this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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With the advances in gaming on Linux in recent years, it is so tempting to switch full time. I would absolutely love to, but I am a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber and it is where I play a lot of my games on PC. I know you can use the cloud version, but I cannot stomach streaming games in their current state, so it is a no go. A large portion of my Steam library is compatible, but anytime I have done an install I end up giving in and going back to Windows for games.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

So one thing that might be worth looking into is virtual machines.

Currently on my desktop I run a variant of Arch (Endeavor I think) where I primarily do my gaming , but for any highly incompatible games, or Game Pass games, I have a virtual machine running Windows that uses pass-through to pass my graphics card through to the virtual machine for games I can't play on Linux. I also use CPU pinning to 'pin' 10 of my 12 CPU cores to the virtual machine to reduce potential overhead.

Works really well, might be an option for you, although it's not super easy to setup. I've tried passthrough on PopOS as well before, but it wasn't as performant, and Arch Wiki provides a ridiculous amount of super useful guides for doing just about anything, including setting this up.

Edit: Otherwise in terms of daily driver, I love Fedora, and likely won't move away anytime soon on my laptop.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I started down the road from Windows to Linux for my main rig a couple of months back after trying out a few distros on a new mini PC for HTPC/media server. Currently running KDE Neon on the TV, and I'd really like to get away from my Win11/Kubuntu dual-boot tower situation, since Proton is handling everything I throw at it short of Cities: Skylines.

The real sticking point is that I need to be able to use InDesign on rare occasions. I've used VirtualBox in the past for old DOS games and mused that a VM would be nice for the edge cases where I need Windows but haven't gotten any further than that since it felt like the ROI wasn't there.

What's involved in setting that up in modern times? Obviously, I'm coming at this from Debian rather than Arch, but pointers on where to start looking would be appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

VirtualBox in the past for old DOS games

Why though? DOSBox is a far superior experience if you wanted to play DOS games. Better performance, better compatibility, better config options (like being able to adjust the CPU speed on the fly), plus controller support and custom config and launcher support so you can just one-click launch your favorite DOS game.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry I was unclear. That's just the extent of my VM experience ... it's not relevant to my current needs, as I've not played DOS games since Win2K.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, well you're missing out. DOS games are still pretty fun and awesome. Having a blast paying Dangerous Dave right now, and will play Prince of Persia once I clock this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've still got quite the collection of classic DOS games that I may throw on the TV computer alongside classic console stuff ... played a lot of A-Train back in the day. Getting the tower sorted is just a far higher priority.

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