The Ultimate System

[@ChrisTitusTech]

Website Guide: christitus.com/the-ultimate-system/ Breakdown of the video and all the video links are in the guide.

[@administrator4728]

The Ultimate System is a thin and light laptop with a massive battery, fantastic ergonomics and display, ports galore, cellular modem. Then a massively powerful server locally with RDWeb Client services enabled and Hyper-V that has full vGPU acceleration. You have all the performance, wherever you are with great usability.

[@endorphinADMIN]

i was considering a beefy workstation for a triple passthrough system: linux, windows, and hackintosh all on the same hardware. in the end, i'm not convinced it's worth it. rather build 3 systems and usb-c kvm them. nice video though.

[@ChrisTitusTech]

@@endorphinADMIN Originally, I was going to combine all my systems into that single one. (It has enough horsepower for it) However, after thinking about recording and other aspects of video production it is just best to have it segregated out for simplicity. For a 3 PC Setup, I'd recommend using Input-Leap with 3 Monitors. That way you can have all 3 systems displayed at the same time and easily move between them all.

[@sparkspark-tn6sc]

​@@ChrisTitusTechCan we use IGPU (for Linux)and single pcie graphics card (for windows)for pass through ? Is it possible or not ?

[@high-captain-BaLrog]

love the people who share this philosophy of efficiency

[@TulioPontacoloni]

Love love love this community. Huge kudos to anyone willing to extend the ladder to us plebs trying to learn. Even old bastards like myself. When I'm lacking tools and information this is one of the spots I hit first to see if it has already been done because you make it "frictionless" 😉 to learn. Thank you for your service.

[@jeffgreene4449]

Now I know what I want for Christmas. Hope to see you in Austin Apr 12th & 13th at Texas Linux Fest 2024. Please come. You're The Man.

[@redeyepete]

I have an old Dell M6600 with 3 hard drives, Archlinux, Windows11, Mint. F12 on boot to choose which drive I want, works for me, I can access/share files on the other drives, but not boot into.If I was to have full rig, which I have in the loft, I would be removed for the sofa and tv, I can multitask between OS and still watch tv with the LHSM.(Long Haired Sergeant Major)Love all Chris's content just a major leap forward in being able to do more on windows and Linux.Fantastic work by Chris, those easy Arch installs are incredible.Not to mention the Windows Utility, and Linux Utility.Amazing how you developed it all, with all the other developers, brilliant work.Makes my brain explode when I see how you do all your scripting.Sheer genius. Thanks for all your work.

[@sprinklednights]

Awesome video! I can relate so much on it because I've been doing a very similar thing when I build my new PC, and I'm currently tweaking a lot of things to get the software side done, and so I love how we're all just trying to get the most out of the technologies we have and just build something you want to be in for hours.

[@austinm8823]

I've honestly come to enjoy the times that I run into bugs or issues with Arch and Wayland. I work IT, and I'm trying to transition into the Software Dev space, and having to deal with a lot of what comes up in the bleeding edge makes it easier for me when I'm learning new concepts in code. It's definitely helped me with debugging which is probably the best skill you can have as a Dev.

[@sprayzmadafaka4079]

I'm looking forward to your development of the utility program.

[@beinteractivebrits4540]

Chris Titus is the Ultimate PC guy! Keep up the excellent work I've been subscribed for years now.

[@gordonpearce]

Tried this sort of project many times. They always work great at the start and then break with updates. These days I run a fully loaded Mac Mini with 3 4K monitors for my workstation and RDP / SSH to various Windows and Linux VDIs both on Proxmox and bare metal.

[@HikariKnight]

7 years later and you replicated my setup but with more modern hardware. :P And yeah, passthrough is a PITA to setup if you have no idea what you are doing, especially if you have incompatible hardware. Whole point with quickpassthrough is to remove the complexity and instead focus on "hey this is what you need, this is what you can expect, this might still not work. So do you still want to do this?" and at least have the heavy lifting done for you. I also agree, single gpu passthrough is not worth it except for some extremely niche uses (like if you do a lot of hardware testing like i do). Plus the process is completely different and incompatible with gpu passthrough with 2 gpus. Like seriously just get bigger SSDs and dual boot at that point.

