The goal posts keep moving. I remember when it was the Year of Linux. Linux dominates every market except Desktop and Console. The Year of “Desktop” Linux is what we’ve shifted too. The only thing that’s kept Windows the dominant OS on Desktop is vendor lockin. Windows isn’t even the dominant OS on Azure. How pathetic. Without vendor lockin, Linux would have seen all kinds of money for engineering efforts from PC manufacturers for Desktop. Sad part is, so many people actually think they chose Windows.

“You can have any color car you want, as long as it’s green.” - Comrade Car Salesman

I’m in the same boat. Just buy games. Don’t care if it’s supported by Proton. If it’s not now, it will be soon. That’s how I feel. So far, everything I’ve bought has worked flawlessly.

Funny how the “Year of Linux” had to switch to the “Year of Desktop Linux”. Any place Microsoft can not use their vendor lockin strategy, some you mention, Linux eventually dominates.

Correct. Azure Linux. They’ve been slowly adding to their Linux distro piece by piece over the years. It’s more expensive to run Windows in the cloud than it is Linux. My bet is, Office 365 will one day give you Azure Linux with a Windows userland and a Windows DE. 90% of the users probably wouldn’t even know the difference. The few folks whose programs actually need Windows will probably just fall back to full Windows while the rest of everybody just uses Azure Linux; saving Microsoft millions.

Not sure why you think you are arguing. You said you didn’t think Linux was taking over anytime soon and you gave your reasoning. Makes sense. I made the claim, so I gave you my reasoning. As I said I’ve been using Linux for almost thirty years. I’m a Software Developer, obviously I would be using Linux professionally. I can understand if you’ve felt the burn from all the “Arch BTW’s” and the “Mint FYI” fanboys out there. Pretty sure I gave you unfanboy like advice by telling you to stop fighting a Janky mess. Get the tools you need. If that means Windows or MacOS or something else, then let that be it. That’s what I did. I needed Linux for work and I liked using Linux, so that’s what I used. That also meant I only had a few game titles that would reliably play. But that’s what I needed. That’s how it goes sometimes. That’s what I gave you the same advice.

Windows is dominant only on Desktop thanks to their Vendor lockin strategy. Everywhere else, it’s Linux (except game consoles). Even Linux is the dominant OS on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. Handheld PC’s are going to SteamOS. Even Microsofts OEM partners Lenovo and Asus are getting on board with their handheld PC’s. The reason they can do this is because Microsoft was forced to make Windows free on small screen devices (Build 2014). Linux has 80% of the IoT market. As Microsoft’s vendor lockin strategy continues to weaken, Linux will continue to take over. It’s only a matter of time. That 1-2% is only Steam Gaming world wide. For English speakers we are about 5%. Which, consequently is enough to get Day 1 Proton support for many Triple A game titles. 3-4 years from now, the games that will be releasing will have been developed from start to finish with Proton as a first class citizen. The Desktop landscape will be wildly different, no question.

Linux is a bit snappier to interact with, but everything I do works on Windows, so that arrangement means not using Linux at all, indefinitely.

Yep, sometimes that’s the breaks.

Been using Linux for almost three decades now. Just use Linux for what you need it for. Use Windows for what you need it for. Stop using either OS for the sake of using either OS. Gaming on Linux has come a hell of a long way in the last couple years. In a couple more years, the gaming landscape will be wildly different. You can always reassess at that time. If you have a couple games that are your number 1 must plays and they only work on Windows, then just use Windows. Trying to cobble together some janky mess, it’s just not worth it at all. Personally, I just played the games that played on Linux for a lot of years. It’s great what Proton has done for gaming on Linux. But if your games or your work are still on the fringe for Linux, no hard feelings. Just use what OS you need. That’s how this is all supposed to work. 30 years ago before Microsoft’s vendor lockin strategy. We bought pieces of software because we needed that software. Then we bought the OS that that software needed and bought the hardware that that OS worked on. Then you’d look and see what games were available to you and that was it. You should do the same. Linux is taking over anyways. Microsoft’s vendor lockin strategy is coming to an end if they don’t do something soon. In 3-4 years from now, you will see a lot of investment into the desktop side of Linux. You can always come back then.

Look up what makes a GUI. Something can be graphical but not GUI. Something that is GUI is obviously graphical. “All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs”.

