Switching to Linux

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My time with Linux has concluded for the time being

See End of the Road… for now

Preface

I’m using this page to document my attempts at getting a Linux setup on my main PC that works with almost everything I use. Of course, there’s going to be some things I may have to give up when switching to Linux, but as long as I can get 90% there, I think it will be worth it.

I already use Linux on essentially everything else except my main PC setup: various servers, most laptops, etc. Unfortunately, as much as I want to switch to Linux as my daily OS, every attempt has presented issues too big to overcome.

This page serves two purposes. Mainly, it is for me to keep track of what I’ve done so far and what I need to do for my ideal Linux setup. Secondly, I will try to update this page with solutions that worked for me for any major problems that I encounter. It might help someone with a similar setup.

It’s worth noting that I am not doing a full switch to Linux. I still have Windows on a partition with a dual boot setup. I have it mounted such that I can still access all of my Windows files in Linux. I plan to keep it this way for now. If all goes well, I may end up shrinking my Windows partition in the future to make more space for Linux. But I will likely always keep it there just in case, hopefully not having to use it often.

Contents

Getting things to work

The main question one must answer when switching to Linux is ”How much of my current workflow will actually work?” Of course, switching to a completely different operating system will inevitably change what you can do and how you do it. I can adapt how I use my computer for the most part, but there are some things that must work for the switch to be worth the effort.

Hardware Support

• Nvidia Drivers One of my main issues when setting up Linux is getting Nvidia drivers to play nice. I can usually just about manage to get the proprietary drivers installed, but I usually run into some issues, especially around the compositor I use. Stuff like poor support for multiple monitors at varied resolutions and refresh rates, games running at awful framerates, etc. This is currently my biggest hurdle.

  8 June 2025 02:33 update: Nvidia drivers decided to work fine this time? The pre-installed propriatery drivers included with Manjaro just seem to work with no issues, despite how much of a pain they were to set up last time. Will update if that changes…

• Stream Deck This is a bit of a smaller issue but still worth bringing up. I use my stream deck quite a lot for a variety of use cases. Ranging from controlling my audio devices through Voicemeeter, using Voicemod soundboard, controlling Warudo scenes, etc. I know there are alternative open-source solutions for Stream Deck software, I’m just not sure how well they work yet, and if they integrate as well with other software. I will have to test that.

  21 June 2025 17:14 update: Whilst not a perfect solution, OpenDeck seems to be a pretty good way of getting the Stream Deck to work. It even has a lot of the original Stream Deck plugins which kinda sorta work sometimes!

• Race Wheel I don’t play racing games too often but I do have a racing wheel (Logitech G920). That uses Logitech software for the force feedback and calibration. I need to find a way for that to work on Linux.

  12 June 2025 00:35 - update: G920 wheel works perfectly fine, tested with BeamNG. A program called Oversteer can be used to further configure it, but I haven’t really changed any settings.

• Wacom Tablet Again, I don’t use it all that often, but I do occasionally. I imagine there’s probably support for this, but I will have to look into it.

  12 June 2025 03:46 - update: works perfectly with no additional setup or software required, including pressure sensitivity. Literally works better than on windows cause I don’t even need to download Wacom drivers. It just works. Configuration for it is in the KDE Plasma settings.

• DJ Hardware I use a Hercules Inpulse 300 mk2 for occasional DJ stuff. I believe it supports standard MIDI protocols so I can probably get it to work with software that supports Linux.

Software Support

• SteamVR Sort-of working… but not fully. Check my progress updates at the bottom of the page! —————————————————————————————————————————— I use VR a lot. One of the biggest concerns with switching over to Linux is how can I get most of my SteamVR setup to work. If I have to switch back to Windows just to use VR, I might as well stay on Windows all the time. This isn’t just SteamVR on its own, it’s also VR streaming software to connect to my Quest Pro that will also support hand tracking , eye tracking, and face tracking (I currently use Steam Link on Windows). Getting all my overlays working and additional software working like VRCFT, VRCX, XSOverlay, OVR Space Calibrator, OVR Advanced Settings, etc. VR Is the main thing that needs to work for me to reliably use Linux as my daily OS.

