Why GPU Passthrough Is Not Worth It ...

[@iFlxy]

Call me a corporate shill, but I think the only single company that ever would want to put even more money into Linux Anti-Cheats is Valve. We won't make that big of an impact on the gaming industry by refusing to play those games that don't work on Linux. I'm waiting for another Linux-focused device from Valve, and I hope they will have something ready...

[@RealJonzuk]

i would delete steam if it wasnt for everything theyve done for linux i seriously do not regret my purchases on steam even though half the games i dont play happy to have supported them also i bough ta ton of csgo keys back as a kid

[@MichaelNROH]

Vacnet is supposedly running on deep-learning (and probably AI soon) so we'll see if it's actually gonna become good over time. Money wise, Valve should have the resources to compete with with cheat makers in that regard.

[@skelebro9999]

Cannot disagree with that. No company has done anything for Linux besides Valve. Our only real option is to wait for the few but still an amount of Windows users to finally make the switch.

[@blue_pingu]

@@skelebro9999 Casually ignoring codeweavers, redhat, canonical, google, microsoft, and many more companies that have contributed to linux

[@sergeykish]

​@@skelebro9999Red Hat provided support on server, Ubuntu made a lot to popularize Linux desktop, Mozilla liberated web from IE6, CodeWeavers made Wine, Google made Chrome, Android and CromeOS.

[@4.0.4]

Kernel-level anti-cheat is honestly something I wish would be made illegal under some EU anti-spyware legislation. Just being unavailable in EU means the whole world sometimes, as companies don't want to develop two separate solutions.

[@coocoobau]

Or you can force to oblivion by not using it. If enough people do this and not get so desperate for a particular game... when there are sooo many options, including doing more in the real life, you basically vote against anti-cheat. Of course you need critical mass of people and time. Patience anyone?

[@4.0.4]

@@coocoobau after Concord, Dustborn, etc I don't doubt gamers' boycotting power. It's been legendary recently.

[@orieLab_]

@@coocoobau nah it wouldn't work. Those types of gamers are usually... slower than average... those giant companies get away with spywares because people don't care about their safeties as long as they get to see shinny colors on their monitor. Just look at windows 11, microsoft is literally describing how a spyware works and how they are using it with recall, and still, more than 70% of people continue using it.

[@mal-avcisi9783]

GPU is worth it !

[@shapelessed]

Just note that the EU wanted to mandate all OS providers (also open-source ones) to install government-issued root certificates, making essentially any encryption based or signed by them easily decryptable by state agencies. They won't ban kernel-level access, they could barely understand the meaning of that term.

[@dogspirit149]

I used to rely on dual-booting for games that weren't compatible with Linux. After a few years, I simply stopped buying those games, so I rarely need to boot into Windows anymore.

[@MichaelNROH]

Basically the reason why I removed Windows altogether. More SSD space, yay

[@FunFreakeyy]

The way to go. We have so many great games nowadays that most people won't even have the time to play them all.

[@lm4122]

@@MichaelNROH less spyware :) "safer" computer.

[@EricParker]

It's extremely useful for software, IE running video editors that wont run under Linux. Gaming can be annoying because of anticheats, a side benefit is that some malware will refuse to run under a VM. Not entirely sure (I think it involves secure boot) how Vanguard does it, but in theory if you have Hyper-V on the VM, it's impossible to 100% detect a VM because Hyper-V enabled on bare metal Windows is also a VM (but is whitelisted). Some anticheats rely on other tells.

[@MichaelNROH]

As far as I'm aware, many games simply refuse to launch when Hyper-V is even enabled. Valorant does it in fact

[@KarbonBlack]

I got banned permanently on Apex Legends because I played on Linux. Tried to appeal more than 10 times but they won’t hear me. Over 1400 hours of game (and money) lost.

[@Shadowofthedark847]

Truely an "EA" move.

[@fabricio4794]

You Aint Loose Nothing .Todays Multliplayer is pure boredom..

[@SlyNine]

@@fabricio4794 that's your opinion tho. Clearly he did like the game.

[@Noriaela]

The joys of Apex "working" on Linux is dealing with Linux users getting bans every few months.

[@somone799]

Damn I thought apex can be played and is supported on Linux???

[@G1esas]

Fedora 39 (at moment of tinkering the VM) - Nvidia rtx 4060 - single gpu passtrough. I simply passed entire gpu to the vm, and when i launch it, linux simply "logging me off", and launching the vm. After shuting down VM, im on the gnome login screen. In my case gpu passtrough was very easy, and not messing with anything important. I have special kvm settings that passedtrough my entire pc to the vm, and i've managed to play fortnite without 1 tiny monitor issue (but i think that was just on me thing). If you wanna do a gpu passtrough, do it only with 2 gpu's (apu + gpu / gpu + gpu)

[@weirdscience-o1i]

Care to share that KVM xml? :) in the process of trying this too.

[@cauals4719]

.

[@G1esas]

@@weirdscience-o1i I tried to send the direct link, but i was unable to. I guess you have to find my link elsewhere, i've posted it under some reddit post, when i asked some guy about how he did it. Or contact me trough other means i guess

[@shapelessed]

​@@weirdscience-o1i Eww... "xml"... *puke*

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

I use complicated audio software for music production, maybe that will be reliable on linux some day. I prefer to have a VM with passthrough so I can use GPU acceleration and so I don't need to have windows on bare metal. This also makes it easier for me since I don't need to reboot my computer every time I want to make music (like I would if I used dual booting).

[@shapelessed]

Many VMs wouldn't even need passthrough. It's quite easy to have decent enough GPU acceleration working.

