The Duff CEO with a Windows-Logo on his forehead: “Gamers use Windows because of its’ user experience not our de facto monopoly.”
Next Image: Duff CEO with Windows-Logo in front of a “Out of Business” sign. Subtitle: “30 minutes after SteamOS is released”
Edit: Yo, I’m not saying this is gonna happen. I just want to say that Windew’s UX sucks ass.
At least we didn’t have to look at goddamn Ads in the menu. Also the AI “”“integration”“” fucked up things pretty badly. Sometime you just need a simple, light, OS to do your thing.
This is the main problem right now.
People want to return to a lighter simple Windows OS, but Microsoft is making that increasingly hard to access. The LTSC version of Windows 10 is close(No AI, No Ads, and minimal telemetry that can be disabled), but they dont sell it to the public unless you buy 5 copies, and
there is no LTSC version of Windows 11 yet.looks like they finally released it a couple months back, but people are unhappy with it.Linux offers an alternative, but compatibility is still a huge issue despite the impressive gains Wine and Proton have made in the last few years.
The reality is that if you have a Windows PC you can basically guarantee that you can install anything you might want(barring hardware limitations). You can often make that software work on Linux too, but there is always some tinkering involved and the general public doesn’t want to deal with that, nor do they want to change to a FOSS alternative.
And if you like playing certain games with kernel anti-cheat, the only way you’re getting away from Windows is on console. Unless gamers jumping from Windows to Max/Linux increase by improbable orders of magnitude, that’s not changing anytime soon.
Always had windows. Never wanted Linux because I didn’t want to dick around with every game install. You give me an OS that lets me browse and game WITHOUT having to dick around with every application, and I’d switch in a heartbeat.
It’s actually gotten a lot better over the last few years; Valve has been putting in a lot of work into making gaming “just work” through Steam. It’s still a bit jank, but honestly all OSes are a bit jank.
If anyone in this thread is interested, I’d recommend giving Linux Mint a go. There’s nothing really to lose.
Anyway, I’m done shilling Linux so I’ll let you get back to your Simpsoning. :P
There’s nothing really to lose.
Just hours of your time as some random miniscule feature you were reliant upon without realizing it until it was missing, then have to look up a dozen different fixes using some stone aged console commands, none of which actually fix your issue…
This is my current experience with pop os. Took a while searching and digging through age old threads to figure out how to fix Rivals so it actually launches, then more searching to fix an issue I was having with the screen blacking out, and it’s going to be more searching to figure out why audio keeps tearing while I’m full screened. It’s a pain trying to make things compatible, so much so I’m extremely tempted to switch back to Windows 10 despite it hitting EOL this year. I really don’t like having to waste my personal time making something work when there’s an incredibly easy alternative where everything works always (aside from hardware issues)
Edit: especially peeved about trying to fix ffxiv. I want my shaders back >:(
I had tried mint years ago, and gave up when I couldn’t even get my extra mouse buttons to work. I’m not going back to 1995 with a shitty 2-button
Did u try installing the driver for ur mouse lol
Hurr durrr… Yes I did.
That is pretty much my experience when I have to use a windows machine at work. Sorry, the powershell command is how long? Just got this from ChatGPT, no idea if it works and I am not booting windows to test it.
Bash: grep -iRl “test”
Powershell: Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Select-String -Pattern “test” -CaseSensitive:$false | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path -Unique
Which is why people use the GUI for pretty much everything. Linux demands you use archaic commands to do anything useful.
Is there a decent way of doing that in the GUI in windows? One of the more common commands I use at work which is the only time I use Windows. Rather than the PowerShell I usually use WSL for it currently because there are usually a few other things I will want to do after as well.
I can’t even remember the last time I had to fuck around with a Steam game, all the ones I want to play just work
Lucky you, not my experience at all, even ended up repurchasing a game on Steam while it was on sale because at some point, time is money and I had spent a whole lot of money trying to make it work.
It’s a pretty seamless experience nowadays. I installed CachyOS on my handheld and installing games outside of Steam is pretty seamless with Lutris and Heroic Launcher
Needing another launcher to launch a launcher isn’t seamless and sometimes it works like crap and requires a reboot to get things working.
thats not how that works though. Lutris and Heroic are not the same as steam. They are seperate launchers. Also why do you have to reboot anything? Generally I have not had a single piece of software that required a reboot to work on Linux. Even the updates don’t require reboots.
