2024 will be the year I finally be the year I ditch windows.
I am not exactly new to linux, yet I am far from an expert. I made my journey over the years form trying Ubuntu (many many major revisions ago) and have found myself down the rabbit hole of going Arch. I run Arch with KDE on my laptop. I want to fully ditch Windows on my desktop, however I feel this will be a much bigger hurdle to overcome.
Build Specs: i7-12700KF Copper Modded EVGA RTX 3090 64gb of 3600mhz DDR4 ASUS Tuf Z690 Wifi D4
I could go into more detail about my specs, but the specs aren’t what has made this journey a bit tougher. I use a Line 6 Helix and a Line 6 PowerCab 112+ and both have usb connections to my computer for integration with, you guessed it; windows or mac software only. Now I don’t have a problem running wine, and a number of other solutions to run windows programs, I do however have a gap in knowledge in order to try to use these specific programs with specific USB peripherals.
Now, I am not sure if this is the best way, but I had heard the idea of USB passthrough. And I have no clue where to begin with that. Would this be the direction I should be going for programs such as those?
The only other software that I am going to struggle replacing is the RGB lighting software for all of my hardware. Most of it is corsair (Fans, RAM, Water Cooler, and plugins for the asus motherboard.) And my Steeleseries keyboard which uses GG.
I have looked into using OpenRGB but I was unable to figure out how to get those setup as it wasn’t as plug and play as the manufacturer software, but understandably of course.
The absolute biggest hurdles is my Nvidia problem. I have always had issues with Nvidia on Arch. I would gladly take an suggestion. For reference, I would be using this mainly for my gaming. I occasionally dabble in Stable Diffusion.
I will be running Arch with KDE preferably, but every single time I have had issues.
I suppose any feedback anyone may have would be helpful.
Checklist of things I need to get working on in Arch, any help would be welcomed:
- Helix Guitar pedal and PowerCab 112+ (USB Passthrough or any other alternatives people may suggest)
- RGB for SteeleSeries Apex Pro (GG software on windows, open to alternatives)
- RGB for Corsair (iQue on windows, open to alternatives)
- Nvidia Drivers
On the Nvidia drivers issue, I’m using an RTX 30 series card and have no problems at all, I’m running AAA games on Linux just as well as on Windows on the same system. I’m running EndeavourOS which is an Arch based distro. Everything was set up by EndeavourOS during the install and everything has just been working right from the start. Anyway, my point is: it can be done. Even the non-proprietary drivers for Nvidia have been coming along really well, I can’t remember the name of the project right now though.
I did some searching and did come across this GitHub guide on installing Nvidia drivers on an Arch system, you may have seen it already though…
https://github.com/korvahannu/arch-nvidia-drivers-installation-guide
I will for sure check out this link.
I do have to ask though, are you using X11 or Wayland?
My issue had to due with multi monitor support with wayland with KDE. It could be very specific to my preferences, in which case I have few options. Change preference, or stick to what I am doing. I vote, I will try something different.
The default for EndeavourOS is X11 but 'cause I love shiny things I have tried out Wayland (last time during the holiday season) but I had a few problems - especially with one game I love - and now plan to try it out again when Plasma 6 is released in a few weeks. As I’m primarily a gamer I just have one big screen that I sit far too close to. I have read about Wayland and multi-monitors, I guess that’s something that will become better over time… I guess the question is: how much time?