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

@@shapelessed I don't need to use it for audio applications anymore. I also need to reboot every time I start the VM (but not when I stop it). This is a technical issue that might be solvable, but isn't worth the time. Currently, my main use for VMs now is videogames (mainly multiplayer BG3 with mods) and an AI frame interpolation software I have not gotten working on linux yet. Both of those require GPU passthrough. For these use-cases, it wouldn't be awful to dual-boot, even more so when you consider I personally need to reboot to get the VM started. Though, since it feels dirty to do that, and I already have he VM working, I don't bother with dual-booting.

[@alecmackintosh2734]

If you set up the vm properly you don't have to worry too much about 2 operating systems fighting over resources. Most programs don't use many threads so if you isolate the cpus, you can run a lot of stuff in parallel, it's one way to take advantage of the silly trend of having like 32 threads on a single cpu.

[@oscarfiala2104]

I was literally trying to pass-though a gtx 650 ti in arcolinux just now.

[@MichaelNROH]

Perfect

[@skelebro9999]

Yo! I use ArcoLinux too!

[@Flackon]

Good. Go for it. Best of both worlds.

[@farrellazhar]

and I'm just done Passthrough my GPU and watch this video, what a coincidence

[@mds698]

When i finished watching a demo bout how to do it, this video popped up on my recommendation. But i did it anyways..

[@mariocraft95]

I have a GPU pass through set up. I pass in my old GTX 1080 into it that I set up. I don’t use it for gaming. I just use it to have a great experience having a windows computer to use or remote into using Remote Desktop. Definitely difficult to do, and you need a powerhouse computer to accomplish it effectively, but for most people, I just recommend dual booting (which I still have set up, just rarely use anymore)

[@forrestorange]

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I have Ryzen 5800X3D with RX 6700XT. I just want to be able to occasionally use Windows for work in good resolution. Is it possible for me to set this up, or do I need a 2nd GPU or a different processor?

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

@@forrestorange Your CPU has an integrated GPU, you can make it work by switching the host to the integrated one whenever you want to boot up a VM. I guy called BlandManStudios make good tutorials on how to do this, but both he and I have an nvidia GPU, so your process might be different. Honestly, with an AMD GPU, you might be able to split up your GPU and send over a portion of it to the VM. Look into it.

[@jorge86rodriguez]

I was tempted to do it but it was easier to stop playing the few games with kenel anti cheat that did not work. They are not that great and there are alternatives, I only miss rainbow six siege but meee it is just one game.

[@xNaxdy]

kernel-level anti cheat is actually a lot more powerful than root privileges on linux. root is still within userspace, but kernel code executes at the, well, kernel level, giving it *direct* access to the hardware, which root only has through interacting with the kernel, so there is a layer of abstraction in between. root cannot for example tell the graphics card to overvolt itself and die (unless the graphics driver allows it), but a kernel module absolutely could. the big problem with kernel-level anti cheat is that if it has a bug, there is a real risk of it permanently damaging your actual hardware. with userspace programs, the worst that could happen is it deletes all your files, which don't get me wrong is bad, but not as bad as destroying your actual physical PC components.

[@SMNFXCN]

little rant i guess. I don't even consider anti-cheat games on VMs because I wouldn't want to lose my accounts. I just play anti-cheat stuff on a console. It just works. If anything i just wanted a better performing Windows VM and it sucks how pass-through works with an Nvidia Optimus laptop without a mux switch. The whole process of doing it is a headache and it feels like you lose functionality from your GPU just for that to work... I'd rather use WINE if at all possible, it's just not everything works as it's specifically designed for windows. Most games I run work on Linux. I'm just referring to niche stuff old peripherals, or certain software/drivers that rely on Windows. or specific Windows software that does not have a good enough Linux alternative (paintdotnet / premiere etc.) Also weird how a lot of software that is used for modding games is not built for Linux. Always windows binaries, if not a python script. I love Linux, i want it to improve. But these are still issues that make me keep around a dual boot, or hardware exclusively for windows. I'm so tired of the dying grasp of windows...

[@packetcreeper]

Thanks for answering my questions! Instead of utilizing a VM running Linux and GPU passthrough I'm just going to install Linux on my old gaming rig to test my games. I REALLY don't want to move to Windows 11.

[@DavidAlsh]

I'm thinking about GPU passthrough on top of an ESXi or Proxmox host hypervisor as an alternative to dual/multi-boot configurations. Makes it easier to test Linux distros, set up VM with environment specific configuration (like machine learning stuff which is messy af) and makes sharing hard drive pools easier with guests. Given ESXi and Proxmox have a web UI, the host doesn't need a GPU attached so it's fine enough to detatch/attach the GPU between guests as needed - at least in theory lol. I suppose it's difficult in practice because you probably need another computer to administer the host and boot the guests 🤷

[@MichaelNROH]

That's a proper use case for GPU Passthrough and how it's meant to be used. To accelerate VMs

[@jonathandawson3091]

I'm amazed how dense this video is in information, even in terms of screenshots that it casually drops for just 1 second! For example, I learned through the PCI passthrough screen how I can pass my GPU through in QEMU. Or, the Valorant ban message which is super interesting to see out of curiosity. Very cool.

[@phantomforcesisdumbgame6964]

youre an ai

[@jonathandawson3091]

@@phantomforcesisdumbgame6964 May be I am!

[@MrVampify]

I mainly game on my steamdeck now. I have what used to be my main PC as a dedicated VR/games server that I steamlink to whenever I want to play a game that needs a windows install due to DRM or anti-cheat. Now I daily drive my nixos laptop, game on steamdeck, and have my windows PC I remote to whenever I need windows. It's pretty much exclusively a VR machine.

[@chaosmaou]

There are binaries for Easy Anti Cheat for Linux. Some games like Squad properly implement the functionality and fully work in Linux, but some developers sadly choose the not support Linux even though it can be done.