[@SandipanMajhi-o9s]

The ultimate system is where you don't distro hop anymore and do actual work. For me it is Fedora Cinnamon. I have been using it for two years and I have been peacefully been able to do everything in college.

[@mkonji8522]

Thanks for still being pro X. Been using i3 for around 14 years or so and it's always just worked for me with no weirdness.

[@chell6022]

God bless you, Chris.

[@mustangjay559]

100% agree on using what’s most efficient. I forced use of hyperland for a while and loved it, but the lack of support for 3D accelerated apps was a deal breaker.

[@brunoguerra6085]

standing by for the DWM TItus V1.0 ....thanks for the great video.

[@C0smicZ3nsei]

Love your videos the info that i am getting is mind blowing and so much interesting. Hope one day i get to your level of knowledge on how to do these things and incorporate in my day to day life schedules.

[@joemama7388]

I've been running a similar same setup for almost a year now, its great!

[@enbirch]

Another budget GPU option is Intels ARC line, Linux Kernel 6.2+ HWE includes drivers for it now. It’s a beast of an encoder for those with Plex setups.

[@TheHighpotinuse]

We have arrived at the future. Everything, running all the time, everywhere...You just read that in Carl Sagan's voice.

[@nicolaskeith8945]

so you're back on Thorium?

[@wanggaard]

Awesome! I have yet to make a PCI passthrough build, but I've always thought it was fascinating. I need to look over that guide.

[@RumenBlack]

Interesting to hear about input-leap, I used barrier in the past but it looks like that is now unmaintained. Good to see some of the surviving maintainers are working on input-leap. Barrier was always a really good option to control multiple PCs on the same desk.

[@oreoman7319]

I would jump to Linux in a second, but I like doing sim racing, and all the apps and drivers sadly mostly only work on Windows, and they are quite finicky too. Adding a virtualization layer would probably break a lot of stuff.

[@SuperNoticer]

o7 sim racers

[@rbrock00]

OK, Chris, since you asked, My ideal system would be one which is bullet-proof, never breaks down (I'm going thru hell right now with my OS). It should also be something which is attractive (OK, I know that the DE), and it should be something where every app is completely intuitive. Oh yes, it should recognize peripheral devices automatically. Personal computers have been around now for almost 45 years. By this time, these things should be the base line.

[@repairman2be250]

What works for me (still) is X99, E5-2680 v4, 128GB DDR4 RAM, 1x onboard video - 24" Dell Monitor, 1x AMD RX-580 - 28" Samsung monitor dedicated to Windows 10, 1x Nvidia Quadro P2000 - 28" Samsung - whatever other OS I want to play with, 1 SATA for OS - Proxmox, 1 NVME for virtual machines. Use Proxmox with Mate desktop installed. Barrier for keyboard and mouse in virtual machines.

[@johnmitchell9705]

Two mini ITX systems are almost as compact as one ATX mid tower. They work great!

[@avalagum7957]

2 mini pcs are almost as compact as 1 mini ITX 🙂

[@johnmitchell9705]

@@avalagum7957 ITX can Support füll Video cards though

[@avidwriter2882]

Linux Mint for me is pretty darn close. Lack of HDR is probably all I'm missing atm? Since I moved my PC gaming to my Steam Deck I'm much happier just having a smaller non-GPU Mini.

[@christopherneufelt8971]

I know what could be my ultimate system: employing Chris Titus to buld a computer for heavy and reliable duty. @Chris: Is it possible to pubish a document with subject titles for computer administration? The subjects can then be found. Thanks in any case for the great videos.

[@alexcolclough3001]

I have missed you, Chris! I had a similar config and may end up going back to it with looking glass. ended up just using a separate disk for windows.

[@DustinDeus]

I think the ultimate system is defined by four key aspects: compatibility, reliability, performance, and ecosystem. You described a toy project, which is fine, but I need a working machine I can rely on. I was a heavy Linux (PopOS) user but moved to MacOS due to lack of support for software, and being a niche user for enterprise software or support in general. Not to forget, it is impossible to find a laptop with excellent battery and official linux support.

