Soak test

After chatting with Gary and Dan about my next Windows PC test options, we all - yes, even Gary - decided to run it on Linux for a few days to see if it reboots.
The thinking here is that if it does not reboot, then we know the hardware is fine and its a driver issue with Win10/11/XP.

Run it on Linux they said, it will be easy they said. Yeah. Nah.
Tried Mint, but it just booted to a blue screen. Seems that Mint does not like my Nvida graphics card.
Tried Ubuntu Desktop. Also blue screen.
More Google... Got Nvida? Try Pop_OS!, but not their stock one, they have a specific Nvida build.

Burnt the USB stick and did not get far some sort of checksum error, reburn it using a different iso maker, Ok, now getting a very useful 'Bad Shim' error.
After more Google foo (losing interest in this test long ago), it seems you need to disable secure boot.
Too shagged to Google how to do that, I took a stab at the BIOS settings and on reboot, no screens at all. In fact, not booting at all.
<heavy sigh>
I could not for the life of me find the motherboard brand on the board and also could not find the BIOS battery by looking.
More Google... The battery and reset jumper is under the Nvida card. I mean, of course it is.
I tried, I really tried, using a dentist mirror and screwdriver to reach the reset pins.
To no effect.
Ok. Pull the card.

Short the pins for about 5 seconds, put it all back together.
Ok, can boot back into BIOS settings.
Watch a YouTube <shudder> on how to disable secure boot. It turns out to be a multi-menu dance of just crazy sub-settings. No wonder I missed it.
I missed the boot device option on the first go and it booted to Windows11. Bleh, I mean, good to know it still works.
Restart and caught the boot option this time and got Pop_OS! to boot off the USB stick finally.

The three monitors are working Ok out the gate. The same three as Windows11.
Plugged in the USB to display port adaptor and it did not pop up.
Eh, with nothing to lose at this point, I moved the 4th monitor from the USB 'Pluggable' adaptor to the Nvida 4090 and to my total shock, it came right up.
Now, before Dan gets all excited, the top wide screen dropped from 1440 to 1080.
So it did not drive all 4 screens to full resolution, BUT, and its a pretty nice BUT, Linux did drive all 4 at only a small loss of pixels. Far better than Windows 1x was able to do.

So, it soaks. I've got church the next 2 days, so perfect to just let it sit and consider its ways. I will check in now and then and will soon see if its rebooted into Windows or not.
(At this point, if it does not reboot, I'm thinking I am going to run this PC on Linux and use Windows on the laptop when I need it - Been wanting to try Linux for the main driver for a while).

UPDATE: Terry reminded me to turn down the refresh rate of the monitors (Some default to 240Hz), once I did that, I was able to get all 4 running at full resolution and 100% scaling. So yeah, its looking pretty good. No reboots in 24 hours.