Hey, everyone!
I’ve been planning to work on compartmentalization. More specifically, I have Fedora Linux and Windows 10 IoT LTSC installed on different drives. I use Windows exclusively for games that either don’t work well or don’t work at all on Linux. Unfortunately, those games are also the ones that I usually play with my friends, so I have to install Element on Windows for communication. I’ve tried my best to limit and/or disable the telemetry, but with Windows still being Windows, I’m not overly comfortable having Element installed there.
I’m planning to get a laptop (and later a separate PC if everything works out), install Windows and all the necessary games on it, and simply stream games to my main Linux PC. That way I would have a Windows machine with nothing but games installed, while everything else, including communications, would be on Linux. Plus less headache with dual booting.
I’m still researching, but I plan to stream using Moonlight + Sunshine over a direct Ethernet connection between the two machines. For Internet, I can set up a guest network on my router and have the laptop connect to it.
If anyone’s familiar with such a setup, is there anything I should be aware of or take note of?
I’ve done this, albeit Linux instead of Windows, both on physical hardware and virtualized.
It works most of the time, but 10% of the time it won’t for whatever inexplicable reason and it will just give you a headache.
I don’t recommend it.
Best to just boot a separate drive or use a KVM if necessary.
Maybe you’re better off using the money to invest into a Windows VM with GPU passthrough? You will need a dedicated Windows GPU for that though.
It won’t be the same compartmentalization as having two separate devices, but it is much more seemless unless your games have annoying anti-cheat systems that do not allow VMs.
I would think this setup would actually be less private as now you will have to have your Windows PC on at all times (sending out data), so its available for streaming. Instead of the current setup you have or just dual booting.
For moonlight to work, it just requires a host computer that turns on when they need to stream the gameplay to the client PC. It can be turned off otherwise.
Unless of course @dumdum wants to turn it on 24/7. But at that point, their electricity bills can probably buy a RTX 5090 in the span of the year /s
It shouldn’t be significantly less private, even if powered on more, because it will have less data to send. Unless you believe Windows Telemetry includes 24/7 mic audio or something (in which case, you are probably too paranoid to be using Windows at all), or you are concerned about getting hacked by something that will do that. But again, I think that reduced use to only gaming reduces the likelihood of that happening, and you are kind of screwed anyway if it does happen. My bigger concerns would be power consumption of a gaming PC left on all the time and potential annoying usability issues, tbh.
To clear things up, @anonymous484, I am not planning to keep the Windows machine on 24/7. I currently dual boot only to play games that I can’t run on Linux. I actually would be okay with keeping my setup as is if I didn’t need to communicate with friends, since my Windows drive has no data besides Steam games.
@KevPham, the reason I can’t do a passthrough right now is because my rig is almost ten years old at this point. I simply cannot play some titles on Linux because of performance issues. My CPU won’t be able to dedicate enough power for the Windows VM to play beefy games. At that point, I would need a whole new PC. It just so happens that a friend of mine is willing to sell me their old laptop, and I’m looking for an opportunity to use it.
I really just meant telemetry that windows will send regardless of what you turn on / off.
An idling gaming PC really shouldn’t be using to much power. This also isn’t the early 2000s. The risk of issues being caused just by leaving a PC on is small.
Anyway its all irrelevant now since OP says they wouldn’t have the PC on all the time.
Bit confused here. You cant communicate with your friends on linux and switch to windows when you game?
@anonymous484, when we play games, I call my friends on Element. However, for some games I need Windows. The main issue is that I have to use Element while on Windows, and I’m not comfortable with that. So the goal is to have a Windows system that has nothing but games while keeping all my communications on Linux.
My plan: use Linux for everything (gaming, voice calls, daily tasks), turn on the Windows machine when needed, stream the content to Linux (while staying on Linux for voice chat), and then shut it down when I’m done.
@lyricism, for me this “streaming setup” is arguably more convenient than dual booting, because I keep my main Linux system running and can simply turn the Windows gaming rig on or off whenever I need to. Dual booting requires me to shut everything down, reboot into Windows, and then reboot again when I want to go back to Linux.
Given that I can connect the machines via Ethernet, wouldn’t Moonlight + Sunshine be better for latency and/or quality than relying on networking with Steam Remote Play?
Most things work on Linux, and I do actively game on Fedora. In some instances, however, due to how aged my rig is, Windows gives me just enough of a performance boost to keep games playable:
Marvel Rivals – Linux: didn’t run well. Windows: playable enough for ranked matches.
Also for marvel rivals it works on Linux I can assure you it’s just that an issue to the launcher you may be having so I recommend going to advanced parameters on Marvel Rivals properties and do
SteamOS=1 %command%
The parameter bypasses the launcher and launches Marvel Rivals
Elden Ring is rated Platinum so it should be running on Linux with proton, seeing the comments try adding the parameter STEAM_RUNTIME=1 %command%
Deadlock should be running fine though, I wonder what’s wrong with it
I also recommend installing something like ProtonUp-QT or ProtonPlus to get custom versions of proton that would work better
Sidenote
No there is hope, Kuro Games’s Wuthering Waves works on Linux that is if you setup the same parameter as on Marvel Rivals due to the anti cheat only expecting steamos and people including me have success running Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail without getting into some banwave or whatever as of since a year I dug into it.
Out of curiosity, I actually reinstalled all the necessary games on Fedora for testing (including Marvel Rivals; it should not be 105 GB, like wth). I tried messing around with them, but to no avail. They simply run much better on Windows. I tried different combinations of launch options and ProtonGE versions, but the performance is just not good enough.
If we go by ProtonDB reports, these problems are definitely on me. I have no idea what I am doing wrong or if there are any issues with my hardware, but at this point I think it’s plain simpler to use Windows for such cases (by either dual booting or streaming, if that works well when I get a machine to test it on).
gacha-related side note, apparently
The hope is there, but I am preparing for the worst. I feel one of the reasons why WuWa runs well on Linux is because they released the game on Steam. Maybe it’s the devs wanting the game to run on the Deck in some capacity. The same goes for other titles like Blue Archive or Girls’ Frontline 2. At the same time, I believe it has been confirmed that Endfield devs are not planning a Steam launch anytime soon.
If the game actually works on Linux, I expect it to be relatively easy to run. While searching around for any info, I found a vid of someone playing the first Endfield beta on Arch with a GTX 1050. It is surprisingly playable!
Hoyo titles actually run well with third-party launchers, speaking as a day-1 ZZZ player. I’ve read that sometime in 2024 there was a ban wave related to running Genshin on Linux, but some bans were lifted, and the devs even patched the game to avoid conflicts with Wine. If true, I feel relatively safe playing Hoyo games, even if their support is unofficial.
/s