• Audio This is a bit of a broad category, but my audio setup on Windows is very much non-standard. I use VoiceMeeter Potato to route my audio inputs, outputs, and virtual cables. I also use Voicemod for adjusting my mic settings, noise filtering, and some basic soundboard usage. From what I’ve seen, neither work on Linux. However, I don’t need this software specifically, as long as I can find an alternative that does most of the same things.

  9 June 2025 00:55 update: qpwgraph for routing stuff + Easy Effects for mic processing works great.

• Photo/Texture editing Adobe sucks, but they have good products. Although I have seen some promising Photoshop alternatives (E.g. Photopea, although I don’t like how it’s browser-based), I still need to find a good alternative to Substance software, specifically Substance Painter. I have to try Armor Paint and see how it holds up.

• ShareX I use ShareX quite a lot. It has a lot of features, including: taking screenshots with instant annotations, recording videos of just small parts of the screen, screen colour picker, instant upload for screenshots, and a lot more. As far as I know, it’s not supported on Linux, and I haven’t found anything with as many features. There are alternatives of course, like Flameshot, but I’m not sure if they will match everything I use ShareX for.

  8 June 2025 04:58 update: Turns out Spectacle, which is included by default in Plasma, has both screen region screenshots and screen recording. I knew it could capture screenshots, just wasn’t expecting the recording functionality too, which is what I wanted. I can still try Flameshot, but this is good for now. I can probably find a screen colour picker at some point when I need it.

• Game Recording I use Medal to record my games, although Steam does have built-in game recording functionality now. I’ve had some pretty major bugs with it on Windows which ultimately made me switch back to Medal, but it might work fine on Linux. I’ll have to use it more to see.

  8 June 2025 02:37 update: Steam recording seems to work fine. I had some old recordings saved from months ago that failed to play (the exact issue I always had with it). But new recordings seem to work fine so far. Will update if something breaks…

• Google Drive That’s my go-to cloud storage option (although I do want to find an alternative which provides better value some day). The desktop client isn’t officially supported on Linux, but I’m pretty sure there’s other ways to get the same functionality.

  8 June 2025 15:04 update: using kio-gdrive, I connected my Google Drive directly as a network drive. I had some problems though, but I found this workaround which worked for me: https://discuss.kde.org/t/kde-online-accounts-not-signing-in/3411/38

Software to try

Here’s things that I’ve yet to test on Linux. They seem like promising alternatives.

• https://mixxx.org/
• https://armorpaint.org/
• https://www.photopea.com/
• https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ *
• https://flameshot.org/
• https://flathub.org/apps/org.pipewire.Helvum

** Not officially supported on Linux, needs some workaround.*

The things that do work

Linux-compatible software

There’s some things I use regularly that surprisingly works well on Linux

• Discord Although you can get native Linux support for the official Discord client, there are also third-party clients like Vesktop which offer a better experience (just like Vencord / Better Discord on Windows)
• Blender
• OBS
• VSCode There is an open-source version of VSCode that doesn’t have a lot of Microsoft stuff. Works well.
• Steam, including most games. Thanks, Proton.
• Unity Editor / Godot
  • (I need to test if the VRChat SDKs work with Unity on Linux)

Software Alternatives

This section is for good software alternatives that I’ve found and tested.

• DaVinci Resolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve Good alternative to Premiere Pro, Vegas Pro, etc. Solid video editing software, I already switched to using it on Windows. Not only is it genuinely better than other popular video editors, the basic version is entirely free and has everything I need so far.

Distros and setups

I don’t have to mention the extent of available distros and flavours of Linux, the customisability and sheer number of options is one of its main advantages. But at the end of the day, you have to pick one.

