Hello everybody and welcome back to Linux Life I admit its been a little while since I made an entry which was informing you of the death of Mangelwurzel and entry of the new Dell Inspiron 3525 I am currently using to type this article on.
Reason its been so long was I actually went back to Windows (stop spitting at back please it’s not pretty) because I wanted to play Blur and a few other games. Well I did and in that time I also tried several ways to have a Linux installation in some form of VM.
So first I used Virtualbox which is a Type 2 Hypervisor basically what that means is everything is emulated in its own little sandbox and all the hardware is virtual. I did manage to get Ubuntu Studio running but to say it was rough would be an understatement.
Virtualbox does not like KDE to say the least and it was painful to run. Also the networking was slow. Sure I could have used normal Ubuntu to see if GNOME was faster but for all I have tried it many times I really don’t like GNOME. Everything needs extensions and the interface is horrible.
Finding apps requires typing in a search because of that stupid Mac Launchpad icon design. I really detest it. I’m sure if you were using a touchscreen then it makes sense but most laptops definitely are not.
Anyway after far too many hours wasted with that I moved on to try Hyper V which is a Type 1 Hypervisor which allows much more connection to base metal components... it lets you use your actual graphics card, the hard drive can be accessed better and you have access to USB and the likes which makes it much better.
Now at the time I was using Windows 11 Home as that’s what came pre-installed on the Dell. So I had to download Hyper V as it wasn’t there by default. So first I try Ubuntu as Canonical have an agreement with Microsoft due to WSL.
Sure enough it installed and was pretty fluid but it had no sound. There was an enhanced mode which refused to work as to do so it needed RDS (Remote Desktop Support) which also prevented sound from working (Huh ?).
To get RDS you need Windows 11 Pro which Microsoft informed me if I wanted a key would be £119. Hmmm not happy obliterated Ubuntu VM. Went web-side got a Windows 11 Pro for £1.67 as it was OEM key. They key would have been £3.35 but I found a 50% off code.
After a bit of fiddling I got Windows 11 Home to go to Pro using a key to switch it then once it did that registered the new OEM key and it worked and guess what I have access to Remote Desktop Services.
So as I felt that Hyper V could cope I now tried installing EndeavourOS which installed without a single hitch. I admit the network was slow but a million times quicker than Virtualbox.
It had no issues with KDE whatsoever but once again no sound. I installed several Hyper V tools and things from the AUR. Even changed out pipewire back to pulseaudio but no matter what I did, sod all worked. RDS couldn’t see the VM even including doing the various Powershell tips.
Bugger all, now sure I could have run Endeavour without sound but I had come this far damn it. OK deleted VM. OK I now have Win 11 Pro so lets try the Ubuntu stuff again.
OK now enhanced mode shows a dialogue and when I log in screen goes black and bugger all happens. Click off enhanced mode and Ubuntu is working. Enhanced mode just black. Setup Ubuntu. reboot now enhanced mode doesn’t come up and even the VM crashes now.
This wasted too many hours and days of messing around. I even got the RDS side running but when I tried to Remotely Access using RDS it crashed. What a complete waste of bloody time.
I even tried running a Ubuntu Studio VM using VMWare Player 17. It didn’t work.
I doing think about setting up a KVM version of QEMU to run a Linux installation but guess what if you want sound on QEMU you need to get a specific version called the Screamer and it won’t let you use KVM setup meaning it wouldn’t allow you to install the Linux.
By this point I just gave up I honestly don’t care what type of Hypervisor it is I am obviously too thick to get things running as they should and I gave up.
I almost tried Proxmox and XCP-NG but upon seeing what they entailed just gave up.
After all that I thought I would leave alone and just use Windows. Then everyone started informing my Facebook had been cloned, well lets just say that didn’t happen when I had Linux.
The internet under Windows just ran slower than when I had Linux. Watching YouTube stalled regularly, downloads failed due to time out and my frustration levels were getting to breaking point.
I tried to dual boot Linux as I found out how to shrink the partition in Windows and use it for Linux installation. So tried EndeavourOS but because of the Secure boot it wouldn’t let the system install.
However for some reason Fedora will install if Secure boot is still on. So I installed Fedora Beta 40 because I wanted to try the new KDE Plasma 6. Now I know it’s beta software so not to have many expectations but most of the software I use was not in the store nor could I find the appropriate dnf installer.
However Fedora now would boot but my Windows 11 wouldn’t the partition was there but it didn’t add it to the menu so now I could load Fedora but Windows wouldn’t load.
Tried OS Prober, Grub Customizer, no matter what I did could not get the Windows 11 partition to boot or get it in the options
Pissed off now I finally turned off Secure boot. Wiped the whole hard drive and installed EndeavourOS Galileo Neo (the latest version) and set up the Dell with KDE.
It now is running on KDE 6 Plasma 6.0.2 running Wayland. It is running seamlessly, the internet is quicker. No issues with YouTube. Updating fine. When I tried KDE 5 Plasma Wayland, Steam and several other programs stopped working.
Well Steam is working fine using XWayland (a Wayland to X11 bridge) and there is a version of Cairo Dock that works with Wayland (it is experimental but so far has not died on me).
So all is right with the world in that respect. Only issue is screen capture isn’t great in Wayland but someone is working on it. OBS and other video capture work fine but screen capture programs such Flameshot, Shutter and other need work.
Well Wayland is slowly being adapted so in time I am sure these things will be fixed over the next few months as more and more main distros seem to be moving to Wayland.
It works well enough and to be honest it's even faster for program launch it seems than the original X11 which is now over twenty years old.
I am yet to try the Steam Proton games such as Path of Exile but who knows maybe next time we speak I may have done so.
So with all that madness abound I bid you farewell for this episode.
Hopefully I will try not to break anything major... until next time take care.
