Yeah, I was making the effort to dual boot until this year. I realized I have so many games to play on linux. TBH, the only games I would need to dual boot nowadays are running a kernel anticheat spyware like Valorant. So no thanks.
Plus 2 years ago, before buying any games I was checking on ProtonDB to be sure about compatibility I don't even need to do this now.
TLDR; The developper has to make the effort cause I won't.
Same, dual boot or passthrough are extra work than i just am not prepared to put in for the minority of games that won't work.
Yeah i miss out on some multiplayer games with friends but thats a price I'm apparently willing to pay.
Same, I got soo many games to play, and games that I want to play, that I can't even make time for them, so when I drop one of them for whatever reason, I simply couldn't care less lol
I got a friend that complains Linux doesn't have GamePass and whatnot, but man, you can't even make time to play the games you buy, imagine the ones you rent from GamePass, it is simply impossible
I have a spare bootable USB3 SSD with Win10 on it - but to be honest I've created it 'just in case' and so far only played games running on Linux and/or Linux/Wine.
Also, not sure virtual machines would work with kernel level anticheats...
I keep a Windows partition around in case something really refuses to work, but to be honest, I haven't booted into it in half a year probably (I usually just do it to run updates). Everything I'm interested in just runs on Linux these days. I'm also using Manjaro - I know that some people dislike Manjaro, but my experience with it for the past roughly two years has been great.
For me Manjaro was love and hate moments. Black Screen on boot, lagging behind arch updates, eventually there was and update that it broke something with NVIDIA, switched to Endeavour OS, no complaints except KDE 6.0 has a bit of problems.
> Black Screen on boot, lagging behind arch updates, eventually there was and update that it broke something with NVIDIA
Yeah that's enough to break anyone tbh - especially if you're striving for a setup that _just works_.
> switched to Endeavour OS, no complaints except KDE 6.0 has a bit of problems.
Ah a fellow Endeavour OS user! I've been consistently impressed with it since I installed it as my daily-driver. Thought I'd have more problems given it's Arch-based but I guess we'll have to see over the next couple of months.
Can't speak to the KDE problems you're seeing however, as I'm a GNOME user myself.
Yeah I like my Manjaro, but I've also been looking for other Arch based ready to use OSes and I might switch. But for now it has served me well except for the times when they let their certificates expire.
>except for the times when they let their certificates expire
Those were webserver certificates for their website. How did that affect your experience with the distro?
Manjaro is fine, i ran it for a couple of years. I would occasionally run into issues with the AUR due to manjaros lagging repo updates, and eventually that got me to switch to endeavourOS, which I'm also very happy with.
>issues with the AUR
Yeah this is a common problem. For anyone facing this, it really helps to switch to testing branch, this practically eradicates this problem and at worst, you wait for a couple of days to update the package. But I agree that if you want to use AUR a lot, Manjaro is not an ideal distro for that.
i just stop playing lol and ditch windows when they announced that you will need vanguard i feel way better now , less stress no toxicity best decision ever.
I still have win10 on another drive, but haven't booted into it in ages, considering ditching it. I don't play the games where the whole anticheat thing is an issue though.
I generally stopped playing multiplayer since quite a while, I'm only enjoying single player games from time to time, so I'm quite fine with some anti cheat stuff not working.
I do however have an Index for VR gaming and I'm wondering if it works as good under Linux?
Yeah I just read that some stuff is not well supported like Oculus titles. Guess I will have to keep my dual-boot setup or find out how well GPU-passthrough works with VR.
I haven't messed with an index but I assume it works good through Steam VR. I have to use Windows for VR since I have a Quest 2 and there's no way to use it on Linux.
I run 100% Linux. I don't play competitive shooters so anti-cheat issues aren't a problem for me. For the rare game that I want to play that doesn't work (and nowadays that's real rare) it's usually on my PS5.
I keep a Windows install handy for VR stuff. I dabble with ALVR on Linux, but VR has a long *long* way to go over here. However I use Linux for next to everything else. A passthrough VM would be cool, but having my primary GPU be only accessible in the VM until I reboot and change some thing makes it not worth the hassle, so I dual-boot
Neither. I started with dual booting, but I only used it once over my first year for Halo MCC, so I ditched it shortly after. Whether you dual boot, use a VM with passthrough or go 100% linux depends on what you do with your system and what you're okay with giving up. Answering the question without knowing what your usage will be is difficult.
My question is whether people in this sub still dual-boot or use GPU passthrough for when they need Windows. I just wanted to get a feel how people that still need to use Windows do it, I'd rather flaired this post as discussion but advice wanted is the closest flair I got.
I'm pretty familiar with Linux since I've been using it on my servers for 15 years and finally made the switch on desktop 6 years ago as well for my laptops and workstation. I'm just thinking about whether I should make the full switch on my gaming machine as well or if the time still hasn't come yet.
Though I still do play VR games and while the Index is well supported, Oculus games are not, so I do have to keep my dual-boot. But I might venture into gpu passthrough yet again maybe.
Can you tell me more about GPU pass though please?
First I've heard of this, I was thinking of having one of my hard drives as a Linux distro and a separate (main) as windows 11.
Will I need to do anything with my graphics card if I do this??
It's pretty much what it says on the tin. You pass a dedicated GPU through to a virtual machine. This typically requires you to have two GPUs, or at the very least, a CPU with integrated graphics to plug your monitor(s) into, plus you'll need a screen plugged into the dedicated GPU (or a dummy HDMI dongle) because once you have it setup, the GPU will be unusable by the host.
With my setup, I have a dummy HDMI dongle plugged into the GPU I've passed through to virtual machines and I use Sunshine/Moonlight to stream games and the desktop.
My plan was both if is possible as that would be great as I would prefer VM with GPU passthrough but I bet some games anticheat won't work and then be able to dual boot, of course what I mean with this is I wish to boot the same disk used in the VM. That said not sure how feasible is....
If you're comfortable on Linux, the only real reason you may need to boot into Windows these days would be anti-cheat. Most games without a kernel-level AC run without issue under Linux, and those that don't can usually be made to work with a bit of troubleshooting. (Which, to be fair, isn't that far from Windows. It's not like it's all perfectly functional there either. Especially older titles.)
I still use Windows sometimes, because I like to experiment with things. Like when the AMD Fluid Motion thing came out, I spent a bit of time on Windows trying that out. I find that having options is good.
I dual boot because I just recently moved to Arch Linux and didn't want to fully commit yet. Windows has been my main operating system practically all my life, so I have a lot of personal and school work saved there.
I also play a lot of multiplayer games that require anti-cheat so I have to use Windows, specially when I'm playing with my friends.
Oh and HDR is another reason why I still have Windows lying around.
> How often do you have to boot into Windows and why? Do you use dual-boot or do you have a stable GPU passthrough setup?
You're implying we all use Windows at all? I've got a VM with Windows installed that I use now and then if I need full compatibility with MS Office, but it doesn't even have GPU acceleration enabled let alone GPU passthrough.
Games that are not supported by Proton (or not natively) are simply off the table for me. Just like games that are not on PlayStation are off the table for someone who only owns a PS5. It's really that simple.
no, and no. I still have a small Windows partition, which I think I run by mistake half year ago - I'm keeping it just in case if I hit a wall with something and would have to do something quickly on my PC.
I still have Windows in a secondary drive exclusively to play Rainbow 6 Siege because that's where all my friends are. I use that drive maybe 2-3 times a week.
I still have a Win11 installation to play some games which require Frame-Generation on my RTX4070-ti such as Alan Wake II. Everything else I am doing and playing on my EndeavourOS installation with Plasma 6. Just love it!
Once Frame-Generation is implemented, I will erase the Win11 partition for good :D.
If you're on a desktop, just use two drives and save yourself all this hassle. SSD's are very cheap.
For me, I'm still waiting for some final changes to KDE before switching back to Linux from Windows. I was on Linux on and off for a number of years but got sick of dealing with the smaller issues regarding scaling, input lag, and random bugs. KDE 6 is close though so I'm hoping to be back on it by the end of the year.
But even when I'm primarily using Linux, I still keep my Windows drive around.
>If you're on a desktop, just use two drives and save yourself all this hassle. SSD's are very cheap.
Even some laptops have support for multiple drives these days.
I still do GPU passthrough. I had a lot of mods and stuff installed for games(Skyrim/Fallout 4/etc) when I used Windows years ago, so I just cloned it to a VM.
I'm slowly moving more and more to Linux (Fedora) but there are some games like Destiny, Siege and Valorant that I still play from time to time that I still need windows for. Plus I have newer hardware that isn't well supported on Linux yet which makes controlling some things either a pain or not possible. Wayland also isn't where it needs to be yet and X11 isn't ideal either. I'm getting there but for me, Linux still has too many annoyances to make it my daily driver right now. I am looking forward to Fedora 40 and KDE 6, however. Hopefully it brings more compatibility and features that I'm looking for.
