Linux

Dude, I wanna tell you that success is possible.

On this one daily driver of a 6-year-old machine. I installed proxmox. Then a desktop on top of that. Then I made the USB keyboard, mouse, and sound, go into that internal machine with the video card. Then I plugged all that shit into a USB KVM, then a 20ft set of USB and video cables to my desk, where the USB is hubbed to the ends of sanity itself before it comes out to a USB mouse, keyboard, and sound dongle. Video goes to the panels clamped onto this desk.

Works. It defies logic, threatens one spec and probably breaks a low of nature and more than one of decency, but it works.

Your way-better gear should really work like gangbusters. Please keep at it in case the solution is right there.

Burning an ISO to a DVD in 2026 as a way to test out Linux is crazy...

Sometimes I think people just want to justify their choice to stay in Windows and try to have a bad experience.

CachyOS might be a bit too ambitious for a transition like that. Tinkering and optimizing is a given on arch-based system.

Don't get discouraged though and give Fedora, Ubuntu or even Bazzite a go I'd say. You can try out the sound in their live environment without having to install anything.

works for me three years ago now when I switched, I use Mint, no issues. AMD CPU and integrated GPU, dual booted for a month and stopped using windows, formatted the NVME and installed LDME from a USB thumb drive, using that ever since.

Tbh, this in specific is why I still have a win7 pc for my music enjoyment.

Not that audio can't work fine on Linux, it absolutely can. But it doesn't always, and it's definitely not as friendly to an external DAC unless you get lucky. Mine works fine overall, but it's still not quite as reliable. The signal cuts out, etc. Works better on my laptop than my desktop, though the laptop I've never had any issues, despite using the same distro when I had Linux on that desktop.

Me? In your place I'd try some other distros before full on quitting, but I'm a glutton for punishment because I enjoy fiddling up to a point. Mint, maybe one of the more noob friendly arch options, something along those lines. PopOs might be an okay starting place to see if it's Linux, or a distro issue. I do know that pulse and the other audio functions vary some between distros, though I'm nowhere near capable of understanding why without learning other things first. I do know that when I tried cachy via a live drive last, it was pissy about sounding decent straight out of the box, so I abandoned it without an install.

Either way, I totally get it. Some things, it isn't about adapting to the system, you just want shit to work the way it should. Music is one of those things for me too.

Those kind of hardware incompatibilities do happen. I think the audio one can be troubleshooted but I have absolutely no idea about the nvidia one.

Hopefully your hardware gets supported on Linux one day.

That's OK. Maybe sticking with Windows is what's best for you.

It’s either “works but evil” (Windows) or “doesn’t work but not evil” (Linux) and that’s unfortunate.

Sorry to be that guy, but Linux does indeed work fine for a lot of folks. Just not for everybody.

I've been using for 8 years now without a single major issue, after having been using Apple products since the early 80s. It mostly depends the use case I imagine and, not being a gamer myself, I'm not sure I even understand completely what was your issue with the GPU. But once again it's obvious it will not work for everyone and I'm sorry you had not experienced that same level of usability as I and many others are.

FYI, for audio output selection I use a little utility called Sound Switcher Indicator, it easily lets me select where I want the audio to play, directly from Mint's taskbar. Maybe this can help? https://yktoo.com/en/software/sound-switcher-indicator/

A few things that might save the next attempt, whichever distro you land on:

Audio: USB DACs on PipeWire usually work, but sometimes they aren't picked as the default output or end up on an "Off"/"Pro Audio" profile. wpctl status shows whether the D3 is listed under Sinks, and wpctl set-default <id> makes it the default. If it isn't listed at all, aplay -l tells you whether the kernel sees it. pavucontrol's Configuration tab is the easiest place to switch the profile to plain stereo output.

4K120: the 2060 Super only has HDMI 2.0, which is why you need 4:2:0 for 4K120 on the C1 in the first place. A common workaround is an active DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.1 adapter on the card's DP port. A good one gets the C1 to 4K120 at full RGB, so the subsampling question goes away on Windows and Linux alike (VRR through those adapters is hit or miss, and cheap ones top out at 60Hz, so check that it specifically lists 4K120).

Installer: writing the ISO to a USB stick is much more reliable than a DVD, and checking the ISO checksum first rules out a bad download.

For the video issues, IIRC that's an issue with HDMI. If that is the issue then switching to Displayport should help. Something about the HDMI forum not playing ball with the Linux driver devs.

As much as I'm a fanboy and Windows hater, I hate it much more that people downvote their bad experience with Linux.

1. In general if you use Linux, you need to be aware of what hardware you have and what is supported and what needs extra work. Looks like your Audioengine DAC is troublesome on Linux since years: https://alriklubbers.com/2020/12/29/fix-audioengine-d3-volume-control-on-linux/
2. X11 doesn't provide a poor experience compared to Wayland. If anything, its the other way around, because Wayland has still some missing features and support from all applications that are established standards on X11. But to me this tradeoff is worth it, because Wayland is more secure by design and is the future, while X11 is abandoned. You can run most X11 games on Wayland with the integrated XWayland bridge (it does it for you automatically). -- Also Nvidia is a removed in Linux, so maybe its an issue with their proprietary driver, rather than Linux (which does not invalidate your issue BTW, I'm not discounting the problem you have, just move the blame). Since the RTX 2060 series, there are also Open Source drivers built into the Kernel. But they are not as good as the proprietary drivers directly from Nvidia yet.

