Single GPU with scripts that run before and after the VM is active to unload the GPU driver modules from the kernel.

I think this was my starting point and I had to do just a few small tweaks to get it right for my setup - i.e. unload and reload the precise set of kernel modules that block GPU passthrough on my machine.

https://gitlab.com/Karuri/vfio

At this point from a user experience p.o.v it’s not much different to dual booting, just with a different boot sequence. The main advantage though is that I can have the Windows OS on a small virtual harddrive for ease of backup/clone/restore and have game installs on a dedicated NVME that doesn’t need backing up

I’ve been 100% linux for my daily home computing for over a year now… With one exception… To be honest I didn’t even try particularly hard to make gaming work under Linux.

Instead I have a Windows VM - setup with full passthrough access to my GPU and it’s own NVME - just for Windows gaming. To my mind now it’s in the same category as running console emulation.

As soon as I click shutdown in windows, it pops me straight back into my Linux desktop.

I had some hard to track down intermittent network issues when I upgraded from LMDE5 to LMDE6 - the solution was to get a newer kernel from backports - its fairly painless…

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=413995#:~:text=You get the kernel updates,using with command uname -v.

The real question is why did they install a system based on 5.25" floppy disks in 1998 in the first place!?

The 5.25" floppy was surpassed by the 3.5" floppy by 1988 - ten years prior to this systems installation - and by 1998 most new software was being distributed on CD-ROM. So by my reckoning, in 1998 they installed a ‘new’ system based on hardware that was 1.5 generations out-of-date and haven’t updated it in the 26 years since.

Yep, especially surface mount lithium batteries - they’re very sensitive to the solder reflow profile being juuuust right