[@MichaelNROH]

Yes

[@sorceresssgarden2172]

Single GPU passtrough on proxmox is quite easy, in the VM settings just set display to Standard VGA (std) and pass trough the gpu. Setup: AMD 5900X, MSI B550 Pro (the newer one has a proper iommu group on the first PCIe), MSI RTX 3050

[@MichaelNROH]

From a technical side it is yeah. Sometimes you have to isolate the GPU or unload the drivers but I don't think that's even necessary most of the times. IOMMU kinda sucks on a second or third PCIe slots though. At least the native detection

[@RealJonzuk]

can you add me on signal and help me with the gpu passthrough im on nixos using RX 6800 my signal i can comment again if you can help me i like gpu passthrough since i never want to run windows on my pc i dont trust microsoft to not fry my hardware

[@sorceresssgarden2172]

@@MichaelNROH Havent had any issues yet but i also avoid games with anticheat for the reasons mentionted in the video. Whole idea was inspired by your videos btw :)

[@nocodenoblunder6672]

@@RealJonzukthey are not frying you hardware. But they will spy on you.

[@tekdragon]

I wish you weren't so correct about all this, but of course you are. GPU passthrough gets us really really close, unless anti-cheat is involved and then it's "game over", no pun intended. At this point, i truly believe Microsoft would be in big trouble if all the anti-cheat companies ported their stuff to linux and game devs turned it on. It's really the final barrier. I suppose if money were no object, the "solution" is to have two seperate rigs, but not possible for many of us. Video was great though and all excellent points you bring up.

[@gorrumKnight]

I have a dual GPU system, so I just pass my bigger GPU in and for WINE I just specify the beefy boi.

[@TheDeveloper-s8l]

I use single GPU-Passthrough on my (Ubuntu) server and not on my desktop PC, since like you said, it makes the system pretty unstable (especially if a desktop needs to run on it). I use it for running a Windows VM for gaming (but only if I really don't get it running on Linux) or in case I find an application, that doesn't run on Linux (which is very unlikely). And the other thing I use it for is an AI VM, because I messed up the NVidia drivers with CUDA so often, that I don't want to set it up on the host. The only problem I have is the idle power draw of my GPU in the server, when it has no driver associated (the server is not only used for VMs), which is around 50W (instead of the 8-12W in idle with the driver). As GPU I use an RTX 3060 which was left over after I "upgraded" to an RX 6750XT in my main system.

[@davguev]

My biggest gripe with GPU passthrough is having to give up my whole GPU to the VM. If I wanna play a native game on Linux, nope, gotta disable passthrough and restart. If I got a monitor connected to the discrete GPU (usually laptops are like this), nope, the monitor is dead for Linux. I hope that VirGL is finished someday soon for Windows guests. I'd be able to play some old online games, at least.

[@stoino1848]

Great video! In the beginning of my Linux Gaming journey I was also tempted to pass through a GPU to a win vm. In the end - at least back then - it was not worth my effort. Luckily for me, the games I play dont have kernel level anti cheat. On the anti cheat topic: there was a recent linux podcast with GloriousEggroll and they claimed overall tempering with anti cheat on linux is probably even harder due to the details in wine itself. I hope kernel level anti cheat will die soon and be replaced by AI. It should be doable to train and AI to detect cheating, even on server-side.

[@MichaelNROH]

I'm not sure if AI is the solution here as it can be heavily influenced by cheat makers (at least if some data is being pulled online). It's AI against AI whereas one side could potentially influence the other side at some point

[@stoino1848]

@@MichaelNROH training need to be done by the game dev of course. So the data set would be curated. I agree, if it is only being trained on live data it would we easy to manipulate. But moving it to the server side is imo the way to go. Wasn't it MSI who showed this enhanced monitor which can analyze the screen and display arrows towards enemies locations (for Dota or lol) ?

[@skelebro9999]

As someone who plays a few games with kernel level anti-cheat, it's not that big of a deal for me. I have Windows dual booted with Arch (by the way) and it's kinda nice having a separate gaming and production system for about an year and it works fine without major issues. It's a little less secure than using a VM but it just works and that's what matters to me.

[@lightshark8562]

Can you do a updated Guide for Dual Booting with Windows 11 (and all the things convigured you need for VANGUARD and other Anticheat - like secure boot) and Linux (e.g. Fedora 40). And some safe practices (like using 2 drives, or other things I don't know of) so Linux or Windows cannot/won't kill each other with every update?

[@cameronbosch1213]

Don't play that game. It is a rootkit trojan.

[@lightshark8562]

@@cameronbosch1213 Well I don't, but I have some friends that play League of Legends and maybe there are some of us out there kept on Windows only as they don't know how to properly dual boot (like me I do not trust my knowledge enough to dual boot with tpm etc. and stay Windows only for now on my gaming system)

[@fabricio4794]

​@@cameronbosch1213All Closed Sofweare Games are Malware

[@TrueGamerX14]

I had this exact issue for a while now D: this is the only reason I cannot daily drive Linux. I play too many multiplayer games with anti-cheats. I wanna try something else; run Linux on a VM within Windows but Wayland stuff were a nightmare under VMware or VirtualBox. Two computer solution is all I have for now heh

[@nadtz]

Different reasons for me but this is what I did as well. Got a mini pc and run windows on that, main machine runs Pop Os. Already had a spare monitor so all in it was about $300 for the mini which isn't terrible.

[@malkogindrat]

Thanks for discussing this topic. Passthrough a graphic card for me is like inception. Good for PCI, HD and USB. I'm too picky on performance for gaming. A real nerd has every system possible. The best solution I have at the moment is dual boot win/arch on my main pc (gaming/excel/photoshop with windows, the rest coding/tweaking with linux), the others laptops, surfaces, nuc, servers, pi each have their own OS depending on the application needed. No need to be stubborn on one system.

