I don’t know, I don’t play cod. See the links from previous replies for that.

as for should you get linux, only you can answer that once you’ve done the research

The daw/music software? Just wine. used wine to install the app & vst plugins, then just using the “start menu” shortcut for the app to run it. I did have to use winetricks to install dxvk on the prefix (without it, some plugin ui’s did not work properly), but after that it works fine.

as for “does it run good” - well enough for me. Some of the guitar/bass amps and instruments I use seem to use noticeably more cpu than on windows

yep, this.

basically, games that need some extra dll file to get mods running, it’s generally just adding WINEDLLOVERRIDES=“nameofthedll=n,b” as env var for the game and off to modded adventures it is.

I haven’t tested this, but fairly sure you could just install vortex, mo2 or whatever other modmanager to same prefix as where the game is.

Depends really on the games and software you require.

For games, check:

• https://www.protondb.com/ - people post their experiences with games if they work or not.
• https://areweanticheatyet.com/ - lists of anticheat enabled games which work or not.
• https://appdb.winehq.org/ - wine’s appdb has games and general applications listed, with some info on how they work or not. Some info is absolutely ancient at this point.

In general, indies and singleplayer games generally work fine. Battlefield/Fortnite/etc hugely popular multiplayer stuff with kernel-level anticheats generally doesn’t.

I’ve only ever set up few printers to work on linux, and they’ve been bigger office printers. And they’ve all worked with minimal effort. Absolutely no idea about home printers.

edit: as for windows software support, generally win-apps run on wine. Some really well, some with issues, and then some just dont. Afaik eg. ancient versions of Photoshop run, more recent ones don’t.

I run a windows version of a music software (renoise) because my effects/instruments have only windows versions. It works, but performance isn’t quite as good as it was on actual windows.

could have something to do with the odd, and massive, influx of new win10 users?

doesn’t either of the loopback devices provide desktop audio?

this must be the flex-box that’s all the rage

it does the “same thing” but it’s the low-iq unga-bunga-caveman option which requires less configuration. Meaning you don’t get a boot menu to choose the os on boot.

if you want to be extra careful, just remove the ssd of the first os when installing the other on it’s ssd & insert back when done. then just in bios/uefi switch which storage device to boot from.

FWIW, I dualbooted for years fine with win10 and Arch - the trick is to keep them separated. let windows have it’s own ssd and linux it’s own, that way the darn windows don’t nuke other boot entries willynilly when notepad gets an update.

This approach needs 2 storage devices tho, and you switch which to boot from bios/uefi.

But on the upside, this makes no changes to either linux or windows, as both are on separate storage devices. Both have their own boot partitions. When you want to get rid of either, you can just remove partitions from the unwanted os’ ssd and make new ones.

Since gaming is the first priority, does he play competitive multiplayer games? Better check their anticheat state first, as some just flat out deny linux, full stop.

I have no real recommendation in regards of distro, but afaik either should do.

And what I gather, Bazzite has package management ‘ujust’ https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/ - but beyond this hastily googled doc, I have no idea, never used Bazzite.

Is SteamOS immutable though? I thought that was just Bazzite.

I don’t know of the version that’ll be available (when ever that happens), but on steamdeck it is.

ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS#Features (yea yea wikipedia and lack of citations…)

Version 3.0 still utilizes an immutable file system

at the end of the day, steamos is still linux which runs steam, just (AFAIK, and on steamdeck) immutable, which is probably not something you want on desktop (or you do, I’m not here to tell you how to computer).

Just the default steam/valve vendor decorations don’t make games run any better, imo.

I’d just keep to a regular distro for a general use pc.

edit: but, yea, I’ve seen people run eg. video editors etc on steamdeck, so it does work as a regular pc too, if you really want to.

heh, yea, my approach is also full on murderhobo in Styx, but I do it so nobody notices anything if at all possible. Levels can take several hours with this method so … uh, it’s not really optimal way to play but damnit that’s how I roll. Admittedly the near constant presence of the void/cliffs/etc bottomless pits makes it fairly easy to get rid of bodies.

Never really felt the need to chase the time bonuses, just collectables etc are enough for me. Admittedly I have not finished either of the games, but played pretty darn far in both.

(video games, slang) Video games from Europe (especially Eastern Europe) with ambitious concepts but lacking in execution and sometimes exhibiting unintended glitches.

as per Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Eurojank)

I was under the assumption the Styx -devs were german, but apparently the studio is French. Either way. I also don’t recall any specific glitches, but the first game has a bit stiff climbing mechanics where you can (and will) do some unintended jumps to void etc.

Basically “AA game” instead if “AAA big budget game”

While I do like the first 2 Styx games (the 3rd one is out soon-ish? if not now?), they are quite the “quicksave/quickload trial and error patience games” and quite deep in the eurojank spectrum. The climbing in the first one is pretty jank, and in both games the character breaks 4th wall deadpool-style pretty often, enemies are dumb as bricks but will absolutely murder you once alerted enough.

But on the upside, it’s one of those rare stealth games where murder is not penalized at all.

That said, the games are great!

apparently renoise doesn’t allow values less than 5ms… which also seems to work just fine, huh.

ASIO doesn’t seem to want to work, and it doesn’t do anything for me anyway, I’ve been more than kontent with the DirectSound (I have no idea what wine 9/10/11 does with it under the hood, plays fine through pipewire & my virtual devices) - and renoise isn’t really a traditional daw anyway, it can record instruments for sure, but it’s more of a old-skool tracker with vst/vsti and daw-like automation.

edit: “kontent”… my kde-isms peaking through. heh.

edit2: ffwiw: when I last used renoise on this same machine on win10, I absolutely could not have set the latency below 20ms, even a single instrument of any kind would immediately crackle.

I’ve set it to 16ms in renoise, not 100% how accurate that is but audio doesn’t crackle and jamming on vsti’s doesn’t seem to have noticeable input delay. I don’t have any actual instruments to test.

While I don’t specifically know about version 11 (EDIT: now I do!), but I’ve been running windows daw + vst’s on wine 9-10.?? for ages. Using Renoise + bunch of different vst’s (mix of vst2 and vst3), all of them seem to work just fine. I did have to install dxvk to the wineprefix to get the ui of some plugins to work, but they do work fine(ish) with it.

Now, the thing I have NOT tested is ilok drm. So far I’ve managed to do with plugins which don’t use it.

I see wine 11 is already in my distro’s testing repos. Aggressive waiting starts.

edit: for clarification, preset dropdown menu’s from one specific plugin vendor (solemntones) vst’s needs to be click/dragged the right way, otherwise they seem to not work. Bit annoying, but otherwise my plugins work.

edit: seems to work just as well on wine 11. But sample size = me & my vst/vsti’s.

Same.

I had been dualbooting between win10 and linux for quite some time, but at some point near the win10 EOL, I realized I had not booted to windows in ~8 months or so. Decided it was time to nuke the windows partitions.

Okular? Iirc it opens cbt and the likes fine.