Linux may very well not be for you, but using Arch first is like jumping into the deep end to learn how to swim. It's no surprise you're drowning. I'd recommend you try a gaming-focused distro like Nobara before you go back to Windows for good.

Oh yeah, to be clear I don't think Macs can't be good gaming machines, it's just that it doesn't seem to be heading that way right now.

Windows has one major thing going for it: it’s best-in-class for gaming. It might even be the greatest gaming platform of all time. Linux and even Mac are gaining ground, but they’ve got a little ways to go.

...is Mac gaming actually gaining ground? From listening to a friend of mine who has a Mac, it sounds like Mac gaming is going steadily backwards. Wine and similar doesn't work very well for them, and Mac compatibility is happening with fewer and fewer games. Game Porting Toolkit isn't really for end users, is it? Is there something else my friend is missing?

Noveau is terrible for gaming. If you want any kind of reasonable gaming experience you'll need the propietary Nvidia driver (for now).

The issue is one of licensing, not technology. There's all kinds of patents in the space, and using free codecs could still infringe them. DirectX doesn't have the same patent protection. I believe in theory you could make a fully open source Linux native version of DirectX.

For more info from someone who knows more than me, see here.

Well, sometimes Windows games depend on propietary codecs, and until Valve can get the devs to make adjustments so the codecs aren't needed, the games aren't going to work properly in regular Proton.

If GE received a Cease and Desist, that would be frustrating, but linux gaming would go on. If Proton got a Cease and Desist, that could be catastrophic to linux gaming. Valve could even theoretically get banned from working on linux gaming (like the Yuzu devs got banned from working on emulation). It's just not worth the risk for compatibility/performance for a smaller proportion of games.

This isn't binding tho, Adobe could change their minds in a year and then legally train an AI on all the data they've collected. Their own blog post doesn't even preclude that, their AI language is present tense. In addition they could just license the data to other AI companies.

Even if it wasn't a gimmick, it still wouldn't be benevolent. Corporations only lower prices when they think the lower price can make them more money overall.

This is a great list of USB wifi adapter chipset compatibility.

That's fair. It's an all-around sucky situation regardless, and it makes sense why AMD isn't marketing socket longevity quite as much in AM5 as they were with AM4.

I do think losing capabilities for older CPUs in favor of new ones is pretty common for long lived sockets, and is an acceptable tradeoff for longevity imo. The board I was originally using for a 2600X never promised 5000 series support, but almost added it anyways. Unfortunately it never got beyond a beta bios, and I decided that wasn't good enough for me (and I ended up giving the old mobo to my sister in a build for them, so it all worked out anyways).

How did you know the CPU wasn't the problem? Sometimes CPUs have defects. Especially given the underclocking seemed to help.

I need some advice on what to throw on this laptop - and some suggestions on how to squeeze the best performance out of this (Optimus vs. Proprietary NVIDIA vs. Open source drivers).

One thing here, the open source Nvidia drivers still have a lot of performance issues. It's only fairly recently that NVIDIA has opened their drivers up enough to allow any kind of reasonable performance from open source drivers, and getting them up to par is still a work in progress. So stick with the propietary drivers for now, but keep an eye on the new open source driver, NVK.

(As far as distro recs go, I recently started using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and am really liking it, but I don't have enough experience with it yet to make an informed recommendation)

Just to clarify, a few airplanes still use leaded gasoline. The vast majority do not.

Nvidia already opened their driver, at least to the same extent as AMD, which is why NVK is able to exist.

I’m not sure about the latter

I believe it was Xwayland 24.1 that recently released that brought explicit sync support, so you'll need that.

Hm, what didn't you enjoy about Elden Ring? I started with Sekiro, finished it, and have moved on to Elden Ring (in co-op tho). I have very much enjoyed both.

Seems like a good redesign.

Yep, this is what I had to do.

I believe that the custom for a lot of wine patch notes is just to mention the first application reported with the bug even if it affects many applications. So that could be what's happening here.