Funny how Steam having to launch EA app to start a game = people complaining about Steam launching a launcher, but Lutris launching EA app to launch a game =/= a launcher launching a launcher for some reason…
After installing the game on Lutris or Heroic I can just add it to Steam and then launch the game directly from steam. In terms of UX I just need to press the play button, wait a little bit and then see the game main menu. Sometimes you see other launchers but there’s a lot of games that have their own launcher before launching the game, Fallout 4? Nixxes ported games?
I don’t know what anything else that you want. Even on Windows same shit still happens.
You want to play the wrong games.
A Linux user doesn’t touch “AAA”.
I can eat from whichever dumpster I choose, thank you very much.
Bruh I play Baldur’s Gate 3 on Linux. Shitty AAA I agree with you.
Then Linux shouldn’t be suggested as a replacement for Windows for gamers.
AAA games work on Linux, sometimes even sooner and better than on Windows.
It should and will continue to be.
Not if it can’t run games that people want to play.
They shouldn’t want to play them.
No true Sgotsman fallacy.
I only use Windows at work and played RE games and Control without issue.
The first time you try Linux will have an initial learning curve. Just like the first time you tried Windows. But once you have everything set up the way you like and get used to it, you really won’t find yourself having to troubleshoot very often. You certainly don’t have to “dick around with every game install” either.
Steam on Linux already does exactly that. You hit play and that’s it, exactly like on Windows. The rest is done for you automatically.
Tinkering might be required with a few non-Steam games and programs, but for the most part, they just work as well.
And lets be honest, it is not as if tinkering isn’t required for a lot of things on Windows too, it is just that the tinkering is a lot more random “hope & pray” stuff like uninstalling and reinstalling things, rebooting,… and hoping the problem goes away.
True!
What? No.
One of the best things about Windows is the incredible huge support on how to fix things.
Maybe not on the Windows forum, about Microsoft software. But every other software is not a problem. Because Windows has such a huge userbase, it would be weird if you encountered a bug that nobody has ever encountered before. And tons of techies already posted several solutions to it.
Not my experience with Windows at all. Windows has a lot of the kind of users who see the system as some mystical thing that can not be understood and they speculate on reasons but their solutions are always more along the line of cargo cults than proper, well-understood solutions.
For the most part that’s true, but when something goes wrong, it really goes wrong.
For example, I wanted to play Path of Exile 2, and it would get stuck at a black screen on startup. The fix is “easy” on Windows, you just edit an ini file in “My Documents”. To fix it on Linux, that same file is stored in
/home/[YOUR USERNAME]/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2694490/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/My Games/Path of Exile 2/poe2_production_Config.ini
Which is insane by any standard.
True, Wine and by extension Proton adds some overhead in such things, which makes troubleshooting a bit less user-friendly
Though that’s a matter of habit. Then you know where everything is.
This is bad yes, but out of all the problems you can have with linux this one is pretty mild.
So fix for both OS is to edit a text file, path is just different?
Yes, one path is easily discoverable, the other looks like an incantation to summon Cthulhu. If you can’t see why one of those options is hostile to users, you are being deliberately obtuse.
If you type it by hand sure, but copy/paste exists.
It’s not about typing it, it’s about finding it.
Good news, then!
You can do that now if your games are on Steam.
That’s the problem, IF your games are on Steam.
If they’re not, then it’s usually pretty easy to add them to steam as a non steam game, or sometimes you can use Lutris.
Then you have a launcher launching a launcher to launch a game, when that happens on Windows people are pissed, when that happens on Linux people act like there’s nothing wrong with that experience.
You can run games with Lutris, which allows you to create shortcuts for games so that they would be launched through Lutris without invoking a UI
So from a user’s perspective, the game just opens up as normal without any launchers or interfaces in between, like if you ran an .exe
Besides, plenty of non-Steam games can be run simply through Wine, then you literally double-click a game .exe and there you go.
But what about LEAGUE!? And Blitz, I can’t be fucked to pick my own runes.
Windows will be worse soon thanks to passkey bullshit they are trying to force. I really think that Blizzard buyout may have entirely sunk current projects.
What? Why would an OS be worse because of a more secure and more user friendly authentication alternative?
And how are they trying to force it? They just encourage it.
Passkeys are pretty much being adopted industry wide (kinda slowly at the moment but still).
Every OS should have good support for hardware bound keys.
I use Linux. I install games via Steam. The most ‘dicking around’ I’ve ever had to do to get a game to work is changing the Proton compatibility setting, choosing a release from the drop-down menu.
I’ve considered Windows a toy OS for decades because the only use case anyone can legitimately make for needing to use it is to play games.
