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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • If you look into PlayStation from a software angle, it makes perfect sense. Sony has always been pretty pro-unix.

    They had an official Linux kit for the PS2 (came with a custom Linux distro on a CD, a HDD, and a KB+M).

    OtherOS was also a selling point on the PS3, and was only ditched when they realized it opened the door to major security risks.

    Further, CellOS, the operating system for the PS3, and OrbisOS, which is the base operating system for the PS4 and PS5, are all based on FreeBSD.

    So, a lot of their hardware is designed around Unix systems already. I know all their controllers since the Dualshock 3 are natively supported by the Linux kernel (no dongles or drivers needed in theory).





  • Adding a little update. Recently reinstalled my system as things were getting cluttered. For some reason, I was unable to install ALVR (or the git version) from the AUR. When building the AUR package manually, I’d get to 99% and the terminal would just close, yay resulted in the same error.

    However, the portable .tar release of the latest version works perfectly. Performance is even better, I’ve had fewer bugs/connectivity issues, and once I followed the official Settings Tutorial and this article on how to disable SteamVR Async Reprojection things have been working 99% as well as they were on Windows. I have noticed occasional quality degradation, but it was never detrimental to the experience overall. And, it’s worth noting that ALVR can function over USB with a link cable, so that should eliminate any issues caused by wireless streaming.

    Just thought I’d report my experience and hopefully give some folks a push to try it out. This is a huge step for the overall Linux experience IMO, as it’s very quickly opening up an entire aspect of gaming/computing in general really that, until a few months ago, was effectively not viable outside of Windows.





  • I left most things default. When I first set it up I played with all the settings and made everything worse lol.

    I can tell you that I set the resolution to the highest setting, the refresh rate to 120hz and the bitrate to the quality settings. Everything else, I left default. I found that this resulted in the best clarity while not really making the artifacting/lag any worse. I’m still playing with it though.

    If you have the option in SteamVR’s game specific settings to enable “Legacy motion smoothing”, apparently that improves things noticably. For some reason motion smoothing is completely unavailable to me though so I can’t personally attest.

    I’ve heard audio was an issue, but in my case (Arch plus KDE6), it was as simple as picking my audio output in the system tray dropdown. I could stream it to my headset or send it out of my headphones I have plugged in.

    Edit: I’m gonna link this becaust I found it while looking into why motion smoothing was unavailable. Apparently disabling async reprojection via a config file can give a noticable performance boost. I’ve yet to try it but I’ll add another edit when I’m back at my rig long enough to test it out.






  • AMD’s naming scheme is honestly similar to Nvidias. They have X600, X700, etc (the “X” being the generation of card, the second digit being the model).

    So for example, the current gen is the 7000 series, with the 7600 being the lowest, and roughly analogous to the 4060, and the 7900 to the 4090. There are also XT versions which is AMD’s version of the Ti line. They have more VRAM, higher clocks, overclocking, etc.

    I’d look at the 6700XT, or the one I have which is the 7600XT. Both have similar specs, the 7600XT is more recent with better performance in a couple areas, but the 6700XT is tried and true, and you’ll be more likely to find a good deal on it. The 7600XT only came out a couple months ago and isn’t anywhere near as well established, but IMO it performs excellent at good temps without any tweaks. Both are great for 1080p or 1440p with modern games.