Debian has all the updated packages one needs for gaming just as well as the other distros.

Yes and no, but I agree with the overall sentiment. Debian is entirely fine for gaming.

People in this thread have very interesting ideas of what “shit hardware” is

True that

Thanks for the explanation. I was hoping it was this instead of “I disagree!”

Both of your posts to this community are videos that were posted a few hours earlier. Should have a peek before you post.

My two suggestions are forcing a different proton version (you mention this, so im guessing you already have) and ensuring you have a 32bit opengl driver installed(package names will differ between distributions. Arch wiki has some info)

For troubleshooting, launch steam from a terminal and watch for errors on game launch/close

Tim Corey on YouTube has excellent beginner C# material. I would start there.

+1 on lower tier Intel CPU mini PC. I have a slew of different boxes by Beelink, Intel, and Asus. The N95 box I bought from Beelink (basically an N100) has been one of the most impressive for being so low power, and yet handling the wealth of services I’ve been running on it (with a lot of overhead yet).

The two are not even remotely in the same category of CPU. This is a comparison of apples to orchards.

I was mostly being tongue in cheek, but I think it might be possible to launch steam in big picture mode, rendered by Gamescope, from the TUI. No DE required.

Don’t install a GUI and you can just skip this step

You son of a bitch, I’m in.

I’ve become a big fan of mini PC’s for home server use these days (with NAS systems for storage duties). Low power, low heat, low noise, and very affordable.

Beelink on Amazon makes a good selection of them. Always watch for sales. I have several of their machines and have been pleasantly surprised by all of them. The latest addition was one of their N95 systems with 8GB of memory. It hosts Jellyfin, Deluge, Wireguard (client and server), dns, forgejo, etc.

There hasn’t been a packaged release in a while. The repo updated last week, though. Not everything needs a high release cadence.

The most common alternative is probably Bottles

Reasons are usually just newest kernel/mesa/etc. Most of the time the difference is very small, and often inconsequential. However, every now and again there is a major development that might make it worth it (IE: The graphics pipeline that all but made dxvk-async obsolete)

I see you all over this thread and I want to share something you might find interesting.

You keep mentioning the server can’t handle the anti cheat because it needs to trust client data. Here’s an interesting thought: how is client anti cheat supposed to work when it needs to trust input data?

Look up direct memory access cheats. TL;DR Two computers are hooked up such that PC 1 runs the game, PC 2 reads memory from PC 1, and can then output keyboard/mouse inputs, as well as wallhacks/esp. How is the client side anti cheat supposed to know that the keyboard and mouse inputs are legitimate? How is the client side anti cheat to know wallhacks are being used when they are being rendered on an entirely different machine?

The plugins would almost certainly work in a VM, but I imagine that latency would become a big headache. For my purposes, I picked up a Beelink mini pc and called it a day.

So in terms of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), Linux already has Bitwig, Reaper, Arour, LMMS, and possibly others. Personally, I find the bigger issue comes from plugin developers (the DAW is your main program, and you add your sounds/effects through plugins). Most companies are not delivering anything Linux native. Many of these plugins can be bridged with compatibility software, and will work fine that way. However, most of these plugins now are also using their own install/activation software center, and they are often a nightmare in Linux.

Music production is the one thing I currently keep a windows mini PC around for these days. It’s not impossible to make the transition to Linux, but the last thing I want when pursuing a creative endeavor is technical software challenges holding me up.

90% sure wireguard (the VPN server) is going to need an open port if you want to connect from the outside.

Lots of people, often unknowingly. If you run apt install firefox on Ubuntu, you’re getting the snap version.