Ah, there’s Adobe and maybe some 3D modelling software
Adobe is sadly huge for design professionals. Also fuck Adobe
I was looking at Ubuntu studio which can work with adobe filetype, but i wouldn’t switch unless i had a backup machine with adobe software just in case.
Autodesk is huge as well. Also fuck Autodesk
Yes and also yes
Adobe is the only reason I still have one of my PCs set to dual-boot Windoze.
Among consumers, sure. But they also have put decades of effort into understanding how business buy and pay for software and computers.
Oddly enough, the rise of software as a service I think has led to Linux being a more viable option for business use. For my work, I’d still be personally missing MS Excel but that’s because I hate LibreOffice Calc with a passion. I cannot understand some of their keybindings which are not changeable. But so much of what I use these days is just in web browsers.
Yeah, it’s true. I don’t think that’s by accident either. The “evil” in Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto was at least somewhat inspired by Microsoft. Now, you can argue about how evil Google has become, but even very early on they saw Microsoft as a prime adversary. That meant not tying themselves to Windows in any way, and it also meant building a lot of capabilities into Chrome that made it so that people weren’t tied to Windows. That has opened the door to SAAS being a thing that happens in the browser, and not in GUIs written in Visual Basic, or something that is tied to the MS platform, which means you’re more and more able to do your normal work on Linux.
I am able to run Linux in a M365 company, and whether Google or Microsoft had more influence on the current state of things, it IS nice that the whole suite works great right there in Firefox.
Member when instant messaging, email, and cloud file storage didn’t need to be deeply integrated into the OS? I member.
I think one reason I really like Lemmy / Mastodon is that they remind me of the days when people ran their own IRC servers, and/or Jabber servers and when that was a normal and standard way to communicate.
Yeah, and you interacted with them on your PC. So I thought you might like this anecdote.
I’m totally accustomed to using my phone on the fediverse. Voyager ftw. But, just yesterday I relocated my main PC so that I could use it with a cantilever lap desk on my end of the couch. In my household we tend to hang out together in the same room all the time, so this is a game changer.
Plus it’s only been a few weeks since I switched this former Windows gaming PC over to Linux Mint. So all the massive UX improvements that brings still feel fresh and impressive for the stuff I use it for. Been running linux on my work machine much longer.
It’s a proper old man PC setup. My feet are up and I am typing on my old full-sized mechanical keyboard that has the circuit board inside mounted to a slab of metal. I can feel my beard turning gray!
Its the only os with functional cad as well. Freecad is a user hating joke.
I’ve used several CAD solutions as a toolmaker. And tested even more. All Windows only. I wear the sackcloth and ashes of FreeCAD at home because
1: It’s free and I don’t need to buy a subscription. Billed monthly or annually-- your choice. I can use FreeCAD as I see fit.
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It does NOT require me to store my data in the cloud. I have worked on things that were trade secrets.
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If my internet connection goes down I can’t access my work with the full ability to manipulate it.
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I absolutely detest the clown car UX that is Fusion 360. I don’t want to click an icon and get a dropdown menu that’s a dozen entries long, then click one of those and getting a submenu that’s ANOTHER 6 entries deep. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit.
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Learning difficult things does not scare me.
Honestly part of the thing that drew me to FreeCAD is it reminded me a bit of CATIA. (Mostly it’s the Linux and free part, but the CATIA but helped). It’s certainly got its quirks (to put it mildly) but 1.0 has made strides.
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Fact. I only still use it because of game compatibility.
Cries in professional CAD-Software-User-Noises
Honestly Onshape is great and works in browser
Some of my customers would skin me alive knowing that I upload their Data to some online CAD Service… sorry.
I like FreeCad
I wish I would. I feel like my dependency on windows holds me down professionally.
Requisite “you don’t need to wait for SteamOS” post.
Gamed on Linux for over 2 years. The time is now. Shit just works (mostly).
Edit: and yes, you can often get better performance on the same games with the same hardware.
you can often get better performance on the same games with the same hardware.
Because there’s a reason why Linux does not randomly use the disk like Windows does
Back when I was still on an HDD the difference between NTFS and ext4 was night and day.
I remember having the need to defragment my drive on windows every few months, or Batman Arkham Asylum would actually start to lag and stutter trying to load textures.
Meanwhile World of Warships, another texture heavy game, would load significantly faster when I tried it on Linux because surprise surpsise, ext4 doesn’t fragment until your disk is nearly full.
Windows honestly gg ez’d it’s way out of making a newer FS with the advent of SSDs, but there was a period of time where upgrading to Windows 8 would blow up your drive usage to 100% the entire time the PC was on.
