Over the past few days we’ve been rebuilding our primary MiraNova development workstation from the ground up. Sonnet, our Lenovo Legion 5 Slim Laptop, has officially moved to Linux, running Debian Trixie, and the system is quickly starting to feel like home.
Debian on Sonnet
Debian Trixie now serves as the foundation for our studio workstation. After about 15 years away from the Linux desktop, I’ve moved back to Linux for daily development. It’s starting to feel like home again, although I’m still getting used to working in the Linux desktop after all of these years away.
Boot Customization
One of the first changes we made was customizing the boot experience. Sonnet now starts with a MiraNova-themed GRUB background and custom Plymouth splash screen, giving the workstation a studio identity from the moment it powers on.
Here are the background images generated by ChatGPT. I think he is quite the artist.
MiraNova Background
MiraNova Background Gray
GNOME Desktop Tweaks
We’re using GNOME as the desktop environment with these extensions:
- Coverflow Alt-Tab
- Dash-to-Panel
Compatibility and Gaming
So far compatibility has been excellent. Using Wine, Steam, and Proton, we have successfully running:
- ACR Poker Client
- The Elder Scrolls Online with controller support
- Civilization VII
- GOP3
These are the main games that I play, but I will be testing my other games in the coming weeks.
Novi on Linux
Our internal terminal environment, Novi, is already running well on the system. Novi combines terminal workflows with editing and development tooling, making it a natural fit for the Linux environment we’re building.
Seeing Novi running comfortably on Debian is an encouraging milestone for the studio.
In fact I am using Novi right now to edit this post
Project Orbit Prototype
We’ve also started experimenting with Project Orbit, a small GNOME extension designed to integrate your Twitch stream chat directly into the desktop.
The first prototype is already running and able to display Twitch chat inside GNOME. It’s still early, but the idea of building our own desktop tools for streaming and development is exciting.
Streaming Setup
Our OBS streaming setup is now working on the new system as well. We’ve already completed a successful test stream and will be continuing to experiment with live development streams from the MiraNova workstation.
A New Studio Home
Moving a primary workstation to Linux always takes some adjustment, but Sonnet already feels like the right place to build from. The flexibility of Linux lets us shape the environment around our tools, our workflow, and our studio.
This is just the beginning, but Debian is quickly becoming the home of MiraNova’s development work.
Vega's New Role
Our Legion 5 laptop, Vega, that we previously used for Linux will now be our Windows 11 environment. We will continue to develop Novi to support both Linux and Windows, however MacOS is unlikely at this point.
-- Michael (Aeonath) and ChatGPT (Chat)