Linux can sometimes be a test of willpower. In my recent Linux adventures of solving odd problems, I encountered an issue with Sunshine and Moonlight. I have set up a new gaming HTPC (or like a Steam Machine) running Bazzite - the deck edition that boots straight into SteamOS Big Picture.

It had a weird issue where when you wanted to stream a native Linux game such as Counter Strike 2, over Steam Remote Play or Sunshine, the mouse control would get stuck, and the player would be stuck looking at the ceiling. It can be easy to fall into that thinking of, oh I don't have these issues on Windows, it just works. But Windows doesn't really respect your privacy.

How I solved it, was as simple as just installing the beta version of Sunshine. It was a mental fatigue battle. What if I installed it and it didn't solve the problem? Well it did, and I could play CS2 over Sunshine and Moonlight desktop streaming at native resolution without issues.

With my new Framework 13 it's been difficult to settle on a distro. I tried Pop!_OS but it uses Ubuntu 24.04 as it's base distribution. As such it misses some of the optimisations for the Framework 13 such as battery life improvements and automatic display brightness. So I switched to Fedora Workstation, just for this laptop. As per my last blog post, GNOME doesn't work perfectly with games with fractional scaling enabled, which may get fixed one day but not yet. The Framework I mainly intend to use for work, and for the small amount of gaming I can just wrap games in gamescope to force a resolution. So GNOME will do, but I installed COSMIC DE on the side just in case.

Obviously one of the biggest issues with Linux is the lack of software, often in the professional art/music/CAD space. Tools for professionals. As most of my work involves software development and Linux back-end management (except for solving IT issues), I can mostly live without these professional tools. But artistic tools is one exception. As I aim to improve my art skills for game development, having access to even Affinity suite and decent graphics tablet drawing tools is becoming more necessary. Krita works well as a desktop applicaiton with a graphics tablet attached without a built in display. I of course ended up buying a graphics tablet with a display built in, and using Krita with it feels quite frustrating, sadly.

The solution is to use my spare devices for art. There's a great drawing tool aptly named "Leonardo" which is kinda like Procreate for Windows, with a slightly different approach to drawing. But it is Windows only (no Linux planned). And I bought it on the Microsoft Store.. so not going to try running it through Wine. So we have a Procreate for Windows, now we just need one for Linux..

So again, the urge to wipe my entire OS on two devices has been mitigated by some problem solving. But - I have a feeling that one day I will return back to Macs, especially if I start integrating art or music into my work more often. The Framework 13 is not going away any time soon. I historically have a tendency to switch entire ecosystems every now and then. But despite it's conceptual design to be a machine that lasts forever, it may end up a secondary device one day, or a server - 64GB of RAM is great for local AI if speed isn't necessary. That's for another blog post.