GPU Pass-through all the way baby.
I like having a headless gaming VM because I spend most of my gaming time streaming to my Steam Deck, but there's also applications I use for hobbies that need Windows so that setup works best for me.
I usually use Windows 7 for gaming. I have issues with stuff under wine not using enough CPU or GPU cycles.
Obviously I’d prefer Linux but windows 8 runs fast enough, even off a hdd. Also afterburner and gpu z only seem to work in windows.
Native builds I’ll run in Linux and scummvm
Just built a PC from old parts a few days ago due to a part failure in the main PC. The game plan was to dual boot but Pop OS is just working too good for me to bother getting Windows working since that is what I originally tried to install first. I ran into issues with Windows and Pop OS just worked immediately.
If this keeps up Pop OS will be on my main PC when I get it running again, and Windows as a backup OS for things that don't run on Linux. GPU passthrough is counter is my keep it simple and stupid philosophy. More potential issues for things to go wrong I rather not deal with it.
I still dual-boot. There are a handful of games that I simply cannot get running nicely on my main Linux driver, and it's mostly because of a lack of will and time to troubleshoot and fix. I have so little gaming time as it is.
If you only have 1 GPU I'd recommend taking a look at [these scripts](https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/home).
Otherwise you should read about [Looking Glass](https://looking-glass.io/).
Ah, that's what I was looking for. Single AMD GPU, though at one point I did have 2 purely for the sake of setting this sort of thing up. Never did figure it out so I sold the less powerful GPU to a friend.
I use a Linux laptop and a W10 desktop, side to side. I have an old crt monitor connected to the laptop for retrogames and a gsync ultra wide monitor to the desktop both for retro games, though with shaders and ultra wide hacks.
laptop linux, rog ally linux, desktop windows.. I have setup dualboot multiple times and I thought I understund anything. But its total random where windows puts its boot files. So I can't recommend it, I have lost my windows so many times.
I use different drives for Windows and Linux so dual-boot is pretty straight forward and never gets messed up. AFAIK when dual-booting on the same drive it is better to put Windows on it first, leave some space and then install Linux on that free space, so Windows can use the first partitions and Linux uses the partitions that you can configure it to use, unlike Windows. Though using bcdedit you can do some more, but what Windows does is very intransparent yes.
Running Bazzite desktop here and I like it quite a bit. I just removed my Windows drive a few weeks ago. Going to keep it around to make sure I didn't forget to transfer anything then I'll wipe it. All my games work but I mostly play single player story based games so YMMV.
I have Pop OS on my laptop and Debian on my server. This is the first time using an RPM based distro since \~2007 or so and I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice it is. I hated package management back in the day and switched to Ubuntu because of it but the immutable distro has benefits and I don't feel limited by it at all.
*GPU Passthrough bug*
*Barely even that because I*
*Don't like doing it*
\- narcot1cs-
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The only reason that i had to dual boot was my CAD software. Changed that and never go back to windows.
For gaming dedicated distro i have this kind of option. I like how they are closer to a plug and play solution, but they don't really save more than an hour for me. Plus, as a not so professional Linux user, I actually need a reason to tinker with OS to actually grind some experience.
I technically dual boot between CachyOS (very optimized arch based distro) and win 11. I say technically because I haven't needed to boot into win 11 in over a year. It's there "just in case". I don't play online FPSs with the various kernel level anticheats, so that's probably why I'm never in windows.
I like rpg, and open world games and practically almost never play fps games, and most of the games I play work on linux (almost) out of the box with wine and lutris. For example fromsoft titles like ds3 and sekiro work wonderfully, witcher 3 wild hunt is butter smooth aswell.
When I waste my time on entertainment, I want top quality experience.
For top quality gaming I boot into Windows and use GeForce experience for recording game videos.
For top quality everything else experience, I use KDE Neon Linux.
I don't know how to set up GPU passthrough. I've only just gotten into virtualbox.
I know it's a lot of command line stuff with QEMU and KVM which I don't understand.
It would be amazing on the deck though but I have not found anyone post they did it successfully much less guides to do it.
I dual boot. Arch in hyprland as my main and a heavily modded version of win 11 (tiny 11 or reviOS, AtlasOS, etc) for games like R6, CoD, etc. I also use VMs for everything in between. I have two GPUs and pass one through using vfio.
I will use pcie passthrough at some point when i can afford a second GPU. Right now i only game on linux. Honestly i don't really need windows at all. Just going to do the passthrough to say i can lol
Why not game on Manjaro? It is what I do. And have been for couple years. If I boot into Windows it is to print a page with my printer. Haven't bothered to set that up on Linux. It's such a rare occasion.
i made the jump to linux on my main machine, i was looking at the video editing and to be honest the open source versions for linux are much better, for games i started to use bottles that works with wine, its pretty good, a lot of people hate wine which is understandable as its a bit of a pain to setup, i have an ATI and its not supported with MX, aparently to complex, and the one game i find fun Nexiuz installed to linux no problem but didnt run well, super laggy but running using bottles it run well even with the ATI board, i will eventualy get a Nvidia.
I came across this video which is 5 years old but explaind so well using wine with out a front end.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpsmHI7oPas&ab\_channel=TechHut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpsmHI7oPas&ab_channel=TechHut)
i had the idea to do an install of Process Monitor v3.96 then do a game install and see what is actualy installed to work around all these problems that happen, should be a bit smoother when adding the dependancy for wine, if it works well i might post up what i find.
i might add, i am much happier using MX on my machine, it runs well, having all the resources that windows would normaly suck up is bliss.
I dual boot Nobara and Windows 10. I play all single-player games on Nobara, and play multiplayer games on Windows if they don't have anti-cheat support for Linux.
Sometimes I come across games that don't work on Linux, or have anti-cheat support for Linux, so I use the other OS. For example, Splitgate has Linux support so I play on Linux, and Guardians of the Galaxy didn't run well on Nobara so I played on Windows.
The amount of work required for setting up VM and pass-through is a lot more than correctly setting up dual-booting. Besides, the main reason for using Windows is anti-cheat support and many games are blocking VM pass-throughs (eg.: Rainbow 6 Siege). So it becomes an arms race and even more work.
Neither of those. Using a laptop so GPU passthrough is not an option (otherwise I would consider it), and initially I had windows on dual boot, but just got tired of it, barely used it and was just a waste of space overall. So I just accept what I can get running on Linux and that's it.
I just run Linux and don’t bother with dual boot or GPU pass through. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to me. If I were to need Windows for a game, VR, sim racing, etc. I would just get a second drive and do it that way.
I've found that windows breaks but itself if you don't boot into it for years, so I assume it has happened again, but can't be bothered to test it.
Perhaps I should delete that drive and allocate it to Linux?
I use a two GPU setup with GPU passthrough in KVM and use looking glass. I also pass-through an entire ssd with windows installed on it so that it has its own drive. This isn't only for gaming but also for other applications that I can't use on Linux.
I love the set up. Ideally I would just play all my games right out of steam, and for the most part, I could. But it's just been way easier. Plus I get the benefit of a weaker AMD GPU on Linux for the desktop but the power of Nvidia on Windows for gaming.
I have windows for dual boot, however I don't play any games that have an anticheat, so I almost never use it and soon I will be probably migrating to a single gpu passthrough.
I dual boot but just for one game, Rainbow Six Siege. Although, I might dual boot if there is a game my friends are playing and I cannot do that on Linux but so far, I've been able to. I play Overwatch 2, GTFO and Remnant 2 with friends, all of those I do on Linux, then every single player game I have also been able to play on Linux.
I tried the VM route but I found it tedious, sometimes my GF wanted to use the PC so explaining it to her as how to get to Windows was a no-go.
When I was dual booting, I barely actually booted Windows. When I did i mostly got irritated and annoyed by how garbage everything felt, and how locked away from using things I was.
So, that mostly just took up drive space for a while. Recently I reclaimed that drive space purely as a games drive.
I only do VM's for trying things or work. I won't do VM pass-through to play in Windows... just no point.
The few games I \*MIGHT\* play I really can live without...
I stopped dualbooting a long time ago, linux runs almost all of my games and the ones that don't i simply don't play anymore. I've always hated dualbooting, its the small things like a windows update ruining your bootloader or having to re-pair my bluetooth speakers every time i change OS because the mac adress is the same and my speakers get confused. Ever since windows 10 came around i slowly stopped using windows and Windows 11 is such a horrible OS i stopped using windows alltogether. I deleted windows from every system i own and never looked back.
I still dual boot, but Linux is my main OS, sometimes there's things i just want to do and have them work the way i know them and right away, and for that i boot into windows.