NTFS is imo even worse than exFAT because at least exFAT didn’t eat your disk alive
My whole family largely uses Linux as our daily driver - ages - 40, 38, 18, 9, 7
The only one not running Linux is my 38 year old wife.
HOWEVER - my 9 year old got an occulus for Xmas, and suddenly we are dual booting and that’s a real shame.
Shit just works (mostly).
That’s the “damning with faint praise” that has been the bane of Linux since slackware came on 500 floppies.
Sometimes that “mostly” is just “oh, you have to do this simple thing that is in a FAQ once and then you’re golden”. Other times it’s “oh, that hardware isn’t supported, so I guess you don’t have a usable video card”.
I think what many of us are hoping with when it comes to SteamOS is that a few of the remaining really sharp edges get sanded off. And, just maybe, there will be a tipping point where the smoother the experience, the more people use it, and the more people use it, the smoother the experience will be.
Bro I had to spend 4 hours on forums trying to figure out why Windows won’t reboot into BIOS. It’s linked to the Fast Start option that won’t turn off without rebooting into BIOS.
Frankly I just shouldn’t have put the mostly. I’ve literally had one issue in the last year. Point is: just try it.
What distro do you recommend if it’s a machine mostly used for gaming?
If you’d otherwise just be waiting for SteamOS to drop: Bazzite. It’s the closest thing to Steam OS, but with a better Desktop mode when you want to switch to that.
I’ve primarily been using PopOS, which has been fantastically stable and very easy. I have an all AMD system, but my understanding is that the nvidia version of Pop also makes some of the nvidia driver stuff a lot easier.
I also play on Arch sometimes, but realistically you probably don’t want bleeding edge stuff if the point is just making sure games work. That’s where the relative stability of something like Pop / Mint / even just pure Debian comes into play.
Easy doesn’t matter as much for me, since I’ve been using Linux for more than a quarter century, but stable is important. And, something that makes it easy to deal with the video card drivers sounds very nice.
I assume that if it’s Linux that a system that is optimized for playing games could still be used as a web server, or to develop software. But, seeing as how my gaming machine is mostly used for gaming / web stuff, it would be nice to choose a distro with that as the focus.
Same experience here. People waiting for steamos don’t know most good distros work how they think steamos is gonna. Games with kernel level anti cheat that are worth playing are few and far between. And fuck their communities for not rioting when their fellow members get removed from the game for no reason.
Anti cheats 😭 Only reason why I keep windows around
Year of the Linux
DesktopHandheldUnfortunately the biggest issue now is the anticheats that only function on windows. My friends refuse to switch to Linux because you cannot play:
- fortnite
- league of legends
- escape from tarkov
- battlefield
- apex legends
- valorant
- R6 siege
- GTA 5
- Rust
- Destiny 2 Etc
They’ll play other games but because they mainline one of these they refuse to leave. As long as SteamOS has no answer to these anti cheats windows will maintain a dominance.
Source: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Fuck kernel-level anticheat.
I refuse to buy or play any games with Kernel Anti-cheat.
And I will die on that hill.
If it doesn’t run on Linux because of intrusive anti-cheats you probably shouldn’t install it anyway.
And it’s maddening that people will fight to open backdoors to Linux instead of fighting the companies from pulling that shit.
Congratulations? How does that help Linux adoption, though.
Well if they are losing out on sales due to practices that are incompatible with Linux then companies are less likely to use those practices in the future.
Remember back when people said nothing was wrong with Linux gaming and it was actually game studios that had to start developing for Linux so the studios changed their practices and started developing native Linux games? Yeah, me neither.
Because people were still buying the games on Windows. If people start actively not buying things then it encourages change. If people complain but still buy it anyway then nothing will change. Vote with your wallet (which is what OP is doing).
Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when you’re 3% of the 3%. It didn’t work to get games on Linux and it won’t work to get rid of kernel anticheat. Wanna know what works? Making things work. Like Valve did with Proton while people like OP were voting with their wallet.
So what is your problem with what OP is doing? That they aren’t personally releasing games to compete with the ones using kernel level anti-cheat?
Like Valve did with Proton while people like OP were voting with their wallet.
Do you think that was profitable for Steam (from people voting with their wallet), or do you think Steam did it for charity out of the kindness of their hearts?
We don’t need spy backdoors in Linux, keep that shit in Windows.
Adoption does not include bad things.
Yes, it does. Whoever wants to install the “spy backdoors” should be able to. It’s called freedom. Look it up.
You can break it yourself if you compile your own kernel. I do, btw.
No need to support it for the general public.
No need to support it for the general public
Unless the general public wants to play a game that requires it. You’re living in your own world.
