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Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.
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Gamers be rising up
I spent the last two days building a machine from old parts and installing Linux Mint. It’s my first time using Linux and I am really surprised at how lovely it is. I am still learning, but I can easily see it replacing my home gaming PC. I have yet to find something I can’t get to work.
Fortnite.
Anything with anticheat unfortunately.
But I’m happily on Linux for daily and gaming. Welcome to the club
Plenty of anti-cheats work on Linux, and the ones that don’t are probably borderline malware anyways, so it’s really a win-win
All anticheats are not made equal, and some are functional under Linux.
It’s the year of the Linux hand held desktop
shoutout to WUBI for making factorio and space age native on linux.
Silksong is also native on Linux
I’ve tried playing Steam games, but my hard drives are all NTFS and the Linux (Mint) partition is exFat, and it seems like they don’t play nicely together. Since i don’t want to move all my steam games to an exFat partition, I’m holding off on switching. But until I get around to overhauling my storage and go single drive, I’m gonna stick with Windows using as many FOSS apps as possible.
I feel you. I have my old PC with quiet an “ancient” chipset. Installed an NVMe and installed Linux on it… Just to find out that my AHCI controller isn’t supported by it with all my Windows hard drives. It’s either booting that NVMe with the Linux one or booting the deprecated Windows ones from BIOS. 12-13 years of reliable hardware… :/ Hope there is a kernel patch supporting it again
Linux on exfat?! Do you mean ext4?
They can play nicely, it just requires some work. The NTFS-3G driver can map Windows users to Linux users and translate the permissions so that it basically Just Works™️ under both operating systems.
Here’s some documentation. There are also tools you can use under both Windows and Linux to generate UserMapping files. I wish I could help more, but I did this a couple years ago and have forgotten the details since then
It causes a bunch of frequent issues though. I strongly encourage users to select exFAT rather than NTFS for sharing a drive between Windows and Linux.
When I switched over my home desktop to Mint, it was a very short time before I looked at Windows and said “I’m too old for this shit.” I mean, the reason I am a Mint fan in the first place is that I am a FOSS loving nerd but with a family and pets and hobbies and a career and a middle aged energy level. The decades I’ve spent fixing Windows based PCs is enough for a lifetime, thx.
I say consolidate old files you want to keep. Shuffle them between drives as necessary to be able to format everything. Go all ext4 on the drives you already have. (once you’re ready)
This is the way.
What makes the chart “only” on 3% is Chinese users. English Linux user alone has more than 6% percentage of Linux users.
We need Chinese government for their independent tech stack to include Linux further. At the moment, there are already several Chinese distro with big companies porting their basic apps to Linux (like chat app, office app, etc).
If Chinese gov force gaming company to support Linux as well, we will see a huge surge evenmore. There are a huge number of Chinese game that never made out of China, and exclusive to PC only.
Here’s a graphic showing that from this page:
I wish there was a graphic that showed English users with SteamOS separated from non-SteamOS users, because I think if we get 5% of non-SteamOS users, we should start to see devs pay a lot more attention. We’re starting to see devs make SteamOS-specific versions (e.g. THPS 1&2 offline mode), so the next step is getting Linux-specific adjustments for more games.
So uh, what happened between March and September 2021 that caused the current upward trend? Was the Windows 11 announcement that poorly received?
Yes, and 2021 was a perfect storm of a bunch of stuff:
- Windows 11 would break compatibility with older processors
- Steam Deck announced preorders in July - wouldn’t release until 2022, but there was a lot of excitement about Linux gaming
- LTT made a video series (part 1 was Nov. 2021) where Linus used Linux exclusively for a month
So yeah, a lot of people were curious at the time, and while not all of it was directly related to Windows 11, that certainly was a factor.
So 93% of the Linux users use English steam. I wonder how much of that is because Linux users just don’t bother to set system language (I am one of them), or maybe the language was not detected correctly.
Would that be similar to Windows users who don’t set the language? Or do OEMs set that for the region they sell in?