[@mexicanhalloween]

I tried this a couple years ago when the 5700G came out. I had a Windows VM with a dedicated SSD and 3070 passed through, but I was only getting maybe 60% of bare metal performance after a couple months of trying to refine the performance. Proton made this completely unnecessary as I was able to get 90%+ of bare metal performance and it has only gotten better in the past couple years, to the point where it's mostly negligible, so I haven't used Windows since.

[@RaveYoda]

I've been using GPU passthrough to do things like playing and making mods for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (Classic). But, the game now plays pretty well on Linux and Steam without. And many games I play just work on Linux now so haven't used it as much. The mod tools though do pose some issues still.

[@MichaelNROH]

What I have seen from other's that use mod launchers is, that you often need to adjust the case sensitivity setting as many mods like to name the "same" directories with lower or upper letters.

[@majoraslayer64]

I'd like to do the opposite of the usual setup; keep my GPU connected to Linux, but pass through my CPU's integrated graphics to a VM. I generally don't use the iGPU otherwise, so it stays disabled in my BIOS (until I enabled it for this project). After enabling it, I do see a device ID and address for it, but I'm not having much luck getting it attached to the VFIO driver so far. This may be a strange use case, but I have a dual boot setup for gaming, and would just like to build a small Windows VM to use a few simple applications that don't require a powerful dedicated GPU (Adobe Fireworks, mainly) but could benefit from some kind of hardware support. I kinda want to use Windows 7 for this VM, but the virtual display lacks the proper 3D acceleration to support Aero. Aero is my favorite part about Windows 7.....so, I'd like to give it just that little extra sexiness by feeding through my unused iGPU.

[@semsontse9513]

I am happy for giving up direct GPU pass through and go with GPU virtualization. I am not a serious gamer, just occasionally play emulation games; some uses of VM remote control via hevc streaming. GPU virtualization is perfect solution for me.

[@donoteatmikezila]

I've given up on dual-boot and vfio. It's just a headache and isn't worth it. I now just have a gaming PC running windows that I play games natively on, and a cheap thinkcentre PC that I use as my main desktop with Linux on it. All of the hardware is intel and well-supported and there's no drama at all. I use sunshine+moonlight to stream games to my main desktop, and my gaming PC more or less acts like a game server. I get native, fully-supported gaming, a linux-only computer to use for everything else, and there's zero bodges involved.

[@MichaelNROH]

I thought of doing the same with Sunlight for a while, but decided to use better use a second PC as a powerful homeserver instead. Especially since more and more games start blocking virtual outputs or inputs like a remote keyboard

[@donoteatmikezila]

@@MichaelNROH I haven't had any games refuse to work over sunshine+moonlight, I'm not surprised that it's starting. I don't play many games that have intense anti-cheat though.

[@JellyOsaurus]

actually, gpu passthrough is worth it for me, because in the rare instance, its for virtual reality as those games dont really use anti cheat and vr on linux is terrible

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

I haven't checked for any performance differences, but ALVR + SteamVR works really smoothly for me.

[@vladislavkaras491]

Thanks for the video!

[@alexgghlebg5375]

On the one hand, I think that GPU Passthrough can be used for gaming, although it depends on the game. On the other hand, GPU Passthrough is "easy" once you understand how it works in detail. Here's a tutorial to set up an efficient GPU Passthrough: To set up GPU Passthrough with Nvidia or AMD, you need to disable the Nvidia driver on the GPU and enable VFIO-PCI (or something similarly named). This way, no driver from AMD or Nvidia can interfere with your GPU. It also means that you can't use this GPU for gaming or video output. In my case, my setup is quite powerful. However, if you try this with low RAM quality and quantity, or a slow CPU, I don't recommend it at all. A lot of workarounds are required to achieve this. Here are my specifications: - Ryzen 5 5500 - 32 GB RAM - 2.5 TB disk total (one disk is for Windows 10) - GTX 1650 (my video output) - AMD RX 6600 (my GPU that I assign to my VM) - A motherboard with an IOMMU group that I specifically chose when I was buying it(I forgot the fullname) If you want to get better latency for the display than what KVM gives by default, use Looking Glass. Note that having 2 GPUs makes the process much easier, and ensure that IOMMU is usable to implement GPU Passthrough.

[@grizzlyindustries7593]

I think one of the greatest investments for people not essentially wanting to "test" a VM of Windows. But "needing" a Windows OS to run certain programs and not to "test" a Window's VM. Then I really would invest in another SSD and storage drives dedicated for there Windows NTFS partition as boot and the rest of there Window's partitions being exFAT cause exFAT can work with most of Android OSs as well. It is just an easier way to run these. I don't even run dual boot on one drive anymore. I just used another drive for my seperate OSs. I did this on a Thinkpad T470 before I gave it to my brother who uses it. And even now, I just use one desktop unit for Linux. And one desktop unit for Windows. Seperate drive. Seperate units. Seperate functions. Two awesome tools I use. I agree with you, Michael Horn. Like these videos on these topics. Funny enough. Learned from my teacher years ago. "VMs are fun to test with. Not fun to use when necessary." This was when asked by a student who just asked why we don't always just use a VM. Smart guy. Worked with ONI and used to live in subsmarines as the main tech guy. Wasn't in the navy, so I have no idea his rank or specific OS. But he is still well respected and liked by everyone. So, I definitely know he did better than me.

