u/Crastinating_Pro

Hey all,

So recently I tried out Linux and kind of wanted to stick to Linux Mint. Not only is it beginner-friendly, but I've noticed that since it's still using X11, it's so far the better distro that works with the Unity 3D game engine which is software I use extensively. Unity works pretty fine on Wayland too (tested on Fedora KDE) but there are some graphical glitches that I personally find distracting and are a problem specific to Wayland. Hopefully this changes soon since GNOME has dropped X11 and Ubuntu is the only Linux distro Unity supports so eventually they will have to make sure the engine is working well on Wayland

That being said, there are some games that I like to play with HDR, and it looks like in order to use HDR you need Wayland even if enabling HDR through gamescope. Mint does have an experimental Wayland implementation for Cinnamon but when I tried a gamescope PPA on Mint with the experimental Wayland session it didn't work. I even took a crack at building a version of gamescope from source that was known to be working with Mint 22.3 to no avail. After some research it turns out Mint's Wayland implementation hasn't fully implemented what's needed to use HDR yet and on top of that it seems no new major Mint releases are coming until the end of this year.

Before I look into another distro I wanted to ask if I'm doing something wrong or if HDR just isn't possible at the moment on Mint. If it's not possible, what would be my options for a distro that has a DE with support for both X11 and Wayland? It seems that most Distros and DEs are currently in a state where they either dropped X11 or only have X11 with experimental Wayland and not both.

At the moment it seems KDE might be my best bet if there's still a distro out there that ships it with X11 and Wayland so I can switch depending on what I'm doing. I'm not a huge fan of GNOME so I'd rather avoid it and the only other DE that I liked was Cinnamon which is a no-go now for reasons explained above.

Hey all,

Not so long ago I thought my AM4 build kicked the bucket and I upgraded to AM5 but now after some time I kind of just felt like testing the hardware again, and it looks like I can salvage enough (maybe just buy a new mobo) to have a second build to have an HTPC/ Console like setup to play games.

I have two GPUs, originally I had a 3080Ti FE, but the GPU was never really mine, and I was "keeping it warm" for a good friend of mine, basically family. This prompted me to get a GPU of my own while I was still able to get a 9070XT at MSRP and the original owner of the 3080Ti ended up not needed the GPU back (at least not yet, but I'm not going to assume it's mine to keep) so now I'm kind of unsure what GPU to put in what system assuming I do end up salvaging enough to make a second PC

AM5 Build (currently at my desk and what I use for my day to day)

• CPU: AMD 9600x
• MoBo: MSI Pro B850M A WiFi
• RAM: T Create 32GB 6000MHz CL 30
• PSU: 1000W Seasonic (overkill but in was on sale lol)

AM4 Build (this is assuming I can salvage everything I expect to be able to)

• CPU: AMD 5900XT (I might sell this and go for a lower power CPU bc this would be a mini ITX build
• MoBo: Aorus B550i pro ax (motherboard was originally having issues and starting to fail so I might replace this)
• RAM: G Skill Trident Z Neo 32GB 3600MHz CL 16
• PSU: Corsair SFX 750W

So, there's no doubt that the AM5 build is going to stay at my desk and the AM4 build is what's going to become an HTPC for gaming. I'm just not quite sure what GPU to put in what system. On my desktop I run a 3440 x 1440 ultrawide QD OLED and for my living room it's just a basic 4K TV with nothing fancy, even the refresh rate is just 60Hz. Both GPUs can do 3440x1440 fairly well and in a lot of comparisons I noticed that there isn't really much of a gap between both GPUs at 4K. Even for ray tracing the 9070XT has been fine, the main disadvantage is there's basically zero push from AMD for game devs to implement any of their Redstone tech into games.

The AM4 build, as mentioned above, will be used as a console to play games and nothing else.

In terms of my work, I don't think I do anything that really benefits from the uplift in productivity that NVIDIA provides. I do game development but since it's all real time rendering, either GPU works fine and since the 9070XT is actually pretty adequate for some Ray Tracing, it would be fine if I wanted to dabble in ray tracing, but that's highly unlikely as most of my projects revolve around AR/ VR mobile and web, so the GPU matters even less in that case since the target platform is not a PC.

