[Vent] Frustrations with Linux: in-home game streaming, Plex, and permissions

I have a modest Windows 10 desktop computer I use for gaming. I have Sunshine installed on it and I stream to devices such as my Steam Deck or a laptop whenever I want to play anything. Recently something happened causing Sunshine performance to tank and nothing I did was working to fix it. So I figured it was time to give Linux another try as I've been doing every few years for the past 20.

First I loaded up Bazzite because I'm using it with great success on a media center PC in my living room. Sunshine worked great on it, but there was no way to install Plex Media Server without going into containers. I know from experience that containers and I don't get along -- largely because of permission issues. I don't quite understand permissions in Linux (I understand how they work, I just don't understand them) and inevitably I'd find myself installing PMS in a hacky way and then doing hacky things involving chown to get access to my media folders.

Next I tried Pop OS! but Sunshine wouldn't run. Sunshine doesn't seem to like functioning unless it's running on X11.

Next I try going back to Nobara because I've had great luck with it in the past. Sunshine doesn't work AND PMS has permission issues.

It also didn't help at any point that I had Windows Spanned Volumes set up and now I'm doing this awkward, time consuming dragging back and forth of files in order to make Linux compatible drives. I've also never been able to set up RAID on Linux -- I'm not command line shy but, because I'm a very visual person, I'm not comfortable doing such sensitive tasks unless I can see what I'm doing, so to speak.

Given enough time I can work around these issues. I've been using computers for 40 years and I'm pretty savvy with a web search, plus I'm patient as fuck. But now that I'm in mid life I really just want something that works out of the box as effectively as Windows, just without the cruft and lack of control of that OS.

Also keenly aware that I'm using an nvidia card and that's just asking for grief.

I'm gonna keep at it for the rest of today and see what I can wrangle. Think of me in your prayers.