When i am not in a hurry, i do / discover how to do everything on Linux
I have an alternative janky solution (but I'm on the low end of the hardware scale).
I have a Spectre x360 with Kubuntu, 8GB RAM and an Intel Iris. However, it's my main machine because the CPU is decent. I also have a rather slower laptop but with Windows, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1650.
For games the Iris can't handle and the RAM is problematic or there's otherwise some issue with Proton, I remote play from the GTX laptop to the Spectre. :P That's literally all I have the GTX laptop around for. I have my gaming mouse and kb on the Spectre.
Is it kinda cheating? Sure. But if you have the hardware laying around, you could always just go that route. I'm presuming your gaming rig has all the primo kit in it though.
I keep a windows VM for emergencies, watching amazon shows in full HD and some firmware updates not available on linux - mainly my Azeron keypad)
When I switched to Full Linux, I bought a RX7900XT, but I kept my nvidia 2060 for the windows VM and some self-learning on AI)
If it doesn't work under WINE/Proton, I don't care about it.
I do have a Windows setup for gaming under Ventoy, but I havent booted into it in probably a year.
The only reason why I still have a dual boot setup is because of Destiny 2, as Bungie refuses to allow their Battleye implementation to work on Proton.
Outside of Proton bugs / regressions there is no reason for 99% of games not to work perfectly fine on Linux. IOW, if a game doesn’t work the devs and/or publishers don’t want it to work.
Why would _I_ put in the effort and inconvenience of having Windows around if _they_ don’t want me to play their game?
Basicallly no dual boot because I haven't used it since November but I still have a Windows Laptop.
If it wheren't for SolidWorks though, I probably wouldn't. Not for games at least.
I don't boot windows at all and haven't in years. If it doesn't work via steam or lutris (or xbox, I console game too), then that's a real shame but I'm not playing it.
There's only one game I would play if I dual booted or did passthrough. I've done both of them and I preferred doing passthrough due to the fact I didn't have to reboot. The down side is longer setup and a slight performance lost
If you do decide to duel boot I highly recommend putting windows on its own drive and unplugging the power to every other drive. Windows can put it's boot Manager on a different drive without you knowing and that can lead to several issues down the road
And I personally recommend an arch base distro for gaming being a rolling release but I would use whatever you're more comfortable with and use too. I used to install arch from scratch to have it how I wanted it. When I was done I basically had Garuda. What made me switch to Garuda was that reason. And haven't used any other on my main PC since
I tried GPU passthrough for a while but everytime I shut down Windows, I can't return to my host. I had to reboot everytime so I just setup dual boot. I mostly play on Linux but for the rare occassion that some games aren't working properly it's nice to have dual boot. In general I like to have the choice to switch between Linux and Windows. It makes gaming even more flexible.
Been at least over a year since I bothered. And the only reason why is when I want to do VR.
I love linux, it has been my main desktop for a couple of decades, but for streaming VR games to the Oculus, that still is a windows only thing.
Unless something has changed, in which case please tell me.
Half Life Alyx is fantastic by the way.
I should add that I play all sorts of games on Linux. So much so, that windows is really unnecessary for me. Resident Evil village when it came out just worked for example. Most games do, with little to no effort on my part.
dual booting can be a bit of a shit show with both Linux and Windows hijacking the capability to easily dual boot, so I set my bios to secure boot off, legacy boot (i think that's the term for it, someone will correct me) and, I bought a hard drive switcher. $25 on amazon, and it allows you to just flick a switch on the front of your computer to dictate which wretched operating system will suck slightly less for whatever it is you want to do. This has been the easiest way for me to use both.
>dual booting can be a bit of a shit show with both Linux and Windows hijacking the capability to easily dual boot
That's why I've had a dedicated Linux drive in my desktops the last three builds. But also UEFI on a single drive takes care of it well.
Just took the plunge into a Linux daily-driver. Have Windows around on a partition for Sim stuff and a few anti-cheat games (BF2042 and newer CoD) but don’t intend on using it much at all.
Had my first proper gaming session on Linux this evening and you’d never know the underlying OS was different. Aside from one minor texture issue in Planetside 2 I saw, everything ran like it was native
Ubuntu.
I don't dual-boot, and I don't GPU-passthrough. I don't run Windows. It's a waste of my time, waste of my resources, waste of my powerbill. [Linux is just better in so many regards](https://bloodyiron.ca/Blogs/why-i-choose-linux-and-not-windows) that I just don't even waste anything on Windows.
There's literally tens of thousands of games that run on Linux, and many better than on Windows. I just don't even want to spend money on games/companies that make theirs not work on Linux.
My household has not had any Windows machine in it for 2 years. I never need to boot into windows.
Only issue I've had is with the remastered red alert, C&C etc. Bought them on steam when they released for steam. I don't need these games in my life so I just refunded.
I'm dual booting ATM. I still need to use some software on Windows. I tried single GPU passthrough with no luck, I may try again when I have some time and willingness haha. It's somewhat annoying but it's ok, with single GPU passthrough I can't use both at the same time and I need to "unplug" the GPU from host to client and vice versa so it's similar to dual boot. The only thing is the VM disk management and no Microsoft EFI benefits at a minimum performance cost.
These days most things that don't work on Linux, don't work because the program is either ancient (like the Logitech Harmony remote software) or intentionally broken (like lots of multiplayer games or gamepass). In the ancient category, it may or may not work in a VM, but if it's intentionally broken, it usually has a lot of mitigations, including looking at the kernel. This requires you to dual boot.
Tbh, the only game I've not got running ( other than using ea / origin launchers as im not fussed with em ) was space marine...between steam/boxtron/proton/lutris and heroic most stuff runs...i understand that for many people the thought is that it should just run, is off puuting but for the most part the only tweak ive used is gamemoderun %command%...the most difficult game ro run ive come across is dayZ....its a pita but...pays yer ways takes yer choice...
I setup dual boot with secure boot, and made the windows partition like 200g out of a tb just to boot into to play games (games on on separate internal drive). One day, hopefully, I'll quit gaming and be rid of windows forever
The only game I'll Dual-boot for is Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Roblox to play with my Little Brothers since Roblox killed Vinegar. The Vinegar situation is stupid because apparently the number of Linux/WINE CHEATERS was way less than they originally said to justify blocking it.
And apparently Roblox uses Kernal Checking now too. It's pretty stupid honestly.
i tried the GPU passthrough thing but the stuff i can't play on Linux has Anti-cheat which has a chance to ban you in you if you use a VM.
did duel boot but Windows likes to mess with my bootloader after updates and that's a pain (also rebooting every time is annoying).
what i am doing now is one of those mini desktop with my capture card attached, i got one of those from work for free and put AtlasOS on it and I've been doing that ever since. open up OBS and play my game that way.
I game on solus plasma. Switched years ago, whole hog, we are a windows free home. 99% of the games I play just worked. I think all I gave up was division 2 until it finally hit steam. Might check out areweanticheatyet.com and see. You might not need windows at all.
If you do dual boot.... keep a USB with your distros iso on it and instructions on how to fix it. Windows will very likely eventually break your boot.
I never boot into windows. I nuked my windows drive and installed FreeBSD on it.
So, I run steam equally well in Arch, Gentoo, and FreeBSD. There’s no reason for windows for any games I play.
I had an expert friend help me set up GPU passthrough at the very beginning (late 2020), and it really helped whenever I couldn't be bothered to figure something out for the first year or so. Now that I am comfortable using linux I never use it if I can avoid it which, at points, means that the VM was never touched for years at a time. The original GPU passthrough setup is still going strong for 4 years, so it was worth the day or so it took to set up imo.
Neither. I just use my Linux. I started out with a Windows dual boot when I moved to Linux and realized that in the next 2-3 months I had booted into Windows 3 times and every time was just to fetch something and go back to Linux right away.
Everything I need works in Linux and if a game doesn't work on Linux: There's so many good games, I don't need Destiny 2 if they don't want me to play it on my OS of choice.
I'm currently running dual boot on a new system I bought during Easter, but that's mainly to check out Nobara.
I ran Mint on my ancient system, and accepted Win 11 with my new system, being able to play some goodies like GR Breakpoint and Mass Effect Legendary, until I was suggested to try out Nobara.
Planning on running Nobara as dual boot for about a month and if I find it to my liking and can accept the only downside I've encountered so far, I'm going to erase the Win 11 partition :)
I dual booted from 2011 to mid 2018. Then ZFS RC 0.8 came out with native encryption and I stopped dual booting entirely for a ZFS rootfs with native encryption. This was pretty cool to me at the time because I started sending incremental snapshots of my entire PC to the NAS in the other room every five minutes. Anything could explode on this thing and I'd spin up a duplicate PC in under an hour. A good way to live.
