Windows 10 support is ending on a cliff-edge, and 11 appears to be a nightmare of privacy intrusion + ads + hardware requirements + wonky updates.
Thus, many will be thinking of getting a new PC and installing Linux as the OS. It would be nice to stay with Windows 7, but the paucity of local AI support is going to be more and more annoying in the next few years.
Here’s what I found out, which may also help others.
The PC? Here in the UK, I see that one can now get a perfectly reasonable new PC, inc. a Saturday delivery, for a relatively modest £435 (Intel i5-14400 10-core CPU, 32Gb DDR4 RAM, 650W PSU – as specced at pcspecialist.co.uk). Then, on arrival, fit your existing SSD drive and graphics card. Then install Linux. I can’t afford that much at present, but it might be possible by September. So I’m thinking ahead here. Apparently a recent Intel i5 10-core CPU and 32Gb of system memory is perfectly adequate for Stable Diffusion AI work on Linux, since it’s the graphics card that matters for SD. I’d also like to try various other local ‘AIs’ such as speech/music generation, creative writing assistants, maybe a Python code-writing assistant etc.
Poser? But what about the 3D rendering in Poser, which I hope to pair with Stable Diffusion by using SD as a ‘style renderer’? The WineHQ directory – Poser information page(s) unhelpfully stops at Poser 2014 on Linux. But in the Renderosity forums in 2024, one usefully reads…
“I have installed Poser 13 successfully on Linux Mint Cinnamon with the latest version of Wine. Everything works perfectly fine, even the Firefly render engine does, which was not functional in Poser 12. The only downside is the dependency on CPU rendering only, because Wine isn’t able to pass through to the GPU.”
So, it sounds like Poser 13 should be fine… if you only want renders from Poser’s Preview, Comic-Book Preview, Sketch and Firefly. Fine by me in this case, as Stable Diffusion doesn’t need to be fed a Superfly render.
Wine runs Poser 11 too, according to a 2019 forums comment…
“newest Poser 11.2 worked right out of the box [with Wine, though also restricted to CPU Firefly rendering]”
11.2 was the first Bondware edition, and restored the .PSD output from the Firefly rendering panel. Meaning you could potentially maintain a Poser running old Python 2 scripts, DSON import of Genesis 1 & 2, E-on Vue compatibility etc.
Linux version? ‘Linux Mint Cinnamon’ is one of the most popular versions for Linux newbies, and has the slight variant Winux7 (which makes Linux Mint 20.3-Una look and feel exactly like Windows 7). Like Linux, Winux7 is free and comes with Wine pre-installed. Wine lets you stay inside Linux, but still run a large range of Windows software. Apparently the Linux version doesn’t matter, for running Wine. Winux7 also includes a “Windows 10 VM”, or ‘virtual machine’ (which requires a valid paid Windows key to activate). This allows Windows 10 and Linux to run at the same time, and to have basic things like clipboard cross-over with Linux-native software. Apparently vital for things like Microsoft Word, Excel and Publisher, since Wine doesn’t handle MS Office software well. And I assume a VM could also run Poser with Windows driver access to the GPU, for SuperFly renders. Update: an article in The Register suggests that’s not the case, and the VM can’t natively ‘see’ the graphics card. Thus a dual-boot Win/Linux system would be required, which is not ideal.
Drivers? Apparently the Linux NVIDIA graphics-card drivers were iffy and sniffed-at a few years back, but that’s changed in 2025. They’ve since embraced both Linux and open source. So I should be able to use the latest drivers, which have Stable Diffusion enhancements. Presumably the Windows 10 VM installs its own Windows NVIDIA drivers.
RAM: Linux OS ideally has 8Gb, a Windows VM a further 8Gb, and then add the software and extras on top. It thus seems like 32Gb would be the ideal, especially for those working with 3D + AI (who knows what may come along in a few months, that will need the extra?).
Photoshop? No longer a problem, apparently, as long as you’re happy to stay with Photoshop CC 2018. Which I am. Photoshop CS6 is apparently the fallback option, and works fine under Wine.
DAZ Studio too? Yes, apparently it mostly works on Linux. Install with Wine then also install nvidia-libs so it can see the GPU for iRay rendering. The downsides are said to be that the Viewport is sluggish when using iRay, and dForce clothing doesn’t use dForce. You also need to make Linux’s file-system not be case-sensitive (e.g. Dog is understood to be the same as dog and doG), since your runtime is likely littered with content creators who didn’t bother about case-sensitivity. It’s never been a problem on Windows, but can be on the default Linux (depending on version).
I’ve no idea if nvidia-libs would also work for Poser and Superfly rendering. I guess it’s “try it and see”.
Update: Also found wine-nvoptix which is… “a library to be used with Wine. It aims at allowing Linux users to launch Windows software using the OptiX API”. The maker also recommends installing nvidia-libs (see above, already mentioned). Also a couple of others, plus “WINE-NVML for hardware function detection from NVIDIA GPU”.