Yep, you learn how to get things done. If your goal is to use something that’s strictly for Windows, then probably you should be using Windows. Same as MacOS, same as Linux, and same as any other OS out there. Same things could be said for touch screen vs. MnK vs. controller.
Or at least virtualize it. With USB and PCIe passthrough, you can basically use Windows for anything but direct access to some PC components (Everything not connected via USB and PCIe, so only the MB iirc), and (many) games (if you don’t have a second, just-working GPU for an VFIO-Passtrough)
If you’re on Linux, I don’t think a windows VM is very useful for gaming? Most games run fine in proton, and the ones that don’t, probably don’t because of anticheat that will also refuse to run in a VM. I do know of one niche case that needed to be run in a VM until recently, that being SS13, but that was because of an engine dependency on IE for webviews.
It’s vanguard so don’t think that works. It’s essentially malware but I keep basically nothing of relevance on my windows side so I’m generally not super concerned. I basically just treat the entirety of windows as a security hole.
i think ive seen ones that support vanguard before. i think vanguard needs a host kernel patch to mitigate, so it doesn’t detect the vm by measuring timing or something.
you would have to look around a bit but i’m sure it still exists. as long as it is still our machines, there will be ways around it, else cheaters would not exist. it just requires you to participate in the cat mouse game.
EAC is notoriously less invasive than vanguard. The repo you linked doesn’t even have a fraction of what you’d need to hide from vanguard.
There are SO many things to hide. In theory it sounds possible, in practice just not.
To name a few, you’d have to hide:
cpu jitter/latency
interrupt behavior
page table behavior
msr access
cache invalidation patterns
IOMMU
PCIe inconsistencies
boot sequence
driver timing
CPUID
And so much more. It’s almost impossibly hard to hide all that. Even if you could, a tiny mistake at one point or a stealth update and you’re banned.
In comparison, avoiding vanguard and cheating on a legit windows machine is trivial. DMA cards are expensive but impossible to detect. DP/HDMI + mouse hooks are another impossible to detect option.
yes, i said as much. vanguard iirc needs cpu jitter and driver timing adjustments, and i found a patched kernel for it at some point. at least last i checked, this might have changed. and yea, depending on how aggressive the company is, expect your accounts to be disposable.
i’ve heard of the dp/hdmi thing and it’s so funny to me how they pour resources into it without being able to block cheaters at all.
That’s a bit extreme. I keep a windows install around, just in case. It’s just not in grub; I have to get into the bios boot menu and manually select it.
Probably just the recent converts that are still 1 foot in and 1 foot out. I don’t keep a Windows VM. If something ever came up over the years, I have to decide if it’s worth setting up a VM. I think even 3 years back, I was able to update my PS5 controller loading up the update tool in WINE (Bottles). Didn’t even need a Windows VM then.
There are a lot of cases where windows is preferable or easier to deal with, I think just nuking it is more common with recent converts (I lolled a bit at this turn of phrase). You probably can do everything with wine + vm, bit I just can’t be bothered with passtrough and shit for the latter and update problems and requirement for 32-bit libraries of the former.
Is there a good word editor on Linux? Because libre office qt lags crazy on plasma wayland, doesn’t have auto lists, or horizontal line, requires an extra package for spell check, and OnlyOffice is missing basic formatting, like horizontal lines, has memory leak issues too, and doesn’t even allow selecting multiple words at a time. Srsly double clicking selects a word, but dragging unselects it.
There’s literally open issues about the lag, im talking about. And even if that didn’t exist. It’s just bad. It’s not intuitive, it doesn’t have any of the convenience features that MS word has.
It’s just bad. It’s not intuitive, it doesn’t have any of the convenience features that MS word has.
Maybe, maybe not.
The last version ow MS Word I used was Word 2.0c. I quit using it because it was completely broken whenever the file got a bit large. I switched to Linux at that time and used office suites on that platform (that was before libre/open office, even before StarOffice I think, I ran Applix at the time), none of them I’ve ever had issues with.
These days I might do that. The thing is, I’m coming from a situation where windows was installed, fully setup and configured with whatever I needed, so it was way easier to just run that than to redo everything and setup a VM.
Also, the last piece of software I need is something used to bypass DRMs, and it kinda requires the whole thing to work flawlessly. I’ll see when I come around to launch it again if it’s viable.
I used to have windows installed for years back when I first stated using Linux… But it grew to where I never booted it again, so now I just use a VM in the increasingly rare cases certain software doesn’t work on Linux.
