Hi, so I want to building a pc for a home server (?) or NAS. I dont really know whats the most appropriate term but what I intend to build is a one pc for my household. currently my requirement is one work ‘pc’ capable of heavy 3d modeling one light work pc. two 4k gaming tvs. (they most likely wont be used at the same time)
my knowledge of technical stuff is bretty basic so please be patient with me.
before, i used my steam deck to stream my work pc using parsec but i thought i just want to jump all in on linux and using vm to use more niche 3d softwares.
my budget is flexible as long as i dont need to use enterprise hardware. also i heard nvidia is not good for linux so i’d like to confirm if that is still the case as im thinking of using 5090 if not, i hope amd releases an equivalent capable card or if any according my quick research suggest.
as for linux, the only distro (?) i ever used is the steam deck one and i love it. im not a programmer or even remotely capable one so i’d like to avoid anything that has to be manually typing commands at terminal but im open to surface level tinkering.
thank you for your time
For the multi-seating aspect, I’ve just set up something similar using something called a KVM Extender (I got this one). I have my PC set up in my office and another seat set up in my bedroom.
The KVM essentially just transports HDMI and USB a long distance through an ethernet cable, so the bedroom monitor just appears as a second monitor. I’ve set up a keyboard combination to switch between enabled monitors so only one is turned on at once.
Not sure how many seats you could push with this, since you would need a set of KVM extender boxes per seat with its own HDMI/Display and USB ports in the PC. Might be something to look into in case it fits!
this sound like a viable option for me. thank you for your suggestion
Adding onto this a bit as I also use a KVM to stream games from my bedroom PC to the living room 4k TV.
Hyprland has been great for this. I used to use KDE, then i3. KDE was a PITA for this setup, no fault of their own it is just fundamentally a different one, and i3 worked to some extent but I was still constantly fiddling with stuff to get audio and video exactly how I wanted to (and to do it easily).
Hyprland just works for me and I love it. I press a keybind and run a script I wrote to turn off my desk monitors, set audio, and launch the emulator front end (emulationstation-DE). Which can also launch all my steam and lutris games, as well as emulators all the way up to PS3 and switch games.
I even mounted a remote start button on the wall and turn my PC on from the other room
thank you for the extra info. I’m interested in how you make the script for turning off monitor remotely, it def sound super useful.
It’s actually very simple:
monitors-on:
#! /bin/bash
hyprctl keyword monitor DP-1, 2560x1440@144, 0x0, 1
hyprctl keyword monitor DP-3, 2560x1440@144, 2560x0, 1
hyprctl keyword monitor HDMI-A-1, disable
monitors-off is basically same thing but reversed:
#! /bin/bash
hyprctl keyword monitor DP-1, disable
hyprctl keyword monitor DP-3, disable
hyprctl keyword monitor HDMI-A-1, 0x0@60, 1
es-de
I’m still working out some kinks with audio so I don’t wanna go down the rabbit hole hell that is pactl and pavucontrol in this post. But that’s more of a universal Linux gripe I have than distro specific.
Obviously you’ll need to tweak the script to what your specific setup is. The first numbers are x & y axis and the second is refresh rate. This is just an example. It’s also Wayland only but you can do this in x11 no problem
As far as “remotely” switching, I just assigned the scripts to keybinds in the hyprland config file. Super easy.
thank you for the instructions!