Can’t talk about AMD but I’m on NVIDIA and I always followed https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and never had issues others seem to be having. I typically hear good things about AMD GPU support, on Debian and elsewhere so I’m surprised.

Now in practice IMHO GPU support doesn’t matter much for NAS, as you’re probably going headless (no monitor, mouse or keyboard). You probably though do want GPU instruction set support for transcoding but here again can’t advise for this brand of GPU. It should just be relying on e.g. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Hardware/AMF

Finally I’m a Debian user and I’m quite familiar with setting it up, locally on remotely. I also made ISOs for RPi based on Raspbian so this post made me realize I never (at least I don’t remember) installed Debian headlessly, by that I mean booting on a computer with no OS all the way to getting a working ssh connection established on LAN or WiFi. I relied on Imager for RPi configuration or making my own ISO via a microSD card (using dd) but it made me curious about preseeding wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed so I might tinker with it via QEMU. Advices welcomed.

PS: based on few other comments, consider minidlna over more complex setups. Consider Wireguard over tailscale (or at least headscale for a version relying solely on your infrastructure) with e.g. wg-easy if you want to manage everything without 3rd parties.

IMHO fix whatever you can, donate it all locally (HackerSpace, RepairCafe, Linux non-profit, etc) as there are quite a few people dedicated to refurbishing computers for schools, people who need a computer to find work, etc.

Then for the tinkering aspect, keep one, that’s enough.

Honestly even 1 isn’t really required. Pretty much everything listed here can be done more efficiently without an actual physical computer :

• your current computer can be a server, just turn off the screen or even accept (which I’d argue is a fair assumption) that at night it will be off. If you want external access put WireGuard or another VPN on it.
• Want to test distributions or anything else? QEMU or containers, no need for actual hardware

Nitpicking but a line is missing IMHO namely The code of the program: should also suggest which file to edit, e.g potato.go. It might be obviously to anybody working with Go but for others it’s not.

FWIW makes me wonder how much work would be required to have this as a Web container, e.g. Dockerfile with

FROM debian:13
RUN apt update && apt install -y qemu-system-x86 qemu-utils
WORKDIR /linux-inside-out

then https://github.com/container2wasm/container2wasm#container-on-browser

Edit: FWIW the image of Debian 13 with QEMU and its utils is ~1.1Gb

Very cool, reminds me of https://jsandler18.github.io/tutorial/boot.html

No doubt NVIDIA is peddling AI as they are financially depending on it now.

Now from claiming something is powerful and even used to actually shipping code on something low level and benchmarkable like (GPU) drivers I have doubt. I imagine they can say they use AI there to rephrase comment and it would “technically correct” but beyond that I’m still skeptical.

Regarding chip design, AI has been used for decades … if you consider routing to be AI. It’s not generative in the modern sense, it’s not using LLM, but it’s automated a process.

To me it’s the typical Harvard Business School playbook. C-suite repeat keywords they read in their peer most popular magazine, they aggregate in a document they call “strategy” they lower down the chain of commands people “execute” that because they must, thanks to KPIs.

I’d love to hear it from an actual engineer working on drivers but I imagine it’d be hard to get a honest opinion with NDAs and all.

Thanks for providing all the sources!

Source please

Sure, but FWIW I play from AAA to indies and it “works” as in no bug, no noticeable visual glitch.

I don’t benchmark from my driver version to the previous one on Windows or Linux or a price point equivalent with AMD hardware, I just play. I don’t think anybody gain much from checking performance benchmarks before playing a game, at least I can say for sure to me that’s not part of the fun.

I would notice if something was blatantly wrong e.g 50% performance hit, but I wouldn’t if it’s 5% hit. I don’t really care for it as it doesn’t affect my gameplay. Like I said, it’s from a casual player, not a pro player nor a game tinkerer.

Working “better” on Windows means nothing to me. Either I can play and I’m happy or I can’t (which never happened) then I’d be disappointed and potentially check why.

PS: I’m also a developer of XR content so I’m relatively confident I’d spot any significant problem.

No idea, I’ve been playing “normal” games and VR games with my NVIDIA card for years now on Debian and… it just works. It just keeps on working. Maybe people are hardcore tinkerers that mess with specific options but me, I just play and I’m happy with it.

Of course, in fact you do not have to change right now, or even next month. Instead you are in a great position when you already have a device because it means you can take the time you need to prepare for a transition without any rush. The problem IMHO is … if you repeat the cycle. If in few years, or whenever you do change phones you say, again “Switching isn’t necessarily easy or doable for everyone” while having done nothing to change your situation.

