cujo @ cujo @sh.itjust.works

Used to be aRatherDapperFox@lemmy.ml. Moved for various reasons, mainly ser

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2 yr. ago

Unfortunately, I've found this to be true as well. For what it's worth, Snapseed is a really wonderful app even if it's not FOSS. It is missing some of the finer features of something like Lightroom, but even the Lightroom mobile app misses out on some of those features. Snapseed is what I use for mobile RAW editing. Maybe someone will swoop in and prove me wrong, though. I'd love that! Lol.

My single remaining use for Windows is to run the CaptureOne photo editing software. It is, in my opinion, peerless. I love using it so much that it ruined basically all other photo editing suites for me. DarkTable, PhotoTherapee, ART, none of them come close for me. Everything else has some alternative that I've come to term with using, or even prefer using, but not CaptureOne.

I'm only a hobbyist photographer so it's not like my livelihood is tied up in this software... I just get tired and sour working in other softwares, no matter how long of a trial I give them. Sometimes you find a solution that's just absolutely perfect for you and the way you work, and CaptureOne is that for me. 🤷‍♂️

In my case, I'd have my host Linux OS for 99.99% of my use case, and then Windows solely for photo editing. But I opted not to do that just because of all my previous experiences trying to use a VM for any production level work with anything that's graphically intensive. Apparently that has changed a lot since I last looked at it, or I didn't dig deep enough and I missed the actually worthwhile software. I'm just not sure I'm going to put in the work. I've got a baby now, and haven't taken a photo on anything other than my smartphone since she was born. 😅

If you have to allocate resources to your host system, that's resources your virtual machine cannot use. It is subpar. If you're going to allocate your host the bare minimum resources, why not run the other operating system to begin with? You're now missing out in performance in the complete opposite direction. The most straightforward solution still remains to run games on your host system. If you want to game on Linux, game on Linux. It's easy enough nowadays, and what tinkering you may have to do will be a fantastic opportunity to get more comfortable with the DIY side of Linux.

I will be the first to admit that I am no expert on the topic of virtualization, as I have said in other comments already. However, this is a community, not an expert consultation, and I have used virtualization to varying degrees of success for various different tasks over the years, all of which has culminated in my opinion that it's best not to use virtualization to game unless you're really intent on running a game that cannot under any circumstances run in Linux, such as Valorant. To follow, if that is your use case I encourage picking up an extra drive (storage is incredibly cheap) and running a dual boot. You're free to disagree and provide reasoning why I'm wrong, but calling my statement "completely uneducated" is disingenuous at best.

EDIT: I concede on my word choice, it's not "subpar ." I'm certain you can achieve average or even above average performance in a VM with the right set up. The word I'm looking for is "suboptimal." My apologies.

Thanks for the link! And for the info. I'll give KVM an honest try, and maybe I'll get motivated enough to spin up a VM for CaptureOne. A 1080 should be decent enough for light photo editing, and I was recently given one as-is. It may or may not work, neither I or the person who gave it to me had time to test it.

Interesting.

My system is all AMD, I prefer not to wrestle with Nvidia's drivers on Linux, lol.

It's been years since I ran Windows on my machine, but I still miss my photo editing software. Nice as DarkTable is, it's no replacement for CaptureOne. And it's pretty much not possible to get CaptureOne running in a productive manner under Wine. I looked into doing passthrough to a VM a while back, but it just seemed a hassle and I didn't have a spare GPU. I game on my Linux install, so iGPU isn't sufficient for my needs there. My photography hobby just has to suffer. 😂

Hmm that's a neat solution. What if you do video or photo editing in your main OS, though, or any other kind of work that would benefit from discreet graphics? Is your only option then essentially two GPUs, or can you switch between passthrough neatly, or...?

Because it's accessable, and is also the extent of my knowledge in running a VM. I won't speak about KVM because I am not intimately familiar with KVM, nor will I ever be. I'm certain it's a better solution than VirtualBox, just as running games in Linux with Wine/Proton is a better solution than setting up a VM to game in.

I'd be happy to hear about the details of why KVM is so superior, if you'd care to enlighten me! I'm always looking to learn new things.

The real question is why we're down voting people who are adding to the discussion just because we disagree with them, instead of just having a conversation?

Sure. I admit my experience running a VM is limited to "type 2 bullshit" like VirtualBox. But that also requires that OP have a spare GPU lying around they care enough to pop into their machine and set up passthrough for, which most people don't. Especially with these GPU prices lately, yikes. Chances are they have a decent GPU already in their system, and buying an equivalent GPU just for passthrough is... 😬

So while baremetal-like performance is certainly possible with a VM, it's still not an ideal solution for most people.

As the other comment says, what you're referring to is running a Windows VM (virtual machine) inside of your Linux machine. It's a great asset for a lot of things, but gaming is not it's strong point. A VM shares resources with it's host machine, meaning it can only access so many of your CPU cores, utilize only so much of your RAM, and take advantage of CPU powered graphics -- unless, as was pointed out in another comment, you happen to have a spare graphics card laying around. The set up for GPU passthrough is more trouble than it's worth, IMO, especially for gaming. And you still have the other bottlenecks to contend with.

