I work in IT and run a number of Linux servers and desktops, but my main gaming computer hasn’t run Linux since about 2021. Around mid-2021 I got tired of not playing certain games due to lack of Linux compatibility and realized my Windows skills were slipping so I switched it over to Windows 10

September of 2025 I installed a new SSD into my desktop and installed Bazzite (I have a bad habit of breaking my Linux desktops through too much tinkering, so they accumulate configuration quirks that I can work around but become more and more of headache. I describe it as being like a mechanics car to non-technical users, it works perfectly but you can’t use third gear, you have to cycle the heat before the AC goes and you use the screwdriver in the glove compartment to change the radio station) so immutable seemed like a really safe bet, plus its already preconfigured 80% of the way to how I like things which is closer than other distros

I fully expected to find some key game that I play a lot or software that I rely on wouldn’t work under wine/proton, but everything just kept working perfectly so it’s stuck for over a quarter of a year already. Also I’ve had less problems with KDE than I’ve previously had when running KDE 5+ years ago, so definitely some improvements there

Running Forza Horizon (a historically Xbox-exclusive game that’s still heavily integrated with Windows/Microsoft services) on Linux feels so wrong but it runs flawlessly

Will have to find a web browser based tax software instead of what I’m used to

I just went to a tax preparer this year. Costs about the same and my 2025 taxes are going to be all sorts of fun because I did fun new taxable things like contract work and a Roth conversion that I need to make sure are accounted for correctly. But yeah I just give them the documents and they file it all for me.

Right now might be a little late though. Most tax places will already have their clients for 2025 locked in and very little opportunity to take on more clients

If you’re having OOM issues you might have have good luck enabling ZRAM

On Debian based systems it’s as simple as running sudo apt install zram and rebooting

I generally prefer to manually install and update my own mods so I’ve never tried running a mod manager in Lutris, but generally the thing you want to be mindful of is if you have everything running in the same wine prefix that needs to interact with each other. Each wine prefix is kinda isolated from another, so when you change which wine version (and therefore prefix) launches a given software, it loses all of its stored data from the appdata folder because that was left in the old prefix

Off the wall idea, but what if you apply a static IP on that network? Then you’ll only have issues when the DHCP server happens to hand out the same IP which you can simply change the IP and have a decent chance of getting a free one

That’s odd because I’ve had a ton of luck adding random crap to Lutris including obscure model railroad software

There was one time years ago I was working on some unholy mess of mods for Transport Fever and the game kept crashing and bringing the whole X session down with it, and instead of just rebooting like a sane person I instead started a new X session on a new terminal session. I think I got up to 4 or 5 dead x sessions before I finally finished sorting out my mods and rebooted to clean it all up

Really just needs one vendor to provide a unified way of configuring and managing a fleet of laptops/desktops. All of the bits exist, just needs someone to bring it all together

That’s kinda the limitation with Cinnamon, it’s not as customizable as it could be.

I wonder if maybe it’s a governor problem. Laptops are often super power limited, sometimes even more so thermally limited, so they rely on increasingly bonkers power profiles to try to balance it, but pegging the laptop at 100% utilization such as while transcoding can still cause it to fall over. Have you played with adjusting the power profile at all?

My other thought is screen tearing and similar. I think Mint still ships with X rather than Wayland and screen tearing is a pretty infamous limitation with Xserver

Vorta only supports SSH and local backup repositories while pika allows SFTP through some kind of compatibility layer with gvfs.

That’s kinda wild given SFTP is just SSH.

If you’re flinging files across the network, rsync is usually a really good option. It’ll typically be run over SSH/SFTP and is capable of resuming if interrupted, verifying the copied files match the original, etc. and rsync can be super fast compared straight SFTP in some cases. In a pinch you can always cobble together a pretty robust backup script purely based off rsync

To be fair, I had more trouble with wake from sleep on Windows than I have had since shifting to Linux.

Also at work I get 1-2 tickets a week for what end up being wake from sleep issues on Windows

Most popular games still don’t work.

I’ve been running Bazzite on my main PC since October (I have a bad habit of tinkering with my Linux installs to death so I opted for immutable so I’m less likely to break it) and of all of the weird and obscure windows software I’ve installed, all has worked flawlessly including funky model railroad track planning software and some somewhat obscure simulator games. I also have some games from the 90s that haven’t worked on modern Windows in years run flawlessly. Heck even Sims via EA’s launcher runs flawlessly (if not better because I can minimize it from fullscreen, something it can’t do on Windows since the DX11 update)

Literally the only thing I’ve found that I can’t run is anything requiring Ubisoft’s launcher. The furthest I got is to about 30% through downloading Anno 1800 before it crashed and refused to run the launcher again. I can’t help but suspect they intentionally broke compatibility because that would be very on-brand for them, but you never know. Kinda sad because I wanted to play an Anno game that’s new enough to not have gotten a disc release but whatever I have plenty of other games I can play

Would requesting a mac with the argument of having access to a Unix shell potentially work? In college my IT instructor used a Mac with a windows VM via VMware Workstation and it pretty seemless. He’d use the Mac for most stuff then jump over to the Windows VM for windows specific stuff, and then diving into the native Bash shell for anything else. Honestly it was a pretty sweet setup

I mean this happens. Traditionally it was companies with lots of digital artists for improved software compatibility, but these days it’s really more done for developers and anyone else just as an employee perk to put them on their preferred platform.

Honestly, for administration purposes having a proper native Unix shell running standard utilities is extremely handy, especially when you need to manipulate files, such as working with disk/VM images for example

Yeah getting paid to sit there while windows wastes 20+ minutes of company time updating is always a treat

Meanwhile I got local admin because the IT guy who’s no longer there couldn’t be bothered to install a couple of utilities for me and most of what I actually do is manage SaaS services in a web browser

I’ve never tried the Proxmox over Debian method, I just know it is an officially supported install method. Good on you for getting that far though!