Mostly on steam deck it means not that much on PC
THPS offline mode is the same version as elsewhere, but it magically allows itself to operate offline when it thinks it’s running on a Steam Deck, which you can do with a launch parameter. Baldur’s Gate 3 actually has a native Linux version that is only officially supported for Steam Deck, and that might be closer to what you’re referring to.
which you can do with a launch parameter
My point is they built functionality specifically for a Linux-based system. In THPS, that meant offline mode, but for other games it could be anti-cheat, where to store game saves, or default settings (I think Cyberpunk some?).
My point is that Linux is getting on the radar of game devs, and that’ll increase a lot at some level of adoption. I think that level is 5% on desktop Linux.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unicorn in a lot of ways, so that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, but it’s related. I’m not going to expect BG3-level of support from devs, THPS 1&2 would be so much more than we’re currently getting.
It’s possible, but it’s also possible that they already had that offline segregation built into the code to support the Switch version, and that it was trivial to enable.
On a separate note, the BG3 native Linux version is so strange. Larian is threating the SteamDeck like a console. As if it is a bundled OS+HW system with only one available game store and only one useable OS. So they are only releasing it in steam, not on any other store. As if that means it can only be installed on SteamDeck and not on other Linux systems on different Hardware. They forget that anyone can install other Linux distributions or even windows in SteamDecks or use other game stores.
This decision is so strange, because it disadvantages people that bought the game for PC elsewhere and own a SteamDeck.
Like will they make performance patches to their games gated behind which which store the game was bought from?
There’s nothing strange about not trying to boil the ocean. Let them cook.
I have a Windows laptop specifically for gaming, but I end up using my Linux coding laptop for games in the end.
It’s less hassle figuring out how to enable nvidia drivers on xorg in GNU linux so that I csn use Proton emulation than to deal with this weeks clusterfuck of windows update trying to make me turn on ads and spying and trick me into using a microsoft.com account to log in.
I am not joking.
The windows still has some dust on it from when I did some house renovations months ago, because I haven’t been bothered to use it.
Having been gaming on Linux for the past 10 years and facing basically 0 issues, I can also affirmatively I don’t understand the attachment to windows. I get it if you need specifically word or excel. and I guess if you’ve got kids who want to play fortnite.
Because sometimes Proton doesn’t work? Like, it’s good enough for most games, but there are always edge cases and games that randomly break one day.
As of now, you have to make an effort to find a game that won’t work through Proton, aside from games with malware (anti-cheat).
It’s mostly convenience. They know it works, so they keep using it.
Luckily Microsoft is making it inconvenient to continue using Windows.
I just banned Fortnite in my house because I don’t like the MTX nonsense. My kids either play on Linux or our Switch.
Minecraft Java edition with mods is so good. Get them accounts and use an open-source launcher like PrismLauncher, you’ll be having a good time :)
Yup, that’s what we do. I just installed a How to Train Your Dragon mod, and they love it. I have a server hosted on my computer, so my kids can play together.
Hell yeah, good on ya. Also nice Weezer username reference.
Weezer? It’s a Three Dog Night reference. :)
Because I dont like Linux. Ive tried multiple distros, and I do not like it. At all. Worse, I find that they only people who do like it are utter cunts who sniff their own farts. Reading up over the years while looking into it, theres a ungodly amount of comments from cunts shitting all over people asking simple questions. It was like a text based version of seeing kids shouting “NEWB!!!” in a COD lobby.
All the issues I see people having with windows, Ive not had or Ive solved. And it was never hard, or complicated, or anything else. And whats more, no one acted like a cunt because someone had, what they considered a “dumb question”.
In short, fuck linux. Fuck Windows as well, dont get me wrong. But FUCK LINUX. Windows I hate because of the company that makes it, Linux I hate because of the own fart sniffers who use it.