[@marksulloway5669]

Thank you for this. My ultimate SFF system: Dual boot Win 11 & MX Linux AHS (with VM's) on B550 ITX MB with 2.5 Gig ethernet, Ryzen 9 5950X, 2 gen 4 - 2TB Nvme drives, 64GB RAM, RTX 3060Ti GPU (Plan to switch to RTX A4000 Ada) in a 10 liter custom prototype case that fits 135mm tall CPU air cooler. No gaming, general use & digital photo processing. Low power draw / heat generation & no excessive fan noise. Will stay with dual boot for Windows per your suggestions.

[@jerre438]

If you like DWM, maybe give DWL a try? It's not quite on the same level as DWM is in terms of "maturity" I'd say, but it works really well once configured properly. Also, I believe it is even more minimal in terms of features it ships with, like not providing a status bar by default because there's a plethora of bars you can use on Wayland anyways.

[@griffin1366]

Low noise systems are always underrated. Undervolting a 13700k and I can keep CPU fans (D15) at 600 RPM. Granted I also have a 180W power limit set.

[@PantsManUK]

Input Leap - I have so much hope for this project! I'm in the same boat (similar may be a better word) - I have two daily systems, one Windows, the other Linux and I don't want to have two mice and keyboards. My preferred distro is (now) KDE Neon which I run everywhere except for this one Linux system, because I have to have Barrier on both so I don't have to have dual mouse/keyboard... Can't wait for input-leap to "release" so I can have Barrier in Windows and IL in KDE Neon and stuff just works.

[@asan1050]

Thanks for posting this video.

[@RaineWilder]

I get the premise and it’s a great video, but would you ever consider doing a review of what laptops are best suited for similar type of usage? For a software developer on the go it’s important to be mobile, always connected (data sim), and being able to use 4K external screens whenever you have access to one. Appreciate the effort and always looking forward to your videos.

[@plica06]

You don't need a lot of power or to spend a lot of money. I have a small 2018 Thinkpad T480 running Manjaro bare metal and I use Virtualbox to run Windows 10 whenever I need Windows applications. Everything is smooth. At home I have Win 10 on one monitor and Linux on another. Granted I don't run lots of cpu intensive things. But this might be a quick and easy solution for your on-the-go use case.

[@AbhipolV]

Love your philosophy on the ultimate system, Chris! I wonder if you have the same thoughts about your smartphone? Given the restrictions on mobile platforms nowadays, I find it hard to create an environment on my phone that is frictionless and tailored to my needs. I'd be really interested to hear your approach to create the ultimate system for your phone.

[@QuestionTheTruth]

Personally I tried to have it like the "Ultimate System", but the passthrough problems I got irritated me so much that I eventually just changed the platform, and got unRaid, payed for basic and set up a temporary test environment that I have been using for about 430 days now. It works really nice and I have dockers & NAS built into the system which makes it easy to share stuff between the systems. Rocking a bunch of Linux and Windows VM's for different purposes, and I can test some distro's without thinking twice about anything. The only problem I seem to have atm is that the AMD 7900X iGPU is passed through, but will not give out any video, but I might have a fix for that with a github vBIOS. I can also have my bot vm going 24/7 without any reboots interfering. I'm quite happy about it all, a bit irritated though that unRaid ships their host system with kernel 6.1.x instead of something newer. I would love it having another version that pushes the boundaries a bit.

[@MikePiligrim]

I wonder, is it possible to share the clipboard between two systems? PS and by the way, thank you a lot for all your videos, they are incredibly inspiring!

[@sher1x165]

You could write a plugin for Hyprland on any programming language you want.

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

The only issue I have with dual booting isis that I want to be able to access the system remotely. But I think remote access would have to be set up individually on each OS, leaving no way to remotely switch OS’s and retain a remote connection.

[@InvictraX]

Wait but isn't this the standard practice in the server world. I mean people remote into the BIOS and install an Operating system remotely. They use the same thing if they want to dual boot.

[@fefgam]

hey Titus please make a video on "how to turn off the 2 fingers swipe back and foward on chrome" I really cant find a solution anywhere.

[@jeinnerabdel]

Not sure if it's me but there's a delay between the audio and the video, pretty small but noticeable

[@msolace580]

i stopped trying to force linux, and just use windows with wsl. does everything i need without the extra hassles. sure its maybe better to passthrough vm it out. but this just works.