Stop giving companies excuses to do outrageous shit.
Like it’s absolutely mindboggling how much shit do people eat in order to play a game. Kernel level anticheat has access to your entire computer, and you can’t even know what it does.
And for absolutely no benefit at all. You can make anticheats on server, or simple client stuff without reading your entire memory.
Don’t make me tap the post title.
Technically, all the major anti cheats have Linux userspace binaries that even support wine/proton passthrough, so there are actually a lot of anti cheat games that run on linux as shown in the list.
The issue is not entirely something SteamOS can solve or is even linux’s fault because no sane distro would ever support running a kernel level anticheat module. It would break the defining security features of linux, and I’m not even sure DKMS or Akmod would support it out of box on secure boot.
The games in question refuse to enable anticheat on linux because they know the userspace binaries are limited, but then their windows solution is just a crappy rootkit. It’s not a very good or longterm solution either. EAC and Battleye both have demonstrable bypasses with various methods of fooling. Only Vangaurd seems to aggressively keep up with the arms race by literally scanning your PCIe devices for hardware cheats.
What they can do is to convince game OEMs to enable their linux AC support by marketing the potential customers they are losing out on. That’s basically what happened with Halo MCC and Infinite. I’m still surprised they actually convinced Microsoft to allow both games to run on Linux with EAC.
I am an idiot, so this is probably a dumb question, but it sounds like you might be able to shine some light.
Why could we not run kernel level anticheat in a sandbox? Does kernel level inherently mean a sandbox cannot contain it?
As an aside is kernel level anticheat required for anti-cheat to function? Or are the developers of anti-cheat software just doing kernel level because its easier?
Why could we not run kernel level anticheat in a sandbox? Does kernel level inherently mean a sandbox cannot contain it?
The linux kernel actually does have several sandboxing paradigms and techniques, but by the definition of anti cheat means that it cannot be sandboxed.
The anticheat essentially scans the entire system memory, filesystem, and loaded kernel modules to ensure the userspace software is not being tampered with. It would be impossible to do that in a sandbox, hence it breaks all the security standards linux has for kernel modules (ex: why would a wireless driver need to access a printer module?).
Even for windows, kernel level solutions are not very well suited to be running there. The recent crowdstrike outage is a notable example, because it did essentially the same thing but then a bad update bluescreened every machine because giving a kernel module complete access is almost like modifying the kernel itself.
As an aside is kernel level anticheat required for anti-cheat to function? Or are the developers of anti-cheat software just doing kernel level because its easier?
It’s not required to function, but kernel level anticheat is just harder to bypass (still doable). They’re choosing kernel level because it’s cheaper to slap on a 3rd party AC than to make effective server-side software and pay for server moderation. Even Valve is hesitant with their VAC 3 system, even though it has been a major upgrade, it still requires manual moderating.
The thing is, most devs have finally realized kernel level anticheat still isn’t an effective solution, so they have been fine with the userspace anticheat on linux and opting for server side stuff. It’s just these last few holdouts that refuse to budge because they don’t value the linux market (yet).
Thank you for the insightful response! Its sad that the cheapest option is the only choice ever chosen, sounds like we could create jobs and foster better security choices simultaneously here (and probably end up with a better online experience to boot).
They literally care about market share and money watch the magical adoption of server stuff anti chest if Linux takes off
I’m sure it’s on the roadmap, but not a current priority. First get it to work decently and iron all the kinks out of steamos, then they can look at anti-cheating.
Its not because steam doesnt support it. Some of the games on that list have banned players from connecting online from linux. Apex legends put out a newsletter about how they couldn’t keep up with cheating using linux OSes and so they had to just cut it off entirely.
Meh the Linux conversation has been going on as long as I remember and windows is still king. But Linux can play games now so who knows where the wind will blow.
iOS and Androids are the king now.
People don’t buy computers nowadays.
while i understand this sentiment, it’s kinda out of touch if you actually try using an old linux distro and compare it to a modern one. Linux has made an absolutely stupid amount of progress in just the past few years and as such it’s perfectly reasonable to start expecting the status quo to change.
Why do steam users act like their game company and their billionaire is somehow their friend?
Am I missing something? The meme says “Windows bad” not “Valve is our friend.”
I don’t need Steam to win, I want windows to lose.
Because it’s a Linux distribution. They’re forced to be our friends because of a brilliant legal tactic that has been working marvelously. For Steam itself we have to trust a billionaire pinky promise that he won’t enshittify. But if Linux becomes a major gaming platform, it could be a major turning point for free software adoption in general.