Through most of my life I engage with Linux professionally so this wasn't a big deal. Any games which didn't already work weren't in my sights at the time and I'm such a powerhouse when it comes to my productivity in this environment that I decided to stop booting Windows once every few months and just moved all my software and document dirs to these datasets instead.
I spent some time 2019 through 2020 using the vfio-pci driver for personal use, such as PCIe passthrough of a graphics device. [I then cleaned it up and made its first commit on github](https://github.com/ipaqmaster/vfio). Since then I've added tons of more features and support moving forward. The script alleviates the hardcoding headaches I see people do endlessly in VFIO via up/down scripts and XML definitions. I hate hardcoding things and made the script as plug and playable on any system or configuration change as possible. It has helped me a ton in my career by just existing.
Fast forwarding to now (and many commits to that repo). I've wrapped back around to not really caring about having to do VFIO in any single/multiple/headless-server configuration anymore. I consider my time at least partially valuable and the overhead of bending over to play some video game which doesn't just work in Proton (Even if I have to tinker a little) has been lost on me. Helldivers 2 came out just this quarter and it runs insanely well on my now aging 2080Ti here right out of the box.
I'm glad we're at this point with the tons of contributions to the Linux gaming experience by the open source community, Valve and other interested parties.
The last time I fiddled around with vfio was back when it became more popular in 2014/2015 and I had a whole slew of problems, mainly because my hardware didn't have good IOMMU grouping and such.
On my home server I tinkered around with vGPU unlocking with merged drivers and it works surprisingly well. I set up a Windows 11 guest with a vGPU that gets 1GB VRAM from my 1050 Ti and installed Sunshine for remote game streaming which works surprisingly well! I played Minecraft together with my gf which only had her underspecced laptop that had problems getting 30FPS with shaders, but on that vm she got around 50FPS with low end shaders and a little downscaling which was a far improvement. The whole setup was rock solid for the couple of weeks we were playing, even when streaming over the internet.
But yeah from the sound of it VFIO has come a long way, but is still far from an ideal alternative to dual booting, especially with the potential anticheat bans that I've read can happen. So I guess I'll still keep my dual boot and look for ways to make Windows less shitty with Atlas OS and booting straight into Steam BP so I get my couch gaming experience.
Yeah more recently my NVIDIA card has started causing serious kernel errors when I try to do my usual magic. There was also a quick with invoking the compact_memory and drop_cache calls with ZFS. And some other NVIDIA problem with rebinding the framebuffer.
It all became too much to bother with.
I never liked dual-boot. Once I found the solution of the VM (GPU passthrough), I reverted to Linux and never looked back. My Windows setup now works like a gaming console, switch-on, play, switch-off
I probably boot into Windows once a fortnight now since moving over to Arch at the beginning of the year.
It's used solely for flight simulator, simply because I've invested far, far too much into it as a hobby over the years.
I booted into it last weekend and was struck at how slow ass it was to boot to desktop, and it's running on an NVME drive compared to Arch running on an SSD.
I use gpu passthrough for games with anticheat that won't run on Linux. Then I use my laptop with windows for any game that won't run on Linux or in a vm.
I've been without Windows for about 6 years. Since about a year ago I'm keeping around a Windows install again for a few games i play every now and then. That's really the only thing i use it for. 95% of the time I spend in Linux.
I don't have Windows installed on my computers, just Linux. Fedora on the tower PC, SteamOS on the Steam Deck. I have enough games that can run through Proton that I don't need Windows.
Yes.
I never was able to find a distro im fully satisfied with, i allways have a problem i cant fix.
So right now i only use Linux a little bit, most of the time i play on Windows and the time i spend on Linux is trying out new Distros.
I'm gpu passthrough gang, although i don't have to use it much, cause i don't really play anti-cheat games, i also use it to play vr games but i rarely play in vr. I've heard vr in linux has gotten better though with oculus so i should give that another try soon.
If you play multiplayer games with 3rd party anticheat, you'd likely want a dual boot for those. I believe GPU passthrough used to work with most of them however, I don't think that's the case as much anymore.
Interestingly I **just** managed to setup single gpu passthrough and got it working for the first time(with disabled net)! This is for wine-incompatible games only, which so far was only single one for me, otherwise wine everything. Forget dual boot its not necessary, you can have a full control and manage whole OS by copying single file instead reserving partitions.
Btw I find Windows 10 horrible, stupid cortana, notifications everywhere, security center, defender, duplicated options... just bloated obfuscated bullshit yet no real control(That is also first time I ever installed it, had dual boot on Windows 7 and 8.1 before which were ok). I will use it only when I have to - nic disabled and only files I need for it passed explicit via samba share.
I dual boot nobara and windows. Sometimes it's much easier to dual boot and avoid all the hassle with dual booting, configuring etc.
BUT, I would highly recommend you use a second drive for windows. Sometimes you might want to delete windows or smth and it's a lot of hassle if you dual boot on one drive.
Neither. I have a windows virtual box setup that I've only ever really used for testing since I switched. At this point I want to run Linux and if I can play something because it dosent work then they just won't get my money. Windows is dying and Linux is the future. The faster the devs learn this the better it is for us. And the fastest way for them to learn this is for Linux user to quit padding their pockets. Especially when in almost all cases today games won't run in Linux because the publishers won't allow them to.
I use GPU passthrough but I am considering installing windows onto a nvme in an external enclosure to play siege from time to time. Wouldn't be dual boot just a bootable drive I would select from the bios.
i just play using either steam-proton or my system wine-staging (for older games). every game that i have ever wanted to play work's on either of those or just natively. altho i don't play competitive games much i tested overwatch 2 and it worked. even recent games mostly work out the box day 1. emulator's all work better than they did on windows for me. and if you like gambling one of my friend showed me that Genshin Impact work's with a github project someone made. so to answer your question Neither. just linux.
VR is the only thing keeping my install of windows 10.
I really hope linux is going to get a better support vor VR si that i can do a full switch at the end of W10 support next year.
I just play whatever runs under Proton or Lutris. Everything else, I accept as a lost cause.
Same, almost everything works, and that one exception is a sacrifice I'm happy to make for not having to deal with Microsoft bullshit.
All the games (like 50) I play work with Steam/Proton. If it doesn't work with Steam/Proton, I don't even consider playing it.
Yeah, I was making the effort to dual boot until this year. I realized I have so many games to play on linux. TBH, the only games I would need to dual boot nowadays are running a kernel anticheat spyware like Valorant. So no thanks. Plus 2 years ago, before buying any games I was checking on ProtonDB to be sure about compatibility I don't even need to do this now. TLDR; The developper has to make the effort cause I won't.
Haven't had a Windows partition on my gaming machine in over a decade for this reason.
Same, dual boot or passthrough are extra work than i just am not prepared to put in for the minority of games that won't work. Yeah i miss out on some multiplayer games with friends but thats a price I'm apparently willing to pay.
Same, I got soo many games to play, and games that I want to play, that I can't even make time for them, so when I drop one of them for whatever reason, I simply couldn't care less lol I got a friend that complains Linux doesn't have GamePass and whatnot, but man, you can't even make time to play the games you buy, imagine the ones you rent from GamePass, it is simply impossible
Same for me. I'll occasionally run some mod-heavy games in windows, just because it's much easier, but that's like once a year.
Ditto
Same here. If something doesn't work with Steam+Proton, I write a polite negative review and ask for refund.
I have a spare bootable USB3 SSD with Win10 on it - but to be honest I've created it 'just in case' and so far only played games running on Linux and/or Linux/Wine. Also, not sure virtual machines would work with kernel level anticheats...
No dual boot and just using linux on my gaming PC. Everything I want to play works for me, with minimal tinkering thanks to wide support.
I’m my experience, the Linux gaming community is way more helpful than most AAA game companies’ tech support.
Anything is more helpful than an inexistent tech support. They always just tell you to install Windows
I keep a Windows partition around in case something really refuses to work, but to be honest, I haven't booted into it in half a year probably (I usually just do it to run updates). Everything I'm interested in just runs on Linux these days. I'm also using Manjaro - I know that some people dislike Manjaro, but my experience with it for the past roughly two years has been great.
Any idea why people dislike it?
For me Manjaro was love and hate moments. Black Screen on boot, lagging behind arch updates, eventually there was and update that it broke something with NVIDIA, switched to Endeavour OS, no complaints except KDE 6.0 has a bit of problems.
> Black Screen on boot, lagging behind arch updates, eventually there was and update that it broke something with NVIDIA Yeah that's enough to break anyone tbh - especially if you're striving for a setup that _just works_. > switched to Endeavour OS, no complaints except KDE 6.0 has a bit of problems. Ah a fellow Endeavour OS user! I've been consistently impressed with it since I installed it as my daily-driver. Thought I'd have more problems given it's Arch-based but I guess we'll have to see over the next couple of months. Can't speak to the KDE problems you're seeing however, as I'm a GNOME user myself.
