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Comment by xaduha | Hacker News Reader

It's too limiting, if you're doing the whole VFIO thing in the first place you don't really want to limit yourself to just Windows in a specific configuration. You want to have an ability to run any OS you can and pass your hardware to it.

I wouldn't recommend VFIO just for gaming, there are better options.

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What exactly is limiting about it? I use it on a daily basis in order to flip between high performance Linux and high performance Windows instantly with the flick of a hotkey.

I use it for gaming, software dev, and just in general it's nice to be able to switch OSs for any reason instantly. What better options are there?

Flipping between OS wasn't how I used VFIO. I had two different OS running on two monitors and both having access to underlying Linux shell.

Basically it's not worth setting up VFIO just for gaming, but if you already on top of that mountain, then use whatever. I stopped using VFIO a while back and just bought a laptop that runs Linux without any issues.

I don't really have time for games now, but if I wanted to play I would probably wait until next LTSC and install it + latest WSL on my PC. Or would buy a console, maybe that Steam Deck.

I would argue it's very much worth it just for gaming, now I get to everyday run an os I like and spin the windows vm up whenever I wanna play overwatch. Now that I'm on NixOS it was literally just a couple Nix lines and it's configured forever. (if on NixOS stable it doesn't break all the time, but you also have 6m+ old packages)

Litmus test for these kinds of things is - would you set this up for a family member in another part of town? I wouldn't. And I used Nixos too.

Well no, but I also don't like living my life by the lowest denominator, I understand how it works, so I don't "break" it by forgetting how to use it. My father's office365 broke last month because of multiple mailboxes, not because something was wrong, but because logged onto the wrong account without the right permissions.

Well I hope you don't end up like me, asking yourself "Why I'm still doing this?" and not finding a good answer.

To be honest, I'm doing it because I like the idea of owning my own machine, the flexibility of a VM and because I want to learn more about Nix & Linux.

Trouble is, now that my Nix setup is good for everyday use (Not yet development, I wish to see Flakes mature soon) I barely ever tinker with it, might be because it's summertime here too, doesn't encourage me to geek out too much.

I'm not familiar with VFIO and Looking glass and last time I used a VM was years ago. Could you explain how exactly did the 'flip between high performance Linux and high performance Windows instantly with the flick of a hotkey' actually work? What GPU setup did you have? Was the 'high performance Linux' in your case the host OS, or was it rather just another VM?

> I wouldn't recommend VFIO just for gaming, there are better options.

What options? I'm interested.

Keeping work separate from entertainment is one better option. But if you have to have Linux and some casual gaming in one place, then I would stick to Lutris or Proton or some other easy to use wrapper.

Or install less annoying edition of Windows like LTSC, configure Unified Write Filter or similar feature to keep it under control and try to live with latest WSL as your Linux. And just buying a console is another option, if not for a general chip shortage it would be a very good time to do it.

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