I'm new and need some hints to finally leave Windows Behind (Gaming related)

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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Hello everyone. Just registered because the amount of knowledge and quality posts here is staggering! To be fair, i mainly came here to get some help with my months long journey of leaving windows. As many other people before me I’ve narrowed it down to gaming. More specifically Overwatch and Rocksmith 2014. Both are near and dear to my heart, are played daily and currently none optional for me. I’d add Reaper for Music Production as VST Plugin Support for Linux is sub-par.

My current setup is a dual-boot windows 10 with varying Linux Distros for fun. Since my spare time at the PC is split between Recording, Overwatch and Rocksmith, i spend 90% of my time on Windows.

I’ll try to make this short now.
Overwatch: I did get it working with wine a few weeks back, but lost around 50% performance. My 1050ti isn’t great as is, so loosing 50% in fps makes it unplayable. Yesterday i gave Lutris a go but couldn’t get it to work (Black Battle net with a graphics context error). I wasn’t able to compile DXVK yet but will try later today. All of this is a little confusing though.

Rocksmith: This relies on the fact that a USB-Audio Cable is present and recognized by the game. It needs to recognize a specific driver to work. Also, low latency access to the integrated Audio is required. The Game installs fine with wine but i can’t get the USB Adapter to pass through correctly.

So, if someone could give a really basic summary of Lutris plus DXVK (what to install first in what order) I’d be greatfull for that.

As a second Test scenario i’d like to give the VM+Looking Glass Combo a go. My i5 6500 has Intel Graphics 530 build in. I’m not sure wether this is good enough for a KDE Desktop, Tripple screen (1440p and 1080p) at 144Hz. Can anyone comment on wether the iGPU of the 6500 is sufficient to run KDE with full compositing at 1440p 144hz with two additional 1080p screen?
Also, is the 1050ti able to be used in the VM+Looking Glass Scenario?

Finally, i assume GPU Hotplugging isn’t a thing, so using the 1050ti in a VM would (without reboot) render it useless to Linux, correct?

If you have any other resources i should look at, i’d be happy to do so. I’m not new to Linux and am a System Admin by profession. I have just no clue when it comes to all the gaming stuff on Linux. Most of my time is spend in SSH Sessions keeping Web- and Database Servers running…

If you need any more info, i’m happy to provide that.

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if you’re using wine, the only decent way to improve audio performance is using jack + wineasio, which is a whole other kettle of fish. While I’m not familiar with your specific game, it sounds like these two pieces of software would fix the problem. Setup and use is somewhat more complicated though.

If you want to pass through a usb audio device in a VM, you’ll more than likely have to pass through an entire USB controller unless you get lucky with the usb interface’s onboard hardware

here’s a guide to VM audio hardware that goes over the basics:

and USB switching if you want to use your interface on the host:

on a card that low end you might just want to use 2 monitor inputs. Not sure what the overhead is on current builds of looking glass but switching to the second source on your monitor is guaranteed to be lower, there’s even tools that will switch inputs for you automatically:

there’s workarounds that make it a thing

hope this helps.

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Man, lots of great info. Thanks.
On Audio: Latency is mostly a non issue in my case. I don’t rely on the ingames Audioengine for the Guitar sound. So, all i’d need is the Game to recognize the Specific USB Adapter. Audio Playback shouldn’t be a problem and the potential latency can be compensate through ingame settings (as long as they aren’t in the realm of seconds).

Input switching isn’t a Problem. For the times i need it, i’m happy to do so. I thought Looking Glass (in my case at least) was an easier solution to the USB Peripherals Problem. Worst case, i’d get a cheap USB Addin Card and be done. I’ll see how this goes and test both solutions.

Concerning GPU Switching:
I’ll read up on that and see where this leads me. Just to preemptively ask though: Would both, iGPU and eGPU be active at the same time or does this disable the one you don’t user completely?
As i have Monitors, the idea would be to hook up two to the iGPU for permanent Linux usage, the third to the NVIdia GPU which can be “switched” between Linux and Windows VM. Is this possible or completely out there?