So steam has had 20 years to enshitify, in that time they have always remained a privately held company and have made choices to ensure long term growth. I imagine at some point (like after gaben hands over control) they could go public and obtain their very own collection of worthless bloodsucking vampires, but i imagine that would be quite awhile, and hopefully by then they will have removed windows death grip from gamers throats.
Enshittifying is usually the process of monetizing a platform that is running at a loss to build a user base. Steam is not running at a loss, they are making a killing as is.
Thats not always the reason why a platform monetizes poorly, thats the most common reason, but there is always room for people to get greedy and begin demanding short term profits, being privatly held is a decent barrier to this process though.
Yes capitalism is a shit garbage system, steam got lucky and started their platform before others noticed the market would exist and could grow organically. The root of enshittification is that is how the game is played today; a few companies all have to operate at losses in a game of “investment capital runway chicken” to attempt to become a monopoly and then rug pull their user base to monetize.
Can you imagine a world where governments gave 2 shits about their people, identified this as a losing game plan for the world, and came up with some form of legislation against this kind of market nonsense. Fuck it would be awesome to see real businesses growing naturally off of success, and not synthetically off of capital. Yes I realize that wont happen. God damnit i fucking hate unregulated capitalism.
This is definitely a rising tides affect all boats thing or whatever the phrase is (that might be a bad thing, idk). I definitely chalk up how great it is now to SteamOS.
I don’t, its just valve demolishes apple and microsoft in the “don’t be hostile to your users” category
Because monopolies are good when it’s one that I like!
I wouldn’t say monopolies are good, but there’s a difference between monopolies existing because the one at the top is actively preventing others from offering the same services, versus the monopoly existing because no one else is capable/willing to doing it. How do you resolve the latter without forcing them to offer a worse service?
It’s not a monopoly and it’s certainly one of the best services out there so if GabeN has a spot in the line, it’s at the back of it.
If Steam isn’t a monopoly because the Epic Games store and GoG exists, then Windows isn’t a monopoly because Mac and Linux exist.
Look, I like Valve. They are better than the vast majority of big game companies out there. They aren’t perfect, though, and they definitely have a monopoly on online PC game distribution. We shouldn’t be blind to that.
There are people using Windows who would very much rather not use Windows but need to because it is the only way to use given software. I haven’t heard of anyone who would very much rather not use Steam but has to in order to access a given game.
In this regard Windows has more in common with Epic and their paid exclusives than Steam.
There are also people using Steam who would very much rather not use Steam but need to because it is the only way to use given software. So many Steam exclusives.
I remember a time when I wanted to play Portal and the only thing in the physical box was a code and a Steam installer.
Just because it is a monopoly you like doesn’t mean it isn’t a monopoly.
I remember a time when I wanted to play Portal and the only thing in the physical box was a code and a Steam installer.
Your argument that Steam is a monopoly involves you purchasing a game from somewhere other than Steam?
Yes, buying from somewhere else and still being forced to install Steam just to be able to play it.
Which still doesn’t disprove the monopoly claim. Steam can be a monopoly even if people like to use it. Valve could very well change in the future. We can hope for the best, but we’re basing a lot on the continued goodwill of a single company.
Steam is a “monopoly” because some devs don’t bother selling their games on other stores. If they wanted to make their games available on other stores tomorrow they could do so very easily.
Windows is a “monopoly” because certain software is not compatible with other OSs, if the devs wanted to make them available on other OSs tomorrow that would be very difficult.
Epic is a “monopoly” because they are legally binding devs to not make their games available on other stores. If they wanted to make their games available in other stores tomorrow they are legally not allowed to do so.
Which is to say if Valve changes in the future and becomes shit companies and users can easily leave for other platforms.
Steam is a monopoly because if devs try to sell on other stores, they will make less money. It’s a feedback loop. We buy games on Steam because all the games are there, and devs put games on Steam because all the customers are there.
Epic actually tried to get around this by offering very lucrative exclusivity deals to devs. That still didn’t work.
Every time I say stuff like this it’s like 50/50 if people downvote or not.
I’m not but they have done a lot to make gaming on Linux more viable.
Happy cake day!
is it really at all surprising when the rest of the industry keeps shitting on people, and meanwhile valve has consistently said “why on earth would we shit on people? let’s just make nice things that people actively want to buy instead”
Years of Stockholm syndrome
It’s windows derangement syndrome, sadly afflicts many on the lemmyverse
If SteamOS is ever launched for non-valve hardware, I would probably stop whatever I’m doing at work to get it installed
My old desktop has been demoted to console, and some time before Windows 10 goes EOL, I’m planning to try Bazzite on it. Seems like the closest we’ll get to SteamOS on any hardware in the near future.
