Long time windows anguisher looking for help to ditch windows ( GPU pass through help needed)

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Hello long time lurker first time poster here. I apologize for the long winded post or if Im in the wrong section or unknowingly break any rules.

I’m at my wits end and looking to try to get some help. I’m a long time linux lover and user. I can install linux install apps , install my day to day needs .etc

Did quite a bit of wine gaming , and tweaking. I hate windows 10 , hate anything non opensource it goes against my core beliefs.

I’m about to enroll in university to take some computer classes and would like to straight up get rid of windows as a host os. My issue is I enjoy gaming and wine doesn’t run a lot of my regular games I play.

So I’m looking for help to set up a gaming VM on my optimus enabled laptop. I’ve tried this on and a off for the last year and always end up with a VM i cant boot and re-installing windows.

Its gotten bad to the point where I’m wiping my system every few weeks cause i cant stand windows yet Linux doesn’t run all my games.

I’ve googled various articles tried setting up pass through using scripts I’ve found here, tweaking it on my own, even doing a rain dance. Nothing

I know its first world problems but im at a point where I would like to ditch windows 10 for good. I’m hoping there is a way to get help here I was so desperate I almost hired someone off of Fiver. I don’t want to brick my laptop.

So ideally for school I would like to be able to run elementary os, have a gaming vm set up using my Dgpu and be able to free myself from windows.

This is a last desperation post that someone will help.

My laptop is a asus g531GT I5 Model, from my research it should be doable.

Ill also attach a detailed spec sheet, hoping someone takes mercy on my beginner soul. I know dual booting is the simple answer but I hate running Windows 10 as a host os. Their data practices offend me.

spec
spec779×705 36.1 KB

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Let’s start by checking out what your IOMMU groups look like. If you haven’t already, run this script and post the results. Assuming you’ve got BIOS support, and the GTX 1650 is in a separate group, then yeah you can probably make it work.

#!/bin/bash
for d in /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/*/devices/*; do
  n=${d#*/iommu_groups/*}; n=${n%%/*}
  printf 'IOMMU Group %s ' "$n"
  lspci -nns "${d##*/}"
done
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So you don’t even use closed drivers? How does it work?

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Hi, I really dislike a lot of things about Microsoft’s way of doing things, and the way their operating systems are set up.
So much that I switched to Linux a few years ago.

But, if you only have one laptop, I would strongly suggest sucking it up during the course, or switching to linux and using a console to play games, rather than isolating a laptop GPU.
There is a surprising number of Linux games available.

Windows is really good at games, and has directx 12, which is also really good.
Running a windows VM with kvm/qemu gives really good performance with a passed through dedicated GPU.
However, there are bugs, issues and restrictions that come up, and you wouldn’t want to miss a course deadline because there is no output on the display, or some booting problem or whatever.

1 Like
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Fair enough. Thanks for the feedback. I might just suck it up and use a removable HDD with windows on it.

I appreciate the feedback.

Topic can be closed if need be