Here’s some of my thoughts on what I’ve already tried:

• Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/ The classic. I’d assume it’s the most popular option, especially for beginners. It works decently well, and I like the terminal (apt, my beloved). It’s my go-to for server setups. However, I don’t like how GNOME looks though, so that’s one thing I normally change.
• Kubuntu https://kubuntu.org/ It’s Ubuntu… but with KDE Plasma instead of GNOME. Essentially replacing the one thing I didn’t like about the default Ubuntu experience.
• Manjaro https://manjaro.org/ A relatively easy way to get into Arch. Comes with a couple different desktop options, including GNOME and Plasma. I enjoyed using this one, it’s a pretty solid setup, but I’m just not used to Arch (why is pacman so complicated, and how do I even use the AUR????)

Distros I want to try/research in the future:

• Pop!_OS https://system76.com/pop/ I’ve seen this one being mentioned quite often, but I haven’t really looked into it myself.
• Arch https://archlinux.org/ Although I’ve tried Manjaro, I still haven’t tried configuring an Arch build from scratch. Maybe I’ll get a better setup this way (even if it takes me a day or two to set up).
• NixOS https://nixos.org/ I’ve seen this one mentioned a couple times, specifically for VR use. I haven’t looked into it much.

My next attempt (VR Build)

I am planning on trying Linux yet again very soon. (update: already started this) I want a build specifically optimised for VR as the main priority. There’s an official page for running SteamVR on Linux which gives me some hints

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/18A4-1E10-8A94-3DDA

Some compatible window managers/compositors include:

• All X11 Window Managers and Compositors
• KDE Plasma Wayland
• Most wlroots based compositors:
  • Sway
  • LabWC
  • Hyprland

In general, we recommend using Plasma Wayland on an Arch-based distribution to have access to the latest graphics drivers and other components needed for the best experience.

There’s also some resources here:

https://vronlinux.org/

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux

https://lvra.gitlab.io/

https://github.com/galister/oscavmgr

As Valve themselves recommend using Arch (Even SteamOS is Arch-based), I am probably going to try Arch again. However, there is another option…

• Bazzite https://bazzite.gg/ Bazzite is a popular gaming-focused distro. Known for being an alternative to SteamOS on the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs. However, it can be used on PC desktops too, and apparently should work with Nvidia and SteamVR. It’s based on Fedora, which isn’t exactly the recommended option from Valve, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work well.

I want to do a bit more research on Bazzite before choosing it, as I want something that can also do all my other tasks well, not just gaming.

Apart from that, I want to give Arch another try. I will likely start off with Manjaro, just because it’s easy to install, and reconfigure it later. Specifically, I am curious to try a different desktop manager/compositor. I’m used to Plasma and GNOME, using either X11 or Wayland, but all of those have caused me a variety of issues in the past. Maybe something else entirely will work better.

Specifically, I want to try Hyprland

https://hyprland.org/

Both because I like how it looks once set up (I’ve been wanting to try a tiling window manager for a long time) but also it’s specifically mentioned by Valve as being compatible with SteamVR.

So, I will probably look into either Bazzite or Manjaro/Arch with my next setup, maybe giving Hyprland a try too.

Manjaro testing

As of 8 June 2025, I have Manjaro installed with Nvidia drivers, running KDE Plasma on Wayland. I’m going to document game performance below.

Specs:

• Driver info:
  • NVIDIA-SMI 570.144
  • Driver Version: 570.144
  • CUDA Version: 12.8

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D (16) @ 4.550GHz

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

🛠

I am just giving a qualitative rating compared to Windows performance. I do not plan on doing any in-depth benchmarking. Good is equal or better performance than Windows. Medium is noticeably worse but still playable, or runs well but with significant bugs. Poor is unplayable.

Note: For some reason most games start by default on the wrong monitor, even though I configured my monitor priority in Plasma settings. Hopefully there’s a way to fix that…

I’m also getting some weird issues, where I have to select a higher resolution than my actual monitor resolution in game settings, otherwise the window is too small at my actual native resolution.

