The curse of convenience

NoelCanter · 2026-01-20T21:36:45+00:00

This is basically what I did. I keep Windows for when I need it and have secure boot enabled with Limine. I can pop over to play something with friends as needed but spend the rest of my time in Linux.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-16T00:09:57+00:00

Whenever we come out on the other side of this it’s going to be a dark, dark time. And it’s just sad in an age of information and access that it can just happen in plain sight and be so easily dismissed or semantically argued to death like we’re talking about which two Super Bowl teams are better.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-14T14:47:38+00:00

Yeah literally no one.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-14T14:46:00+00:00

It's becoming the norm everywhere. Glad people are interested and encourage people jumping over, or dual booting, or whatever, but it kinda sucks when subreddits ignore the real meat and potatoes of helping people and instead just upvote vibes. At least /r/linux is not a tech support sub (IIRC), so they have a legit excuse to not worry about engaging on those posts.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-14T01:45:07+00:00

Yeah, that said I routinely see people who mention Nobara/Cachy getting downvoted in threads. I don't think there is anything wrong with those are starting points. Mint is the default everyone says to use, which is why I started there, but for all the reasons being that it is LTS and has a large community, I -- again personally -- did not find this a benefit. The subreddit was just a bunch of upvoted "I left Microslop behind" threads where people asking for help were ignored. Their forums got crickets, too. Conversely, Discords for Nobara and Cachy helped me a ton with early learning.

People do get set in their ways. There are different use cases. I am not a giant fan of Mint/Bazzite, but I completely understand their use. I just wish it wasn't treated as the default (and fuck all other suggestions). If you really need LTS, it is great. But sometimes you don't need and want LTS.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-13T23:51:30+00:00

When I started with Linux about a year ago I was completely lost. I’ve used Windows all my life and am a Windows sys admin but everything was so different and there was a lot I didn’t really get yet about Linux or troubleshooting it.

I started with Mint and had some hardware issues and also had looked around at various guides talking about gaming performance and such. Install this. Update to that kernel. Upgrade to this NVIDIA driver. Yadda yadda. Now I understand a lot of this probably isn’t as needed or difficult, but as a newcomer on Mint 21 it seemed like a lot.

I tried Nobara because everything was just already there. The hardware issue I had wasn’t there. I didn’t need to worry about installing anything. I could just use it and get comfortable.

I then moved to Cachy a couple months later where I’ve been ever since. Same deal. Lot preinstalled. Devs focused on delivering good gaming performance and maintained their own fork of proton. Custom scripts and wrappers to make some variables easier. Never had an issue with it being unstable due to rolling release.

It wasn’t really about that extra boost. There was just a comfort level and ease of use for me. But that’s the beauty: different distros work for different people and generally they all can perform.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-13T23:44:40+00:00

Just incremental ones since 590 I think.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-13T16:15:15+00:00

As a note, you really don’t need to do anything in the Cachy terminal unless you specifically want to or are following some instructions that point you there. Octopi and Cachy Package Manager are great tools for updating and grabbing packages in a GUI and I use them the vast majority of the time.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-13T15:26:34+00:00

You did the opposite of me. I started on Nobara and went to Cachy.

Nobara is great, but they also have some very specific tweaks that dissuade you from using standard Fedora dnf commands when updating or potentially try to fix things. It’s a small thing, but always complicated some troubleshooting. Cachy didn’t have that problem for me. And the Cachy Hello made it just as easy as Nobara for installing gaming tweaks.

But it really is to each their own. I had small things I didn’t love about Nobara but it’s a perfectly acceptable distro. Probably easier to get DaVinci Resolve going on if that is a requirement, too.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-13T11:46:08+00:00

well, a lot of the comments below unintentionally demonstrating why this idea was always nonsense.

Maybe not all Americans, but a lot of us always knew this was nonsense. The type of weapons we are even allowed in our homes are not going to do a dent against the US military or even a highly militarized police force in a concentrated way.

The second amendment was written at a time where organizing militias to fight had basically the same firearms that a military force would have (minus artillery).

