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I am, in July or August, installing "Windows Server 2025" which is supposed to allow video card passthrough to the Hyper-V Windows 11 Enterprise, Linux, and other VMs I'm creating. I won't actually know it that's true until I try it though. It said that Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, and Windows 11 Enterprise as the Hyper-V host doesn't allow video card passthrough. It's via DDA (direct device assignment). If I do DDA then the host no longer has access but for me, that's actually what I want. The Windows Server host will use that Radeon Vega GPU integrated into the Ryzen 7 5700G and the Hyper-V VMs, which will only run one at a time, get the PNY GeForce RTX 4070 12GB exclusively.
That is according to chatGPT. What it said is in the black box. (oops, I deleted the black box of chatgpt output, but you can ask or search for instructions easilly enough).
Got OpenCL to work under the GE-Proton in Lutris. Bit convoluted to explain, and probably not relevant since it mysteriously works for you out of the box (TimberWolf that is). But I guess maybe for posterity. Also quite interesting.
On DS4/DS6 entry in Lutris under Runner options set to GE-Proton and under System options, scroll down to Environment variables and add:
WTF is this? GE-Proton by default does this
It's a Wine DLL override. Override letters:
n = native Windows DLL first
b = builtin Wine DLL first
d = disabled
So n,d says: try native opencl.dll; if that is not usable, do not fall back to Wine built-in. Disable it.
For Daz/Proton this is bad because Wine/Proton’s built-in opencl.dll is the bridge that talks to Linux OpenCL. GE-Proton adds opencl=n,d for most game IDs, so Daz cannot reach Linux NVIDIA OpenCL and reports "No OpenCL 1.2 device".
GAMEID=umu-2767030 works because GE-Proton skips that override for this specific Steam Game ID. Anything loading through Proton gets a Steam ID and only seemingly 2 games in the UMU database get a special treatment.
2767030 = Marvel Rivals
2274200 = Arken Age
There is an OpenCL allowlist inside GE-Proton’s proton script:
Hence we pretend to be Marvel Rivals to get around that opencl = "n,d" behavior. And then we provide it with the specific OpenCL vendor driver library file we want in OCL_ICD_FILENAMES.
@3DIO
Here's a shot in the dark you can try. Do as described above but point to the AMD specific library. From what I gathered it could be
usr/lib/pressure-vessel/overrides/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libamdocl64.so
or something? If GE-Proton is missing probably install the Gaming packages in the CachyOS Hello app under Apps/Tweaks.
Edit: no ,GE-Proton is not installed with the game packages. This should do it:
Might have to install yay first. It's for downloading/building stuff from the AUR (Arch User Repository) that has lots of stuff that isn't in the official repositories. You can find yay in the CachyOS Package Installer, or do
Wow, I might just have to give that a try this weekend :) Thanks so much, Robert.
@bluejaunte
Awesome piece of detective work but I do think the majority of this is unique to your particular environment setup (the /pressure-vessel directory, which isn't present in my directory structure despite me having Steam installed, suggests something steam related) rather than me being the outlier. I tested the following distros on a USB drive which was reformatted between each installation using the same methodology: The distro was installed using the Nvidia drivers if included (if not, they were installed as the first step), the latest stable wine was then installed, then Lutris, then the Daz Software. The Lutris runner was always set to system wine.
In all of these, dForce worked in Lutris with Nvidia GPUs without any other intervention: Linux Mint, PopOS, Fedora, Nobara, Manjaro, CachyOS, Zorin, Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
Have a look through the last few pages of the thread - nobody else has reported dForce issues with their installation either. AMD hardware is a whole different kettle of fish. It's unsupported hardware on an unsupported OS and was always going to be tricky, particularly with hardware that has been declared obsolete by its own manufacturer.