[@rag3z706]

I have been using a VM with single GPU passthrough for years now, and yeah it kinda sucks. I used to be able to play games like Rainbow 6, but one day battleye updated, and now it detects my vm. Anti-cheat developers actively go after VM users, and I have given up the cat and mouse game. I still refuse to use windows natively, so the only option really is to just give those games up. All I use my VM for is VR, which works perfectly fine with oculus link. Nvidia GPUs have always been more of a pain to passthrough, but adding a few extra lines in the vm config along with patching the rom, and its the same experience as AMD.

[@johnbell1810]

Time to blacklist games the don't support VM

[@onegabriel5823]

If you happen to have 2 GPUs it's still nice to have a VM with one of those passed through to have access to Windows only programs with properly working GPU acceleration.

[@FengLengshun]

IMHO just use Steam/Heroic/Bottles/Lutris/Wine for most stuff, then use VM when not needing performance, but if you absolutely need GPU or compatibility then dual-boot

[@bar7381]

GPU Passthrough is not just for gaming

[@gorlix]

@@bar7381 i tried to passthrough a gpu and it felt horrible, i dont know if what i did was wrong somewhere but im used to 144 hz refresh rate and when i saw that the display hasnt changed a bit i was disappointed. totally unplayable, please if someone reads this and knows what's up let me know. i can't find info about this problem

[@michaelcarrier103]

Please elaborate

[@gorlix]

@@michaelcarrier103 gpu passthrough is for everything that needs actual GPU, maybe you need windows app that works with nvidia cuda cores... or just anything really maybe editing software, I'm not sure too since i only used it for gaming

[@gerarderloper]

Yeah I have a VM 4090 with passthrough atm but I am waiting the day Wayland gets better and HDR+DLSS comes to linux (ALL OF IT, not fragmented broken parts)

[@user-bx7ll3xp3n]

i clicked on the video because i was curious to listen to ur points but u gotta realize that not anybody does gpu passthrough to play videogames, me personally i use gpu passthrough to run windows only applications (that dont work on wine ofc) that i need for work while having bare metal performance and without installing windows natively on my ssd

[@vanodon2257]

VMs are the only way I can play tarkov, siege, and league. Yes its like installing gentoo level of config for hardening a VM for games to actually work. But its better than running Windows on bare metal. Is it worth the time investment... Well....

[@Reichstaubenminister]

Is there a specific guide you followed or just trial and error? I tried many times to fully hide the VM, but there was always something that didn't work.

[@vanodon2257]

@@Reichstaubenminister Asked around Security research communtiy. Said i was researching ransomware that kept detecting it was in a VM. The CPU behavior is the main difficulty hiding the VM.

[@GRAYgauss]

As someone who has been running my windows VM with passthrough for gaming for the last year...you underestimate the utility and convenience, also the performance. I get better performance out of passthrough and pinned cpus than native windows. Also just great to use one workstation as two separate machines, not having to ever reboot your hypervisor. I'm at like 288 days. Anti cheat is meaningless to me though. Also shutoff your windows VM to reuse your GPU for other containers or whatever simply.

[@the_real_isco2146]

So let's say I want to try a linux distro on a VM but can't use GPU passthrough because I got a single GPU setup, is there a way to know how the OS will actually run on my pc ? Or are there an alternatives that I don't know about ?

[@christopheriman4921]

Most linux distros have a live cd installer where you can try out the OS before install and that would probably be a better indicator of performance than a VM anyway

[@MichaelNROH]

@christopheriman4921True, but performance might not be optimal. Especially when you want to try recent gaming related stuff that want an SSD. I would suggest a whole external harddrive with USB 4 or 3.2, so that you get at least some performance for dynamic loading.

[@the_real_isco2146]

@@MichaelNROH @christopheriman4921 Thanks you for your replies guys I guess I will try out those things and see how that turn out

[@t0uchme343]

My issue was less anticheat blocking me (I don't play any of those games) and more I couldn't get my ideal set up to work. I wanted to use my ryzen's igpu for display and my nvidia card for gaming, which I wanted to toss around from one OS to another. Sounds simple, right? Well. The nvidia driver would hook onto a module which was also hooked up with the igpu and, long story short, I kept looping myself back to single gpu passthrough basically, so I gave up.

[@poligarpi]

I used to use single GPU pass-through to play a couple of games in windows, Valorant and Halo Infinite, Halo Infinite started working fine on linux and then Vanguard started requiring more and more tinkering to work I had to rebuild the VM every week with different parameters, different modifications to Windows, until 2 and 1/5 years ago I just stopped caring about it and deleted the Windows VM, it's not worth your time. And no, I don't like dual boot, so no more windows in my life.

[@fabricio4794]

Did you Installed AMD GPU pró Driver? Arch linix has this driver...

[@rishipopat6708]

Honestly Linux has come a very long way in gaming and meeting the needs of the average user. I yearn for the day i can use adobe apps in my fedora install and get rid of Microsoft's ad machine once and for all

[@tedzards509]

Sadly Adobe thinks that Linux users have the wrong mindset for their products.

[@NeilHaran]

Have you ever had GPU passthrough, using say virt-manager KVM/Qemu work even 50% of native performance? I've never had any such luck.

[@MichaelNROH]

When passing your GPU through, then you might run into other bottlenecks like CPU, RAM, etc. Modern Hardware has Virtualization capabilities, but it's nowhere near Enterprise level which handles split ressources better on that level. Some optimizations you can make is to pass along some more data like not obscurring your CPU model by pressing the button "Copy host CPU configuration" and so on.

[@evrypixelcounts]

I only use gpu passthrough for a windows music production VM. That's it. Never really considered gaming on it, too much of a hassle really.

[@murilomm192]

yeah, at that point it's easier to just dual boot

[@Dizzydre21]

You don't need 2 GPUs to run proxmox. Do the first setup with your GPU, and then everything else through the web GUI or SSH.