Game	Compatibility	Performance Rating	Comments
No Man’s Sky	Default	Good	Runs great on Ultra. Slight stutters at first but I didn’t bother to build Vulkan shader cache so that’s to be expected I think.
Overwatch 2	GE-Proton 10-2	Good	~~Having issues getting it to run on the correct screen…
Then it started updating and I couldn’t be bothered 😭~~
It works well now that I managed to change monitors.
Red Dead Redemption 2	GE-Proton 10-2	Good	I switched to GE-Proton because I had issues with the mouse escaping the window. That didn’t fix it, but the game runs well both ways. To fix the mouse, I changed the mouse mode from raw input to windows mouse in the controls settings (making sure mouse lock is also enabled).
VRChat
(Desktop mode)	GE-Proton9-22-rtsp17-1	Medium	Performance is good in desktop mode, however there are some issues with video players. With regular GE Proton, video players worked somewhat, but would crash the game whenever the video changed. Switching to Proton GE-RTSP fixes a lot of those issues, but video players are still not perfect. Notably, I can’t seem to change the position of the video, and I had some issues where it would only play video but not audio sometimes. It still mostly works, but there are problems.
Haste	Default	Good	Runs great, possibly had some minor bugs at the start (but that might just be Haste, not necessarily a Linux issue.) This is great, because this was specifically a game that wasn’t playable last time I tried Linux. Also, I played with my PS5 controller using Steam Input, works great with no problems.

Overall, most games perform very well on Manjaro. Maybe even better than on Windows.

Issues to Fix

Here’s some issues I’m encountering that I have to fix:

• Certain USB devices now take a while to connect after a restart
• Other disks/partitions don’t automatically mount at start even though they’re configured to do so in plasma settings
• Password required to mount other drives
  • Fixed mounting by overriding session defaults in gnome-disks to auto-mount them without a password.
• 12 June 2025 00:37 Currently dealing with an issue where at boot time, I get stuck on a black screen for what feels like 30-60 seconds. I then get a brief text display saying something like “Timed out waiting for udev queue to empty”. I researched it a bit, apparently could be caused by certain USB devices. It started happening after I tried to shrink and move my Windows partition, and grow my Linux partition (They’re both on the same drive) with GParted from a USB. However, the repartitioning failed before it even really started (I don’t remember the error). So I wonder if that broke anything. I wanna research it a bit more because it causes my boot times to be very long.
• Vesktop game streaming seems capped at 720p30 even though I have nitro

Problems and Solutions

• Steam games don’t launch when using the old Windows library
  • Disk filesystem stuff is weird. Drives formatted for Windows are not recommended to use with Proton. It’s better to format a drive to something more Linux-friendly and install games there.

Resources List

Linux Software

• https://www.photopea.com/

Games

• https://sober.vinegarhq.org/

VR on Linux

• https://db.vronlinux.org/
• https://vronlinux.org/
• https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux
• https://lvra.gitlab.io/
• https://github.com/galister/oscavmgr
• https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.wivrn.wivrn
• https://gitlab.com/gabmus/envision
• https://github.com/galister/wlx-overlay-s

VRChat-Specific

• https://github.com/vrcx-team/VRCX (as of 17 June 2025, the nightly builds have best linux support)
• https://vrc-get.anatawa12.com/alcom/

VM Stuff

• https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/home
• https://github.com/ilayna/Single-GPU-passthrough-amd-nvidia
• https://www.debugpoint.com/kvm-share-folder-windows-guest/

Misc / Fixes

• https://gist.github.com/poyotanp/d3aff65df96d0cf93c78a3e52fedd6fa

End of the Road… for now

As of 24 August 2025, I fully switched back to using Windows 11 again.

Although I really enjoyed using Linux for its day-to-day experience, there’s some things that just don’t work well on linux. Although I have tried various methods to get those things to work better or to run Windows in a VM, that just wasn’t enough. I ended up dual booting into Windows for many of these things but this ended up getting annoying as I would sometimes end up restarting my PC several times a day just to switch between programs. For now, I think Windows remains as a necessary OS for my use case, althogh I will continue using Linux on pretty much anything that isn’t my main PC.