Gaming on Linux is best enjoyed by using a combination of Wine and Proton (Wine suped up for the express purpose of gaming by the fine folks behind Steam) paired with a launcher of some kind, usually Steam. For non-Steam games, Lutris is a fantastic second choice. These platforms make gaming on Linux easier than ever, and are actually the technologies powering the SteamDeck. If you decide to go this route and need any help setting up, please reach out! The community is here and (usually) quite helpful, lol.

If you decide to try the VM anyway, you should look into a software called VirtualBox. You will need to install a few packages to make your system a suitable host, and you'll need the Windows installation ISO image to get it up and running. You can usually acquire it directly from Microsoft by running a search for "Windows XX ISO" where the XX is the version number you're looking for. If you need help getting any of that together, I'd be glad to assist as well. ☺️

All this comes from years of running Linux and only Linux, on a PC I almost exclusively game on. I've had great success, especially with all the headway Valve has made into making the ecosystem viable and accessable.

However you decide to proceed, best of luck to you!

EDIT: As has been pointed out, if you want to virtualize a gaming setup, you should look into KVM, not VirtualBox! It sounds like it's a much more performant option, I am just not very familiar with it myself.

It will still be subpar performance, bottlenecked by the CPU resources you can allocate to the VM as well as your original hardware's capabilities to power the VM among many other variables. Running a VM to game will always produce subpar results. Using GPU passthrough will increase performance, but it's almost always preferable to play on real hardware.

The real answer will always be: if you want to game on Linux, utilize Wine/Proton and Steam/Lutris/Bottles/Heroic/some other launcher that lets you fine tune Wine/Proton to cater to the specific game.

You know, I was talking about actual zippers in another thread at around the same time I was writing this, and my brain just went with it. Doesn't help that I have aliases for all my regular zypper commands and haven't actually typed it out in awhile. 😅

🫡 Glad to be of service, lol.

I knew a girl in high school who picked "Not All Bronies are Pedophiles" as the topic of her speech for our public speaking class. We also caught her reading hentai in class... "For the plot."

Stereotypically speaking, stereotypes are bad. But some of them exist for a reason.

One more point that you shouldn't let scare you away, but just something nice to know going into OpenSUSE: by default, the distro is FOSS only, the official software repositories don't have things like proprietary multimedia codecs or other non-free (as in free speech) software included. You have to enable these yourself if you want them (to, say, watch MP4 files perhaps).

This has gotten so dead simple recently that it can be done in a couple of terminal commands, it's just important to mention. If you know it going in, it saves the step of "what the heck, why aren't my media files playing??"

sudo zypper install opi

opi codecs

OPI is a package manager for installing software from a few sources, namely the openSUSE Build Service (which is where OPI gets its name, OBS Package Iinstaller), Microsoft, the Packman repositories, and a few others. Installing codecs is the only thing I have ever used it for, though.

EDIT: zipper to zypper

I use Tumbleweed for this exact purpose, and I love every second of it! It's been my choice distro for a while now, and put a definitive end to my distro hopping. I can't speak to how using Nvidia with it will work as I've always run AMD, but Steam runs beautifully!

SmartLauncher, here! I love the way it categorizes my apps for me. I like to have a few frequently used apps on my homepage with everything else tucked neatly away in my app drawer... Unfortunately most other launchers I've used alphabetize your apps all together, which I hate. If I feel like playing a game but I'm not sure which one I swipe to my Games page and just peruse them, for example.

Hahahah! AI confirming what artists have known forever: hands are the hardest. Love it.

It is a very well known issue that AI art had/has trouble generating the appropriate amount of fingers/toes/arms/legs. There's a picture in botart right now of an ai generated elephant. It has six legs.

It is so common that one of the first places many people look to see if art is AI generated is any shown hands/feet/limbs. That and teeth. AI cannot figure out how many teeth are supposed to fit in a mouth, or what size they're supposed to be. It'll get there one day, I'm sure.

They also took pains to point out that subscribers trying to exercise their GPL granted rights to redistribution and installation were against the RedHat subscriber agreement

This is the point that matters most to me. The rest of it... sucks, but I can live with. Putting sources behind a price tag is within the GPL and I don't believe it is against the spirit of the GPL as others have said; removing sources from the RHEL repos and using CentOS Stream is an antagonistic change, but they're protecting their business which... they're a business. I don't expect any company to be a bastion of free in the face of potential profits, though it's always nice when they are. The one point that changes my view on the topic completely is that they are actively trying to prevent people from exercising their rights under the GPL by "cleverly" not VIOLATING the GPL, but doing some sneaky fuckery to threaten paying customers into NOT exercising those rights. They don't say you can't, they just say you shouldn't (and here's why). That's straight up bad.

Previously, I hadn't seen evidence of it despite looking around (admittedly not to heavily), all I found was hearsay. But multiple people have provided sources now, which is great!