[@systemmeltdown5601]

Some time ago I tried to switch from Windows to Linux for my daily driver but there are so many possibilities when it comes to the GUI. I looked up different examples to get an idea of the possibilities and also tried a bunch of them but it got me a bit overwhelmed. Guess I'm stuck to Windows for now, which I don't mind since I atleast tried it and got some knowledge about Arch, KVM and PCI passthrough out of it.

[@thej3799]

I wish I had a modern PC that could do this well. I've been trying to do this on and off since they invented VMware a long time ago. But I haven't been able to afford anything new in many many years. My system only has 8gb of ram and I can only run VMware workstation 9 as the latest version. So I don't use anything other than Linux in a vm. Sometimes a stripped down windows server. Virtualization even on old systems like this is still very useful because it takes many different threads that run on an operating system and squishes it down to a single thread. It makes multitasking a lot easier when you only have two or four cores total

[@GuyWhoChad]

not to be that guy, but as classic titus guy, i think in the next week the ultimate system will be something else :)

[@jsnjyn]

I’ve used gpu-passthrough-manager from the AUR (referenced in the passthrough article on the Arch wiki) and it worked well too.

[@peterjansen4826]

Chris, you didn't motivate why you prefer Intel over AMD for this. The number 1 reason which I can think of: AMD had some issues with USB. Nice that you are back on dwm, it didn't take you a few years to get to the point of being able to use it, it took you a few years to understand that dwm is easy to use. :) I love it that the 0-tag comes in so handy for you to pin Chatterino to all the workspaces. The little things which can make the difference. dwm definitely can be userfriendly for beginners, it really is just a matter of doing some proper documentation. I don't claim that it is necessarily easy to patch it for beginning users but just using it (prepatched by another user), that definitely can be userfriendly for beginners. Once the user started using dwm he can easily learn how to patch it.

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

I remember trying to do something like this when I got my system in late 2022 though doing it with an at the time brand new cpu in the 7950x and trying to do the thunderbolt 4 docking lead to me giving up and just having a windows drive instead. I can’t really do it now since I have my 1070 to my parents so they would replace the 4770k with a HDD boot drive. That they were using.

[@michaelbradley7704]

The ultimate system is a PC the wakes from a low power state and or hibernation to run any program or game without crashing. That's this system I'm using now and the only system I've owned in thirty years to work as advertised.

[@mhelmreich1]

My favourite system is the kind I can get productive in the quickest manner. For me that usually means Debian, LMDE, and I gotta say Manjaro is there also. I kinda like GhostBSD, but Linux is much less friction to implement. I have a nice FreeBSD installation unfortunately so far I have not yet been able to get everything that I use running on the BSDs.

[@xblue555]

Can you get a 7950x3d and have windows VM use the extra V-cache cores so it thinks its a 7800x3d and linux use the normal cores like its a 7700? or are we not there yet.

[@MartinErman]

Great video, thank you

[@EpickyHrac]

Ok arch but why dont use debian sid repo

[@billymania11]

Holy Cow! That is like using a steam powered pile driver to push in a tack. I admire the effort but not sure if all that complexity is necessary.

[@oDonglero]

could I get a link to that background 🙏

[@ChrisTitusTech]

github.com/christitustech/nord-background

[@drubizzy]

This is a cool project but something I wouldn't feel comfortable running. For me I prefer smaller discrete systems as the systems admin I was 20 years ago just can't operate without hardware redundancy. I love dual ITX rackmount cases for this and the Level1Techs KVMs are excellent for switching around for my workflow and having near perfect DP and HDMI signaling for higher performance monitors and TVs. Different builds for different workflows though. I also like the discrete approach as it lets me filter pieces of my hardware down the stack as I upgrade but I love being in the hardware more than the software anyway. Probably why I can't leave Debian no matter what else I try.

[@gamingandanime9000]

07:28 that is the biggest flex ever! 💯

[@thecaptainindia9790]

Nice suggestion

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video!

[@DavidLeutzinger]

With a "rolling updates system", how do you know it's a good time to update and not a bad time to update (intermediate/incomplete updates)?

[@itscoolerthatway]

Are you able to do wobbly windows on the tiling windows?

[@dionnix]

You do the ultimate system every 2 weeks 😂 (I do too, I update my config repo a lot)

[@winsucker7755]

IMPOSIBLE! If you have a lot of money, you can get an ultimate system :O! Who would have thought.

