This year I'm finally putting into action something that I've been wanting to do for some time: fortifying my home's network, improving privacy for my father and me, and laying the foundation for a smart home. (You guys took the time to help me out with that here, which, btw, thanks again!)

The network and privacy fortification is well underway and working. I set up Pi-hole with Unbound on one of my Raspberry Pis that also acts as a Tailscale exit node, got a new router that can connect my devices to ProtonVPN, have my Synology server working as storage, and... you know what, let's save this for another post. I'm still figuring some things out and want to let the dust settle first.

Anyway, back to gaming and PC'ing.

I'm no stranger to Linux; I've been using it on and off for over a decade on older PCs. But I've never committed to it on my main rig. As I said in another post, "It's the little things that make me not jump to Linux". While "these little things" didn't completely go away, I guess rolling up my sleeves to reconfigure my network, becoming more privacy-conscious, and reading about the ongoing issues with Windows 11 tipped the scales.

I debated between EndeavourOS and Fedora KDE. Fedora won.

EOS is a solid choice and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to try out an Arch-based distro. But Fedora is undeniably more popular, which means if there's a Linux app, it's almost guaranteed the devs will have a Fedora version with dedicated documentation and installation commands. In other words, the potential for more convenience won out.

And convenient it was, mostly thanks to this website: https://nattdf.streamlit.app/. It helped a ton. It installed codecs, SSH, enabled Flathub and RPM Fusion, etc. It even provides a script to install Nvidia drivers.

But drivers weren't my real worry. My real worry was something else entirely.

You see, I lied to you guys by omission. I actually tried to install Fedora a few months ago, but I had severe issues with my TV. My PC is connected to both a monitor and a TV. The monitor worked without problems, but the TV was a different story. The image quality was terrible. You know those photos taken with the very first camera phones? That's how the colors looked. I remember trying everything: switching to X11, installing different driver versions, messing around with Nvidia settings, display settings, color profiles, even the TV's internal settings. Nothing worked. So I gave up and went back to Windows.

But today, while trying to fix an issue with my TV, I noticed two things:

1. I found out that my TV's HDMI ports are not all equal. Port 4 is HDMI 2.1, while all the others are 2.0.
2. My PC was connected to Port 3.

This was the problem. It's what caused my Windows to randomly lose sound, and it's what made the image quality terrible on Fedora, and it's what caused issues I mentioned in my old post. I don't know how or why Windows could "deal with it" and output 4K 120Hz without apparent image quality loss, but somehow it did.

Regardless, after moving the cable to Port 4, installing Fedora, and getting the drivers running... it works just fine and dandy. Great image quality, 4K, and 120Hz. My PC still works flawlessly as a gaming machine.

The moral of the story? Don't be like me. Before blaming Wayland, Nvidia, drivers, or Linux... check the back of the TV.

This also brings a much-needed sense of standardization to my setup. Now that everything is under the same Linux umbrella, I can manage it all via SSH with total consistency. I’m already eyeing my Raspberry Pi’s Telegram bot as a way to remotely wake the PC for heavy tasks and shut it down afterward. The potential of this setup has me feeling pretty euphoric.

Now that the biggest hurdle is cleared, Steam is running perfectly and Proton is handling my game library like a champ. I'm finally daily-driving Linux on my main rig, and this time, I think it's for good.