My memory isn't the best on this, as it was close to 10 years ago, I just now had to look up some YouTube's and images to see which things I recognized.
I was using Arch and I'm pretty sure I managed everything with Virtual Machine Manager.
I know 100% I used vfio, and I wanna say qemu as well.
The one thing I remember most, was I couldn't use Virt Manager's GUI to just straight up add the Windows SSD. I had to use the GUI to add something similar, but then had to go and directly edit the XML. It took me forever through trial and error, but I wanna say I finally was like fuck it, and changed the XML entry to just straight up /dev/nvme and it worked.
Never had any bootloader issues. I think I let Windows have its own EFI boot partition it installs automatically, but also gave my arch install its own EFI boot partition as well. When I wanted to boot Windows bare metal, I would just press F8 on boot and select the Windows Boot manager entry, as opposed to booting into systemd-boot and selecting Arch or Windows.
I did the vfio passthrough years ago, rocking two monitors like I always have.
Top monitor was Linux only via Display Port. Bottom was Linux via HDMI, and Windows via DP. Small cheap AMD GPU for all the Linux, and big boy AMD GPU was only for Windows VM.
I would turn on the VM, and then toggle my bottom monitor from HDMI to DP to game, and then the reverse when finished. Could be done all the same without the top monitor.
A neat trick I figured out, was the Windows VM was actually a bare metal Windows install on a separate SSD that could be booted into normally, but also passed through to the VM when using Linux.
Microsoft makes stupid decision for Windows = There's always someone writing up paragraphs of how they switched to Linux via Mint, like they're about to convert swathes of people to do the same. Insert meme where Obama is giving himself a medal.
Microsoft is gonna close off access to their NT kernel, eventually. When that happenes all anticheat will have to be in userspace. I'd imagine at that point all of those games become Linux compatible.
Look for the option when installing that is along the lines of "wipe entire drive."
If you want Debian, check out Vanilla OS. They reached a milestone not too long ago, and it's a bulletproof distro. It containerizes most programs, it's immutable, and has atomic updates.
Someone already mentioned, turn off secure boot in your BIOS/uefi settings.
Will be interesting to see if 343 just sucks at making Halo games, or if their engine was holding them back. Or both I suppose.
I hope multiple Halo games confirmed means some singleplayer/coop story stand alone titles. Seperate and quatantined from the online live service multiplayer titles.
Alan Wake 2 legit blurs the line when presenting a character; between film footage and digitizing the actor. Even the games environments blend in photographed and filmed objects. It's a masterpiece of a game, with beautiful graphics, and a fun and bonkers story.
I should be playable from Epic Games Store via Lutris or similar. Or from sailing the high seas.
Apparently The VVitch is extremely impressive and accurate for the English dialect they speak in the movie. They pulled old court records related to Salem witch trials. Things like that give me hope for Nosferatu!
People like that CS doesn't change. It just eventually gets visual upgrades with new engine versions. You can hop on CS, and know the exact game play you're going to get.
Also, custom CS servers for extremely different game play are a thing.
Free to play Call of Duty clone.