[@mohit8335]

You added visual C++ runtimes but you forgot to add DIRECTX install in your custom utility. How can it be possible?

[@OneEyeGamer]

How do I run a virtual machine????

[@tristen_grant]

There are lots of video on KZbin explaning how. Do some research.

[@redam.4943]

Chris there's some options and installs on winutil that don't work, the Reddit is not active. Did the work on it stop?

[@TheArakan94]

Why not nixOs for the base system?

[@skrillzplayz9092]

Hi Chris. I really want to have a seamless dual boot/OS experience with Windows and Nobara, because I need Windows for "work" and some games (need TPM to work for Vanguard), but I want to run Linux daily for dev and because it's cool AF. However, I do not have two GPU's (well I kinda do, but it's sitting in my old gaming pc parts converted to home lab server for media encode/decode (6600 XT)), but I got a powerful gaming system; AMD 5800X3D and 7900 XTX & 32GB RAM. I am wondering if I can get a similar experience with that? Not only that, but I am very likely going to upgrade my CPU and double or quadruple my RAM once AMD's next gen comes around, so I might be holding off on actually setting this up until then. Any tips, thoughts or ideas would be super appreciated!

[@CleanCivilian]

So does this actually require dual GPU to make it work?

[@chromerims]

Can we toggle to LCARS Debian with this? 👍 Nice video. Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.

[@ChrisTitusTech]

Absolutely, LCARS is a very minimal WM and it would be very easy to swap to it from the Display Manager like SDDM.

[@chromerims]

@@ChrisTitusTech Loved your past video on it. Was half joking about this iteration. But that's so cool, sir. 👍 You're doing the galaxy a huge service.

[@rifqifeXII]

What can I do to maximize the battery life if I were to install using this guide? I'm planning to go back to linux on my laptop, and I've always been fascinated by Arch BTW

[@guthelp]

Hey Chris, love your vids. You always have some great info. I am using your window utility (donation paid) and it saves so much work. Can I ask what you use for editing and/or recording? I like how your are able to remove the background behind you and appears like you are just floating around the screen. What software you use to achieve this? Thanks.

[@JebsRahmo]

Thank you for constantly testing for the best and ultimate practices to enjoy our HW and Software to maximum extent. I have some questions regarding this setup" Does it apply for Laptop with a dedicated VGA? What would be the minimum RAM required for it? What would be the resources reserved for Windows Machine vs installing Windows? I have a Laptop P53 and I am always a windows User. But Windows is kinda a pain regarding installing packages for development or anything development. and I was wondering if I started deploy this solution, would it be the same as normally install windows while enjoying the perks of Linus? sorry for the long comment

[@bes12000]

Hyperland looks more sleek than DWM, honestly, when I watched that video you did like a year ago, was looking for an update on that, but now your on DWM, lol

[@sparkspark-tn6sc]

Can we use IGPU (for Linux)and single pcie graphics card (for windows)for pass through ?

[@roningai4791]

Would like to know this too.

[@akdisrael]

im looking also single gpu passthrough

[@kzrhridoy2953]

Hi Chris, since you have the ultimate system you don't use your Windows Utility tool anymore to tweak it?

[@surftycoon]

Do you have any issues running games on windows that have anti-cheat software?

[@Leandrocp14]

Can I install the pirated Adobe applications in a virtual machine using the same capabilities of my hardware without losing much performance?

[@TruePcKing]

i have always liked watching these ultimate system setups, and would want to do it myself, but i wonder how it will work with multi monitor. I like to have 4 monitors.

[@surenbono6063]

..what about power independence for a start...isolated solar power ,hydro ,wind ..etc

[@ammatlock]

I'd like to be able to plug my work laptop (windows) into my linux desktop and have the linux desktop pretend to be a docking station for keyboard, display, etc. so that it folds neatly into my overall experience. Imagine all your VM passthrough setup, but with a real piece of hardware on the other side. (no laggy RDP or miracast hacks)

[@ZINZIRIO]

Chris how are you? For some time now, every time I restart the PC after applying your tool I get this error 0x00007FFB88123ACA and I have to click OK for the PC to restart, do you know what could be happening?

[@IRBxTopJamaican]

So do you recommend windows 11?

