[bhaney]

This is one of many reasons why I just don't let Windows touch bare metal. My old gaming rig was a Linux machine that would boot a Windows VM with GPU passthrough, and the control I had over the virtual hardware that Windows thought it was attached to was really helpful for working around a lot of Windows bullshit. Won't boot without a screen? Virtually attach a fake one. Recognizes a device and tries to auto-install the garbage manufacturer-provided driver? Run the better Linux driver (if one exists) and have qemu present Windows with a generic version of the device. Want to debug some issue that requires disconnecting a piece of hardware? Just take it out of the qemu command instead of needing to go physically disconnect it. Want some remote peripheral attached that Windows has no idea how to talk to? Proxy it over the network in Linux and just present it to the Windows VM as a USB device. Having full control over the world that Windows lives in makes it much more manageable.

[genewitch]

Same. I only stopped because managing storage became a problem - three huge games came out that I wanted to play.

Were I to do this again I wouldn't do ryzen I'd do at minimum a threadripper, so that the guest can get a USB pcie card and a GPU, so literally every device windows sees and talks to is virtualized. Usb keyboard, mouse, soundcard, etc.

I think LTT did an epyc build where 1 epyc ran 3 full "Desktops" with GPUs, nvme, for each virtual machine dedicated. I just need the one!

[jokethrowaway]

Since a few years, I just play on Linux

Almost anything works with proton - unless you're playing competitive online games with anti cheats software

[bhaney]

Same. My Steam Deck has completely replaced my old gaming VM.