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.

  • Pinapelz@mk.arks.cafe
    3·
    15 hours ago

    Not exactly the setup here, but I did something similar with my laptop + single monitor setup (KVM/VFIO)

    1. Yes you’ll have to do that for 3 monitors in your case.

    2. 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

    3. 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.

    4. 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!