Linux

Whelp I tried to switch several years ago to PopOS! as daily driver. Everything was fine and dandy until I tried to use the side buttons of my Razer mouse or my Keychron M3. Short story: not plug-and-play-able. This is a non negotiable feature for me. Maybe I'll find some motivation between the years to tinker again...

The only bastion left is anticheat. Everything else are just (bad) old habits fueled by marketing.

I jumped into Linux, via Mint, about a year ago when I refreshed my hardware. The transition was pretty easy, and I haven't looked back. Steam runs fine and I haven't had a modern game that didn't work under default proton settings except for things I've run outside Steam and mods. Most of my personal PC's workload is gaming and handful of web-based apps that are effectively OS-agnostic; Everything else has an easy equivalent in the apt repos.

I would say that my decision to embrace Linux as my OS was primarily influenced by my Steam Deck. Gaming on it has been simple and the desktop UI was easy to adapt to. I replaced my laptop with the Steam Deck, bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-C dock with HDMI out (all things I already had for the laptop). I now just hook into whatever TV is handy as a monitor when I need a computer on the go.

I was a tech enthusiast when I was younger, and am thus familiar with fucking around on the command line, but now I'm an old man who just wants his stuff to work and it just has... The barrier of entry for the Linux Desktop is effectively gone. We just need PR now.

Also, I think I'd replace Mint on my primary PC with SteamOS, given a simple way to do so. About a year ago, the desktop/beta SteamOS was not fully baked.

When SteamOS releases on all devices people will say "I'll switch when every peice of Windows software is compatible" or some other unreasonable and impossible accomplishment. Even if every peice of Windows software was compatible people would say "ill switch to Linux when it looks and functions identically to Windows".

I've been using Linux exclusively for ~14 years now. Heavily gaming on Linux only for the last ~8 years.

It was possible (though sometimes headache inducing) to play most games back then (Wine and soon Proton to thank) the biggest change IMHO came with SteamPlay since it turned the headache into one click on most games (thanks to the amazing work of wine/proton developers and the tinkering of the community).

When the SteamDeck released people seemed surprised at the breadth of games that were running on day one. To me it was not really a surprise since I had been Linux gaming with SteamPlay all the time and was almost expecting games to "just work" (though I still would and still am checking ProtonDB before purchase).

What the SteamDeck changed in my view was

1. Showing "everyone" that Linux Gaming is a thing that's happening and been happening for a while. So maybe check it out?
2. That a Handheld that doesn't have to work around Windows but uses a purpose built OS just makes a lot more sense

I feel that the SteamDeck with SteamOS has really put Linux, especially Linux gaming on the map. Even though I want to be like "Linux Gaming has been a thing forever, I was doing it before it was cool" ;) I have to recognize that fact. In the past years I've seen so many people setting up Linux especially by the way of SteamOS (using HoloISO, Chimera ...) just to play/mess with it which is also why I think an Official SteamOS release will make a huge difference.

Tl;dr: Gaming on Linux was a thing before. But the SteamDeck/SteamOS 3 made a huge impact nonetheless.

I saw a post on bluesky saying Steamdeck can't be widely adopted because of linux. I asked why is that the case? He says "Linux doesn't run as many games as windows ". I said "only a few and the anti cheat ones". He kept arguing. I asked him about nintendo and he goes "It has the games to back it up" and I blocked him lol.

Millions of games are not enough because its FOMO.

This is the fifth person I see misinterpreting what Steve said about doing Linux performance testing, they aren't going to start doing this soon, they will only start doing it WHEN SteamOS is released for desktops! It was very clear on the video FFS

I'm also really fucking excited for that tho, I recently switched to mint and helldivers 2 actually feels smoother than on windows, it has been such a good experience!! I cannot imagine how much better things will get with more people jumping to Linux and thus game makers actually pay attention to us

To paraphrase the gay chant from the 90's: 4% is not enough RECRUIT RECRUIT RECRUIT!

I've been saying for years: we need a dedicated gaming operating system.

Every game I bought on Steam under Windows runs great on Steam in Linux Mint. The few games I didn't buy on Steam (Deus Ex, Giants: Citizen Kabuto) run great on Wine, using the default settings.

Adopting Proton was the smartest thing Valve ever did. They're going to get about 90% of gamers migrating from Windows to Linux, who don't want to fiddle with configuration settings.

New to the Linux community here; why is a valve owned Linux OS better than any other massive company OS. Like if Microsoft released their own Linux OS, would it be good suddenly?

At the end of the day, we don't want our OS's big company owned right?

I have about 7-9 months to decide what to do with my PC. I don't want to move to windows 11. Because I will have to basically fresh-install my entire system that has 4 drives and god knows how many antiquated programs on it from the XP, Vista and 7 era that I still use. and Im just not ready for it. Im too busy

headache

I just build a new gaming/creative pc, decided to make the jump to linux mint while i was setting up something new. And I honestly expected more hickups than i got, nothing which a quick search didn't fix except for one. My xbox controller won't connect over Bluetooth, it works when connected through a cable though. But I also noticed some stick drift, so I'm tossing it and order an 8bitdo which has those magentic sticks (forgot the name) and linux compatibility.

I just did that. I have a dual boot laptop where Windows was used exclusively for games, and instead of upgrading that I built myself a PC with an AMD GPU (Nvidia, fuck you!).

So far I haven't run into any problem that I couldn't easily solve, and the only games that won't run are those demanding I install an anti cheat system, but I'm fine not playing those.

I thought this had already happened?

I remember seeing ads on Steam for SteamOS years ago—wasn’t there a point at which you could download and run it on your own computer? What happened?

Windows is actually fedware these days. (Fedware that also scams and aggrevates the feds themselves) if you post here you owe it to yourself to dump that hot garbage as soon as you can.

This is so great to see, and the timing is perfect.

My son already calls the PC Steam, as in “we played game A on Xbox and game B on Steam,” so maybe by the time he has a PC in his room Steam really will run the whole platform.

Only 1 downvote? woah.