Copying my own comment from yesterday:
There was a comment thread in one of the Linux communities the other day talking about this mindset. Obviously the comments got a bit rude and unconstructive, but the point is that you can switch to something like bazzite now and most things will work pretty well, but if you’re holding out until it’s perfect then you’ll be waiting forever!
Awesome thank you I’ll check it out
It probably won’t be trivial but this is Lemmy, if you’re stuck there are hundreds of Linux nerds itching to help!
It was already launched for non-Valve hardware. Not for any hardware though, just a Lenovo handheld.
Recall is the final straw for me. If there really is no way to permanently disable it then I’m going to have to get used to Linux/SteamOS. Which sucks because I really do seriously value things just working and not have to dig for hours to fix random issues with every little program I want to use. :/
Honestly, as someone comfortable with Linux already, but running Windows because of games, it was the last straw for me in a bigger way. A bunch of people up and down the chain at Microsoft thought recall was a good idea, and didn’t need really basic safety features at launch. Not only is that very poor judgement, but what they think I want and need is so far disconnected from reality that following their upgrade path is a huge risk.
Maybe they’ll put switches in to disable Recall, but maybe they’ll want to take them away for my own good at some point in the future. Maybe they’ll do so silently. I know there’ll be an adjustment curve, but I’d rather be in control of it rather than let the people who thought Recall was a good idea updating my OS internals. I’ll never install Windows 11 on a device I own, and I’m not holding my breath on future versions at this rate.
You will like Linux then because on Linux, unlike Windows, you can figure out why stuff goes wrong and then fix it for good instead of randomly having reappearances of the same problem (barring hardware issues like overheating of course but that affects all systems equally).
That’s the best part of using Linux, you get actual error messages that can be figured out. Windows tends to just say “an error occurred” or “something went wrong.” I dual boot for a couple games and Windows drives me crazy. It keeps trying to install updates, something doesn’t work, and it then uninstalls the update next reboot. No idea what the problem is.
I value the same things and after spending a few days troubleshooting mh worlds and rummaging through internet forums, cmd line, reg edit i remembered my deck plays it fine and I installed fedora.
My os now uses 1gb of ram, i didn’t need a day to find drivers for all my weird hardware as it all just worked, mh world runs without crashing, old weird games started working flawless, my graphics tablet doesn’t want me to manually launch drivers to work
Windows has become what linux was.
Y’all have no idea how true this is. I just finished building my OC and installed CachyOS (Arch derivative). Got Steam running incredibly easily. I can play both Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2 online multiplayer. The only tweak I needed to do was use a different version of Proton for Helldivers 2 (which would’ve been the default one, but Cachy has its own Cachy one).
I don’t know when the last time y’all have tried to play games on Linux is, but it is genuinely trivial. Even Nvidia drivers are easy now.
I just installed mint on a little gaming PC connected to my TV. Set it up to boot straight to steam with big screen mode. The only thing that is a small chore was installing xpadneo for my controller and downloading many many gigs of games into it.
Even Nvidia drivers are easy now.
What about VRR and HDR support?
some distributions have HDR support and some don’t
If VRR is VR I don’t use VR so I don’t know, and my monitor doesn’t support HDR.
VRR is Variable Refresh Rate. Its a nice feature that let’s GPUs talk to compatible monitors so that you dont get duplicate, wasted, or torn frames. The monitor adjusts its frame rate to the GPU and the GPU doesn’t render more than the monitor can handle.
“Who here wants a bathtub Mint distro?”
Finally a comment that I expect from a simpsons shitpost community. Here’s your reward: A scented candle!
I don’t really understand this buzz about Steam OS displacing Windows.
Windows is a general purpose computer OS; whereas Steam OS is a game-platform OS designed for the Steam Deck and similar devices. It doesn’t seem to be the same use case. Obviously Steam OS could be used as a general purpose OS, if you just switch modes and install this and that software… but then what are you waiting for? There are already heaps of high quality general purpose Linux OSs already designed for that purpose. Linux Mint is a drop-in replacement for Windows, and has no problems whatsoever with games.
I mean, if you want to use Steam OS on your main computer, then that’s fine - but I just don’t really see a reason to use that rather than something that is already available, and already a desktop OS rather than a console OS.
It’s the OEM effect behind it. If Valve offers it as an OS anyone can use (which they are trialing by giving it to ASUS), then it is more likely for both users and OEMs to trust it as a platform, meaning devs would be incentivized to support it and users would be more likely to switch off windows.
