I don’t know, I don’t play cod. See the links from previous replies for that.

as for should you get linux, only you can answer that once you’ve done the research

The daw/music software? Just wine. used wine to install the app & vst plugins, then just using the “start menu” shortcut for the app to run it. I did have to use winetricks to install dxvk on the prefix (without it, some plugin ui’s did not work properly), but after that it works fine.

as for “does it run good” - well enough for me. Some of the guitar/bass amps and instruments I use seem to use noticeably more cpu than on windows

yep, this.

basically, games that need some extra dll file to get mods running, it’s generally just adding WINEDLLOVERRIDES=“nameofthedll=n,b” as env var for the game and off to modded adventures it is.

I haven’t tested this, but fairly sure you could just install vortex, mo2 or whatever other modmanager to same prefix as where the game is.

Depends really on the games and software you require.

For games, check:

• https://www.protondb.com/ - people post their experiences with games if they work or not.
• https://areweanticheatyet.com/ - lists of anticheat enabled games which work or not.
• https://appdb.winehq.org/ - wine’s appdb has games and general applications listed, with some info on how they work or not. Some info is absolutely ancient at this point.

In general, indies and singleplayer games generally work fine. Battlefield/Fortnite/etc hugely popular multiplayer stuff with kernel-level anticheats generally doesn’t.

I’ve only ever set up few printers to work on linux, and they’ve been bigger office printers. And they’ve all worked with minimal effort. Absolutely no idea about home printers.

edit: as for windows software support, generally win-apps run on wine. Some really well, some with issues, and then some just dont. Afaik eg. ancient versions of Photoshop run, more recent ones don’t.

I run a windows version of a music software (renoise) because my effects/instruments have only windows versions. It works, but performance isn’t quite as good as it was on actual windows.

could have something to do with the odd, and massive, influx of new win10 users?

doesn’t either of the loopback devices provide desktop audio?

it does the “same thing” but it’s the low-iq unga-bunga-caveman option which requires less configuration. Meaning you don’t get a boot menu to choose the os on boot.

if you want to be extra careful, just remove the ssd of the first os when installing the other on it’s ssd & insert back when done. then just in bios/uefi switch which storage device to boot from.

FWIW, I dualbooted for years fine with win10 and Arch - the trick is to keep them separated. let windows have it’s own ssd and linux it’s own, that way the darn windows don’t nuke other boot entries willynilly when notepad gets an update.

This approach needs 2 storage devices tho, and you switch which to boot from bios/uefi.

But on the upside, this makes no changes to either linux or windows, as both are on separate storage devices. Both have their own boot partitions. When you want to get rid of either, you can just remove partitions from the unwanted os’ ssd and make new ones.