Overall Linux is not just a single operating system or vendor, and that's one of the beauty compared to locked down Windows and what Microsoft allows you to do. In Linux you can switch and change graphics system like X11 or Wayland, you can choose the entire desktop environment like KDE or Gnome or build you own by using a Window manager directly. And that's just a few points I listed. When installing first and learning, this is a lot off course. Let alone the customization you are able to do once you are familiar with the system.

Windows 11 can be used with an online account online, that needs to be registered and activated by Microsoft. You have ads in your startmenu, Microsoft is tracking everything, even if you change settings it will revert at some point. Updates are horrendous in Windows. Ai integrated deeply in the system (if you like that, there is even a Linux distribution for you too...).

It's unfortunate that you didn't have much luck when trying Linux out. I'm not sugar coating it here, some hardware setups, and some use cases are just not well suited on Linux. You have to weight what you gain and loose with the switch and if its worth it for you. Maybe there is a distribution out there that fits you well, but its hard to say what exactly caused your issues. I just wish people would not downvote you for sharing your experience and frustration.

Try Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint as LiveUSB’s to see if you like the experience. Installing different DE’s can be done, and there are also versions of distros with KDE as the default. Giving one distro a shot really does yourself a disservice, especially if your answer is to go back to an OS that has reached EOL.

I have never tried Catchy, but some distros require more setup and maintenance than others.

Currently I have Debian and Pop os as my main distros. Those two have worked almost without issue compared to other distros I tried. Troubleshooting and learning how your computer actually works is part of the fun with Linux though. I used to get really discouraged when something on my computer would not work, but I realized that was mainly due to not understanding how to fix it. With Linux you can fix it yourself and it teaches you how to be patient and learn to solve computer issues on your own.

I couldn't get everything in my setup to work in catchyos, but everything works in Garuda. Try distros until you find one that doesn't piss you off.

1. Audio is always an issue. I still have issues with Audio on some distros. like on Void I couldn't get audio working at all to save my life. Try a different distro like Fedora or Debian if you want it to work out of the box. if you're looking for a gaming focused distro like CachyOS try PikaOS which is a fork of Debian. by far one of the quickest and most straight forward installs i've ever experienced.

2. you don't have to use Wayland, I don't. I can't stand wayland. I use X11 with Picom. I use DWM cause it just works. if you want a desktop environment then use XFCE4. that just works and is very light weight.

But honestly at the end of the day if Windows works for you and still works for you then just stick with it. Don't listen to the people who say "wah wah windows bad" it doesn't matter. Use whatever works. I mean I use every OS on various machines because I honestly enjoy playing around with Operating Systems. I use Linux, BSD, Windows, MacOS on various machines. there's no perfect OS out there and I've used them all. just use what works for you and your hardware.

I could not figure out how to get audio to come out of my headphones.

That's probably an Audioengine D3 USB DAC problem and not a Linux problem. Almost all audio systems are supported in Linux, but maybe this one isn't. It is up to the hardware vendor to ensure quality support, that's also how it works with Windows. It's not Microsoft that writes all those drivers, they are written by the OEM vendor.

Only with Linux sometimes users of the hardware implement the support that should have been provided by the vendor.

over HDMI to my LG C1

Don't use HDMI, HDMI is inferior to display port and only serves the purpose to work as a DRM mechanism, something we absolutely do not want.

but I’ve read that X11 provides a poor experience compared to Wayland.

I have no idea what bad user-experience X11 should be the cause of. X11 works absolutely fine, and has features you won't find anywhere else.

But apart from that I've heard Windows is utter crap proprietary spyware, so compared to that you are obviously way better off with Linux.
You should complain to the maker of that audio system about it not working, your complaint here is completely irrelevant, and achieves nothing.

Hmmh. Isn't there some way to fix those two issues? I mean it's usually the case that we have to put in some effort when starting fresh. You probably put in time to get the audio how you like it with Windows, and configured the display subsampling to your liking and now that's all set up perfectly. And now you're trying to set up the computer in a different way. And I'd expect that to sometimes come with a bit of friction?! At least it won't just continue exactly as is, because you're starting fresh with a new operating system.

If you really like to switch... I think configuring a USB DAC should be possible. Not sure about the Nvidia stuff. You'd have to blame the big companies for deliberately messing up HDMI. And LG for not providing any alternative. I mean if it's worth the effort for you, you could try asking for help. If you're okay with Windows and like to avoid starting all over again, maybe just stick with it?!

I mean it's going to be some sort of tradeoff anyway. Currently you have the subsampling right. Maybe on the flipside your CPU performance is worse than it could be with Linux. And it's a bit wasteful with the memory and spies on you. With Linux that might improve, but you might trade it in for a few different quirks. Computers rarely come anywhere close to being perfect. But you can pick your poison.