Please, don’t rush a change and make it painful. Take the time and use the resources you have… but do something, even if a small thing, to go where you want to be. Do not stay stuck in a place you do not even enjoy.

Honestly… I come from iOS, using for nearly a decade. Yes that stuff is secure, yes that stuff is (or at least was) stable, yes that stuff is slick to the point of being a status symbol… but DAMN does it suck for interoperability!

Every success of bringing the Apple ecosystem to interact with anything is just so ridiculously hard… for in the end bringing very little.

Do yourself a favor, switch to (deGoogled) Android to enjoy KDE Connect, adb, scrcpy, etc just working out of the box, copying normal files the normal way, however you want. Try “just” Linux if you can’t but on mobile that’s not for everyone.

Again, I celebrate this success and all ways, e.g. iSH or Homebrew, that help to tinker, manage, work with Apple hardware but honestly I suggest ignoring it entirely. Just rely on software and hardware that actually provides the bare minimum to be interoperable. Not this.

Instead use this, and iSH, Homebrew, libimobiledevice, and the rest to transition AWAY from that locked ecosystem.

FWIW rsync also works on mobile phones and VR standalone HMDs, via e.g. termux or ish … so it’s really on working fine on… pretty much anything with a terminal and a connection really.

Warmly recommended.

Also if you need more than solely the last version, check rdiff-backup.

yet to get my first. I had been considering the Meta Quest 3, but Meta.

Perfect then

You can also run kiwix-serve to provide offline Wikipedia, StackOverflow, Project Gutenberg and more. Even on a very basic device search works as indexing is well done.

Remove the battery.

One should hope, and the tinkerer community, me included, is eager for both of these features.

Regarding new content I posted https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-isnt-currently-working-on-a-new-vr-game/ countless times because to me that’s maybe the biggest bummer. I have several headsets so I don’t need “yet another one” that is roughly equivalent. I need something genuinely different. A flat SeamOS (no immersive features to KDE Plasma) is boring but understandable, no new content from the quality only Valve (unfortunately) seems to be able to produce makes me think I’m not in rush. Just like hand tracking or WebXR we can hope for surprises but it mostly shows it’s considered a thin terminal for Steam, nothing more, and I have already few of these (thanks to Alvr, Wivr, CloudXR, but also just Steam streaming).

• sure, it’s no a hardware problem so they might support hand tracking but for now at least officially they don’t and didn’t announce they would. There are even https://github.com/Lynx-MR/LynxOrbSlam3 that could be used. For now though it’s not supported. I remember the BT control of Base Station for the LightHouse systems NOT being supported on Linux for years in fact check https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/207 it’s a 6 years old issue. Being feasible does not mean it will be done.
• yep
• CPU/GPU aren’t better than other standalones HMDs already out
• there is no WebXR support on Linux, hasn’t existed for years. Firefox never supported it, neither does Chromium. It’s been confirmed by the Google developer implementing WebXR https://bsky.app/profile/toji.dev/post/3m5hm2aysg22d
• that Valve isn’t making a new VR like Alyx

A friend of my is a researcher working on large scale compute (>200 GPUs) perfectly aware of ROCm and sadly he said last month “not yet”.

So I’m sure it’s not infeasible but if it’s a real use case for you (not just testing a model here and there but running frequently) you might have to consider alternatives unfortunately, or be patient.

Yes but …

• no hand tracking
• no color passthrough
• no hardware upgrade
• no WebXR
• no new VR proper content

Still, it’s good obviously, not having to rely on BigTech. This was also possible before though as I pointed out in https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202786 with e.g. Lynx XR1, as a rooted Android standalone HMD with no account required.

Anyway IMHO the big questions for VR on Linux more broadly is what changes upstream on KDE in terms of immersive UX? Is KDE Plasma becoming a VR graphical shell? Does it have 3D widgets? Does it impact freedesktop in any way?

Edit : I have a SteamDeck since its out, Lynx XR1, etc so I absolutely want Linux VR and FLOSS XR to succeed. In fact I even gave a talk at FOSSXR years ago about that, fact did it twice. Still it doesn’t mean I can’t be disappointed by those points. I like Valve, I want to give them money, that doesn’t mean I can’t be objective. You might have different requirements, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t compare to alternatives which have existed for years.

Half-Life 3 release (not joking)

Sadly not, at least not VR first, cf https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-isnt-currently-working-on-a-new-vr-game/