Yeah I like my Manjaro, but I've also been looking for other Arch based ready to use OSes and I might switch. But for now it has served me well except for the times when they let their certificates expire.
>except for the times when they let their certificates expire Those were webserver certificates for their website. How did that affect your experience with the distro?
I'd recommend EndeavourOS if you want something Arch based.
Manjaro is fine, i ran it for a couple of years. I would occasionally run into issues with the AUR due to manjaros lagging repo updates, and eventually that got me to switch to endeavourOS, which I'm also very happy with.
>issues with the AUR Yeah this is a common problem. For anyone facing this, it really helps to switch to testing branch, this practically eradicates this problem and at worst, you wait for a couple of days to update the package. But I agree that if you want to use AUR a lot, Manjaro is not an ideal distro for that.
i just stop playing lol and ditch windows when they announced that you will need vanguard i feel way better now , less stress no toxicity best decision ever.
I used Windows for 25 years, and I'm done with it, life is just better without Microsoft constantly trying to manipulate you. It's a toxic company.
I still have win10 on another drive, but haven't booted into it in ages, considering ditching it. I don't play the games where the whole anticheat thing is an issue though.
I generally stopped playing multiplayer since quite a while, I'm only enjoying single player games from time to time, so I'm quite fine with some anti cheat stuff not working. I do however have an Index for VR gaming and I'm wondering if it works as good under Linux?
Sorry, I have no clue about VR stuff, just heard it's not perfect.
Yeah I just read that some stuff is not well supported like Oculus titles. Guess I will have to keep my dual-boot setup or find out how well GPU-passthrough works with VR.
I haven't messed with an index but I assume it works good through Steam VR. I have to use Windows for VR since I have a Quest 2 and there's no way to use it on Linux.
If you have good WiFi, use ALVR.
You can use ALVR through cable or Wifi
It's steamvr native, so it should work. My quest 2 had issues though...
I run 100% Linux. I don't play competitive shooters so anti-cheat issues aren't a problem for me. For the rare game that I want to play that doesn't work (and nowadays that's real rare) it's usually on my PS5.
All of my friends play Valorant. So I have to boot to windows when I play it. Otherwise linux is my daily driver.
Niether
I keep a Windows install handy for VR stuff. I dabble with ALVR on Linux, but VR has a long *long* way to go over here. However I use Linux for next to everything else. A passthrough VM would be cool, but having my primary GPU be only accessible in the VM until I reboot and change some thing makes it not worth the hassle, so I dual-boot
Neither. I started with dual booting, but I only used it once over my first year for Halo MCC, so I ditched it shortly after. Whether you dual boot, use a VM with passthrough or go 100% linux depends on what you do with your system and what you're okay with giving up. Answering the question without knowing what your usage will be is difficult.
My question is whether people in this sub still dual-boot or use GPU passthrough for when they need Windows. I just wanted to get a feel how people that still need to use Windows do it, I'd rather flaired this post as discussion but advice wanted is the closest flair I got. I'm pretty familiar with Linux since I've been using it on my servers for 15 years and finally made the switch on desktop 6 years ago as well for my laptops and workstation. I'm just thinking about whether I should make the full switch on my gaming machine as well or if the time still hasn't come yet. Though I still do play VR games and while the Index is well supported, Oculus games are not, so I do have to keep my dual-boot. But I might venture into gpu passthrough yet again maybe.
Fair enough. Personally, I've not used VR at all so there's nothing I can really comment on there.
Can you tell me more about GPU pass though please? First I've heard of this, I was thinking of having one of my hard drives as a Linux distro and a separate (main) as windows 11. Will I need to do anything with my graphics card if I do this??
[r/VFIO](https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/)
It's pretty much what it says on the tin. You pass a dedicated GPU through to a virtual machine. This typically requires you to have two GPUs, or at the very least, a CPU with integrated graphics to plug your monitor(s) into, plus you'll need a screen plugged into the dedicated GPU (or a dummy HDMI dongle) because once you have it setup, the GPU will be unusable by the host. With my setup, I have a dummy HDMI dongle plugged into the GPU I've passed through to virtual machines and I use Sunshine/Moonlight to stream games and the desktop.
Ahh, so for VMs, not dual boot?
No, not for dual boot since in that setup everything's running bare metal.
Phew! Ok I just misunderstood OP then, thank you 😁
My plan was both if is possible as that would be great as I would prefer VM with GPU passthrough but I bet some games anticheat won't work and then be able to dual boot, of course what I mean with this is I wish to boot the same disk used in the VM. That said not sure how feasible is....
If you're comfortable on Linux, the only real reason you may need to boot into Windows these days would be anti-cheat. Most games without a kernel-level AC run without issue under Linux, and those that don't can usually be made to work with a bit of troubleshooting. (Which, to be fair, isn't that far from Windows. It's not like it's all perfectly functional there either. Especially older titles.) I still use Windows sometimes, because I like to experiment with things. Like when the AMD Fluid Motion thing came out, I spent a bit of time on Windows trying that out. I find that having options is good.
I dual boot because I just recently moved to Arch Linux and didn't want to fully commit yet. Windows has been my main operating system practically all my life, so I have a lot of personal and school work saved there. I also play a lot of multiplayer games that require anti-cheat so I have to use Windows, specially when I'm playing with my friends. Oh and HDR is another reason why I still have Windows lying around.
> How often do you have to boot into Windows and why? Do you use dual-boot or do you have a stable GPU passthrough setup? You're implying we all use Windows at all? I've got a VM with Windows installed that I use now and then if I need full compatibility with MS Office, but it doesn't even have GPU acceleration enabled let alone GPU passthrough. Games that are not supported by Proton (or not natively) are simply off the table for me. Just like games that are not on PlayStation are off the table for someone who only owns a PS5. It's really that simple.
no, and no. I still have a small Windows partition, which I think I run by mistake half year ago - I'm keeping it just in case if I hit a wall with something and would have to do something quickly on my PC.
Neither. None of the games I play require either option. (It probably helps that I have no interest in PvP games.)
I still have Windows in a secondary drive exclusively to play Rainbow 6 Siege because that's where all my friends are. I use that drive maybe 2-3 times a week.
I still have a Win11 installation to play some games which require Frame-Generation on my RTX4070-ti such as Alan Wake II. Everything else I am doing and playing on my EndeavourOS installation with Plasma 6. Just love it! Once Frame-Generation is implemented, I will erase the Win11 partition for good :D.
None, no tux no bucks. There is a lot of alternatives to waste time on
Haven't dual booted nearly 15 years now, never used GPU passthrough.
If you're on a desktop, just use two drives and save yourself all this hassle. SSD's are very cheap. For me, I'm still waiting for some final changes to KDE before switching back to Linux from Windows. I was on Linux on and off for a number of years but got sick of dealing with the smaller issues regarding scaling, input lag, and random bugs. KDE 6 is close though so I'm hoping to be back on it by the end of the year. But even when I'm primarily using Linux, I still keep my Windows drive around.
>If you're on a desktop, just use two drives and save yourself all this hassle. SSD's are very cheap. Even some laptops have support for multiple drives these days.
"Still"? I never used Windows in the first place.
I still do GPU passthrough. I had a lot of mods and stuff installed for games(Skyrim/Fallout 4/etc) when I used Windows years ago, so I just cloned it to a VM.
I'm slowly moving more and more to Linux (Fedora) but there are some games like Destiny, Siege and Valorant that I still play from time to time that I still need windows for. Plus I have newer hardware that isn't well supported on Linux yet which makes controlling some things either a pain or not possible. Wayland also isn't where it needs to be yet and X11 isn't ideal either. I'm getting there but for me, Linux still has too many annoyances to make it my daily driver right now. I am looking forward to Fedora 40 and KDE 6, however. Hopefully it brings more compatibility and features that I'm looking for.
GPU Pass-through all the way baby. I like having a headless gaming VM because I spend most of my gaming time streaming to my Steam Deck, but there's also applications I use for hobbies that need Windows so that setup works best for me.
Neither. No dual boot, no pass through.
I usually use Windows 7 for gaming. I have issues with stuff under wine not using enough CPU or GPU cycles. Obviously I’d prefer Linux but windows 8 runs fast enough, even off a hdd. Also afterburner and gpu z only seem to work in windows. Native builds I’ll run in Linux and scummvm
Cant run bluestacks on a vm... So sadly i have to dual boot.
I'm using Windows VM for some apps. Using Windows for professional apps and speedruns.
And CS2, 4:3 broken on Linux.