I could be wrong, but I think what they really want is for a PC OEM to pick up SteamOS so that it markets to the general audience. They’re beta testing it in the handheld market because of the steam deck’s success.
If people get to use it truly out of box, the market for it will grow.
As of now, most Linux users are here because they have a knack for tech and trying things. Most computer users are not like this and will cling to even subpar experience because its familiar.
Windows can keep kneecapping itself all day, but linux desktop will only expand rapidly if both companies and users see immediate value (it’s always been there, but hard to convince).
Maybe some people only use their computers to play games? I don’t know. I’ve been wondering as well. Pretty much any modern distribution works fine.
A large amount of non-gaming work that people do on PCs these days is inside a web browser. A chromebook would do fine. In fact, a lot of IT departments prefer it because it’s a locked down environment by default.
i don’t agree that steamos is a game platform, it’s fundamentally just a normal linux distrobution but with steam big picture mode as the default. The gaming stuff is quite self-contained in the steam client itself.
Don’t make me tap the post title.
I mean just saying it’s optimistic is insufficient. “Fever dream fantasy” is closer.
You do understand what the joke is about, do you?
Why don’t you explain the joke and we’ll see
That Window’s UX is shit and no one uses Windows for its’ UX?
Oh… Is that funny? Ok
Still beats gnome, lol, tee hee, jajaja
Ok. Yes. I guess this wasn’t quite the right place for me to post my piece.
If Microsoft has a monopoly on gaming it’s not because they’ve made an effort to build one. It’s just that MacOS and Linux have never been actual competition. Linux because the user base was so small that making games for it was a big financial risk. SteamOS devices could change this but I doubt it.
And Apple just wont put the effort in for some reason. I’m sure they could make a huge dent on the market, as every iPhone and iPad with Apple silicon are pretty capable of running modern AAA games with a few tweaks, as are their computers. But they just won’t invest in making porting easier and cheaper and refuse to pay more devs to bring their games to the platform or to build a proper gaming division to support them. I’m convinced that Tim Cook just thinks gaming is for losers and doesn’t want it associated with the brand in any way.
If both Microsoft and Apple didn’t put in the effort, then why did Microsoft win?
The meme is not about how great Linux is, but how shit Windows is, jeez. 🙄
I probably will be giving Linux a shot this year, at the very least attempt a dual boot.
For anyone with two feet, dual boot instead of a single boot is highly recommended
Yarr, but what if we be having one?
I have used linux for about two years for gaming and it works for well most games but there is always a game that doesn’t work right too, not to dissuade you from giving it a try. Just want to tell you my experience. I’d say 95% of games I’ve tried work in a basic sense. But sometimes a certain game just runs like crap or I have to fiddle getting a game to work with using lutris . Some games just can’t work because of anti-cheat services. Etc… I’ve tried various OS and really enjoy POP_OS as well as good ole fedora. So, dual boot is recommended if you can do it. Ultimately, I’ve sadly moved back to windows just because I got tired of always having to troubleshoot stuff to the point of not wanting my computer to be a hobby. I love linux and want it to be my only OS but for me its just not quite there for no fuss gaming setup. I’m a parent and dont want my fleeting moments of free time to be troubleshooting while something isn’t working.
I choose the games i buy based on the protondb ranking. Most unsupported games are those with kernel level anti cheat which i wouldn install on any system anyway. My bazzite gaming PC is absolutly hassle free, for my masochism i have Arch on my Notebook :D
Makes sense that linux doesn’t quite fit the no fuss gaming setup, but I’m curious, would you say Windows fits the no fuss gaming setup today?
Part of what drove me away was my infrequent gaming on Windows led to everytime I went to play games having windows demanding updates that would be end with spamming me about Microsoft products I’ve declined 1000 times before. Then updates to the games themselves. It was slowly turning me into a console gamer as I felt the only low/no fuss environment for gaming was a PS5.
Linux definitely requires the time/energy to keep things playing smoothly, but IMO so does Windows, just in very unproductive ways.
I think you answered your own question.
Linux definitely requires the time/energy to keep things playing smoothly,
Windows, overall just has less time/energy to keep things playing smoothly. Running a good debloat helps some. Honestly, what through me over the edge was with poe2, on linux it just stuttered and lagged. I even went from POP_OS to Fedora, same issues. Came over to windows and it runs nice and smooth. Its just I’ve went through situations like that enough to say thats enough… I can’t keep doing this.
You can boot from a USB stick too, which means you can check out this or that linux, without any kind of modification to your system.
