BananaTrifleViolin

An option to consider: LibreElec does this with Kodi, and Kodi itself can be used for this. LibreElec can be set up for a controller from boot.

The downside with Kodi is it’s a bit clunky to do anything other than play media, but it can be used to launch games reasonably well or even launch a dedicated gaming interface like RetroArch for a good interface for games.

I’m sure you could achieve what LibreElec achieves using Armbian and DietPi if you’re willing to spend some time configuring things.

hehe, true. I’d just buy a used one off ebay. It doesn’t have to be a good drive really as it’s not going to have critical data on it. People don’t want them because the drives are old and could fail, but for this would literally just be windows and an online game so I’d take the risk of the inconvenience of having to replace it in a year. Any data lost can just be re-downloaded onto a new drive. E.g. I found a bunch of second hand SSDs for £30-£40 on a quick search now. Wouldn’t touch them for data storage but for this - why not?

I’d just get a cheap small second hard drive for your PC, install windows on it, dual boot set up (keep linux as the primary drive and Grub will have Windows as an option) and use it to play Fortnite. Windows will pester about activating but if you’re just using it to play Fortnite so ignore it.

I Linux main, but kept my old Windows drive and install in case I ever need it. Haven’t used it in ages, but it’s pretty harmless to have an old drive sitting in my PC. I don’t even mount the drive in Linux, it’s just there if I need it.

So Kazeta as others mention is about putting games onto SD cards.

Another project is https://zaparoo.org/ - this one doesn’t store the data on the card, but instead uses NFC so people can have “fake” cartridges that trigger the load of a game on the Linux system. This allows people to make something that looks great but is simply a stylish trigger to load the media (games, sites, movies, doesn’t matter what).

SteamOS is optimised for Valve’s hardware, and at present it only officially supports AMD GPUs, and not all of them. They are rolling out support for more AMD hardware, and “working with” Intel and Nvidia to do the same. Support is a big deal, especially as it’s an immutable system and it’s not got a big ecosystem of users/volunteers managing the packages and providing alternatives. Configuring and modifying it is more difficult than a non immutable system, so you are very dependent on the official options the distro provides to customise your system. It’s based off Arch which is completely different to Bazzite. Arch doesn’t have it’s own immutable versions to work with (there are immutable distros based on Arch, but not ones that SteamOS is based on), so if you need to problem solve you’re restricted to SteamOS specific advice, and whatever Valve currently has within it’s repos. It’s likely 3rd parties will add more options but at present it’s a focused distro.

Bazzite meanwhile is an open distro project, which is also immutable but built from the start to support (and tested on) a huge range of gaming PCs and other hardware, including with Nvidia GPUs. There are lots of users & volunteers already involved that are motivated to ensure it works with all the major graphics cards, and keep up to date as they use it themselves. It is also based off Fedora Kinoite, which has an established immutable ecosystem which eases some of the friction when finding support. This also means likely more software within the main Bazzite repos already tailored for the immutable system, alongside the usual options in Flatpaks and AppImages. But Bazzite also includes Waydroid to allow android software use, and is already set up with Homebrew & Distrobox to give more options. It’s unlikely SteamOS has these things set up or at least easily set up for users.

With an immutable system it’s important to have options to get software installed, although it’s possible in a HTPC set up you’ll find what you need in the main repos of SteamOS, Flatpaks and AppImages so maybe it won’t be an issue.

SteamOS is a great concept and I like it on my Steam Deck, but it’s not really something to run on your devices while so early in it’s support system. If your device is AMD based then maybe you’ll have no issues, but I don’t think being an early adopter on a system you want to use daily is a great idea. Maybe you won’t need the wide range of software and options Bazzite offers, but Bazzite does offer much more “out of the box” at the moment as a mature and established distro.

Ok, the best way to do this is to install VM software on linux (I use KVM/QEMU) then make a new Windows guest and install from scratch using a Windows install ISO file. It’s the better method as the new Windows install will have no bloat from your original install, the boot partition will be set up properly and there won’t be redundant old drivers and configuration issues that could be very messy in the guest.

I have a KVM/QEMU windows VM with a license that runs fine; I use it rarely mainly to use work’s version of MS Office. You can migrate the license from your original install over to the VM so you don’t have to pay for a new Windows license. If you also have data to transfer into the VM from the original windows partition, you can either directly mount that partition inside the VM or mount the partition in your Linux host as a read only partition, and then share that as a folder into the VM. Then you can transfer any files you want into within your guest machine (e.g. within the windows guest copy files from the shared folder, drive D: onto the guests machines drive C:). It’s much much easier than the complexity and issues of cloning an existing partition and trouble shooting it to work in a VM.

If you really want to go down the route of taking the current installed OS and move that into a VM image, then the best way is making a disk image of the whole windows drive (assuming it’s a boot partition + C: drive) or clone both the boot partition + windows partitions into their own files if it’s a shared drive with Linux. There are lots of tools that can do this; “dd” and “partclone” are 2 particularly common tools you can use from a linux terminal to create a .img file of the partitions, and then you mount those into a VM. But messing with Windows boot partitions is always messy, and you’ll likely also need a Windows Recover disc to also mount in the partition to “repair” the boot partition in the new machine. You will also have to troubleshoot hardware issues if Windows can’t cope with the sudden complete hardware change from your host PC to the new virtual hardware.

Honestly, make a fresh Windows machine in a VM and transfer your files in. It’s far easier.

EDIT:
Here is a good guide to setting up a Windows guest in KVM/QEMU including TPM 2.0 for linux.

https://computingforgeeks.com/windows-11-installation-on-kvm-with-virt-manager/

Then with once you have a working Windows VM, this is a good guide for setting up a shared folder (I’d mount your windows drive within your Linux host as RO, and then share the mount point as a folder into your guest; that reduces the risk of data loss):

https://www.debugpoint.com/kvm-share-folder-windows-guest/

I didn’t write these guides but have read them through and they’re what I’d do/did for my Windows VM. If you choose to migrate your drive instead, you’ll still need to set up the hardware of the virtual machine as in these guides, but instead of creating a new virtual drive file, use the disk image you create from your windows partitions.