[@heinrichagrippa5681]

Back when I first heard about the concept of VFIO, it would have had some legitimate use-cases in the pursuit of still being able to play games while remaining booted into Linux. However, now that it's matured a bit and is somewhat more accessible, it's ironically lost much of its original appeal, as in that same span of time, the problem of gaming on Linux has already been 95% "solved". The original fantasy of being able to use Linux as your daily driver and pop into a Windows VM to play games is now mostly irrelevant, as you can now play nearly everything on Linux as seamlessly as if you were playing it on Windows - often _better_ even. Even for the games that _can_ run under Linux, but are a massive pain in the ass to get working properly, whatever number of hoops you need to jump through is still almost guaranteed to be less arduous than setting up an full-featured, optimized VM with GPU-passthrough... which is exactly why I did it anyway. It's no longer about practicality. Getting a 99.5%-indistinguishable-from-bare-metal Windows VM running _is_ the game. So, with an aging spare GPU pulled out of retirement and an extra SSD that was lying around, I made it happen, and am now writing this comment from my new pet Win11 VM. Now, at the press of a button, either one or both of my monitors can flip their output from one OS to the other. It's pretty cool and really does feel like I now have two entire _real_ PCs running on one physical machine. What am I going to use it for in the long run? I don't really know yet. My Linux host has its own much, _much_ more powerful primary GPU and is far better equipped for gaming. So this VM with the 12-year-old secondary GPU it's been given is not going to be "the gaming VM" that so many seem to strive for. I'm sure I'll find ways to have fun with it though.

[@jamesrodriguez8899]

Might get hate for this but single GPU passthrough is a fool's errand, as it's no different than dual booting except its more prone to breaking more and just complicates things. I have a dual GPU set up as I like to use my desktop linux and windows at the same time, but even then I've been booting into my windows drive bare metal more often recently.

[@MichaelNROH]

The biggest advantage to Virtualization is, that you can use Linux and Windows at the same time. It's like running a Browser or something like Discord on Linux, while Gaming on Windows on the same machine. That's something that Dual Boot cannot do unfortunately, so you have to install programs twice.

[@nocodenoblunder6672]

@@MichaelNROHthat makes no sense. Single gpu passthrough means your host is not functional while the gpu is captured by the vm. At this point you might as well use a Dual boot

[@loiphin]

I think it’s definitely worth doing gpu pass through. When you get it right it’s very very satisfying, and you learn a lot . So don’t be scared to try

[@Prophet6000]

This was a good video. The only thing I have to use Windows for is my capture card.

[@MichaelNROH]

Oh boy that's a bummer. I also had this issue with the Cam Link Pro. Got rid of it asap

[@ralph4370]

You can get away with OBS and USB HDMI capture device works for me.

[@worldquestioneer1533]

A permanent, irreversible ban seems like a harsh and extreme punishment for running Valorant/Vanguard in a virtual machine. Running Vanguard/Valorant or Destiny 2 in Wine, Proton, or a virtual machine cannot POSSIBLY be as bad as actual cheating! I’m sure that many of the people who try running those games on Linux with Wine or Proton or in a virtual machine do so with good intentions and have absolutely NO plans to EVER cheat!

[@johnbell1810]

And it doesn't prevent cheating either. Not hard to have a display and usb from a windows machine piped into another machine with AI that can "assist" game player :D

[@qwerty-password]

Not a gamer, so my needs are different. I use GPU passthrough for things that are difficult to do in linux like davinci resolve or impossible to do in linux like AutoCAD. my base nixOS install has barely anything on it other than virt-manager and I boot it just to get into either GPU passed through Windows or Linux VMs. This way rollbacks are easy to do from VM snapshots, my host system is more secure, and i dont have a laggy VNC/spice experience. Also keeps the host clean. nix btw

[@nocodenoblunder6672]

Are multiple gpus needed for such a setup?

[@johnbell1810]

Davinci Resolve should be available for Linux

[@qwerty-password]

@@johnbell1810 its available for fedora if i remember correctly. I'm on NixOS, that's why i said difficult to do, not impossible to do. it's much more worth it to pass through a GPU that I can do more with than debugging one specific problem for one solution to me

[@spiritmacardi9300]

I don't like online games, so Linux is perfect to me.

[@asunavk69]

Yeah this is a video addressing anti-cheat problems, i do play some online games with anti-cheat like genshin, and other example cs2, but i am part of the audience that does not care about gpu-passthrough for games but for work, therefore i'd wish we had access to SR-IOV on AMD and NVIDIA for that, in my case i require some gpu functionality not all, and unfornatly the solutions on vbox and vmware not that great too.. But cool tech nontheless i just enjoy doing these configs and exploring about libvirt, qemu, etc, its imo one of if not the most impressive piece of software on linux imo.

[@uxiii9537]

I really wanted to play wuthering waves on my linuz machine via lutris. Tried installing it only to be disappointed after looking up that the game with no competetice elements whatsoever requires a kernel level anti cheat. I mean even if i were to modify the memory of the game most of the things should be eaisly noticed by the server. The only things i could possibly do are modifying movement speeds and other stuff.

[@denji-0]

Hi, first off your videos have been very informative to me, being a complete newbie in this whole penguin space and all.But i have a question i was hoping for some assistance in despite it being totally out of scope of this video..I was looking into what gpu i should get for my gaming/work rig and my options are between a 3080 Founders E or the RX 6800 XT paired with a Ryzen 7 3700x..(Not sure if its necessary to state but i will also be using hyperland as my wm) Given the whole wayland / x debacle, in your opinion what would be a better choice performance wise for native linux gaming, virtualization and cyber security focused tasks..

