Do Bazzite. It will be unbeatable for just working and ease of use.

Stay away from Manjaro for anything.

SteamOS that Valve offers is not the same as what’s on the Steam Deck. It’s extremely dated and is what it used to be. A real distro from Valve has yet to be released.

The best way to install WoW is using Lutris, which also comes with Bazzite. You search for and install Battle.net, then you can install WoW normally. Lutris can also add a WoW shortcut once WoW is installed, too.

You can also just copy and paste the WoW folder from your Windows Program Files folder. It keeps all your settings and addons.

For addons use Wowup-curse. It’s a open source addon manager that is just straight up better than all others.

Currently, WoW needs Proton-GE to work. Using wine-staging, or the dated wine-ge, and Battle.net will have problems starting. It’s something weird with authentication and connecting online. Proton-GE contains a patch specifically for this.

The easiest way to get Proton-GE is using Protonup-Qt if using KDE plasma, or Proton Plus if you’re using Gnome. For Protonup-QT, you select Steam, then install Proton-GE for Steam. Lutris will also be able to use it.

Just general advice, I’d use the latest Proton-GE as the default for all Steam games.

In Lutris set the runner for Battle.net to Proton-GE.

Source: I’ve tried all but Drauger OS, and currently play retail WoW.

Its anticheat is proper server sided.

Possibly relevant:

https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

So this is why multi monitor support has been a never ending hot mess?!

They really need to start differentiating; between multiplayer mainstream, and singleplayer mainstream, IMO.

Ranked will not be F2P. If you already own Seige, you won’t have to pay again for ranked.

Yea, Shroud helped a lot during early development.

Seconded. You subscribe to channels you like, and your feed is just the newest videos first. Plus built in sponser block.

Essentially, most cheats for games work because the program can access the RAM addresses that the game uses. Anticheat works by scanning the computer for these running programs/services that are known to be cheats.

Historically this has been done in userspace, ie. no elevated permissions. Nowadays, Kernel level AC let’s the AC check for deeper cheating methods, like devices that are operating on a driver level.

Currently, the most difficult to detect method is cheating using a 2nd PC that connects via a cable to a special PCIe device in the gaming PC. It essentially analyzes everything going to RAM and plucks out game related info. It’s currently a back and forth trying to hide that PCIe device from the anti-cheat.

Get Unraid for your server OS. Its nuts how good it is at being beginner friendly, while being robust when needed. It has a docker app “store”, as well as plugins, and a virtual machine manager as well. It also has a very, very nice Web GUI: you manage the server from another PC you use in your house.

I can not overstate how much I learned by starting with Unraid.

AMDs always get a wack, ultra safe, and high voltage. I undervolt all my AMD GPUs and CPUs. Makes quite the difference.

Unraid is the bee’s knees, especially for being beginner friendly. You use the internet browser of another computer on the same network to access the web GUI of the server.

Most game servers, Palworld included, have ready to go templates in their “App Store,” for running the servers as Docker containers.

Same, with their current 14 beta.

Lmao, that got me good! “List of things it does better than Windows: open dxdiag.”

Beat me to it. Outstanding controller, with replaceable parts staight from 8bitDo.

IIRC MPV can be configured to play HDR video as SDR, and you set the .conf things like quality and standard to what you want.

I’ve done a decent amount of Distro hopping with an all team red PC, and CachyOS is fantastic. I recommend Bazzite for people who want no bullshit, OOTB experience. But if you don’t mind minor tinkering, CachyOS is just too good at what it accomplishes. Their gaming meta package, which has custom wine & proton builds, is is such an easy way to milk out that last bit of performance. Their kernel manager and Firefox fork are also just so well done. Not to mention they’re ahead of the game for things like the upcoming NTSYNC in Linux 6.14. Last but not least their default Cachy kernel is the cherry on top.

Ranked is for being a try hard and coordinating with a decent amount of game knowledge. People are gonna get heated and toxic, you’re playing with humans.

Just play unranked with comms off when you just wanna chill??

The CPU was done in BIOS on an ASUS x570. For me it was under AI Tweaker > Precision Boost Override > Curve Optimizer.

The GPU was done in the driver software on Windows. Or LACT if on Linux.

Unraid + Unifi network equipment. Everything is scheduled and automatic, with the exception of large Unraid updates, but those are only every ~6 months. Every night mover from cache SSD - > HDD array, then checks for plugin updates, then docker container updates, if Monday morning SSD trim, and if 1st of the month does an array parity check/repair.

After all that if it’s Monday morning, Unifi will check for firmware then software updates.

Sometimes a docker container will get a breaking update maybe once a year, and then I just go look @ documentation and see what needs to be changed to the config to fix.