It's an inspired work-around to get dForce working on your PC but I think the vast majority of folks would not need to get this deep into the weeds if they do a standard install of their distro of choice and use Lutris from the get-go to install it all, rather than trying to get Studio running via a Windows installation through Steam. That's a bit left-field, as is the solution to the problem I suspect it created, but I can't help but be impressed by your fix :)
Yeah not sure what's going on there. With these findings I would've expected OpenCL to not work for you on any of the Proton runners either. But they do, right? All of the Proton options & Staging give you CUDA to render and find your card as an OpenCL device at the same time?
Does make me wonder what's different. I doubt that merely starting an existing exe through Steam screwed up anything. The logical conclusion if it works for you is that the native opencl.dll is working on your system whereas mine isn't as described above. Through that bit of code in GE-Proton I get to point it to the file manually. Maybe I'll try to find out more about that default opencl.dll that seems not to be working for some reason.
Did we solve the Smart Content Postgre database thing by the way?
@bluejaunte
Yup, absolutely. The only Proton runner that didn't work for me was an ancient GE-Proton version and Studio just refused to start. All of the more recent ones are fine, including the experimental and the cachy-os specific tune. For both DS4 and 6, GPU rendering and dForce worked with the Proton runners and I have a suspicion that dForce is actually a little quicker than under Windows.
As for Smart Content - not sure what to tell you here! It just works with no tinkering required. I don't use Smart Content as a rule but I have installed a few products with it, mostly script-based, that call other scripts using an absolute path rather than a relative one. The Ultrascenery series are in my Smart Content so I used it for them as well and they all appear as you would expect and work perfectly. What I don't have is a massive database of content but what is there works. Do you get a pop-up box with a warning about Postgre not being available on startup?
@3DIO
Backing up any Linux installation can be quite different to backing up a Windows one. There are two ways of doing it really:
1 - Disk image, as bluejaunte does. This makes restoring your OS easy, although the backup itself may be quite lengthy and can require a large amount of storage. Because you don't have a Windows dual-boot installation to fall back to, you'd need to create a bootable USB disk imager as the drive needs to be dismounted before it's copied. This needs to be done regularly or you could face lengthy system updates once it's all back up and running. By far the simplest but slowest option.
2 - Copy certain directories to a storage device. This is what I do. This requires more work on a reinstall and may potentially not work if the OS version you reinstall is significantly different from the one at the time you made the backup. This is not likely to happen with Cachy, as long as you do the rolling updates regularly. It requires very little space and is quick to do, but you will need to reinstall the whole OS again before copying the directories back. I am quietly confident I will not irreversibly wreck my OS and when the day comes that I am proved wrong, I will no doubt fiercely regret not doing an image backup! Anyway, I backup these and this should work for any Linux distro:
Starting from root:
/etc, /home, /srv (you may not need this one, depending on what you install), /usr/local and /var.
Davinci Resolve may prove to be tricky on your hardware as well. There are open bugs for it filed with the Cachy team - https://discuss.cachyos.org/t/davinci-resolve-amd-gpu/28038 - but I'm pretty sure it needs ROCm installed to work from the limited research I've done. I might be completely wrong about this so please investigate yourself.
I hate to say this, but it might be worthwhile for you to temporarily switch back to Windows, or at least dual-boot, until you can get a newer GPU. It seems to be the logical option to me.
I used to, not now though. I installed PostGre thingy through DIM at some point. I think I don't have any content installed, or no meta data, or not linked to the Windows folders. Haven't really looked into it. Small fix probably then.
Yeah works fine now. Was a matter of some annoying symlinking.
I've lost track. What were you needing Windows for again?
This is all starting to feel a little dogmatic...
I don't think anyone will be able to offer practical help for this endeavour because none of us use a virtual machine with hardware passthrough on Cachy. Please go and read the 20+ page guide that Robert posted earlier (and it is just a guide because what steps you actually take and the files you have to code yourself will be different from those the author needed) all the way through. All of it, in depth, not just the first paragraph! Once you've got through that and are confident that you can manage it, your next task is to find out which of those debian packages are held and what they're called in the Cachy repos, or the AUR archives...