[@MichaelNROH]

The CPU is probably gonna be a tiny bottleneck for both GPUs, but generally speaking, it just depends on your budget and workload. If you do a lot of work with programs that use hardware acceleration, then Nvidia is the way to go. If you want a better price to performance ratio and don't care about raytracing, then AMD is better. It's a payoff between what you need it for

[@denji-0]

@@MichaelNROH Thank You for the heads up on the CPU(would a 7 5800x be better?) and for even answering my question..6800 xt it is..Once again i appreciate your content and "i will be bak🤖"

[@uxiii9537]

@@denji-0 I recommend you look at benchmarks for your usecases for the following cpus Amd 5700x Amd 5800x Amd 5700x3d Amd5800x3d The x3d versions of cpus have a generally higher ammount of L3 cache which makes them perform better in gaming. I dont know how well do they hold up in linux though. If you can afford it i would recommend the x3d versions. Once again LOOK AT BENCHMARS for YOUR USECASES. I think thats all

[@deus_nsf]

Things changed a little bit since the release of Lossless Scaling Frame Generation :D

[@anthonywalker6268]

Yeah, it completely fed up my system in a way I don't understand. What do you mean I have a different number of pcie ports. Did grub not get reset from a reinstall.

[@elalemanpaisa]

Why would any one bother to get through the pain of gpu pass through and just not install windows on a different drive soley for gaming. End of story the restart into windows is as quidk as starting a vm.. and performane hit with virrual drives or overhead is always something you dont want in gaming there is no reason for vms for gaming on Linux (only on mac because apple is the devil) Btw if you use kvm on top of a linux os you dont have a type one anymore

[@MichaelNROH]

KVM and the Linux Distro share the same kernel, so it's technically a type 1 hypervisor. It's most comparable to Hyper-V, but with a more interesting architecture.

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@MichaelNROH yes and no however proxmox adds an additional layer where I would argue it's not type one anymore. Technically it is the same like installing windows 11 Pro desktop and using hyper-v it is also interacting with kernel level virtualization. Proxmox is debian with extra packages. In fact it not only installs stock Debian first even proxmox recommends installing Debian normal and adding the repos to add the GUI if you need a custom disk layout or encryption.

[@sc0or]

I think Proxmox can map pcie device directly to a hosted OS, and so a GPU manufacturer's drivers will be used. Without all these problems with anicheats

[@MichaelNROH]

Kernel Level Anti Cheats cannot be reliably worked around. This has nothing to do with passthrough

[@sc0or]

@@MichaelNROH Hm. Is that as bad as appears? I start to understand why people complain some certain anticheats..

[@zackxcrab9557]

just pass your windows boot drive to your vm, and for those cases where vms really just don't work, you can boot windows normally

[@TheAtariSan]

Well, yes, the reason mentioned for the central server are right... but the biggest reason nowadays' microtransaction. Also, since gamespy shutdown 12 years ago, it was the reason they moved to private server since COD P2P server suck on xbox 360 if the game host disconnected.

[@pazzoeo]

In my experience it's just way easier and less time consuming to dualboot. You restart your computer in windows and play, then go back to linux

[@alkeryn1700]

you can use gpu passthrough with your host's gpu shutting down X i prefer to start a VM than to dualboot windows, because i don't want it to have root access to all my hardware.

[@pacifico4999]

I agree completely. I settled for dual boot

[@SpookySkeletonGang]

Ok I just have to say, you mention that cheat makers can utilize the Windows kernel just like Linux so it's not a concern, but these are not the same situations? You can modify the Linux kernel as much as you want and custom kernels are quite common, whereas the Windows kernel is entirely closed source. It's one of the very few advantages Windows has over linux, developers can guarantee integrity for at least that part of the system, which they can't easily do on Linux.

[@F_Around_and_find_out]

Best anti cheat is probably 100% hosting the game, or server side game, cloud gaming, whatever sticks. Except for the kernel itself, nothing resides at ring 0.

[@MichaelNROH]

Maybe but it wouldn't work well for the games since they loose everything competitive about them

[@tedzards509]

I dont play any games with anticheats so I could do all my gaming on Linux. However VR has a 100 or so ms delay on Linux. So far Ive tried Manjaro, Fedora and Nobara, both with an nvidia 1060 and an amd 6800 but the issue just persists. When playing VR games through proton things get even more weird as there are two different delays for the native SteamVR stuff and the proton game.

[@MrGamelover23]

1:56 No, this did not happen with Genshin Impact. It happened with their driver being signed into malware, but nobody who had Genshin Impact installed was actually at risk.

[@MichaelNROH]

That's not true. The Anti Cheat driver was signed, ergo can use that "certification" to change system settings as it is "allowed to". With a right signed driver, you can interact with software that trusts it, which is why it was dangerous. The problem was that the Anti Cheat could execute system functions and yes, it was being used without having the game installed, but if you have access to this module on a system in one way or another, then it is an exploit. If I install Vanguard on a system, either with Valorant or as a standalone, then it shouldn't have access to everything, which is the point.

[@MrGamelover23]

@@MichaelNROH Let me know when someone gets their system compromised just because they installed the game rather than installing malware. Only then will people actually listen to the gospel of why kernel level anticheat is bad. Nobody cares until you can actually get compromised just because you installed the game. Weirdly enough, Genshin Impact's anti-cheat no longer seems to flag Linux, which is weird because they never gave any official word on that. They just silently added Linux support without telling anyone.

[@SoulRollerFIN]

Only game I play on VM is Warzone. It's super worth it to passthrough the GPU. What's not worth it is sacrificing 200 gigs for windows + warzone install. So, if I ever need that 200 gigs back I won't hesitate to delete the POS software called windows.

[@rayjaymor8754]

I use my desktop rig for gaming and it runs Windows. My laptop is for everything else and it's running Linux.

