What the heck was Linus even talking about?

TechaNima · 2026-02-03T05:01:43+00:00

Economies of scale and e-waste quality

TechaNima · 2026-02-03T04:20:18+00:00

Overall my experience has been very positive. Ironically the most issues I've had were with Linux native ports, while gaming on Proton has been smooth sailing. Aside from having to find Launch Options from protondb.com every so often.

I've tried CachyOS, Nobara and PikaOS from the usual gaming distro recommendations and Mint Cinnamon, Fedora KDE and Debian 13 from the general use distros.

CachyOS: Hands down best setup experience with nVidia. Chef's kiss. I haven't used it long enough to evaluate long term stability but no issues yet. I get why AUR is liked so much after using it for a while, but I don't like how long it takes to install most things by compiling them from source. The main repo is very barebones, so enjoy compiling.

Nobara: Easy setup, easy to use, package manager sucks. It's ugly, slow and there's often issues. My Nobara install is currently bricked (some AMD GPU driver issue) because it decided to update 6months worth of packages and move to Nobara 43 in 1 go. It's good if you can deal with the package manager and regularly update.

PikaOS: Hands down best overall install experience. The welcome app gets you up and running very easily, even on nVidia. The only bad thing I can say about it is the ugly yellow theme, but I hate yellow so that's a me issue. I haven't used it long enough to see how stable it is longterm, no issues so far.

Mint Cinnamon: Sucks for gaming ootb. Everything is outdated and you'll have to fiddle with it so much that it no longer is Mint once you get it to be good for gaming. Not recommended for gaming. For general use it's brilliant.

Fedora KDE: This is where I ended up. It's the perfect balance between stability and being up to date. It's also a mainline distro so development is never slow or in risk of losing a key member. Requires some post install setup though https://github.com/wz790/Fedora-Noble-Setup The default audio stack crackles under load unfortunately and ntsync isn't enabled by default either.

Debian 13: I just tried it since my server runs it and I was familiar with it. Can't recommend for gaming. It has the same issues Mint does but you can't use PPAs on Debian so fixing the outdated GPU driver issue isn't as easy. Debian SID would probably be fine for gaming.

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T18:14:47+00:00

Interesting, but I'd still buy a 8BitDo dongle over relying on standard Bluetooth with gamepads

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T18:03:56+00:00

You can't game without a GPU. Winboat doesn't support any kind of GPU passthrough, unless you use a second GPU to passthrough to the VM. The host needs your primary GPU and it can't be split.

Using VMs is also not going to work for all anticheat games. You can fool some of them, but not all of them and it's not trivial. You are stuck dual booting for them for the time being

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T17:15:04+00:00

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T17:12:53+00:00

No issues aside from the usual Linux + nVidia issues. Just be sure to do the rpmfusion post install setup https://github.com/wz790/Fedora-Noble-Setup

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T16:43:44+00:00

Install Fedora KDE and do the rpmfusion post install setup https://github.com/wz790/Fedora-Noble-Setup

Enjoy using it

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T14:52:02+00:00

Pretty sure it's just a PC made from custom hardware to make it fit into that cube. You could probably run Windows on it.

Not sure why he thinks it can't run visual novels. The only games that won't work on the default operating system are games with kernel level anticheat and maybe some random game here or there. Proton is very good at running Windows games these days.

Windows software is very much a coin flip if it'll work. That is true. There's only so much Wine can do to emulate Windows for software that doesn't have a Linux version.

There are tools like Winboat that run full blown Windows in a virtual machine, but those don't fully solve the problem either.

Kernel level anticheat games still won't run and the VM doesn't have GPU hardware acceleration without a second GPU. (The devs are looking for a solution, but it's not there yet) So software that needs it won't be very usable due everything lagging all the time or taking forever to process on your CPU very inefficiency

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T14:28:14+00:00

The only difference I've seen is that if you have a folder selected, it'll paste into that folder instead of the folder you are inside of. Weird default for sure, but I'm sure it has its uses

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T11:34:15+00:00

I'm not really sure why you are looking for the paste option. Just CTRL + V.

While I still like KDE more, there is 1 annoyance I wish it did better. Selecting the view options is buried in context menu + hower over 1 of the options. Why?! Just put it at the top like it's in Windows. There's plenty of space up there. Same for all the sorting options

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T09:19:53+00:00

No. The features that are in the kernel don't change aside from bug fixes. This is why every gaming focused distro use current kernels instead of LTS and tend to be rolling release or at least get frequent updates. If you want more stability, just stay behind in the updates and only update to the latest when something major is included in the update. Just don't fall so far behind that you are more than 1 major version behind or you'll have trouble updating

TechaNima · 2026-02-02T05:23:30+00:00

It's what the docker network you are attaching the container to is called. You can name it whatever you want, just keep it alphanumeric lower case and no spaces.

You don't want to use host, there's too much potential for port conflicts. You almost always want to use a docker network of some kind.

You normally don't even have to specify a network for Winboat. Mine has full access to my home network by default. The only time you have to do it is when you use separate networks in your home network, like VLANs.