It really isn’t. That’s like saying “I keep a bottle of anthrax in my pocket just in case”. It just doesn’t you any good! (Yes, it’s a facetious example)
But seriously, if you need Windows for something every so often, just setup a VM. Safer, cleaner, can’t mess up your host.
It depends what you’re using it for. If it’s gaming, then it’s a no. But OP above didn’t say gaming. A Windows VM is fine for general tasks, but that naturally depends on the host system and how many resources you give the VM.
Edit: ok, so I just tried setting up a windows vm again, and it’s much faster now, animations are still a bit laggy, but changing some windows and libvirt settings improved performance by a lot. ig it was skill issue? even virtio didn’t have the resolution issue I had before, somehow
virtio NEVER lets me pick my native resolution either. This has been an issue on all my devices, and has persisted throughout all my PC upgrades.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but it doesn’t help that the documentation is so non-existent for what to pick and the specifics for each xml options.
Just don’t have windows installed.
Yep, you learn how to get things done. If your goal is to use something that’s strictly for Windows, then probably you should be using Windows. Same as MacOS, same as Linux, and same as any other OS out there. Same things could be said for touch screen vs. MnK vs. controller.
games are technically almost all strictly for windows…
Yep, skipped a lot of games. Sad day when Loki Entertainment when under.
Or at least virtualize it. With USB and PCIe passthrough, you can basically use Windows for anything but direct access to some PC components (Everything not connected via USB and PCIe, so only the MB iirc), and (many) games (if you don’t have a second, just-working GPU for an VFIO-Passtrough)
If you’re on Linux, I don’t think a windows VM is very useful for gaming? Most games run fine in proton, and the ones that don’t, probably don’t because of anticheat that will also refuse to run in a VM. I do know of one niche case that needed to be run in a VM until recently, that being SS13, but that was because of an engine dependency on IE for webviews.
Not so easy for gaming. The perf is not the same. Certain games are the only reason I have windows in my pc.
Might not be as easy, passthrough stuff can be a little tricky to set up sometimes, but once you get it going performance is identical
I have windows specifically for one game with shitty anti cheat, I don’t like it but it is what is is.
That’s me with Battlefield 6. I fucking hate it, but I have too much fun playing BF6 with friends to only have Linux.
Did you try virtualizing in i.e. QEMU?
It’s vanguard so don’t think that works. It’s essentially malware but I keep basically nothing of relevance on my windows side so I’m generally not super concerned. I basically just treat the entirety of windows as a security hole.
for the record, you can technically hide the vm and bypass those anticheat checks.
i hear its hard and annoying to setup.
That sounds VERY unlikely. I’m gonna need a source for that (with vanguard) or I’m calling bullshit
i found this https://github.com/zhaodice/qemu-anti-detection which supports EAC and others but not vanguard. looks quite easy to use compared to what ive seen before.
i think ive seen ones that support vanguard before. i think vanguard needs a host kernel patch to mitigate, so it doesn’t detect the vm by measuring timing or something.
you would have to look around a bit but i’m sure it still exists. as long as it is still our machines, there will be ways around it, else cheaters would not exist. it just requires you to participate in the cat mouse game.
EAC is notoriously less invasive than vanguard. The repo you linked doesn’t even have a fraction of what you’d need to hide from vanguard.
There are SO many things to hide. In theory it sounds possible, in practice just not.
To name a few, you’d have to hide:
And so much more. It’s almost impossibly hard to hide all that. Even if you could, a tiny mistake at one point or a stealth update and you’re banned.
In comparison, avoiding vanguard and cheating on a legit windows machine is trivial. DMA cards are expensive but impossible to detect. DP/HDMI + mouse hooks are another impossible to detect option.
yes, i said as much. vanguard iirc needs cpu jitter and driver timing adjustments, and i found a patched kernel for it at some point. at least last i checked, this might have changed. and yea, depending on how aggressive the company is, expect your accounts to be disposable.
i’ve heard of the dp/hdmi thing and it’s so funny to me how they pour resources into it without being able to block cheaters at all.
Pretty much all invasive kernel level anti cheat detects and blocks VMs
That’s a bit extreme. I keep a windows install around, just in case. It’s just not in grub; I have to get into the bios boot menu and manually select it.
Is dual booting really that common? Whenever I need to test something on windows I just use a vm
Probably just the recent converts that are still 1 foot in and 1 foot out. I don’t keep a Windows VM. If something ever came up over the years, I have to decide if it’s worth setting up a VM. I think even 3 years back, I was able to update my PS5 controller loading up the update tool in WINE (Bottles). Didn’t even need a Windows VM then.