There’s always one engorged asshole that had to show up and be a complete prick about people liking something. Fuck all the way off
You do realise that Im talking about YOU doing that, right? This me giving it BACK to you. And oh look, none of you like it. Funny how that works, aint it? Now, why dont you “fuck all the way off”.
My experience is the opposite.
Whenever I have a problem with Linux, there’s often a solution available after some Googling. Often it’s just changing something in a configuration file. Not great, but at least doable.
Whenever I have a problem with Windows, there’s often that one thread where someone details the exact same problem, and there’s some ”official Microsoft tech support” whose only contribution is to ask if they have tried to reboot the computer and then radio silence.
I cant lie, those Microsoft tech support “have you tried rebooting” gits are the worst. But outside of that, even on Reddit, you get actual help. With linux, I see an ocean of “what a fucking newb” type shit. Even in here, everyone sucking their own cock because they dont use windows anymore. And if you do, well, you must be a pleb. Like people cant just use what works for them, and leave it at that.
And whats funny, is that everyone using linux is still having issues. They say its amazing, then harp on about not being able to play games and the solution is more often than not “have you tried installing this other distro???” Which is about as helpful as “have you tried turning it off and on again?”.
Everyone uses whatever works for them. Windows, MacOS, linux, whatever. And that should be fine. Instead, its become some kind of dog shit console war. PC users looking down their noses at console users, console users looking down their nose at mobile users, ISO users looking down their nose at Android users, Android users looking down their nose at IOS users, linux users looking down their nose anyone that isnt using linux. And even then, “Why you still using Mint, mate? Dont you know its better to use OSpop for gaming???” Its this never ending hole of cunts all shitting all over everyone else. If only we could just enjoy what we are doing and shut the fuck up.
I’ve definitely run into some snobbish “Accept my incorrect solutions and be grateful, or go back to Windows, newb” types of people. I don’t have much love for them. I recognize it takes patience to acclimate new users, but it’s part of the job.
By and large I’m preferential to just stay with something that works; part of what pushed me off it has just been Microsoft themselves enshittifying the experience. I feel like I remember a day when Windows start search actually took you to what you wanted, and now “notepad” immediately queries the shopping network before your own program list, and when you get Notepad open it has a Copilot button.
You’re doing the right thing as long as you stay on an OS that keeps you going day in and day out. I tried Linux earlier in the year on two distros that did NOT work as well as the internet said they would, and went back to Windows. More recently, tried another one and there were stupid difficulties - but I got past them, at a time when Windows issues were just giving me “This is the way it is now, just put up with it”.
Take your aggressively rude snobbish attitude elsewhere.
Yes, please do. No one cares that you use linux. Its not a personality trait, and it doenst make you “cool”.
You’re on Lemmy, a site people use when they don’t like reddit. You don’t see any reason why there might also be a ton of people here who use Linux, an operating system you use when you don’t like Windows?
I dont give a fuck where I am, you start looking down your nose at people, Im gonna fucking say something. Snobby twats deserve every slap they get. As for using linux, use whatever works for you. Just dont start treating other people like shit just because they dont do the same thing you do. “I dont understand people who still use windows…” Cool, no one gives a fuck what you do or dont understand. I dont understand why you piss about with different linux distros, but here we are, and you dont give a fuck that I think that, right? And nor should you. You should just go about your day. Which is why I dont spend my time in windows forums moaning about linux users being snobs. I just get on with my day. And you lot should too. I know the console wars are over now, but fucks sake, lets not start PC vs linux wars now.
There’s something deeply ironic about how angry you are towards people because they disagree with your OS choice.
Perhaps some introspection might be in order, hmm?
The anger isnt at OS choice, its at snobs, trying to make other people feel small for their OS choice. Cant you read?