It’s called a terminal emulator because it emulates graphically what used to output to a printer at the console of a mainframe. Then you got CRT monitors. The mainframes like the PDP-10 would output to a printer or CRT monitor. This was your terminal. A printer writes the output from the mainframe 1 character at a time, left to right, top to bottom. The CRT monitors were made to do the same. Obviously before outputting to a printer or CRT monitor, the output would show on a set of lights on the console. If you watched them change enough, you would know where you were in your program as it ran (obviously something only doable because the opcodes were not running in parallel through super scalar pipelines in the Ghz). With printers and monitors, you could increase the amount of feedback you get from the running or exiting program and give input to the system via a keyboard.

So, the terminal is not “technically” a GUI. We do use a GUI to emulate a terminal which receives the actual terminal output from the system and then displays it for you. They are not the same thing at all. GUI is a paradigm for what you display on a Monitor for the user to interact with. Modern monitors are fast enough that they can and do work well with the GUI paradigm. You definitely wouldn’t be sending GUI context to a printer.

So, if I switch the terminal output back to my dot matrix printer instead of my monitor, like back in the day, it’s not graphical right?

I use a DO droplet with docker compose. Filthy dev here too. Much cheaper overtime than buying and hosting home server equipment.

Been using Linux for several decades now. I’ve always been able to throw in a floppy or a CD, or now a thumbdrive and just boot up and easily fix what’s wrong. Plus it’s rare to even have to do that. The times I’ve used Windows, when things go wrong, if it’s not a simple fix, best you can do is format and reinstall. I have friends who are so numb to that. But they figure, they might as well since they’ll just have have to format Windows and reinstall anyways because, Windows gets slower over time. I have one friend who had it on his calendar to just monthly reinstall Windows. I’ve never once thought, wow Linux is getting slow, let me format and reinstall. I mean, how can that even be an acceptable solution to anybody. Sure, if things just went sideways so badly and everything is corrupted, but that would be one hell of an extreme exception.

Everything I selfhost was easily setup with a simple compose file and various env files for each resource. What the heck was he trying to setup? I haven’t used Windows in a long time, but I doubt they have anything as easy as a declarative file like compose.

Definitely lost my co-op Elden Ring save. My normal game play was saved of course.

Agreed. Long time Linux user here. The distro is just supposed to get you near what you want or need. There are science distros for different science labs. Because there is a certain set of tools and software that all the researchers would be using. And likely, the distro is not useful for anybody else. I think there is only the big gaming distro issue because, gaming hasn’t really been a huge thing on Linux. Now it is, and new people to Linux have no clue what all is needed or what all is possible. Most don’t even realize they could install and switch DE’s without having to “distro hop”. But, 100% agree with you.

Well, Steam doesn’t install leading edge versions of Proton. For instance, if you install Battle.net through Steam. Sometimes Battle.net breaks. like here https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/01/ge-proton-9-23-released-with-a-battlenet-fix-for-linux-steam-deck/ , so you need the latest changes which wont be available to the Steam Deck, proton-experimental wont get the changes right away. If you just pop open protonup-qt, you can just download ge-proton-9-23. Of course once you have ge-proton-9-23 installed, then the Steam UI can switch between the various versions installed, or you can do it from protonup-qt while you have it open after downloading the latest leading edge proton that you need. I think it’s a good tool, especially for beginners.

Should do for all - after all, it’s just a matter of prefixes

naa, they do two different things. Sure you can go to the Lutris wine manager under runners and install Lutris versions of wine or select an already installed version of wine. That’s not the same as what ProtonPlus and ProtonUp-qt are doing. They are like Lutris wine manager on steroids, for Lutris and Steam and Bottles and whatever else. Always the possibility I completely overlooked a feature of Lutris.

No problem. I use Gnome as well for my desktop and yes that is KDE on your Steam Deck. If you’ve got a Steam Deck then protonup-qt is definitely a must have. Maybe it was more important when the Steam Deck first released, but it’s still handy to manage Proton versions for games that are already rock solid on older versions.

Does Lutris manage Proton for just Lutris or will Lutris manage proton for all your other launchers?

Nice. ProTip, checkout ProtonPlus or ProtonUp-qt. They manage different versions of Proton for you. They both do the same things in about the same ways. ProtonPlus will match better with Gnome based Desktop Environments and ProtonUp-qt will match the Kde like environments.