+1 for Cachy, its Arch with cheat codes for speed.

I’ve had a lot more success using Bottles over Lutris. Being able to see a list of all possible Windows dependencies and being able to 1 click install any of them is aces. The default Gaming Bottle itself is very good, but I’m not sure how their own custom runner, Soda, performs.

Line must go up next quarter.

+1 Jellyfin is the best!

Cant paywalls be bypassed by just using reader mode?

I’ve tried all the ways, and Bottles was the easiest by far. Make a bottle for games from the high seas, using bottles’ preset for games. Once created change the wine from Soda to whatever you want or just use Soda.

Then inside the bottle look for install dependencies and grab things like vc redist, and dot net. Once that’s done under the bottles’ UI choice “Run Executable” and chose the .exe for the game’s installer. If it doesn’t work as expected, click the cog/gear and select the checkbox for “Run in Terminal” to see where it goes wrong and search online for what fix is needed.

The only time I had to troubleshoot with terminal, was for a mspatcha.dll problem. It was an easy fix: the bottle has a Legacy Wine Tools > Configuration > Libraries, where I found mspatcha listed, then changed it to “Native then Built in.”

Hope that helps.

This also handles the device settings and open-razer driver, it’s more than just RBG control. I use it to set polling rate and DPI, my mouse doesn’t have rbg, either.

My memory isn’t the best on this, as it was close to 10 years ago, I just now had to look up some YouTube’s and images to see which things I recognized.

I was using Arch and I’m pretty sure I managed everything with Virtual Machine Manager.

I know 100% I used vfio, and I wanna say qemu as well.

The one thing I remember most, was I couldn’t use Virt Manager’s GUI to just straight up add the Windows SSD. I had to use the GUI to add something similar, but then had to go and directly edit the XML. It took me forever through trial and error, but I wanna say I finally was like fuck it, and changed the XML entry to just straight up /dev/nvme and it worked.

Never had any bootloader issues. I think I let Windows have its own EFI boot partition it installs automatically, but also gave my arch install its own EFI boot partition as well. When I wanted to boot Windows bare metal, I would just press F8 on boot and select the Windows Boot manager entry, as opposed to booting into systemd-boot and selecting Arch or Windows.

I did the vfio passthrough years ago, rocking two monitors like I always have.

Top monitor was Linux only via Display Port. Bottom was Linux via HDMI, and Windows via DP. Small cheap AMD GPU for all the Linux, and big boy AMD GPU was only for Windows VM.

I would turn on the VM, and then toggle my bottom monitor from HDMI to DP to game, and then the reverse when finished. Could be done all the same without the top monitor.

A neat trick I figured out, was the Windows VM was actually a bare metal Windows install on a separate SSD that could be booted into normally, but also passed through to the VM when using Linux.

Microsoft is gonna close off access to their NT kernel, eventually. When that happenes all anticheat will have to be in userspace. I’d imagine at that point all of those games become Linux compatible.

Bazzite if you want no bullshit easy mode and bulletproof.

Cachyos if you wanna tinker and squeeze out that last 10% in performance.

Then that comment isn’t for you…

Its hard to get, but I’m not sure about pricing, since they only sell it via business volume licensing.

The IoT Enterprise LTSC won’t have recall or copilot. It gets Edge and that’s it.

Supposedly CachyOS works amazing on handhelds. Arch based, too.

Just spreading the good word for those still stuck/attached to Windows. You can get W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC which has no bullshit. Would be a shame to waste time looking for it, and a permanent activation on websites such as massgravedotdev.

Edit: this version is FANTASTIC for gaming. Doesn’t even have Xbox or M$ Store bloat. Feels like PC gaming back in the XP and 7 days.

Look for the option when installing that is along the lines of “wipe entire drive.”

If you want Debian, check out Vanilla OS. They reached a milestone not too long ago, and it’s a bulletproof distro. It containerizes most programs, it’s immutable, and has atomic updates.

Someone already mentioned, turn off secure boot in your BIOS/uefi settings.

Don’t forget child labor for in game premium currency, since Roblox.

Way more reliable, and just as optimized for out of the box gaming.

People like that CS doesn’t change. It just eventually gets visual upgrades with new engine versions. You can hop on CS, and know the exact game play you’re going to get.

Also, custom CS servers for extremely different game play are a thing.