There are a lot of cases where windows is preferable or easier to deal with, I think just nuking it is more common with recent converts (I lolled a bit at this turn of phrase). You probably can do everything with wine + vm, bit I just can’t be bothered with passtrough and shit for the latter and update problems and requirement for 32-bit libraries of the former.
Is there a good word editor on Linux? Because libre office qt lags crazy on plasma wayland, doesn’t have auto lists, or horizontal line, requires an extra package for spell check, and OnlyOffice is missing basic formatting, like horizontal lines, has memory leak issues too, and doesn’t even allow selecting multiple words at a time. Srsly double clicking selects a word, but dragging unselects it.
Ok, you’ve got something going on with your system. If LibreOffice and VMs are lagging on your system then something isn’t right.
Something is broken on your system. Libre office works fine on all other machines.
There’s literally open issues about the lag, im talking about. And even if that didn’t exist. It’s just bad. It’s not intuitive, it doesn’t have any of the convenience features that MS word has.
Maybe, maybe not.
The last version ow MS Word I used was Word 2.0c. I quit using it because it was completely broken whenever the file got a bit large. I switched to Linux at that time and used office suites on that platform (that was before libre/open office, even before StarOffice I think, I ran Applix at the time), none of them I’ve ever had issues with.
You probably want to ask a Pro Office user. I’ve just used Libre Office. Worked fine for my papers in school and edits my resume just fine.
I just use Typst for everything these days, but if you really want a gui thing there’s always the web version of google docs and ms office
Google docs and word online dont have many advanced features unfortunately.
These days I might do that. The thing is, I’m coming from a situation where windows was installed, fully setup and configured with whatever I needed, so it was way easier to just run that than to redo everything and setup a VM.
Also, the last piece of software I need is something used to bypass DRMs, and it kinda requires the whole thing to work flawlessly. I’ll see when I come around to launch it again if it’s viable.
Every VM I’ve tried are horrendously laggy.
Are you providing the guest a proper amount of system resources?
I keep a windows partition on an external SSD solely to play League 🤷♀️
I used to have windows installed for years back when I first stated using Linux… But it grew to where I never booted it again, so now I just use a VM in the increasingly rare cases certain software doesn’t work on Linux.
It really isn’t. That’s like saying “I keep a bottle of anthrax in my pocket just in case”. It just doesn’t you any good! (Yes, it’s a facetious example)
But seriously, if you need Windows for something every so often, just setup a VM. Safer, cleaner, can’t mess up your host.
Windows VMs don’t perform well, maybe virtio can fix their awful drivers, but until then that’s a waste of time.
Sorry for being crude, but I hate the linux culty gaslighting.
It depends what you’re using it for. If it’s gaming, then it’s a no. But OP above didn’t say gaming. A Windows VM is fine for general tasks, but that naturally depends on the host system and how many resources you give the VM.
The performance is horrible for me, even for simple things like word processing, the cursor lag and choppyness makes it extremely frustrating for me.
Ive tried virtio, qxl, vga, and rdp. Rdp is the only one that’s usable for me and it’s still awful.
The only time it hasn’t been bad for me is with GPU passthrough, but that’s a huge pain, and I’d rather dual boot instead.
That’s not normal. That suggests some issue in the virtualization config, or maybe your proc doesn’t support virtualization or something.
Aside from graphically heavy things, a VM should only incur a minor overhead compared to the host. Word processing should function just fine.
Edit: ok, so I just tried setting up a windows vm again, and it’s much faster now, animations are still a bit laggy, but changing some windows and libvirt settings improved performance by a lot. ig it was skill issue? even virtio didn’t have the resolution issue I had before, somehow
The libre office issue is literally a known bug https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152911 and https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/libreoffice-performance-issues-on-linux/114920 etc.
With the VM, I’ve tried on my laptop (framework 16), my 8600k desktop with rx 580, and gtx 1080
12700k with gtx 1080 and 6700 xt
9800x3d with rx 9070 xt.
Lots of others have the same issues, so please don’t gaslight me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/qemu_kvm/comments/11m9a4x/why_is_the_virtmanager_display_so_slow/
https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager/issues/645
virtio NEVER lets me pick my native resolution either. This has been an issue on all my devices, and has persisted throughout all my PC upgrades.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but it doesn’t help that the documentation is so non-existent for what to pick and the specifics for each xml options.
Btw I got the rdp tip from here, and rdp actually allows my native 4k resolution https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/comments/1fcs0kj/virtmanager_better_fps/