You are effectively asking us how to build the whip you wish to flaggelate your own back with!
I can't help any further I'm afraid. My answer is to dual boot your system and use an exFAT drive (can just be a USB stick permanently plugged in) to pass files between the two or just allow Cachy to read the NTFS drive. This is not the answer you want to hear and it doesn't answer your question. It will, however, work.
The only other option is to try Linux Mint and see if dForce works out of the box with your GPU as it did for Csaa.
You've rejected every suggestion we've made up to this point and, unfortunately, I've got nothing left. Good luck!
I'd say don't bother with VM. Note the the very beginning of that Github passhtrough tutorial. He uses two GPU's and mentions how you need two for good performance. Using one is possible but some very light googling reveals that the host might lose the video display entirely and then you need to do SSH or god knows what kind of shenanigans to get it back. Or you don't do passthrough and it'll be slow as molasses. Either way you're gonna have a horrible time. Surely this has to be the worst option for performance-hungry stuff like Daz Studio or Davinci Resolve.
All just because of no NVidia GPU? Just go get one. Don't know what the minimum requirements are but surely some used one will do. If that really is absolutely impossible then dual booting is the obvious choice. Native performance, easy to do with minimal effort, other than maybe having to mess around with boot loaders. If you ever get an Nvidia card you can try and get everything working on Linux and eventually ditch Windows completely. But it'll be there until then.
Not to mention, in terms "showing Microsoft" or whatever, a VM is just Windows again. Sure you can disable internet access, but you can do that in Windows too. Just disable the network connection. You'd more so be punishing yourself than Microsoft. They'll just laugh their ass off that you still need Windows inside of Linux.
Obviously they won't give a damn either way, but just to paint the picture of what you'd be doing with a VM
Here's a small thing thatt bothers me: when opening a scene in Daz Studio running through Lutris, as in File > Open, the size of that file dialog window isn't saved. And it's too small by default, cutting off columns. It's also all white.
Some options when right-clicking on the window title bar > More Actions > Configure Special Window Settings. Add property for position and size, set both to remember. Can't find a property for column width though.
@bluejaunte
The window size and position for that dialogue box persists throughout the session for me but it's lost when restarting Studio. I'm curious as to why this bothers you because I've never even noticed it before. This is what it looks like with the KDE desktop:
Often cuts off long folder names and stuff. Windows saves everything you do in there, i.e. changing the column width. I'm basically increasing the column size every time and it gets annoying. Not the end of the world of course, but small things like that stand out when you work with a thing for 10 years.
I thought maybe some cheap used one. Switch to instant noodles for a month or something. Sell the AMD card. But hey I understand perfectly well, I'm struggling a lott these days too. If anything in my PC dies I can basically close shop with current hardware prices. It's pretty tough for PAs all around these days.
To be fair, Windows 10 is an alright OS. The real issues started with 11. Anyway, how were you going to install anything on Windows 10, VM or dual boot, without allowing internet access? I admire your conviction but it does feel a bit... unreasonable, at this point.
Single gpu passthrough using Arch Linux and a AMD Rx580 https://www.musabase.com/2025/05/single-gpu-passthrough-on-vm.html
I hate the call home crap that some software uses
Looking at DaVinci Resolve Studio activation I found this
DaVinci Resolve Studio does not require a paid periodic subscription update; it features lifetime activation via a license key or USB dongle for all major and minor versions. The activation key works on two computers simultaneously, and activation is permanent unless deactivated or if the system detects excessive, rapid, and conflicting activation
I did a search on activation and that was in the first hit
I did another search just now and got conflicting answers some saying since ver 20 some saying not with e free version and not with a dongal
I contacted their support and asked. Now waiting for an answer
No reply yet though it's probably a bit early for one.
I totally agree with you on the no internet access.
I've had MS remove programs in the past including my Daz Studio installation had a popup saying this program has been removed because it's not Microsoft approved. Poser and several video editors got he same treatment
You can't install Win 11 without being connected now. It no longer lets you create alocal user account. You have to use your micrsoft account.