[@whiskytangi]

I think the one thing that makes me mad is the games that refuse to work unless you own them on steam (I personally dont mind repurchasing on steam its just a hassle something) An example is for honor. Have it on ubisoft, wont allow anticheat to work Buy on steam, 3 clicks later in a ranked game. Its annoying but im just glad it still works

[@MichaelNROH]

Games that have Anti Cheat enabled on Linux, should run from any launcher tbh. The main reason is that the binaries are the same. From my experience it doesn't make a difference. Which game are we talking about here?

[@whiskytangi]

@@MichaelNROH for honor. For some reason on my fedora 40 install I couldn't get the anti cheat to initiate via bottles or lutris. Via steam was press play and call it a day

[@tohur]

If you happen to have an extra GPU around it IS SO WORTH it lmao. like wtf you have access to the apps you typically make excuses about that keep you on windows lol.. with GPU passthrough ya get the best of both worlds JUST SAYING. also you can fool the vm into "thinking" its a real machine just by turning on nested virtualization and and installing Hyper-V in the VM and that in my experience satisfies most anti-cheats as hyper-V is trusted by almost all of the anti-cheats

[@TaseenA09]

I tried this for so long before realising that this was very impractical. Having this video before would have been a life saver.

[@vyacheslav2750]

It would be great if I could run Windows in Docker and launch just a few apps. I don't need the entire Windows OS. Hmm, is it possible?

[@MichaelNROH]

If Windows were to open their kernel then yes. The problem is, that containers use the system kernel, which would mean that you need to run Windows in a subsystem like they do with Linux.

[@forrestorange]

So if my CPU says "discreet graphics card required" (Ryzen 5800X3D) like in the video and I only have one GPU, does that mean I can't passthrough my GPU to the VM?

[@MichaelNROH]

You can, but there might be a chance that the host distro crashes. It also means that you essentially loose any graphical output on your host as well, meaning that in order to go back, you need to shutdown the VM. Single GPU passthrough with shared resources is possible, but can be tricky to achieve.

[@forrestorange]

@@MichaelNROH Thanks, if I lose graphical output on Linux while using the VM, that's unacceptable :( I just want better resolution on Windows while using the VM... :/

[@nathanddrews]

As a Windows user since 3.11 (GeoDOS before that), I'm extremely close to making the switch. I hate what Windows is becoming and the constant pop-ups reminding me to upgrade to 11 aren't helping. Unfortunately I'm fully entrenched in Destiny 2 right now...

[@ArefinKarim]

Make Linux myth busted video please

[@MichaelNROH]

Mh, that might not be a bad idea

[@johnbell1810]

What myth?

[@somone799]

Someordianarygamer managed to run valo by doing nested vm and 2 lines to virt manager xml file or smth like that.

[@Soccera0]

It might just be an NVIDIA issue but I've had a seamless experience with single GPU passthrough on AMD.

[@MichaelNROH]

AMD works fine if you get it to run. From what I gather online, single GPU passthrough seems to be easier on NVIDIA though

[@blacksundarkskies]

you can do gpu pass-through with a single gpu tho is difficult

[@kurotsune77]

I mean I'm considering VM just because I don't like the Windows UI, so I could only give it one screen while the rest is still linux Besides the only reason for me having to use Windows is because Proton just straight up made driving wheels unusable after 6.8 and I love my sim driving

[@davidchuyma9783]

An can't get the option to install the Linux thing after I put the USB stick as the first boot option

[@davidchuyma9783]

when I followed ur lynx tutorial nothing changed when I did the final step for installing it and I'm not in a loop

[@lukeyisaverage]

i run windows on a seperate drive that i never have plugged in at the same time

[@mechan1sm_]

kernel anticheats are rootkits, if one knows what does it mean, he/she will never play such games

[@cameronbosch1213]

I agree with this 100%. Not to mention one of them is owned by a Chinese company!

[@rars1302]

I have no problem at all doing this

[@Korodarn]

Yeah honestly it's easier to just get a USB SSD, install windows 'to go" and drop all the games that you can't play in linux onto it.

[@Totallynotmwa]

Or dualboot windows with tweaks

[@KanaalMTS]

5:54 "mainboard" is such a German thing to say, haha

[@MichaelNROH]

It's the preferred terminology in Desktops as there is only one board built in. It's actually something that I try to work into my scripts since I don't call it that myself

[@aaronplays_]

With Nvidia working on a GeForce Now app for Steam Deck, we can safely say that Linux is definitely catching mainstream attention, slow but steady.

[@xard64]

It goes without saying that running Windows alone is not enough and the VM approach has been already plugged out for quite some time. Native Windows 10 might not be enough for long as the support runs out and consoles have been starting to ban custom controllers lately. If this trend continues you might not only need the correct hardware to run latest supported operating system but also you'd need to use only "trusted" input devices (and maybe output devices as well if the monitor makers start getting funny ideas with AI). I personally think that the "secure" client model for multiplayer on PC is a dead concept as consoles do all that much cheaper already and are still not completely cheater proof.

[@MichaelNROH]

I think that we will see a shift in gaming pretty soon. If the cheating situation isn't improved, less people are gonna stick to the games in the long run and companies need to find a new way to make them profitable. Some think that PC gaming is going die out because of cheating, but in reality, the efforts would just shift to consoles

[@xard64]

@@MichaelNROH In the late 90's cheating was technically laughable easy but never that much of a practical problem due to games allowing self hosting and communities looking after themselves. PC gaming has always been bit like Linux in a sense that let community do it's own support and things will be mostly fine. The only problem is that companies and their monetization strategies are in odds with the natural state of the PC environment.

[@SrPivete13]

Talk about Nobara linux as a Out-of-box distro for gamers and easy suport as based on Fedora please....

[@A4orce84]

So....I should dual-boot with Windows still? =)