Eh, I don't really care if they stop using Windows, I care that they start using Linux. Dual boot if you need, but more market share for Linux increases the likelihood that devs will support Linux directly.

It's funny because while some of it has to do with work to make Linux desktops better, a non-trivial amount of it is how worse Microsoft has made it to deal with Windows.

I had issues with drivers, like I would have to find them somewhere on the internet, trust a random stranger to download and install them. And even then some things required me to launch drivers manually every single time I wanted to use my hardware.

I had issues with games, constant crashes or some games flat out not working. Some even crashing the entire system occationally.

I had issues where my pc would randomly turn on. Going to sleep was funky and would break the system requiring restart. I had to find drivers for my audio systems to get them running.

I had to run around confusing settings and tweak them through different control panels made by random people that largely overlapped to fix basic issues.

Thankfully those issues were solved the moment I installed linux.

Which distro ? I've been rocking Bazzite for a year, and holy mother of christ, it requires less maintenance than my smartphone.

Yeah. Windows install and Linux install quietly switched which was the difficult shitty experience sometime when I wasn't watching.

If a SteamOS desktop system gets established, it would be time to add productive software to the ecosystem. Like a web browser, email, libreoffice, maybe some other tools. There are good free versions of all kinds of productivity software, and having them nicely packaged for a system like that would add a lot of value to the SteamOS driven family PC.

Well, yes and no. The main point of compatibility that games should be working towards if they want to run well on macOS is to have ARM versions that work better with Apple's M-series chips. SteamOS/The Steam Deck are still built for x86 processors which Apple has since stopped supporting.

It's not impossible to bundle the games in an emulation layer, but it is a bit more involved than something like Proton/WINE, which are just compatibility layers and not emulators, and it comes at the cost of performance.

Oh it will be the year of the Windows 11 refresh, there's no question of that. Untold millions of business PCs will be making the change as Windows 10 goes EoL.

It's a very different story in the home market. Frankly the only thing holding Windows Gaming in place is decades of increasing personal PC ownership but that ownership / use rate is now declining as normal people transition to using smartphones and tablets.

In just a few short years, ten at most, gaming on Windows will be about as relevant as gaming on Mac. It may still be called "PC Gaming", you can already see media trying to redefine gaming on SteamDeck and other handhelds as "PC Gaming", but those games won't be built around the Windows OS.

Sure, but Valve is terrified of the Microsoft store for a subtly, but importantly, different reason than why Microsoft should be terrified of Steam OS.

Microsoft should be terrified that Steam OS will destroy their monopoly by making it so users no longer have to use their product.

Valve is terrified that Microsoft will destroy their monopoly by making it so users no longer can use their product.

There is nothing to be terrified of for MS, windows can implement mandatory rectal scans to log in and linux wouldn't break 20% market share.

Well, there are a lot of newb-friendly distros these days. Some options:

• Linux Mint (any spin) - one of the easiest to get help with online, with minimal compromises
• Fedora - also pretty easy to get help w/ online
• Bazzite - great if you just want to play games; it's about as close to SteamOS as you get w/o an official release

Any of those should be pretty friendly to users new to Linux, and they go roughly in order from fitness as a regular desktop (top down) to fitness for gaming (bottom up), but any of them can handle gaming and desktop stuff pretty equivalently.

I feared making the plunge as well but it was so seamless tbh. Got Linux Mint and it just feels like a newer version of old Windows. Not sure how it's with other distros, but I find it to be precicely Linux for dummies.

I'd say the difficulty to getting used to new environment was on a similar level to getting from Windows XP to Windows 7. If you can dual boot I recommend just trying it - the water is fine.

Some things that may help you get started:

1. All of the risk in changing your computer operating system comes from the potential loss of data. Everything else is replaceable/recoverable, including your original Windows install if needed. You can avoid this risk by backing up your personal data to an external drive, which frankly everyone should be doing anyway because hard drives are consumables.

2. You can try Linux with no risk by running it as a live OS. This loads the operating system files into RAM from an external device (typically a USB drive) and makes no changes to the system hard drive. This lets you test your computer's functionality in Linux without making permanent changes (does my graphics card work? wifi? audio? etc). The mainstream Linux installers do this already for the installation process, but you can just load one up to try things out without running the installation process.

3. You don't have to completely switch off of Windows. It's fairly easy to install Linux as a dual-boot on an existing Windows system. As long as you have some free space on your hard drive to dedicate to Linux, you can just keep your Windows install and have Linux too. You can even access your files in Windows from the Linux install. All of the mainstream Linux installers have the option for setting up dual-boot during the installation.

4. I think one of the biggest hurdles for switching over is knowing what software to use in Linux (how do I edit a document? watch a movie? read a pdf? etc). There are options for basically anything you might want to do, but if you don't know what you're looking for you might feel a bit lost. I recommend alternativeto.net for this. You can search for software like Microsoft Office and filter for Linux to get a list of compatible software options that do the same job.

I’m probably one of the dumbest motherfuckers here when it comes to not setting my devices on fire.

I know exactly how you feel. I have wrecked so many OS installs I've lost track. I have friends who tell me I have tech problems like no one else. I seem to stumble into edge cases on a higher-than-average basis.

My point is, when I say that everything is recoverable, that's from experience. I've done it enough times to know there's very little chance of actually making a computer unusable, though it's relatively easy to lose your data if you're not paying attention to what you doing - so backups. Always backups.

If you try this a couple times you'll start to see your computer as something that you have control over, something that you can completely wipe and bring back or rebuild into a different system as you please. Feel free to reach out if you've got questions.

It's the year of the Linux Desktop!!

They do. We're already there.

The only titles that don't work are the ones with kernel level anti-cheat, and that needs to die anyway.

Yes, it's only a fraction, but most of the rest is going to SaaS through web browsers or mobile apps, because companies get to control and force subscriptions that way, but has a side effect of targeting a browser as a platform rather than an OS. Gaming in browser is more in the pain point of browsers, so it's a use case that demands OS.

I believe it could be killer casual home PC if they had clearly stated specs with expected power draw and output. Not everything needs to run at 240 Hz in 4k res... as steamdeck showed. It has too low res though for desktop PC, so new steam machine should be a bit beefier than just rebranded deck.

Is there any future for Microsoft gaming?

Yes, in the "Netflix of Gaming" Game Pass, they've already been pivoting on it more and more. They know they're losing their hardware dominance

Only a matter of time IMO before they work on getting Game Pass games on Linux. Which would be great because I got the bulk of my games from Game Pass these days lol

Bazzite is exactly that. Dead easy.