Here’s some of the issues:

• The Unity Editor
  • It just doesn’t work well on Linux (it doesn’t work well on Windows either but Linux is worse). Constant crashes, awful performance, certain shaders not rendering correctly, dragging and dropping files into the editor doesn’t work, UI scaling is broken…
  • I use Godot for making games but I still need Unity for making VRChat avatars and worlds unfortunately. I ended up having to reboot into Windows whenever I wanted to make some avatar changes.
• VR, mainly VRChat
  • I could not get SteamVR to run nicely. I tried a bunch of other methods of getting VR to run and they weren’t very good. One of the biggest issues is that SteamVR overlays just do not seem to work on Linux, at least when you use the other VR methods. This sucks as I rely on them a lot and the Linux alternatives are pretty bad.
  • VRChat also doesn’t work great, with video players being very buggy even when using the specific version of Proton meant to fix VRChat video players.
• Other games
  • Some games have anticheats that don’t run on Linux. I don’t play those games much but I do sometimes.
• Other software
  • There’s some software that either just runs better on Windows or doesn’t have particularly good Linux alternatives. E.g.
  • Photoshop / Substance Painter
  • Davinci Resolve (only runs in full screen on linux for some reason??),
  • Discord (Stuff like screenshare and game detections are buggy),
  • Stream Deck software,
  • Warudo (Proton does not support webcams),
  • OBS (Display/Audio capture is weird on Linux, and Spout2 does not seem to exist).
  • Voicemod

Progress Updates

Below is a timeline of updates as I go through the process.

7 July 2025 20:26 - Getting the Unity Editor to work better (and some updates)

It’s been just about a month of maining Linux at this point, and I’ve been enjoying it for the most part. I’ve pretty given up on trying to get VRChat to work well in VR mode, I just don’t think it’s viable yet. And GPU passthrough just isn’t worth it for VRC…

“ After further testing, VRChat on a VM isn’t as good as I initially thought. With VRC being very CPU-heavy, I have experienced significant CPU bottlenecks on the VM. e.g.: In a Pug instance 40-50 people, medium shield, no culling, in VR: VM: 10-15 FPS (30-70ms cpu frametime) Native: ~40 FPS (~20ms) ”

“ After further testing, VRChat on a VM isn’t as good as I initially thought. With VRC being very CPU-heavy, I have experienced significant CPU bottlenecks on the VM. e.g.: In a Pug instance 40-50 people, medium shield, no culling, in VR: VM: 10-15 FPS (30-70ms cpu frametime) Native: ~40 FPS (~20ms) ”

Currently, I still have a Windows dual-boot and I switch to Windows for VRChat and for the Unity Editor, as I’ve been having issues getting it to work well on Linux. However, I’ve found some workarounds that seems to make it run better.

This is specific to VRChat Unity projects, I launch them through ALCOM, which is essentially an open alternative to the VCC. I’m getting some weird performance issues though as ALCOM stutters a looot but it’s just about usable to launch a project or add a new package to it.

In the ALCOM settings, I set this launch argument for the unity editor: -force-vulkan Which forces the editor to run in Vulkan mode instead of OpenGL. This seems to not only perform better on Linux, it also seems to fix some weird shader bugs I had, especially with Poiyomi shaders.

The other issue I had is that window scaling did not work properly. Seems to be related to having multiple monitors at different resolutions and using monitor scaling. There is a way to force window scaling but it’s only integer, so at 2x scaling the font is way too big. The only solution I’ve found so far is just switching to Hyprland. For some reason, it handles window scaling better than KDE Plasma so I just switch to it whenever I want to work on a Unity project.

21 June 2025 13:13 - Single GPU Passthrough

I decided to try this route, only really for VRChat. I do kinda want to try dual-GPU passthrough sometime but I’m just confused about the setup. I’d want to be able to use my good GPU for games on the host, but then dedicate the good GPU to the VM when the VM is open, and use the weak GPU for the host. Then when the VM closes, I should still have access to use the good GPU. There might be a way to set it up like that but most guides I see seem to dedicate the good GPU to the guest only, and seemingly only use the weak GPU on the host. I’ll need to do more research into that in the future, so I can maybe use looking glass too.

