I have been daily driving a dual booted laptop for the past two years. After a year of distro hopping I settled with fedora + kde and never looked back. I really liked the auto nvidia driver config and it made everything so pleasant to work. Since the last 8 or 9 months I decided to do gaming using bottles and proton ge. I cannot afford to buy games and bottles is a God send at that. Now I realized that I had not logged into my windows partition in over 6 months. So I logged in to check and it told me it needs to download 8 gigs of updates. That sent me into rage and so clean installed everything to be fedora. I have 250 gb of storage locked in limbo because of windows( I have a 512 gb ssd so it was a lot) and today after everything was setup, the os took only around 20gb minus the games. Never felt happier.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    10 months ago

    A NAS is pretty simple, it’s just some drives linked together with some services on top. Mine is super simple:

    • 2 8TB drives in a mirror RAID, on an old computer
    • Samba configured to act as a Windows network drive
    • minidlna configured so my TV sees it as a source for content - there no “app,” I just go to “Videos and Pictures” and find my network share
    • SSH enabled for my Linux devices to login and push/pull files

    That’s it. You could probably get the same thing done with a Windows machine (but replace SSH with remote desktop).

    There’s no GUI for it like you’d get with Plex/Jellyfin or a commercial NAS, just a machine that streams files over the network. It has no access outside my network, so I’d have to configure something if I wanted someone else to access it.

    I threw it together over a weekend looking at the Arch Wiki. It does the job.

    GOG

    If you mostly use GOG, have you considered Heroic? It’s a launcher that can run games from Epic and GOG (and maybe others?), and it integrates WINE/Proton with it, so most of the time you just push play and it works. I’ve tried a few games with it and it seems to work well.

    It’s not the one you mentioned, but it has a decent interface.

    Linux newb

    No worries. I think most distros have a GUI interface to configure WireGuard. Look in the network settings to put in your keys and whatnot. If you do it that way, everything will probably work better together. Likewise for adding a network share to your NAS, though it’ll probably be in the file picker.

    Then again, maybe it’s something else. I remember being new to Linux and things not working until I reinstalled. It’s easy to forget a step, especially if you’re not really sure what you’re doing.

    Anyway, good luck!

    • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
      1·
      10 months ago

      A NAS is pretty simple, it’s just some drives linked together with some services on top. Mine is super simple:

      ⋮

      I threw it together over a weekend looking at the Arch Wiki. It does the job.

      I…really really appreciate you going out of your way like that to help me. Really, I do. But I…really like having a service like Emby, Plex, or Jellyfin. I like seeing the posters and backdrops and other organizational aspects.

      Really, the only thing I want in this case is the ability to connect to my NAS through the local network within the file manager and transfer files between it and my computer.

      If you mostly use GOG, have you considered Heroic? It’s a launcher that can run games from Epic and GOG (and maybe others?), and it integrates WINE/Proton with it, so most of the time you just push play and it works. I’ve tried a few games with it and it seems to work well.

      It’s not the one you mentioned, but it has a decent interface.

      I have not actually! I may actually try that! Does it allow me to install games via offline backup installers? That’s how I generally install my GOG games.

      No worries. I think most distros have a GUI interface to configure WireGuard. Look in the network settings to put in your keys and whatnot. If you do it that way, everything will probably work better together. Likewise for adding a network share to your NAS, though it’ll probably be in the file picker.

      Then again, maybe it’s something else. I remember being new to Linux and things not working until I reinstalled. It’s easy to forget a step, especially if you’re not really sure what you’re doing.

      Yeah, I understand how VPNs work, and yet I don’t know what the hell WireGuard even does or how it works. Then, again, I’ve never looked it up…

      …I should probably do that.

      Anyway, good luck!

      Thanks!

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        10 months ago

        I really like having a service like Emby

        And that’s totally fine. Linux should work just fine for that setup, I’m just not very familiar with it.

        Next time you’re booted into Linux, try the network drive thing again, maybe it’ll work better. I’m guessing you missed a checkbox or something to reconnect after a reboot.

        If you still have issues, I can try the GUI with my NAS, which should be similar enough to help. Just let me know what distro and desktop environment you’re running and what didn’t work.

        Does it allow me to install games via offline backup installers?

        I think so? I know there’s a way to import games, which I think works with an installer. Give it a shot!

        WireGuard

        WireGuard is just the built-in Linux kernel support for VPNs. The main alternative is OpenVPN, which runs as a regular program and generally has worse performance and VPN providers can be finicky about which clients work properly.

        So if a VPN service offers WireGuard, prefer that and things will probably work more smoothly.

        • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
          2·
          10 months ago

          Next time you’re booted into Linux, try the network drive thing again, maybe it’ll work better. I’m guessing you missed a checkbox or something to reconnect after a reboot.

          Perhaps…

          Problem is I don’t have Linux installed anymore. After my switching attempt catastrophically failed last time, I (reluctantly) reinstalled Windows.

          WireGuard is just the built-in Linux kernel support for VPNs. The main alternative is OpenVPN, which runs as a regular program and generally has worse performance and VPN providers can be finicky about which clients work properly.

          So if a VPN service offers WireGuard, prefer that and things will probably work more smoothly.

          Oh! That makes sense. I can’t remember if ProtonVPN offers WireGuard support for Linux… I know it does for Windows.