Lucklly I installed it before they did that so I still have my local user account, at least until they disable it. Hopefully I'll have all my machines running Linux before that happens
Yeah Unfortunately I wasn't given a choice. When W11 first came out ther were a large number of us whose machines were upgraded autmatically / mistakenly due to MS's popup about W11 and attempts to revert back to W10 either failed altogether or were only partially succesful leaving only a clean install being the only option that might work which didn't always due to W11 locking access to part of the hd sectors sometimes
So I got stuck with W11 because of that and not wanting the hassle of reinstalling all my software again which presented problems as well.
@3DIO
You don't *need* to do this. To reiterate, a Wine prefix is a collection of folders which contain a basic Windows environment. Any Windows application running inside that Windows environment is sandboxed - it cannot see any of the file structure that exists outside that sandbox. The reverse is not true. Any Linux application, such as Blender, can see inside the wine prefix because it's just a set of folders. They neither know nor care about anything wine related. Blender was never isolated from Studio-produced content - I think you just assumed it was.
At its core, Diffeomorphic is a native .duf file importer for Blender. It does lots of other very cool things but at its heart, that's what it is. You don't even need to save anything from Daz Studio - you can navigate, in Blender, to your Daz content and open the files directly if you wanted to.
The reason you might want to use a symlink to allow Daz Studio access *outside* the sandbox is that the directory structure inside a wine prefix can get a little tedious if you're using it a lot: /home/3DIO/games/daz/drive_c/users/3DIO/Documents can get a little annoying.
What the symlink is does is *create* a shortcut from wherever you like which will open a folder that *already exists*.
--
So, as an example, create a directory in Home and call it diffeo. Navigate to the c_drive directory in your Daz wine prefix, open the console (you should have an option along the lines of 'open console here') and type:
ln -s /home/3DIO/diffeo diffeomorphic
This will create a shortcut folder called diffeomorphic that Studio can see in its wine prefix that will actually use the contents of the diffeo folder in your Home directory. Note that all references to 3DIO should be replaced with your username. Now you can easily navigate to your saved content from within Blender without having to navigate that tedious directory path.
You should use this technique to access your Daz content folders as well, rather than copying them into your wine prefix because that road leads to tears when you, inevitably, have to rebuild your wine environment....
(Some file managers actually enable you to symlink by just right-clicking in the UI - I think Nautilus can so have a search and see if your FM is capable of this.)
Reference: https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-create-symbolic-links-in-linux-using-the-ln-command/
Received reply about Davinci Resolve
"Thank you for contacting us.
DaVinci Resolve Studio may require periodic re activation of license keys if an update to the software is applied, otherwise the licensee should remain active in the program if o changes are made. We are aware of early versions released of a software version automatically de activating users license keys requiring a re activation.
In such case it is recommended that users install the latest update to the version installed. In example, if DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1 is installed, you will need to install the latest version, 20.3.1 to avoid the de activation. You can find the latest software versions available for download under the "latest downloads" column. "
50 series needs DS 2026 and from what we can read it may not perform as expected.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/728111/daz-studio-2026-beta-version-6-25-2026-12107-updated-may-04-2026#latest
Just keep an eye on it. Would be a terrible downer if he new card doesn't perform as expected. At the moment at least I'd say a used 40 series is probably the smarter choice.