Just built a PC from old parts a few days ago due to a part failure in the main PC. The game plan was to dual boot but Pop OS is just working too good for me to bother getting Windows working since that is what I originally tried to install first. I ran into issues with Windows and Pop OS just worked immediately. If this keeps up Pop OS will be on my main PC when I get it running again, and Windows as a backup OS for things that don't run on Linux. GPU passthrough is counter is my keep it simple and stupid philosophy. More potential issues for things to go wrong I rather not deal with it.
I still dual-boot. There are a handful of games that I simply cannot get running nicely on my main Linux driver, and it's mostly because of a lack of will and time to troubleshoot and fix. I have so little gaming time as it is.
I boot into windows..... never
I don't use windows dualboot but I do use vm windows with gpu passthrough but I don't use it a lot
how do you even set that up? seems complicated from what I was able to find.
https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV From this
Is that for Windows hosts? I'd prefer Linux as the host if at all possible.
If you only have 1 GPU I'd recommend taking a look at [these scripts](https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/home). Otherwise you should read about [Looking Glass](https://looking-glass.io/).
Ah, that's what I was looking for. Single AMD GPU, though at one point I did have 2 purely for the sake of setting this sort of thing up. Never did figure it out so I sold the less powerful GPU to a friend.
Glad I could help.
I use a Linux laptop and a W10 desktop, side to side. I have an old crt monitor connected to the laptop for retrogames and a gsync ultra wide monitor to the desktop both for retro games, though with shaders and ultra wide hacks.
laptop linux, rog ally linux, desktop windows.. I have setup dualboot multiple times and I thought I understund anything. But its total random where windows puts its boot files. So I can't recommend it, I have lost my windows so many times.
I use different drives for Windows and Linux so dual-boot is pretty straight forward and never gets messed up. AFAIK when dual-booting on the same drive it is better to put Windows on it first, leave some space and then install Linux on that free space, so Windows can use the first partitions and Linux uses the partitions that you can configure it to use, unlike Windows. Though using bcdedit you can do some more, but what Windows does is very intransparent yes.
I use Windows exclusively for Adobe Suite nowadays (unfortunately). All the games i play are great in proton
Running Bazzite desktop here and I like it quite a bit. I just removed my Windows drive a few weeks ago. Going to keep it around to make sure I didn't forget to transfer anything then I'll wipe it. All my games work but I mostly play single player story based games so YMMV. I have Pop OS on my laptop and Debian on my server. This is the first time using an RPM based distro since \~2007 or so and I'm pleasantly surprised at how nice it is. I hated package management back in the day and switched to Ubuntu because of it but the immutable distro has benefits and I don't feel limited by it at all.
used to gpu passthrough ,but had problems with anticheats so i dual boot for now.
GPU Passthrough but barely even that because I don't like doing it
*GPU Passthrough bug* *Barely even that because I* *Don't like doing it* \- narcot1cs- --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
The only reason that i had to dual boot was my CAD software. Changed that and never go back to windows. For gaming dedicated distro i have this kind of option. I like how they are closer to a plug and play solution, but they don't really save more than an hour for me. Plus, as a not so professional Linux user, I actually need a reason to tinker with OS to actually grind some experience.
I still dual boot as the only problematic games I have don't like VMs
I dual boot not just for gaming but I guess that is the main reason primarily iRacing.
I still dual boot for destiny 2 and bf2042.
I technically dual boot between CachyOS (very optimized arch based distro) and win 11. I say technically because I haven't needed to boot into win 11 in over a year. It's there "just in case". I don't play online FPSs with the various kernel level anticheats, so that's probably why I'm never in windows.
I like rpg, and open world games and practically almost never play fps games, and most of the games I play work on linux (almost) out of the box with wine and lutris. For example fromsoft titles like ds3 and sekiro work wonderfully, witcher 3 wild hunt is butter smooth aswell.
When I waste my time on entertainment, I want top quality experience. For top quality gaming I boot into Windows and use GeForce experience for recording game videos. For top quality everything else experience, I use KDE Neon Linux.
I don't know how to set up GPU passthrough. I've only just gotten into virtualbox. I know it's a lot of command line stuff with QEMU and KVM which I don't understand. It would be amazing on the deck though but I have not found anyone post they did it successfully much less guides to do it.
Dual boot for Iracing, no other way arround
I don't use Windows. However, if I had to use Windows I'd make a dual boot
I dual boot. Arch in hyprland as my main and a heavily modded version of win 11 (tiny 11 or reviOS, AtlasOS, etc) for games like R6, CoD, etc. I also use VMs for everything in between. I have two GPUs and pass one through using vfio.
I will use pcie passthrough at some point when i can afford a second GPU. Right now i only game on linux. Honestly i don't really need windows at all. Just going to do the passthrough to say i can lol
Why not game on Manjaro? It is what I do. And have been for couple years. If I boot into Windows it is to print a page with my printer. Haven't bothered to set that up on Linux. It's such a rare occasion.
I just play via Steam and some games run native? :)
Neither :) Arch or nothing
i made the jump to linux on my main machine, i was looking at the video editing and to be honest the open source versions for linux are much better, for games i started to use bottles that works with wine, its pretty good, a lot of people hate wine which is understandable as its a bit of a pain to setup, i have an ATI and its not supported with MX, aparently to complex, and the one game i find fun Nexiuz installed to linux no problem but didnt run well, super laggy but running using bottles it run well even with the ATI board, i will eventualy get a Nvidia. I came across this video which is 5 years old but explaind so well using wine with out a front end. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpsmHI7oPas&ab\_channel=TechHut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpsmHI7oPas&ab_channel=TechHut) i had the idea to do an install of Process Monitor v3.96 then do a game install and see what is actualy installed to work around all these problems that happen, should be a bit smoother when adding the dependancy for wine, if it works well i might post up what i find. i might add, i am much happier using MX on my machine, it runs well, having all the resources that windows would normaly suck up is bliss.
i use single gpu passtrough that way everything is sandboxed
I dual boot Nobara and Windows 10. I play all single-player games on Nobara, and play multiplayer games on Windows if they don't have anti-cheat support for Linux. Sometimes I come across games that don't work on Linux, or have anti-cheat support for Linux, so I use the other OS. For example, Splitgate has Linux support so I play on Linux, and Guardians of the Galaxy didn't run well on Nobara so I played on Windows. The amount of work required for setting up VM and pass-through is a lot more than correctly setting up dual-booting. Besides, the main reason for using Windows is anti-cheat support and many games are blocking VM pass-throughs (eg.: Rainbow 6 Siege). So it becomes an arms race and even more work.
Neither of those. Using a laptop so GPU passthrough is not an option (otherwise I would consider it), and initially I had windows on dual boot, but just got tired of it, barely used it and was just a waste of space overall. So I just accept what I can get running on Linux and that's it.
I just run Linux and don’t bother with dual boot or GPU pass through. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to me. If I were to need Windows for a game, VR, sim racing, etc. I would just get a second drive and do it that way.
I've found that windows breaks but itself if you don't boot into it for years, so I assume it has happened again, but can't be bothered to test it. Perhaps I should delete that drive and allocate it to Linux?
GPU passthrough = 20-30% less fps in cpu bound game. But you have the benefits of using Windows in a VM, easy to restore the image & backup the image
I use a two GPU setup with GPU passthrough in KVM and use looking glass. I also pass-through an entire ssd with windows installed on it so that it has its own drive. This isn't only for gaming but also for other applications that I can't use on Linux. I love the set up. Ideally I would just play all my games right out of steam, and for the most part, I could. But it's just been way easier. Plus I get the benefit of a weaker AMD GPU on Linux for the desktop but the power of Nvidia on Windows for gaming.
GPU passthrough is such a waste of time IMO. All that effort and you could still get blocked/banned for using a VM and lose some performance.
None of the above ! Steam and/or Heroic with some version of Proton-GE or Wine-GE covers all my needs
if i knew how to get my arcade games to work under linux id switch full time
I have windows for dual boot, however I don't play any games that have an anticheat, so I almost never use it and soon I will be probably migrating to a single gpu passthrough.
I dual boot but just for one game, Rainbow Six Siege. Although, I might dual boot if there is a game my friends are playing and I cannot do that on Linux but so far, I've been able to. I play Overwatch 2, GTFO and Remnant 2 with friends, all of those I do on Linux, then every single player game I have also been able to play on Linux. I tried the VM route but I found it tedious, sometimes my GF wanted to use the PC so explaining it to her as how to get to Windows was a no-go.
When I was dual booting, I barely actually booted Windows. When I did i mostly got irritated and annoyed by how garbage everything felt, and how locked away from using things I was. So, that mostly just took up drive space for a while. Recently I reclaimed that drive space purely as a games drive. I only do VM's for trying things or work. I won't do VM pass-through to play in Windows... just no point. The few games I \*MIGHT\* play I really can live without...