For now though, I’m going with single-GPU passthrough. This repo made the initial setup simpler, as it has some scripts that install and configure a lot of it for you. https://github.com/ilayna/Single-GPU-passthrough-amd-nvidia However, it doesn’t do all of the setup. It links to two pages of a different guide but I found I needed more info from that guide than I had assumed. https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/3%29-IOMMU-Groups https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/5%29-Configuring-Virtual-Machine-Manager https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/6%29-Preparation-and-placing-of-the-ROM-file https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/8%29-Attaching-the-GPU-to-your-VM

So far, it seems to work! I still need to try VR and my bluetooth headphones aren’t connected (to be expected with how bluetooth radios work between OS changes) but it’s good progress. Though next main thing I need to set up is a folder passthrough. I need to be able to sync my VRCX database and vrchat photos between the host and VM, like I had already done for my Windows dual boot. I also kinda wanna find a good way of passing all connected USB devices, since currently I’m manually passing them and that has weird behaviour between restarts and USB disconnects.https://gitlab.com/risingprismtv/single-gpu-passthrough/-/wikis/8)-Attaching-the-GPU-to-your-VM

Update: I found a way of sharing folders that worked for me. Started with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_mF81k6oNc Which mainly just goes over this guide: https://www.debugpoint.com/kvm-share-folder-windows-guest/

I also used mounts to attach multiple folders (although I’m having some issues with this approach) https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/wv15co/can_multiple_virtiofs_filesystems_be_added_to_one/

17 June 2025 03:42 - Breaking and fixing my main partitions

Nothing toooooo bad. I wanted to shrink my Windows partition to make more room for Linux. GParted kept failing so I did it through a Windows utility. After all that happened, I got grub rescue mode. I followed this guide (with relevant changes for my OS), which helped me solve it https://geekyshacklebolt.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/how-to-boot-from-grub-rescue-fixederror-no-such-partition/ Turns out my partition numbers got changed so my OS was no longer under the partition that grub was configured to launch into (I think). Everything seems to work fine now. I’ve also been setting up OBS lately, I streamed a bit over the weekend. I should probably leave some info about OBS setup because it was quite a lot of work. As for VR, specifically VRChat, I’m just using the dual boot approach for now. I think for simpler games that don’t need much external software, VR on linux should be fine. With VRChat in particular though, I use so much external software and additional hardware that getting it all to work perfectly together is a massive pain. Maybe in the future I’ll try the single gpu passthrough VM approach but first, I need to make some space. I’m backing up my Windows user files (which I really should’ve done before shrinking, anyway) and gonna move the partition around so I can grow my linux partition.

13 June 2025 03:52 - Full body tracking attempts

Trying to follow this section for getting my trackers to work https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/fossvr/wivrn/#wivrn—lighthouse-driver but I’m running into some issues. Can’t get continuous calibration to work at the same time as vrchat. If I start calibration before opening vrchat, I get an opencomposite error and vrchat won’t open. Similarly, if I open vrchat first, I get a Failed to create OpenXR instance if I try running calibration. Overall, I did manage to get my trackers to show up ingame, but not being able to recalibrate playspaces is a big problem. Also, this didn’t work at all at first, turns out steamvr beta isn’t supported (had to switch back to regular steamvr)

12 June 2025 03:37 - There is hope in VR

I tested my race wheel and it worked, great!

Anyway… I’m making more progress on VR. Using Envision is nicer than launching WiVRn directly. I also used it to set up wlx-overlay which has the basics I need, like seeing desktop and playspace moving. I aaalso configured oscavmgr so I can use face tracking in VRChat. Aaand I managed to fix my VRCX setup so it properly shows Discord RPC and propely inserts metadata into my photos, just by updating the build to nightly (thanks devs). It’s looking more and more promising. I just need to see if I can set up full body tracking with tundras next, and that should be most of the stuff I need for VRChat, neat.

