Linux, Gaming, and Peripheral Hardware

[XavDawn]

Greetings!

 

I'm new into the Linux-sphere and trying to learn all that I can as I have been looking into potentially moving everything from Windows 11 to Linux. Seeing how far Linux has come in recent months with new game support thanks to SteamOS among more support that has come in recently come for certain programs has got me excited to look into this more. Especially after seeing the recent LTT video that came out about it today. However, there are a few things that I have learned is that not every game that I currently play is supported on Linux and neither are some of the peripherals I use. A main game that I play a lot is Honkai Star Rail which does have launcher that's on version 1.9.0, but isn't clear as to if that supports the most recent update which is 2.7 nor does it say it keeps it up to date when the newest update, 3.0, comes out in about a couple of weeks.

 

Then, for my peripherals, I'm worried for support for some of my mice that I use such as my Logitech G 502 wireless mouse and Corsair SCIMITAR's software not working. Now, I have heard that people have been able to find said workarounds for those, but I'm not too clear as to what those exact workarounds are so I'm a bit confused on that. And the same thing goes for my two biggest peripherals I use daily which are my Stream Deck and WaveXLR. A friend of mine has said that he did find a way to get his Stream Deck to work, but I have found nothing on WaveXLR or Wave Link support workarounds which would be a big turn off for me for complete switching.

 

If there's anyone who's have had experience with getting HSR (Honkai Star Rail) to work on Linux in recent memory and works to the current version of the game along with getting WaveXLR/Wave Link to work on Linux, I'd be more than happy to see your suggestions are. I know it's a big ask for me as I like to do as minimal tinkering as possible when it comes to getting certain things to work on Linux, but if that does exist, I'd love to hear about them with any other suggestions. And if we know that if there's going to be official support coming out for any of the things I mentioned going around, I'd love to know.

 

Any help and suggestions is appreciated! Thank you!

[CosmicEmotion]

Honkai can be made to work but I do not recommend it cause there's a possibility you can get banned (small but it's there). I am not sure about your XLR, Google will be your best friend with that.

[XavDawn]

10 minutes ago, CosmicEmotion said:

Honkai can be made to work but I do not recommend it cause there's a possibility you can get banned (small but it's there). I am not sure about your XLR, Google will be your best friend with that.

Good to know about Honkai. I've been looking a few hours on Google and Reddit, even on here, and haven't found a single thing on the WaveXLR/Wave Link. It's why I'm directly asking to see if anyone has experience with getting it to work and if so, how much tinkering would I need to do (which I'm hoping isn't too bad).

[Ralphred]

2 hours ago, XavDawn said:

WaveXLR/Wave Link.

There was a reddit post where the user reported it as "detected as a USB mic" so it technically does work, but you need to be aware of how much of the functionality you currently use is software driven and how much is hardware driven.

2 hours ago, XavDawn said:

and haven't found a single thing

The best place to ask the "do you use this successfully in linux" question would be some of the audio/studio distribution forums, you are more likely to come across users there (Quick Search starting point).

 

 

This is the second time I've come across someone asking about "higher end consumer audio" stuff recently, and am predicting "StreamerOS" being a thing in the near future - there is a rich history of professional grade audio software floating around the linux ecosystem, it just needs someone "aware of the needs of the average streamer" that's familiar with linux audio stack and available software to collate and package it with some sensible out of the box configurations.

[XavDawn]

2 hours ago, Ralphred said:

This is the second time I've come across someone asking about "higher end consumer audio" stuff recently, and am predicting "StreamerOS" being a thing in the near future

I'm really hoping so as I'm mostly just looking to make sure my audio can separate into channels like I have them on my Wave Link software with sub-mixes and all; preferably without needing to get a different mixer as what I have now is good.

 

2 hours ago, Ralphred said:

There was a reddit post where the user reported it as "detected as a USB mic" so it technically does work, but you need to be aware of how much of the functionality you currently use is software driven and how much is hardware driven.

I do know that when it comes to the Elgato Wave Link software is mostly software based. If I had to switch to a different mixer, I'd want to get something like the Rode Podcaster as that's more hardware based (assuming that can work on Linux systems). But given that I don't have the money to switch to something like that, plus I am needing to save up for some other things that are more of a priority for me atm, I'd rather keep what I have if that makes sense.

All in all and the TL;DR question I'm wanting to get at is: based on what I read, what you're suggesting is going to more Linux audio forums about my situation and see if there is anyone there who might've been able to get it to work or at least see what they suggest?

[Potatoes__]

14 hours ago, XavDawn said:

Logitech G 502 wireless mouse

Not sure about this one specifically but my G Pro wireless works flawlessly, and can be configured through Solaar. 