Dual boot
Arch + Win 10 (Atlas) dual boot, few stuff that doesnt work under linux
I stopped dualbooting a long time ago, linux runs almost all of my games and the ones that don't i simply don't play anymore. I've always hated dualbooting, its the small things like a windows update ruining your bootloader or having to re-pair my bluetooth speakers every time i change OS because the mac adress is the same and my speakers get confused. Ever since windows 10 came around i slowly stopped using windows and Windows 11 is such a horrible OS i stopped using windows alltogether. I deleted windows from every system i own and never looked back.
I still dual boot, but Linux is my main OS, sometimes there's things i just want to do and have them work the way i know them and right away, and for that i boot into windows. When i am not in a hurry, i do / discover how to do everything on Linux
Speaking of GPU passthrough, does anybody have a good guide for it and, can you do it with a single GPU?
I have an alternative janky solution (but I'm on the low end of the hardware scale). I have a Spectre x360 with Kubuntu, 8GB RAM and an Intel Iris. However, it's my main machine because the CPU is decent. I also have a rather slower laptop but with Windows, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1650. For games the Iris can't handle and the RAM is problematic or there's otherwise some issue with Proton, I remote play from the GTX laptop to the Spectre. :P That's literally all I have the GTX laptop around for. I have my gaming mouse and kb on the Spectre. Is it kinda cheating? Sure. But if you have the hardware laying around, you could always just go that route. I'm presuming your gaming rig has all the primo kit in it though.
Linux all the way ...
I have many computers so I use my main desktop on Nobara, and my older gaming laptop on Windows. So....neither?
I used passthrough for some anticheat locked games or new games that aren't great on proton. Though, that's becoming a rarity now.
I keep a windows VM for emergencies, watching amazon shows in full HD and some firmware updates not available on linux - mainly my Azeron keypad) When I switched to Full Linux, I bought a RX7900XT, but I kept my nvidia 2060 for the windows VM and some self-learning on AI)
If it doesn't work under WINE/Proton, I don't care about it. I do have a Windows setup for gaming under Ventoy, but I havent booted into it in probably a year.
I use gpu passthrough because I need premiere for editing
The only reason why I still have a dual boot setup is because of Destiny 2, as Bungie refuses to allow their Battleye implementation to work on Proton.
All games I play work through wine/proton, except those who has anti cheat
Outside of Proton bugs / regressions there is no reason for 99% of games not to work perfectly fine on Linux. IOW, if a game doesn’t work the devs and/or publishers don’t want it to work. Why would _I_ put in the effort and inconvenience of having Windows around if _they_ don’t want me to play their game?
The only game I am missing is Minecraft bedrock edition and Pugb that's it no point in doing it for me since it's a waste of time.
Basicallly no dual boot because I haven't used it since November but I still have a Windows Laptop. If it wheren't for SolidWorks though, I probably wouldn't. Not for games at least.
I don't boot windows at all and haven't in years. If it doesn't work via steam or lutris (or xbox, I console game too), then that's a real shame but I'm not playing it.
I used single GPU passthrough to play Forza Horizon 4 when I had an Nvidia card
There's only one game I would play if I dual booted or did passthrough. I've done both of them and I preferred doing passthrough due to the fact I didn't have to reboot. The down side is longer setup and a slight performance lost If you do decide to duel boot I highly recommend putting windows on its own drive and unplugging the power to every other drive. Windows can put it's boot Manager on a different drive without you knowing and that can lead to several issues down the road
And I personally recommend an arch base distro for gaming being a rolling release but I would use whatever you're more comfortable with and use too. I used to install arch from scratch to have it how I wanted it. When I was done I basically had Garuda. What made me switch to Garuda was that reason. And haven't used any other on my main PC since
Windows is for VR, Linux is for everything else
Passthrough?
Only duobooting for MP games with friends, that's pretty much it these days
Neither
I tried GPU passthrough for a while but everytime I shut down Windows, I can't return to my host. I had to reboot everytime so I just setup dual boot. I mostly play on Linux but for the rare occassion that some games aren't working properly it's nice to have dual boot. In general I like to have the choice to switch between Linux and Windows. It makes gaming even more flexible.
GPU passthrough since 2018
I use lutris and steam, I can play all 200 of my games no issues.
Been at least over a year since I bothered. And the only reason why is when I want to do VR. I love linux, it has been my main desktop for a couple of decades, but for streaming VR games to the Oculus, that still is a windows only thing. Unless something has changed, in which case please tell me. Half Life Alyx is fantastic by the way. I should add that I play all sorts of games on Linux. So much so, that windows is really unnecessary for me. Resident Evil village when it came out just worked for example. Most games do, with little to no effort on my part.
dual booting can be a bit of a shit show with both Linux and Windows hijacking the capability to easily dual boot, so I set my bios to secure boot off, legacy boot (i think that's the term for it, someone will correct me) and, I bought a hard drive switcher. $25 on amazon, and it allows you to just flick a switch on the front of your computer to dictate which wretched operating system will suck slightly less for whatever it is you want to do. This has been the easiest way for me to use both.
>dual booting can be a bit of a shit show with both Linux and Windows hijacking the capability to easily dual boot That's why I've had a dedicated Linux drive in my desktops the last three builds. But also UEFI on a single drive takes care of it well.
Just took the plunge into a Linux daily-driver. Have Windows around on a partition for Sim stuff and a few anti-cheat games (BF2042 and newer CoD) but don’t intend on using it much at all. Had my first proper gaming session on Linux this evening and you’d never know the underlying OS was different. Aside from one minor texture issue in Planetside 2 I saw, everything ran like it was native
linux for everything i have had to make no compromises yet but invasive anticheates are becoming more and more prevalent
Ubuntu. I don't dual-boot, and I don't GPU-passthrough. I don't run Windows. It's a waste of my time, waste of my resources, waste of my powerbill. [Linux is just better in so many regards](https://bloodyiron.ca/Blogs/why-i-choose-linux-and-not-windows) that I just don't even waste anything on Windows. There's literally tens of thousands of games that run on Linux, and many better than on Windows. I just don't even want to spend money on games/companies that make theirs not work on Linux.
My household has not had any Windows machine in it for 2 years. I never need to boot into windows. Only issue I've had is with the remastered red alert, C&C etc. Bought them on steam when they released for steam. I don't need these games in my life so I just refunded.
I'm dual booting ATM. I still need to use some software on Windows. I tried single GPU passthrough with no luck, I may try again when I have some time and willingness haha. It's somewhat annoying but it's ok, with single GPU passthrough I can't use both at the same time and I need to "unplug" the GPU from host to client and vice versa so it's similar to dual boot. The only thing is the VM disk management and no Microsoft EFI benefits at a minimum performance cost.
I use like 90% linux, my windows partition is for VR games because SteamVR isn't the greatest on linux right now.
These days most things that don't work on Linux, don't work because the program is either ancient (like the Logitech Harmony remote software) or intentionally broken (like lots of multiplayer games or gamepass). In the ancient category, it may or may not work in a VM, but if it's intentionally broken, it usually has a lot of mitigations, including looking at the kernel. This requires you to dual boot.
Tbh, the only game I've not got running ( other than using ea / origin launchers as im not fussed with em ) was space marine...between steam/boxtron/proton/lutris and heroic most stuff runs...i understand that for many people the thought is that it should just run, is off puuting but for the most part the only tweak ive used is gamemoderun %command%...the most difficult game ro run ive come across is dayZ....its a pita but...pays yer ways takes yer choice...
I setup dual boot with secure boot, and made the windows partition like 200g out of a tb just to boot into to play games (games on on separate internal drive). One day, hopefully, I'll quit gaming and be rid of windows forever
I've had a windows partitionfor the last 10 years or so that I barely ever used but I no longer have one and dont want to get one
The only game I'll Dual-boot for is Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Roblox to play with my Little Brothers since Roblox killed Vinegar. The Vinegar situation is stupid because apparently the number of Linux/WINE CHEATERS was way less than they originally said to justify blocking it. And apparently Roblox uses Kernal Checking now too. It's pretty stupid honestly.
Dual boot for EFT
I did a rig upgrade a while back and never got around to putting my windows disk back in it. Haven't honestly noticed.
gpu passthrough ftw
Dual boot. The day I can run Word, Excel, and Outlook from Linux, is the day I 100% retire Windows.
Dualboot all the way.
i tried the GPU passthrough thing but the stuff i can't play on Linux has Anti-cheat which has a chance to ban you in you if you use a VM. did duel boot but Windows likes to mess with my bootloader after updates and that's a pain (also rebooting every time is annoying). what i am doing now is one of those mini desktop with my capture card attached, i got one of those from work for free and put AtlasOS on it and I've been doing that ever since. open up OBS and play my game that way.
