Is The MNT Reform For Me?

Wanted one of these for a while, mainly for the looks and the customization. Idk tho. I have a feeling its not like I can just hook up the reform with the ssd from my current pc and boom now its just like my current pc with a new body lol. I’m guessing there’s a lot more to it than that? Seems like the reform can only handle so much when it comes to the graphics on the kind of games I like(splitgate, xdefiant, GuiltyGearStrive, etc), and gaming is probably my highest priority(kinda). Not even sure if playing those kind of games is possible on the reform ngl. I don’t even know if it’s compatible with the some of the applications n stuff I like to use (blender, the adobe stuff, Ableton etc). If theres a way to make it work tho, I’d gladly take on the challenge, just need to know if it’s even worth a try. Considering that my old running off of windows ( and I overall have no idea what I’m doing), I got a feeling it’s not gonna work out. Always wanted to switch my os but I’m assuming some of the software stuff I use might not work on anything other than windows.

Any thoughts?

The answer sadly is likely going to be “no”.

I don’t have the Rockchip SoM (yet), so I cannot comment on that one, but at least on the A311D the GPU will not be able to run the games you mentioned at an acceptable framerate.
Also, except for open source games, you will have a hard time finding any games that run natively on ARM64 hardware, so you also have to consider emulation overhead.

The Adobe stuff is also likely going to cause headaches. To my surprise it seems that it is meanwhile working through WINE (see https://appdb.winehq.org), but it seems to not be a smooth experience (only Gold rating for some applications). Last time I tried to run Adobe software on Linux (more than 20 years ago) it did not work at all, so this is definitely a nice improvement.
At least on the A311D CPU performance is going to be a bottleneck there though - given that the CPU isn’t that fast to begin with and then there’s emulation overhead…
Given that the A311D is barely fast enough to use the native version of GIMP, I have my doubts about it being able to handle Photoshop through an emulator with usable performance…

I would be very happy if someone else with first-hands experience would prove me wrong on those two claims though, but I am not optimistic.

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Hi @porkymcporkstr and welcome to the forum!

The answers you get here will probably be quite a bit biased as probably most of us here are still here because they like the platform. But that being said I think I have to agree with soulsource. If gaming is your highest priority, Linux itself might be problematic. With the Reform, you would not only switch operating systems from Windows to Linux, you would also switch architectures from x86 to arm64. While a lot of progress has been made in the area of gaming on linux (software like playonlinux, minigalaxy, play.it or even steam make it much easier than it was in the past) it can still be a tricky experience and even not work at all if you are unlucky. It becomes even more tricky because triple-A games are almost exclusively written for the x86 architecture. This means you’d have to emulate them on the Reform which is another can of worms…

If you have not much experience with Linux, my personal suggestion would be to start with a native linux installation on a second-hand computer and use that to tinker with the system and see if it’s something for you at all, given your priorities.

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And just to not be that negative about Linux gaming: On actual gaming hardware you can nowadays play almost all games on Linux.
I am writing “almost”, because competitive games that require kernel-level anti-cheat generally do not run on Linux, and also a few other games have issues still.

Linux gaming is working so well, that Valve is selling a gaming handheld running Linux: the Steam Deck.

But yeah, all currently available SoMs for the MNT Reform use an ARM64 CPU, so you will have emulation overhead, and the GPU is generally not what one would consider suitable for gaming…

There is the MNT Reform Gaming Thread, which you can check to get an idea of what kinds of games you can expect to run on the Reform.

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I appreciate you reaching out, been feeling so lost with this computer stuff lol. Thank you for the warm welcome. Thats so cool I didn’t even know it worked that way. Ngl yall really got me ready to actually look into linux. Pretty intimidating but… eh whatever xd. Also i luv ur pfp

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I appreciate you goin out of ur way to answer, frfr. Thats some pretty insightful stuff. Thank you so much.

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It might not be for you in terms of gaming, but it could still be for you if you want to learn linux. The most demanding game I’ve gotten to run on the rk3588 is Halflife 2 if that gives you an idea of what the hardware is capable of.

Testing out linux on an older x86 laptop would be a more affordable place to start. Most programs you find in package repository’s on x86 should be available on arm at this point.

This won’t apply for mnt laptops as they use arm processors, but more general place to go to see if a game runs on linux is protonDB. I think most of my steam library works, but I play mostly single player RPGs. It doesn’t seem like the shooters you listed will work very well on linux but the fighting game should play just fine on supported hardware.

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Whoa I appreciate you putting me on to this website. I feel like you gave me a lot more clarity. Thank you so much. Feels good knowing the fighting games I play aren’t that demanding ngl. I luv how they generally don’t demand much power most of the time.

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