Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Quick answers to the most common questions. For depth, each answer links to the right page.

General

What is SkillFishOS? A Linux distribution (Debian + KDE Plasma 6) designed and tuned for the AMD BC-250 board: gaming, emulation, local AI and desktop use, all preconfigured. See Introduction.

What hardware does it run on? Only on the AMD BC-250 (Zen 2 + RDNA 2 “gfx1013” APU, 16 GB GDDR6). It’s a system built around that board, not a generic distro. See BC-250 hardware.

How much does it cost? Is it open source? It’s free. It integrates open-source software from many communities; the project’s code is on GitHub. See Sources.

Does it include games, ROMs or BIOS? No. SkillFishOS provides the tools (Steam, EmuDeck, emulators, frontends); you add the content yourself, legally. See Gaming.

Installation

How do I install it? Write the ISO to a USB stick and boot the Calamares graphical installer. All with the mouse. See Installation.

Can I try it without installing? Yes: the ISO is live, you can explore the desktop before installing.

Does it erase my disk? The automatic install (“Erase disk”) does. To keep existing data, use manual partitioning. SkillFishOS uses Btrfs with separate @rootfs and @home subvolumes.

Do I need an internet connection? Not to install; you’ll need one afterwards for Steam, updates and AI.

Performance and overclock

Why does it start “slow” / in Stock? For safety: every BC-250 is different (silicon lottery). You move up profiles from the Tuner, which validates everything on your card. See GPU & overclock.

Is overclocking dangerous? The Tuner applies a profile, tests it and rolls back if the card can’t handle it; the 85 °C cap and the thermal-guard are always on. It’s designed to be safe.

How many FPS in game X? It depends: some games are CPU-bound (e.g. Black Myth: Wukong) and don’t scale with the GPU. See Performance & benchmarks.

Can I use FSR 4? No, it requires RDNA 4 hardware. Use gamescope (FSR1/NIS) or OptiScaler. See Gaming.

Daily use

Why is the screen sometimes black? The DisplayPort HPD is broken on the BC-250: SkillFishOS works around it with a dedicated daemon. Use a DP monitor or a passive adapter. See Troubleshooting.

Why is there no audio from the TV? Often it’s an active DP→HDMI adapter: use a passive one, a DP monitor, a USB DAC or Bluetooth audio.

Can I put the PC to sleep? No. Suspend is broken at the hardware level and the board won’t wake up: SkillFishOS disables it on purpose. Don’t re-enable it. See Desktop.

Can I use it from another computer? Yes: the default session is X11 and x11vnc runs, so you can control the desktop over VNC on the LAN. See Desktop.

Local AI

Which AI model can I use? The practical reference is qwen3:14b, which runs fully on the GPU. The stack is Ollama + OpenWebUI in Vulkan (not ROCm, unsupported on gfx1013). See Local AI.

Can I game while the AI is on? No: AI and heavy games share GPU and memory. Shut down the AI stack before playing.

Updates

How do I update the system? sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade or the Discover app. A snapshot is taken automatically before/after every update. See Updates.

An update broke something — what now? Reboot and pick a snapshot from GRUB → “SkillFishOS snapshots”. See Storage & snapshots.

Does Debian update the kernel? No: the SkillFishOS kernel is held (apt-mark hold) and updated only from our tested repo. See Kernel.

Project

Can I contribute or report a bug? Yes, via Issues on GitHub.

Where do I download the ISO? From the Download page (hosted on SourceForge).