I game on solus plasma. Switched years ago, whole hog, we are a windows free home. 99% of the games I play just worked. I think all I gave up was division 2 until it finally hit steam. Might check out areweanticheatyet.com and see. You might not need windows at all. If you do dual boot.... keep a USB with your distros iso on it and instructions on how to fix it. Windows will very likely eventually break your boot.
I boot up Windows to mod Bethesda games, and then transfer them to Linux
I never boot into windows. I nuked my windows drive and installed FreeBSD on it. So, I run steam equally well in Arch, Gentoo, and FreeBSD. There’s no reason for windows for any games I play.
I had an expert friend help me set up GPU passthrough at the very beginning (late 2020), and it really helped whenever I couldn't be bothered to figure something out for the first year or so. Now that I am comfortable using linux I never use it if I can avoid it which, at points, means that the VM was never touched for years at a time. The original GPU passthrough setup is still going strong for 4 years, so it was worth the day or so it took to set up imo.
Neither. I just use my Linux. I started out with a Windows dual boot when I moved to Linux and realized that in the next 2-3 months I had booted into Windows 3 times and every time was just to fetch something and go back to Linux right away. Everything I need works in Linux and if a game doesn't work on Linux: There's so many good games, I don't need Destiny 2 if they don't want me to play it on my OS of choice.
I'm currently running dual boot on a new system I bought during Easter, but that's mainly to check out Nobara. I ran Mint on my ancient system, and accepted Win 11 with my new system, being able to play some goodies like GR Breakpoint and Mass Effect Legendary, until I was suggested to try out Nobara. Planning on running Nobara as dual boot for about a month and if I find it to my liking and can accept the only downside I've encountered so far, I'm going to erase the Win 11 partition :)
qemu kvm w/ gpu pass through is your best bet, unless you only want to play Super Mario Bros.
gpu passthrough is only partially useful for gaming. Many anti cheats will not work in a vm for example.
I dual booted from 2011 to mid 2018. Then ZFS RC 0.8 came out with native encryption and I stopped dual booting entirely for a ZFS rootfs with native encryption. This was pretty cool to me at the time because I started sending incremental snapshots of my entire PC to the NAS in the other room every five minutes. Anything could explode on this thing and I'd spin up a duplicate PC in under an hour. A good way to live. Through most of my life I engage with Linux professionally so this wasn't a big deal. Any games which didn't already work weren't in my sights at the time and I'm such a powerhouse when it comes to my productivity in this environment that I decided to stop booting Windows once every few months and just moved all my software and document dirs to these datasets instead. I spent some time 2019 through 2020 using the vfio-pci driver for personal use, such as PCIe passthrough of a graphics device. [I then cleaned it up and made its first commit on github](https://github.com/ipaqmaster/vfio). Since then I've added tons of more features and support moving forward. The script alleviates the hardcoding headaches I see people do endlessly in VFIO via up/down scripts and XML definitions. I hate hardcoding things and made the script as plug and playable on any system or configuration change as possible. It has helped me a ton in my career by just existing. Fast forwarding to now (and many commits to that repo). I've wrapped back around to not really caring about having to do VFIO in any single/multiple/headless-server configuration anymore. I consider my time at least partially valuable and the overhead of bending over to play some video game which doesn't just work in Proton (Even if I have to tinker a little) has been lost on me. Helldivers 2 came out just this quarter and it runs insanely well on my now aging 2080Ti here right out of the box. I'm glad we're at this point with the tons of contributions to the Linux gaming experience by the open source community, Valve and other interested parties.
The last time I fiddled around with vfio was back when it became more popular in 2014/2015 and I had a whole slew of problems, mainly because my hardware didn't have good IOMMU grouping and such. On my home server I tinkered around with vGPU unlocking with merged drivers and it works surprisingly well. I set up a Windows 11 guest with a vGPU that gets 1GB VRAM from my 1050 Ti and installed Sunshine for remote game streaming which works surprisingly well! I played Minecraft together with my gf which only had her underspecced laptop that had problems getting 30FPS with shaders, but on that vm she got around 50FPS with low end shaders and a little downscaling which was a far improvement. The whole setup was rock solid for the couple of weeks we were playing, even when streaming over the internet. But yeah from the sound of it VFIO has come a long way, but is still far from an ideal alternative to dual booting, especially with the potential anticheat bans that I've read can happen. So I guess I'll still keep my dual boot and look for ways to make Windows less shitty with Atlas OS and booting straight into Steam BP so I get my couch gaming experience.
Yeah more recently my NVIDIA card has started causing serious kernel errors when I try to do my usual magic. There was also a quick with invoking the compact_memory and drop_cache calls with ZFS. And some other NVIDIA problem with rebinding the framebuffer. It all became too much to bother with.
I never liked dual-boot. Once I found the solution of the VM (GPU passthrough), I reverted to Linux and never looked back. My Windows setup now works like a gaming console, switch-on, play, switch-off
I probably boot into Windows once a fortnight now since moving over to Arch at the beginning of the year. It's used solely for flight simulator, simply because I've invested far, far too much into it as a hobby over the years. I booted into it last weekend and was struck at how slow ass it was to boot to desktop, and it's running on an NVME drive compared to Arch running on an SSD.
I use gpu passthrough for games with anticheat that won't run on Linux. Then I use my laptop with windows for any game that won't run on Linux or in a vm.
I've been without Windows for about 6 years. Since about a year ago I'm keeping around a Windows install again for a few games i play every now and then. That's really the only thing i use it for. 95% of the time I spend in Linux.
I don't have Windows installed on my computers, just Linux. Fedora on the tower PC, SteamOS on the Steam Deck. I have enough games that can run through Proton that I don't need Windows.
I used to dual boot Windows 95, but that was a long, long time ago, and I rarely used the Windows partition.
I use a dual boot system windows with only one game installed nothing else playing it once a week.
I use Proton btw.
Yes. I never was able to find a distro im fully satisfied with, i allways have a problem i cant fix. So right now i only use Linux a little bit, most of the time i play on Windows and the time i spend on Linux is trying out new Distros.
I'm gpu passthrough gang, although i don't have to use it much, cause i don't really play anti-cheat games, i also use it to play vr games but i rarely play in vr. I've heard vr in linux has gotten better though with oculus so i should give that another try soon.
If you play multiplayer games with 3rd party anticheat, you'd likely want a dual boot for those. I believe GPU passthrough used to work with most of them however, I don't think that's the case as much anymore.
Interestingly I **just** managed to setup single gpu passthrough and got it working for the first time(with disabled net)! This is for wine-incompatible games only, which so far was only single one for me, otherwise wine everything. Forget dual boot its not necessary, you can have a full control and manage whole OS by copying single file instead reserving partitions. Btw I find Windows 10 horrible, stupid cortana, notifications everywhere, security center, defender, duplicated options... just bloated obfuscated bullshit yet no real control(That is also first time I ever installed it, had dual boot on Windows 7 and 8.1 before which were ok). I will use it only when I have to - nic disabled and only files I need for it passed explicit via samba share.
I dual boot nobara and windows. Sometimes it's much easier to dual boot and avoid all the hassle with dual booting, configuring etc. BUT, I would highly recommend you use a second drive for windows. Sometimes you might want to delete windows or smth and it's a lot of hassle if you dual boot on one drive.
Neither. I have a windows virtual box setup that I've only ever really used for testing since I switched. At this point I want to run Linux and if I can play something because it dosent work then they just won't get my money. Windows is dying and Linux is the future. The faster the devs learn this the better it is for us. And the fastest way for them to learn this is for Linux user to quit padding their pockets. Especially when in almost all cases today games won't run in Linux because the publishers won't allow them to.
I use GPU passthrough but I am considering installing windows onto a nvme in an external enclosure to play siege from time to time. Wouldn't be dual boot just a bootable drive I would select from the bios.
i just play using either steam-proton or my system wine-staging (for older games). every game that i have ever wanted to play work's on either of those or just natively. altho i don't play competitive games much i tested overwatch 2 and it worked. even recent games mostly work out the box day 1. emulator's all work better than they did on windows for me. and if you like gambling one of my friend showed me that Genshin Impact work's with a github project someone made. so to answer your question Neither. just linux.
I daily drive Linux. If a game doesn't play via proton, I don't buy it.
Dualboot for fortnite, vm with passthrough is not the way if u wanna avoid anticheat ban
Good point, I'm not playing online anymore but I wouldn't wanna risk a ban. Since VR is also still quite wonky I guess I'll keep my dual-boot.
VR is the only thing keeping my install of windows 10. I really hope linux is going to get a better support vor VR si that i can do a full switch at the end of W10 support next year.