I’ve definitely seen angry people respond to windows bug reports on various apps. Is the Linux community worse? Anectodally, I would agree with you. Its also fine to have a preference, and I understand needing to besmirch your own because some people on Lemmy are toxic particularly around open source projects, but like, I try to not stoop to that level. I am happy youve generally had a good time bug fixing in Windows, unfortunately I switched away because my graphics drivers regularly crashed on Windows and I’ve never had said issue on Bazzite. Could it be my fault somewhere? Sure. I’ve had a better time since I left, though. Guess I’m a fart sniffer. Just wanted to voice that not everyone has had this experience, is all. Have a good one, hope you cheer up.
If you like Windows, that’s 100% fine, keep using it.
But I’m genuinely curious, what didn’t you like? Which distro(s) did you try? What problems did you run into?
I ask because you obviously cared enough to try it out but had a bad experience, so that’s something we could maybe look into as Linux enthusiasts.
I’m never going to berate anyone for their choice of OS, use whatever works for you. For me, that’s Linux, mostly because I found a workflow that works really well for me and it’s a pain to replicate on Windows. My SO still uses Windows because that’s what they like, and it’s totally fine, I’ll even help them fix stuff when it breaks. I honestly don’t care what people end up using, but I will mention my preference if I think others might be interested.
I use arch btw.
Never had any of these problems on windows. I kinda wonder what it is that you are all doing that you having such problems?
https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm <<<<< stops updates, unless you decide you want them.
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat <<<<< blocks telemetry and gets ride of all the useless dogshit.
I run Windows normally.
How long does your Window box function without updates? How long does it remain safe? Historically, a few months at best until they bundle telemetry in a new way. Then you need to find another rando dude’s github for workarounds.
Anyway what you are describing is literally a hassle that for me is just not worth it. I can do all that and set up and update group policies for updates over and over oooooor I can literally spend less mental energy figuring out how to configure my drivers on Linux.
What you do works for you and you feel it is convenient. That is fine.
Perfectly. I have no issues. And its not really a hassle to click a button…
Oh that’s handy, I set group policies on my wife’s Win10 computer, but I guess InControl automates that process. Nice.
I switched to Linux last year, but the wife has no interest in any of that. So I set the group policy and haven’t seen a single thing about Windows 11 popup on her computer… yet. But I have Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC flashed to a usb stick taped to her computer in case they find a workaround for that.
MORE!! MORE!!!
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
Most will stay on Windows of course, but some don’t. And those who switch to Linux are likely not returning to Windows (for gaming at least).
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks, which run on Linux, not from people switching to Linux on their PCs.
If it continues to rise, this is the reason. The general public is less and less into using a desktop at all as time goes on, much less running, and much less changing to, an extremely niche operating system on one.
EDIT: The previous sentence is actually more of the reason, upon further reflection. The total number of people playing on desktops period is falling, and the vast majority of desktops are Windows, so non-Windows OSes will comparatively gain ‘market share’ as that happens, even if their numbers don’t change at all.
That’s not true. You can see on Steam Hardware Survey what OS people are running, and SteamOS only makes up 27% of Linux users on Steam, so the vast majority are on regular PCs.
The vast majority of the increase, is what I said. In other words, I’m saying it wouldn’t be nearly at the 3% mark without those users, and with over a quarter of all Linux users coming from the Steam Deck userbase, that is, in fact, true.
Without the Steam Deck there’d be 27% fewer Linux users. So while that would indeed mean Linux wouldn’t yet be 3% of the total Steam userbase, I think you will find that 27% is not the majority.
GamingOnLinux aggregates this data in a nicer way and as you can see there, the total Linux market share has gone from <1% five years ago to the 3% it is now. If that increase was mainly thanks to the Steam Deck, it would have to make up more like 75% of the Linux userbase rather than only 27%.
Instead, as others have pointed out, SteamOS’s share has actually gone down rather than up, which is a natural consequence of the Steam Deck being relatively old now so fewer are being sold.
Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)
“Freedesktop SDK” means the user is running Steam via Flatpak. They could be on any distro.
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They said Steam OS, not Steam Deck.
If you click on “Linux Version” it expands into a list. Steam OS Holo is the largest portion, but not the majority portion.
“SteamOS Holo” 64 bit is the Steam Deck.
