Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

nlm@beehaw.org to Operating Systems@beehaw.org – 89 points –

I'm currently on Win11 but I'm getting that familiar Linux itch and want to dual boot a while again. I tend to gravitate towards Ubuntu simply because it's so big and well supported by most things.

I've run Arch in the past but I've gotten too old and lazy for that if I'd be completely honest. I have played with manjaro and endeavour though.. and opensuse tumbleweed, rolling is kind of nice.

Not sure what I'd try out first this time so I figured I'd get some inspiration from you guys!

271

You are viewing a single comment

With some of the news going around about the new windows versions and what-not, this sounds really interesting. I have a couple questions if you could answer them, that would be awesome!

How does a new release of Windows affect the compatibility of this set up? I know programs with for a while on older releases, but after a time, that version will be phased out. That might be more about the VM than your setup, but I don't have a lot of experience with those either lol.

Does this introduce some system lag for input in any way? If I ever do get the confidence to abandon my system to go to Linux, it would suck if this really cool sounding method added response time to inputs.

So the only problem is you'd have to update every VM over time to get security patches, this is mainly a problem if you're on limited internet(like me). Im capped at 100gb a month and my download speed is almost always less than 1mb/sec.

Windows has a feature that if one system on your network is updated, other systems on the network can download locally from that one and save your data, which is wonderful. But you still need to update Nvidia drivers for each VM, and update games, etc. You can connect a hard drive(virtual or physical) to multiple VMs, but only run VMs with a common hard drive one at a time.

And mind you this isn't to save compatibly, for me once it works it works. I just like to keep security patches updated because I download a lot of sketchy programs lol.

Latency is non-existent. I use a program called lookingglass, which allocates like 32mb of GPU memory to be dedicated to passing frames between the VM and the host. Or non-existent for my level of perception. If you're Spidey senses tingle more easily you can pass through a secondary keyboard and mouse and just literally have two screens two keyboards two mice one box. It would have the same latency as bare metal. And even have two people play multiplayer games together off of one box if you have the horsepower.

So, there are a couple of things that have happened recently. I have an old laptop that I've messed around with different distros of Linux on. I installed Arch on it and am trying to do some different things. It's not a good laptop, so the VM set up I'm really interested in won't happen until I get a few more drives for my main PC and set up a dual boot abd some other things. I am really interested in this set up because it just sounds neat.

Are there some things I should try to do to help me get better at working with this OS? I'm currently seeking up a server with a reverse proxy using nginx and its... Going. The server works I think, but the proxy doesnt yet.