[@autumnjeserich2689]

I been wanting to a build a system like this and I have a question about the cpu choice. What would be your minimum clock speed? I been looking into past gen threadripper and xeon workstation chips because I have 5 drives and want a dual gpu(one workstation and one gaming card) so I want the extra pcie lanes but not sure where clock speed becomes a worse trade off for more cores.

[@TazzSmk]

with high enough budget you can opt for more cores and then disable them in BIOS to get less cores with higher speeds, it's always a tradeoff, you should ultimately decide depending on what applications you want to run, for workstation or gaming, 6 (performance) cores should be enough, so looking at 12-16 core cpus should be best value, and if you're fine with 64 PCIe lanes (for gpus, NICs and NVMEs combined) and only quad-channel RAM, then you don't need 3400 series Xeon like Chris got imo

[@autumnjeserich2689]

I wouldn't get a high end chip I'm looking at the used market looking at platforms like first gen threadripper. For work I sometimes have to run up to 3 windows vms at once ontop of my host os which murders my 6 core consumer chip. I also compile android a lot which I know will benefit from more cores I just don't know what frequency to shoot for to keep single core performance at reasonable level.

[@TazzSmk]

@@autumnjeserich2689 I'd say anything around 3-3.2GHz should be fine for most uses, with anything higher you get much more power draw with diminishing performance boost, in my weakest VM host Proxmox build I use ancient i7-4770 and 32GB ram, and it can run multiple Windows VMs at once, with limit actually being "slow" sata ssd, not cpu or ram

[@TazzSmk]

funny coincidence for the video, I'm just configuring new HP Z4 G5 nowadays, very similar setup to yours, I wonder if you could test one specific thing - because you also have "X" Xeon model, what does Intel XTU show in your Z8 G5, and what cpu frequency allocations do you see there? because in my case, 2465X cpu cannot be overclocked, cannot reach advertised turboboost speeds, and frankly core 14+15 can go higher than 9+10, while all others cap at 3.7GHz - either HP cripples motherboards/BIOS or there's a Windows-Intel bug yet to be fixed....

[@lkzMini]

Hi Chris. I've not idea how passthrough works and why people use it (i mean, in some cases). Reading a little bit about it, i found some interesting info and i learned how to do it. But... Some requirements are weird to me i probably missunderstanded something. Why people use 2 GPU or 2 Monitors? Is it because they use the GPU for the VM and the iGPU for the host? Something similar with the monitor? Im aiming to study and work on Linux and use Windows just in rare cases. But those cases may include gaming... So, without passthrough, that gaming is awful honestly. And i for sure dont want to install all that on the Linux machine (host).

[@bigperson_dotk]

Do you ever see yourself moving to NixOS at some point in the future?

[@rsseguel]

This tool works with 24H2?

[@sleekspeed22]

@ChrisTitusTech do you have any videos on installing WSL on a non-system drive? my windows drive is too full and don't have budget to update my personal system. It's a 10 yr old 6 core with a small ssd and 2 hdd as one drive... which is where I want to install to. I salivate at the hardware you suggest but it's not in the cards now.

[@CoritGmun]

Arch you worried about Arch breaking. lol

[@metalhead2476]

What do you get for paying for the debloater? Isn't it already free?

[@Perifangs]

Do you have a video for how to setup linux through wsl efficiently? For those who don't have the large budget to make these beefy devices/high budgets but primarily work within windows?

[@mxgeller]

I’m newer to Linux, but this looks like an awesome alternative to dual booting Windows. Question: does anyone know if swapping between the Linux core and the Windows VM is supported with multiple screens/displays? If you use looking glass to switch to Windows VM, would the VM environment display across all monitors?

[@asunavk69]

Ultimate or not🙃, this is my dream setup, well software side it damm well is.

[@ronaldhofman1726]

I decided only using ready to go mini pc because there are power effciecent and for the standard stuff or Proxmox it's capable enough, it's only 22 to 25 wats instead of the 60 watts towers that i had , in these dayes with high energy prives it save money

[@rededgesol]

This will work with 6 monitors setup?

[@ChrisTitusTech]

If you have 6 monitors I'd dedicate 2 or 3 to Windows then main Linux on the others and not even bother with Looking glass. Then just use input-leap to pass over to that system. Would be a cool setup.

[@m4adz766]

What browser are you using?