I’m still keeping the dual boot as VR is not quite perfect, like my resolution was just not good switching to Envision for some reason. The WiVRn app on my quest keeps crashing if I unfocus the vrc window. Video players sooometimes work sometimes not. It’s all just a bit jank, but it works for most stuff.

Live reaction after I got face tracking to work.

10 June 2025 21:32 - Current VR Situation

After looking more into VR, especially VRChat, I’m not sure I can get a good experience with Linux. Especially with how much additional software and overlays I rely on for using VRC. Getting the perfect VRC setup purely on Linux is probably not gonna be worth it. I think for now, I’ll stick to dual booting for VR. In the future, I want to try out KVM with a clean windows VM and GPU passthrough for VR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTWf5D092VY

10 June 2025 02:37 - More VR Progress

Trying out ALVR, getting some weird issues. AV1 encoding doesn’t really work, and for some reason reverting back to h264 gives me an nvenc error even though that was the default that just worked earlier. HEVC can kinda run. Turning up bitrate causes a ton of latency, around 200 - 250 ms. Not playable with that. (this is all wireless stuff btw) I also tried WiVRn which game me much more playable results, though it’s a bit unstable. Unfortunately the VR runtime it uses doesn’t have the steamvr dashboard and I can’t seem to get overlays to work. Though I am using the flatpak version, maybe configuring Monado + Envision will make it work better natively. I still wanna try wired VR and just configuring it more. At this point, I’m not sure how worth it VR is on Linux, and I’m considering just setting up a clean Windows install with just the bare essentials I need for VR installed and booting into that. I still have my old Windows install, so that’s for the future in case I can’t get acceptable performance with Linux.

My first photo in VR on Linux, Full body and face tracking not working at this point.

9 June 2025 00:51 - Fixing function keys

My function keys on my keyboard weren’t working, just defaulting to brightness/media controls, regardless of fn being pressed. After a bunch of research, I found my keyboard has a windows/mac switch. Switching modes fixed it sorta, introducing two new issues: I need to hold fn to use f keys, windows and alt keys are swapped. To fix the first issue, I set /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf to options hid_apple fnmode=2 then ran sudo mkinitcpio -P and rebooted. — I don’t actually have an Apple keyboard, for some reason it’s listed as one and uses apple options. Then I swapped back alt/win by going to plasma keyboard settings > key bindings > alt and win behavior > alt is swapped with win.

9 June 2025 00:49 - Audio Setups

I tried Carla to process my mic audio through a VST but it seemed pretty unstable. I’m now just using Easy Effects (flatpak version to fix dependencies) and that works really well for my my mic setup. Also, qpwgraph is nice for more advanced routing.

8 June 2025 04:35 - Setting up ALVR

Getting VR to work is gonna be my next step. I have managed to get it to run successfully, although looking pretty bad. I’m gonna tweak settings tomorrow, maybe try running wired too. It’s the main way to get VR working on linux to my knowledge, but it’s missing some stuff I liked from Steam Linked, like eye tracked foveated encoding for Quest Pro.

8 June 2025 02:43 - Testing Games

I am testing a range of games, and they mostly run well surprisingly enough. I know Proton is really good (I do have a Steam Deck afterall) so I expect the compatibility to be fine. I just had issues with Nvidia drivers last time. Now, it seems fine. I’m updating the table in the Manjaro testing section.

8 June 2025 00:58 - Installing Manjaro

I decided to install Manjaro after all. The installation was a bit weird, as it failed to install the bootloader the first time. Buuut I just tried again without really changing anything and it seemed to work the second time.

Seems like it actually came with propriatery Nvidia drivers too, which is nice. Just getting the basics set up for now, surprisingly Plasma Wayland seems to actually work. Gonna test a couple different games, good performance on No Man’s Sky (non-VR) so far at least.