@3DIO
We made a business decision to switch to Cycles as our renderer when the Alpha was released. I do think Daz will get to the bottom of whatever is causing the viewport to behave like it's molasses (at the moment it's dreadful with both my 5060Ti and 3060 in Windows and even worse in Cachy) but there is no roadmap, no timescale and no guarantee. I'm not sure Daz have really even officially acknowledged there is a problem because it's not affecting everybody; it's fine with our Lovelace RTX 6000s at work which are essentially slower, less energy-intensive 4090s with double the VRAM. The only semi-official response I've seen is 'it's being investigated.' Blender is the natural choice if you're on Linux as well - you get a choice of AMD or Nvidia cards (Nvidia cards are much faster but also comparitively much more expensive - check the price of a 9060XT 16GB vs the 5060Ti) - and all the functionality that you have to pay a subscription for with Daz Studio. We use K-Cycles, which is a paid-for version of Blender, and the render times are about a quarter compared to the same scene rendered in iRay with zero difference in quality. This is where you're expecting the 'but' and there are some:
It's a bit unfair comparing the two because Studio is a stager, somewhat akin to Marmoset, but Blender can do everything Studio can do and so much more. Except for one critical thing: Studio is by far the cheapest, easiest and most adaptable character creator on the market. There are character creator add-ons for Blender and other paid stand-alone competitiors, but they don't come close. Try taking a meta-human out of Unreal. So... create your characters and scenes in Studio, then throw it to Blender using Diffeomorphic. You get a native Linux 3D toolset with your choice of GPUs and the ease-of-use and massive flexibility (and affordability) of Studio's character and outfit creation and market-place. You get a shader system that can weather, add dirt and grime, rust, dust, or alter anything you please, a geometry node system that can break up those straight edges or scatter anything and, if you're prepared to put in the time, a fully-featured modeller and animator that's used professionally. The compositor which adds post-render effects is excellent and you get a superb near-real-time renderer, Eevee, for animation and cut-scenes.
The downside is that you have to learn how to use this functionality and Daz store models are designed for iRay and obviously just work in Studio. There is some extra work taking these assets into Blender and making them look good and in some cases *a lot* of extra work. If you're just doing portraits or similar I would just stick with Studio. If you have plans to do anything more complex, there are other routes which you might find more viable.
@bluejaunte
Unless I personally knew the person selling that card or bought it from a business that offered a good warranty, I wouldn't touch a used GPU with a bargepole. You might get lucky and find a private seller who's genuinely looked after their card and used a fan controller 100% of the time or you might end up buying something that's been thrashed to within an inch of its life in a crypto mining operation and flogged off at the end of the 12 month warranty. The people who do this aren't stupid - they keep the boxes and are perfectly capable of photographing it in a nice PC in a nice study. It's why I offered my 1660 to 3DIO completely free - I couldn't sell it because it might last another 6 years or it might last 6 hours.
I don't think I've ever seen a bigger upheaval in hardware availability and prices. With Nvidia essentially relegating their consumer-grade GPUs to a side-hussle in favour of their AI workstations and the ever-increasing demands of data-centers for hardware, AMD or even Intel Arc GPUs might turn out to be the ones we're using in the future. And that future does not have iRay in it, but it could all change tomorrow.
3DIO,
I'm heartened to hear that you've reached a milestone. A visual confirmation such as the render you've shared is a wonderful sign that you've got a working set of tools to engage in productive work.
If I may make a personal request, could you kindly move on from this "Daz Studio and Linux" thread? As you've seen in the Art Studio forum, there are active threads there pertaining to comics, short videos and Gen AI. Amazing stuff! Now that you have a working system, I should think you'll find productive feedback there about these topics. If it helps, simply create a new thread of your own in the Art Studio forum to showcase your work and to solicit feedback.
I make this personal request as I monitor this Daz and LInux thread and try to help when I can. The more focused the problems and the more on-topic they are -- chiefly, Linux and Daz on a technical level -- the more we can work together to resolve them and learn. A good signal to noise ratio in any discussion thread is something worth aiming for, right?
Cheers!
Please try to keep the discussion civil and on the topic, not other people.
3DIO,
Could I ..??? Oh you mean, put in a request to @TimberWolf about Linux and Daz? Yeah. I do have some technical question I believe a person of @TimberWolf's knowledge and experience could help me with. But, gosh, there's so much discussion on this thread lately, I'll hold back just to keep down the cross-talk. I'm good, really.
Cheers!