The biggest benefit I see at the moment to going with the 9070XT as my HTPC GPU would be that I can put something like Bazzite's HTPC iso on it since the GPU is AMD and will play nicely with Linux. The NVIDIA GPU also works with Bazzite, but I think the HTPC version of the distro has bugs when trying to use it with NVIDIA.

Edit: Clarified that the AM4 build will be strictly used to game

Hi all,

I've owned this OLED monitor for close to three years and very recently I've been having this odd behavior where there's a visible flicker on my monitor specifically when there's motion on the screen such as videogames, videos, even moving the mouse sometimes.

I am aware that this monitor doesn't play very well with VRR and DRR and will have a flicker when either is enabled, but I've double-checked this, and they're both off. When I go to the monitor's OSD and go to the display info there's a section that says current and it displays the current resolution and refresh rate. When the screen is flickering the refresh rate is jumping all over the place and this happens when there's motion on the screen even if it's not something taxing like a YT video

Curious to know if anyone has had this issue before and what I can try to fix this. The monitor is using the same DP cable that came in the box and it's hooked up to my PC's GPU which is a Radeon 9070XT

I also ran the monitor self test to cycle through text and colors and while I was cycling through it, there was no flickering but there was also no motion on the screen which is usually what triggers the flickering

Hello all,

I've been looking into checking out the Linux ecosystem mainly inspired to do so because of my Steam Deck. I have some Linux experience in the past I used to run Ubuntu LTS on a laptop in college for some CS classes (this was between 2014 - 2019) but the program I was in was more focused game development so we stuck to Windows for the most part and it was only in pure CS classes where I really used Linux.

I recently tried checking out Fedora 44 but on one instance the install nuked my Windows install and on another deleted the Windows ESP and I couldn't get it fixed (luckily I tend to back up all my important data so a reinstall wasn't really an issue) so now I'm here wondering what distro would cause the least amount of friction for a Windows and Linux dual boot if they're on separate SSDs. I would imagine Fedora would be one of those distros with little to no friction when dual booting so I'm not sure what I did wrong (I am certain I only installed on the empty SSD) or if maybe it's just some one off bug since 44 just released.

What I currently use my PC for:

• General computer usage like browsing the internet, streaming (most do that on my Apple TV though), YouTube, etc...
• Gaming - I game exclusively on Steam (I hate having too many launchers) and I don't really play any anti cheat games. The only one I've recently played is Battlefield 6 and that was months ago now. Still, I would prefer if Secure Boot was supported in case I get back into it. Recently been playing Diablo 4 and Cyberpunk the most and occasionally Crimson Desert
• Game Development - I use a wide array of software (I will list it below) and I would say about 95% of it maybe more is usable on Linux. I mostly stick to building games for web or mobile becasue I work at a mobile AR/VR game technology company and it's what I'm more comfortable with plus it's a good way to keep polishing my skills. I do join the occasional game jam though so sometimes depending on the folks I work with we might also target PC platforms.
• VR/XR development - this is mostly tied to Game Development up above and i typically develop with Unity3D but have dabbled in OpenXR a bit
• Graphics Programming - I've gotten interested in some more lower level grpahics programming and I've been learning OpenGL and plan on checking out Vulkan and DirectX soon

Software/ tools I tend to use. These are the ones I revisit the most but in no particular order:

• Unity3D
• Godot
• Unreal Engine
• Raylib
• Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Code
• Jetbrains Suite
• Blender
• Krita
• Inkscape
• Gimp
• Audacity
• Reaper
• git
• cmake

Hardware:

• CPU: Ryzen 9 9600x
• GPU: Radeon 9070XT
• RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000MHz CL 30
• MoBo: MSI Pro B850M-A WiFi

I originally built this PC very last minute because my AM4 built got fried unexpectedly so I went with a cheaper CPU and Motherboard so at some point I plan on upgrading to a better CPU possibly Intel though but I'm not sure yet