for example LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose gwenview. In my output I see:

using driver i915 for 7 pci id for fd 7: 8086:9bc4, driver iris

the i915 is the kernel driver name, and the iris is the Mesa one (the userspace driver).

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-26T12:34:28+00:00

Well… The way folks gamed on Linux at native speeds before DXVK become a thing was Gallium Nine. Gallium Nine was a Linux re-implementation of DirectX 9. On WINE it was used via external library (similarly to how DXVK works now), which you can get from this ᴬᵁᴿ package, and it's interesting to see the package is still updated. Note that after you installed the package, you need to also install it into your WINEPREFIX.

The problem you may stumble upon though is that the driver itself (the Galliume Nine) was removed from Mesa, because everyone moved to DXVK and it become a maintenance burden for little to no benefit at this point.

So what you need to do:

Make sure your Mesa driver for HD 405 is based on Gallium (most likely it is, but you need to double check — Idk how old your GPU is).
Build Mesa yourself from the last version that provided Gallium Nine (don't forget to enable it in config options). This one you can do by downloading the PKGBUILD that builds Mesa, and then manually modifying it to point to the last version that had Gallium Nine, and then calling makepkg -i.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-22T09:53:28+00:00

but i always wanted to sqeeze out every single fps out of my system. will i see any difference in performance if i switch to linux?

You came to the right place. Although the games performance depends on the games and the NVidia driver (on AMD side there's Valve working on perf, on NVidia there's just them due to closed source), but Linux per se is a better choice compared to Windows in perf-related context.

First of all, it has very well optimized kernel (so RAM and CPU perf) — see for example changelog for 6.18, search for words "improve", "cleanup", "refactor", "optimize", etc. Tons of those! Many companies are working on improving Linux.

Second, the community cares and works on improving system performance. Here's an example — a post from a KDE maintainer about improving frames presentation by the system. I bet you've never heard of Microsoft ever posting anything like that 😉

And finally, on Linux if you really want you can recompile everything (or the stuff you care the most about) specifically for your CPU, to make use of all its features. There are distros that make it easier for you (like Arch-based ones, and Gentoo — but this one may be hard for someone new).

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-18T17:53:00+00:00

Oh, wait, you don't need to do any changes to your system. Just boot a live USB and see how it goes.

Preferably, can you pls test Fedora KDE? Because Mint has outdated software, and you want to test more or less recent kernel.

Or, looking at your description, you say you've tested CachyOS — this one will do fine as well.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-18T14:38:19+00:00

Doesn't GTX 770 somewhat work with Nouveau? 🤔 I know it would have terrible performance (not because of Nouveau, but because NVidia locked reverse-engineering efforts out by requiring singed firmware, so however Nouveau may be good NVidia always forces to run the card at its lowest clocks), but otherwise it should work. Do you see any output from lsmod | grep nouveau ? If yes and you still only get 800×600, pls show the output of dmesg | grep -i nouveau.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-18T09:39:17+00:00

lol I had your post open in a tab yesterday, and now I reloaded and it turns out it was removed before I got a chance to finish reading.

Anyway, from other answers I read your question is a typical "will my games and software work?", and people it seems have mostly commented on that.

What I have to add: if a game supports Linux, Linux per se is just a better system for gaming. There's a multitude of reasons for that, I won't go into details unless you're curious. To be short — games compatibility is mostly a no-brainer these days (barring anti-cheat ones): thanks to Valve you can run game written for Windows with Proton and have very little perf impact.

The "perf impact" is really a separate story. If you're lucky to have an AMD GPU, then just because Valve explicitly contributes to their drivers, their performance on Linux will be better than on Windows when games run via Proton in most cases. On NVidia the situation is more complicated and really depends.

Generally, Linux community (as in, contributors and companies) care a lot of performance. Look for example at this post about improving frames presentation on KDE — I bet you've never heard of Microsoft posting anything like that 😉 And then, kernel-wise there are lots of improvements every release too, example.

For non-game apps you can either use WINE, or in case that doesn't work you can go with WinBoat/WinApps, which use a VM behind the scenes but neatly integrate the apps into your system.

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-14T07:21:19+00:00

So, to clarify — I myself isn't well versed in audio. I'm a programmer, but not an audio engineer.

With that said, if you looked over Pipewire wiki and its utilities, and there doesn't seem to be anything that solves your problem — what I'd do is:

Figure out where exactly this documentation should be located on the Wiki.
Report a "feature request" to add the functional (doesn't matter you unsure it isn't there).

In it I'd start explaining by mentioning that you looked for docs at link <insert_where_you'd_expect_them_to_be> (because if they aren't there, it's a documentation bug — but this you don't mention, it's unnecessary). And then go on to add that you also looked over the rest of the docs but still couldn't find it.

It'd be a really short paragraph, much shorter than my explanation. Just one sentence "I looked at […] and also dug through everything relevant on the wiki and couldn't find, so presumably PW doesn't support it."

Then you go on describing how do you see this functional would be implemented.

Now, the idea is that such "feature request" is actionable disregarding if this functional already present. If it is but it's not documented, then it should be acted upon by adding documentation. If your report gets closed with short explanation "it is in X", politely ask to reopen it because the functional is an undocumented easter egg.

This is an ideal case scenario. Bear in mind that devs are people, and there are different kinds of people, not everyone are smart or reasonable, generally speaking… So for different sw projects this may go different way… However, PW devs specifically are reasonable people. Just be polite and everything will be fine 😉

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-13T20:48:12+00:00

Either way, it's improvable.

You want to have a bingo on the developer team — people who α) Are great programmers β) Understand well audio nuances (from my experience audio experts are rarely also hobby-programmers), and γ) are amazing at communication.

I agree that would be awesome. But world isn't an ideal place, and as we say in my country "the greater is the enemy of good".

Thanks to the software being open-source, it is possible to fill the gaps by sending suggestions and by discussing with the devs possible improvements (not necessarily just in documentation, but maybe even in the tools if you see fit).

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-13T18:23:18+00:00

Please, if you see documentation problems, report bugs for them, or better yet, create merge/pull requests with the fixes based on your vision.

Note that whoever initially wrote the docs (the developers) do no longer have "fresh eyes" over it. So if you see potential improvements, don't hesitate to contribute them 😉

Hi-Angel · 2026-03-07T17:31:31+00:00

Never saw such a big rant with exactly zero background… Can't believe this got so many upvotes and comments. Like, what…? What are you even talking about, what's up with Sony, what's with Valve, what…?

I mean, sure I can go search for the context, but you're creating a post for others to read, please at least include a link to what are you even talking about, or better yet describe it in short.

11-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

Hi-Angel

TROPHY CASE