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Qemu by default has broken audio. The workarounds are either to patch it or pass through a usb audio device, just a heads up.

this is also doable in software sans looking glass:

to my knowledge linux can’t use multiple display gpu vendors at the same time without a lot of special config anyway

the way nvidia-xrun works is that it automatically detaches the discrete card from the host, then shuts down x and restarts it on the igpu. Not perfectly seamless but it achieves what you want.

You’d have to attach all your displays to both cards if you do want to use the nvidia card on the host without performance degradation, though

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Great, something for me to chew on!

Step one, i’ll see how Arch with KDE performs on my iGPU (though it only supports two outputs if i remember correct). If this is workable, i can dedicate my eGPU to the VM (or get a cheap second Card for Linux).

I’ll look how the USB Ports on my MoBo a laid out.

And finally, running everything through wine isn’t totally out. Overwatch has been working for some (though the loss in performance might be to much for my GPU) and a User on Reddit just said, he got Rocksmith to work. If i can get this set up, i might not even need the VM at all…

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if you go this route I recommend getting the vendor that you aren’t using in the guest (nvidia guest, amd on host, and vice versa)

saves on config headaches

if it aint broke…

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Other people have given you plenty of info on the VM side of things, so I’ll skip that, and address this issue:

Good news, you don’t have to compile DXVK if you don’t want to. First off, lutris has integrated support for it, albeit with a slightly outdated version (0.53 if I recall correctly).
It’s really easy to make it use a newer version, though, just download the latest version (0.63 right now) from the project’s binary releases page.
Lutris stores the dxvk files in .local/share/lutris/runtime/dxvk in your home directory.
Just untar the archive you downloaded there, rename it to 0.63 (just to stick with lutris’s naming scheme really), and set up the game to use this version in its lutris configuration.
To do that, right click the game in lutris, click configure, go to the Runner options tab, make sure DXVK is toggled on, and enter 0.63 in the DXVK version field.

I haven’t tried out overwatch in Lutris myself, so I can’t guarantee that this will fix it, but it’s worth trying.

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Oh great, didn’t now that. Seems easy enough. I’ll just wipe the testsytem from yesterday, start from scratch with the nvidia-vulkan driver and see how it goes. I know it should at least be possible to run. weather my graphics card has enough headroom to do this is another story. It must have been something i did wrong yesterday…

Also, is Arch/Antergos a decent choice or are there “more compatible” distributions i should look at? I’m fairly agnostic in that regard.

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last i checked the battle.net launcher titles work fine on playonlinux installs too

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with regard to distro, use what you’re comfortable with, it doesn’t generally matter for wine stuff (VMS depend heavily on community support and configuration, but that’s a different matter)

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If you’re comfortable using Arch then yes, use it, I believe it’s still the easiest distro to set it all up in.

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So, i’m not getting nowhere with this.
Current Setup:
Antergos fresh install on seperate 120G SSD
Basic Install with only nvidia packages added. I Installed

Installation through the Lutris “Battle Net” works, but after the login i only get a black box saying “No Graphics Context”. Installation through Lutris “Overwatch” Fails completely at Loading the Battlenet setup.

First try at getting a Windows VM Running from my existing second HDD (250G SSD) weren’t sucessfull either. I’m able to create the VM, edit the xml to add the HDD and boot, VM just stay at “Booting from Hard Drive…” I though that UEFI Setup might be a Problem.
Installed OVMF, added
nvram = ["/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd:/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd"]
to the qemu.conf

Now libvirtd can’t even start up.

Installation of DXVK 0.63 went flawless through lutris though. Doesn’t help much though…

I have no clue what i’m doing wrong. I’ll work on this for an hour or so and if this doesn’t work i’ll give fedora a try. Haven’t looked at that in years and am interested. Though i’m not sure wether this helps…

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for the VM, follow

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF

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