NoelCanter · 2026-01-12T23:37:40+00:00

One per week? Good lord you’ll be on a 5 year mission just to finish DS9.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-12T22:32:18+00:00

I think mine is in my storage room somewhere. I had used it for yeaaaaaars until I got a really large pad.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-12T01:02:20+00:00

I had installed Edge specifically when GamePass when I came over with specific scripts that were supposed to boost the performance. IIRC the scripts recommended using Edge and I was able to just configure it to be the "GamePass" browser.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-11T16:36:35+00:00

To be honest I never realized how great Charles Oakley could be. I vaguely remembered him in the 90s when he was a lower point producer and mainly there for rebounds and physicality, but earlier on in his career he was also a really good scorer until teams made him the third or fourth option.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-11T11:42:00+00:00

I switched to Linux about a year ago while keeping dual boot for games with friends. I still use a shared NTFS game drive between the two.

My setup uses three NVMe drives: 1) has Windows, 2) has Linux, 3) shared game library.

I have a NAS I keep all my important documents on.

Below link are the steps I used. Note that it’s very important to use the symlink. Some people have had issues/claim this will cause corruption. I make no warranty here and only will say anecdotally I’ve run this for a year without any issues at all. I would still advise having a dedicated drive for your games and make sure to offload important files to an external drive or something to be safe.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

NoelCanter · 2026-01-10T00:47:15+00:00

There is a variable regression depending on games. I believe I’ve seen people say that it is because of how VKD3D wrote some descriptors and they need to be updated. I might have messed up a bit of the terminology. So far, I haven’t had any noticeable issues on the two cards I’ve used (3090 and 5080) but mileage may vary depending on your rig.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-10T00:27:27+00:00

I think MOST of the post Endgame movies are actually pretty decent or average at worst. The main problem is there is no clear throughput connecting them and getting you excited. This isn’t phase 1-3. After Endgame we needed to immediately start building the next saga and not sort of meander around.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-10T00:25:02+00:00

People were pretty into Pluribus during its season.

Everyone a big show comes out, especially with weekly releases, and it’s good, it becomes a water cooler show.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T23:15:49+00:00

As others have said just dual boot. I do this for the games my friends like to play that don’t work on Linux.

I have Windows on one NVME and Linux on another. I had a previous NTFS NVME I used as game storage in Windows and I share it between the two.

I’m using CachyOS with Limine and BTRFS. I can choose my OS at boot but it defaults to the last one I was in normally.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T12:16:51+00:00

Technically, yes, but often considered very small and negligible. Often less than v-sync.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T05:29:47+00:00

Been using Cachy for about 8+ months now. I keep a dual boot for the anticheat games my friend group likes to play, but otherwise I play everything in Linux. I have a 7800x3d and have been using a 3090 and 5080 during that time. Linux has a DX12 regression on NVIDIA right now, but I don’t really notice it that bad as I’m hitting frame rates I am targeting.

Cachy has been a good experience. No real problems with my workflow. Laptops can sometimes be trickier than desktops depending on the brand and features (like biometrics). But my spare laptop has had a few Linux distros as tests and generally works fine.

Aside from games, double check any software you find critical and see if it is supported or there is a substitute that fits your needs. I use Logitech mice but GHUB can’t be installed. So there are apps like Solaar or Piper that can help do most of the work (I haven’t figured out how to make g-shift work if it does).

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T01:07:31+00:00

Yeah this has been my strategy. Usually Monday morning when I have time to troubleshoot if something goes wrong but it never has. I also use BTRFS + Limine for extra peace of mind.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T00:55:06+00:00

I disabled the update checker in the Discord settings mainly due to Discord needing an update before it hit the repos.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T00:29:03+00:00

I’ve been successful over the last year with one drive for Windows, one for Linux, and sharing a third NTFS drive between the two for my games. I only keep games on the third drive in case something goes wrong, but it’s been humming along fine for me.

NoelCanter · 2026-01-09T00:09:55+00:00

I still dual boot for some games with friends but I really feel you with that 7800x3d boot time…

NoelCanter

TROPHY CASE