So I’ve been looking into moving back entirely to Linux, but I play a lot of games so would likely need access to windows. I’m considering using KVM as dualbooting isn’t really something I’d want. I’ve some questions I don’t really get from how this setup would work:
- I have 3 monitors. I have 1 Nvidia 2060. I imagine I might have to get a cheap-ish 2nd video card for Linux as the 2060 would have to be passed through to the guest (windows) VM… right? (I have integrated graphics, but not enough connections for the 3 monitors on it)
- how do you switch between playing on the host and playing on the guest? I.e. if a game runs fine native on Linux, I’d want to use that instead of the windows vm. Is it possible to use the Nvidia card I’d normally pass through on the host? The only thing I can think of here is to run a Linux VM on the Linux host so the card can be passed through to it…? Or is it just not worth it and better to stick to just playing on the windows VM?
- how do multiple monitors behave in this? E.g. I connect the 2 monitors on the left/right to the weak card which I dont have yet. I connect the middle monitor to both cards. Once I launch the VM I change the input on the main monitor to the connection with the Nvidia card. How will my monitors behave (and will I have any control over it)? E.g. will I be able to move the cursor across from the left monitor through the middle monitor and to the right or would they act more like 2 different PCs?
- how do other things work, like microphone? E.g. can I have discord running on Linux and talk in voice chat, while also using the microphone to talk in game chat in the windows VM?
Answering any of them is useful, thanks in advance. Also if I misunderstood how this setup is meant to work, feel free to correct me.
Not exactly the setup here, but I did something similar with my laptop + single monitor setup (KVM/VFIO)
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Yes you’ll have to do that for 3 monitors in your case.
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I did this just fine, had a btrfs partition just for games. Then used WinBtrfs drivers on Windows to access that. As mentioned here already, its better to install in Windows then force proton if you’re doing this
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You will have to set up LookingGlass for this, otherwise they will just act like seperate machines when input devices are passed. LookingGlass was a MUST for me, playing through Spice had way too much delay.
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If you pass your audio device through then you can’t use it on the host. You can pass audio from your Windows back to the host via Pipewire, JACK, PulseAudio take a look at the Arch Wiki page on PCI Passthrough via OVMF. Not 100% sure about mics.
Like others here have said, its probably better to just dual boot. I’ve come to accept that too because often times anticheats will detect KVM setups and playing the cat and mouse game to hide VM info is just too annoying for me. But these days to be honest, I rarely touch the Windows VM since support for the games I play have gotten quite good. Best of luck on this!
Thank you for the answers!
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About the second point, your pc shouldn’t be putting any resources towards a VM if it isn’t active. Just shut it down, close it, and play games on your host as normal.
One more thing, I’m assuming you’re doing your gaming on Steam. Check ProtonDB for all of your games to see if they work on Linux (protondb only lists steam games, so if you have games as well, I’ve found a google search usually does the trick). You might find that you don’t even need a VM
Unfortunately for some of them even if the game works there are often cases where either mods don’t work or some overlay/other additional software.
On your answer though, I was under the impression that when you configure the KVM passthrough setup it makes the video card you use for the passthrough inaccessible for the host itself and that to make it accessible, it requires undoing some of the config and a restart. Is this incorrect?
It’s incorrect. I have 2 AMD cards, I can detach it from linux before booting the guest. After I shut down the guest I have to log out in Gnome to make the card usable again, but no reboot required. It depends on how you set it up. I have a single 34" monitor with 2 inputs, connected to both cards.
I recommend to read about this topic, it would be quicker than waiting for people to answer, your questions were answered multiple times. I recommend the vfio wiki on the r*ddit a lot of good links are collected there: https://old.reddit.com/r/VFIO/wiki/index
Thank you, that’s useful!
It’s gonna be way less hassle to just use Linux. The gaming situation is so vastly improved from 6 or so years ago, and the vast majority of games just work, with a large amount of the rest only needing minor tweaks.
The big exceptions are in competitive gaming, and even there it’s pretty much limited to proprietary & intrusive anti-cheats that I wouldn’t have installed on my Windows computer anyway; Riot’s Vanguard and FACEIT are probably the two big ones. Also Fortnite – even though EasyAntiCheat does work fine with Linux, Epic has chosen to explicitly not support it. If you do play one of those few games – or use other proprietary software like the Adobe suite that also won’t work – a dual boot should be fine, it only takes maybe two minutes to swap over and unless you have two beefy GPUs you’ll be limited in a KVM setup.