 

One general advice - instead of doing preemptive preparations and reading before the big move, if you have some free time, consider dual booting your system. You can approach each of your use cases one by one, test if it works fine in linux, troubleshoot if anything goes wrong, and if you're feeling too much pressure you are just one reboot away from your regular windows install. That's exactly what I am doing now cus I still can't figure out Guitar Rig on Linux and some of my games (like Stalker 2) run noticeably better in windows, but other than that - linux feels like home.

 

I'd suggest grabbing some cheapo 256 gig SSD to keep it separate from your main install, that will save you some headache from partitioning your main drive.

[Ralphred]

14 hours ago, XavDawn said:

who might've been able to get it to work or at least see what they suggest?

Yes, you are more likely to find someone there than in the generic distro forums.

 

If you end up getting no help, you can always boot up a "portable distro" (like on a 16gig usb stick) and see how it behaves with your hardware, we can give you diagnostic commands to run and see what's being recognised as what.

[XavDawn]

4 hours ago, Ralphred said:

Yes, you are more likely to find someone there than in the generic distro forums.

 

If you end up getting no help, you can always boot up a "portable distro" (like on a 16gig usb stick) and see how it behaves with your hardware, we can give you diagnostic commands to run and see what's being recognised as what.

That would be most appreciated! It'll take a bit as I would need to either find one in my tech boxes I have or see if I can order myself one as soon as I'm able to.

[XavDawn]

13 hours ago, Potatoes2241 said:

Not sure about this one specifically but my G Pro wireless works flawlessly, and can be configured through Solaar. 

 

One general advice - instead of doing preemptive preparations and reading before the big move, if you have some free time, consider dual booting your system. You can approach each of your use cases one by one, test if it works fine in linux, troubleshoot if anything goes wrong, and if you're feeling too much pressure you are just one reboot away from your regular windows install. That's exactly what I am doing now cus I still can't figure out Guitar Rig on Linux and some of my games (like Stalker 2) run noticeably better in windows, but other than that - linux feels like home.

 

I'd suggest grabbing some cheapo 256 gig SSD to keep it separate from your main install, that will save you some headache from partitioning your main drive.

Not a bad idea. I've heard that people either do like a VM or dual-boot solution especially if someone is looking to test the waters. I'll definitely look into seeing about getting a separate distro for it to boot from!

[Potatoes__]

13 hours ago, XavDawn said:

Not a bad idea. I've heard that people either do like a VM or dual-boot solution especially if someone is looking to test the waters. I'll definitely look into seeing about getting a separate distro for it to boot from!

I may be wrong on this but to my understanding VM may be limited in terms of performance to regular setup (e.g. uses only a fraction of available hardware and share it with the main OS) and it may be finicky to set up properly. Depends on your skillset of course but I see dual-booting as an easier solution for newbies, especially when you have a spare drive for it.

 

From the top of my head, a few points to keep in mind when dualbootin':

 

1. You will need to partition the drive properly - read up on linux installation partitioning to get the general idea. In simple terms, you need to make your drive to have a root partition (maybe around 100 GB will be enough, my usage is ~35GB only on Kubuntu) and a home partition (with the majority of space left from root). Some suggest having a swap partition but IIRC that's valid for systems with low RAM volumes, so for low consumption/large size RAM setups it's just a waste of space. Most importantly - have a separate boot partition. Continuing on the boot partition:

2. Each time I'm tinkering with dualboot setups I somehow manage to bork my bootloader. Essentially it's a subsystem that tells your PC to boot into the OS it detects on your system. Misconfiguration, bad partitioning or general tomfoolery may result into you not being able to boot into Linux, Windows, or both. While it looks scary and is super annoying, as long as you are not formatting your partitions left and right, your data and OSes are safe and sound even if bootloader is completely dead, and it can be rebuilt fairly easy. Just make sure to have USB drives with linux and windows images at hand so you can use them to recover the bootloader. Keeping boot partition on a separate drive space instead of re-writing the existing windows bootloader will allow you to fall back to it in case your new bootloader (GRUB) fails for some reason.

3. Absolutely every time I dual boot linux and windows, the latter one starts having trouble telling the time. Easy fix and explanation here.

4. There is generally no need to re-install every game under Linux if you already have them installed for Windows. In Steam you'll need to auto-mount your windows drives and import the existing Steam library (I used this guide), and for others try Heroic Games Launcher (GOG+Epic integration and import of alternatively obtained games). Keep in mind that while Linux can work with NTFS (which is a proprietary filesystem for Windows), it may have some potential for instability. Personally I have not experienced any yet, but be informed in case something gets weird.

5. Get a Timeshift app for your Linux distro and set up backup plans. When getting familiar with Linux you may accidentally do something ungodly to your setup, so having a restore point is super useful as compared to wiping your root and starting anew.

 

Hope this helps, have fun!