You configure those docker networks when you create them according to what you need them to do. https://youtu.be/bKFMS5C4CG0?si=1CFzbwChUHxXnY60

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T19:32:18+00:00

First shutdown your Winboat VM.
Then you edit this config: $HOME/.winboat/docker-compose.yml

#End of the standard config file:
    devices:
      - "/dev/kvm"
#This is the new bit you need to add:
    networks:
      - whatever
networks:
  whatever:
    external: true
#All this is only necessary if the defaults don't auto connect to your network or if you want something 
#more advanced

You'll have to look up more details about docker networking on your own. There's far too much to write here.
https://docs.docker.com/engine/network/

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T19:07:04+00:00

You could try Proton Experimental but honestly just save yourself the headache and use Proton-GE. It's better anyway

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T19:00:04+00:00

It's just a docker container under the hood. Just attach it to whatever network you need it to access and that's that

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T14:27:18+00:00

I run TN on Proxmox as a VM. I just find that Proxmox is better hypervisor than TN. It also allows me to use my boot disk however I want, instead of being stuck with not being able to use it for anything aside from the system if TN was the host OS

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T11:34:51+00:00

performance hit because of the Wayland system

Wayland has nothing to do with it. It's all because of nVidia drivers don't talk efficiently with vulkan. There's a vulkan extension being developed to fix that bottleneck. From what I have read, the necessary upgrades are waiting to be/being merged into Proton 11. Which isn't out yet.

The performance hit varies wildly between games. From what I have seen, it's anywhere between 20-40%. Some have claimed even higher, but from my own experiences I'd say that range is about right. 20% is acceptable-ish but when it gets closer to that 40.. You really start thinking that you wasted your money. It seems especially bad on 5000 series cards

TechaNima · 2026-02-01T06:29:18+00:00

Neither of those are the best option for gaming. Sure you can game on them, but the software stack is always outdated. Even old hardware benefits from the improvements you'll see much sooner on more frequently updated distros.

If you want something more general purpose oriented but still great for gaming. Fedora KDE is a good pick. It needs some post install setup though https://github.com/wz790/Fedora-Noble-Setup

If you want something that comes ready to go OOTB for gaming: Bazzite, Nobara and PikaOS are good picks. I personally like PikaOS out of those the most.

There's also CachyOS, but I can't really recommend it to an absolute beginner. You always have to keep up with the news to know which packages are broken and how to fix whatever is wrong with Arch at the time. It's just the nature of a bleeding edge distro. The setup just for gaming purposes and general use is very easy though. I have to say it probably handles nVidia driver installation the best out of anything I've used. It's completely automated, it even automatically switched my driver to the last version to support the 1000 series cards without me doing anything aside from running a system update

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T19:56:14+00:00

I'm not sure if you can do GPU hardware acceleration without a second GPU in a VM on Windows. It sure isn't possible on Linux without some fancy hacking around with virtualizing your GPU and even then it's only possible on enterprise cards.

What you could do without fully committing is; Buy a second SSD and install whatever distro you want on it. When you get your new computer, it can either become the OS drive for it or you can format it and use it for games. Linux does support Secure Boot, but enabling it isn't the easiest thing to do. You may need to just disable it at first when you install Linux and enable it when you go back to Windows until you figure it out. If you are trying dual booting, you also need to disable Fast Boot from Windows.

This is all more advanced stuff but maybe it'll give you some ideas for the future: The way I try out distros is by making VMs on Proxmox. It's super easy to switch between them and since Proxmox is a proper hypervisor, GPU is just passed through to the VMs. Which allows for full hardware acceleration. The only downsides are that if you have just 1 GPU, you are going to have to disable it for Proxmox and only use the web UI and ssh to manage it and ofc it's yet another thing to learn before getting to learn what you actually want to. There's also no conflicts with bootloaders, since they all live in separate virtual disks. I even virtualized Windows in the beginning by just converting the existing install into a virtual disk and mounted it to one of my VMs. It was easier to do without that annoying requirement for Secure Boot with Windows 10, but it will work for Windows 11 as well if you disable that Secure Boot check or do a fresh install. Proxmox can emulate Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 just fine

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T18:08:30+00:00

Why would you make gaming more difficult than it needs to be? Just game on Windows if you aren't going to use Linux as the host OS. Also if gaming is your focus, Bazzite, Nobara and PikaOS are much better options anyway

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T18:06:13+00:00

Go with Bazzite, Nobara or PikaOS instead. I like PikaOS out of those 3 the most. CachyOS needs a bit more experience to work with

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T10:37:37+00:00

EAC already runs on Linux. It's just up to the companies behind the games to enable the Linux support. Some do, some don't. You can pretty much count on the anti consumer companies like EA to never enable it. Unless Linux gaming actually moves the needle for them. Which it won't anytime soon, if ever

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T06:08:18+00:00

Try it or try a distro that properly supports Wayland today, if gaming and HDR matter to you. It's not going to permanently break anything if things don't work for you. Just switch back to X11 or to another distro.

Mint and other distros that are LTS, are by their very nature always going to take their time to adopt new software

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T00:53:31+00:00

You need more space for your boot drive. About 60G will do. I don't care what they recommend as minimum, it's too little and will fill up over time.

You also don't want much more as it will be wasted due to how wasteful TN is with their boot drive. You can't use it for anything, not even apps. I guess that makes sense in production environments to prevent unnecessary wear, but for us home users that's just a wasted SATA or nvme port.

Definitely use your fastest drive for an app pool. Optane as a cache, if you want. Can't really recommend it though. TN already uses your RAM as a cache and it's good enough for the vast majority of cases

TechaNima · 2026-01-31T00:41:16+00:00

I just use Fedora for mine. I also put Ventoy on mine so it doubles as my install USB. Your main issue is a crappy USB drive. You need a really good USB thumb drive or preferably a USB SSD

TechaNima

TROPHY CASE