Actually, the raw number percentage shows that the increase is due to Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Maybe people are installing Bazzite on their Deck but likely not the other two.
I switched from Windows to Bazzite on my main rig 2 weeks ago. Likely won’t go back to Windows for gaming as I’ve had pretty much no issues with Bazzite.
I did also get a Steam deck recently, so anecdotally, both above answers are right.
Insert “I’m doing my part” meme
Hannah Montana Linux support for Steam Deck when?
Not too soon (if you wanna run it in bare metal):
https://www.xda-developers.com/i-tried-hannah-montana-linux-in-2025/
I want to say that I’ve been helping people get onto Mint and Bazzite. Going to pat myself on the back for contributing what little I can to grow this awesome community
The portion of people playing on SteamOS is steadily decreasing, which means new Linux users are on Steam Deck to a lesser extent.
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks
I believe this is incorrect. The Steam survey break down GPUs by description and the Deck’s GPU appears in the results as “AMD Vangogh”, which only accounts for 0.39% of respondents. That implies that the vast majority of survey respondents using Linux are actually on PC, not the Deck.
the Deck’s GPU appears in the results as “AMD Vangogh”
I bet it’s EXCELLENT at rendering sunflowers!
Not so good at ears, though.
Yeah, for me personally, I’ve got one or two devices that see irregular use that are linux now, but my main rig is still windows and will continue to be so, since I have a number of friends on xbox that I can get more cross play for via gamepass But since I’m currently boycotting microsoft, and don’t know how much longer friends will stick with xbox given their general market decline, and given all the stability issues with win11 lately due to an increase of AI code usage, and all the everything… It might be a matter of time
According to statcounter, Linux desktop was over 4% marketshare in April 2025, damn that’s impressive.
We really are getting there.
By some reports it’s over 5%, statcounter may be undercounting Linux.
Everybody keep growing the userbase!! We got this!
Back when I worked at Apple Retail we used to say, “5 down, 95 to go”. I really want SteamOS to be a runaway success
I’m not so sure Valve is the right maintainer for the core desktop. The Deck works well, but mainly what Valve is maintaining is the Game Mode feature and Proton. Everything else is largely better handed off to a bigger group.
I’m doing my part!
SteamOS Holo 64 bit - 27.18% (-0.47%)
Arch Linux 64 bit - 10.32% (-0.66%)
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit - 6.65% (+6.65%)
CachyOS 64 bit - 6.01% (+1.32%)
Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit - 4.55% (+0.55%)
Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64
bit - 4.29% (+4.29%)
Bazzite 64 bit - 4.24% (+4.24%)
Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit - 3.70% (+3.70%)
Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit - 2.56% (-5.65%)
EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit - 2.32% (-0.08%)
Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64
bit - 2.31% (-3.98%)
Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition)
64 bit - 2.12% (+0.19%)
Manjaro Linux 64 bit - 2.04% (-0.31%)
Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit - 1.93% (-0.04%)
Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition) 64 bit - 1.75% (-0.43%)
Other - 18.04% (-4.28%)
I wonder if Valve will ever release an official desktop version of SteamOS? I think Linux adoption would really increase fast if there was a gaming focused Linux desktop distribution with the support of an established company. But does Valve want that? A full featured operating system is a lot to maintain and provide support for.
Bazzite already fills this niche. It just doesn’t have the Steam name on it.
Is that really needed?
I think what could really drive adoption is if computers with Linux pre-installed was more easily accessible. Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install and then it’s done. It doesn’t need to be SteamOS. Just any good distro will do.
Strong agree.
Everyone agrees chromeos is not THE best OS but you won’t see a single person dualboot windows on their personal chromebook.
How google fucked up gentoo is another topic.
A brand name that people trust is a huge deal in marketing
Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install
Yeah, that’s not at all accessible to the average consumer; they don’t know what a “DE” even is, much less why they should choose any over any other.
Very, very few people want to deal with something other than a ‘just works’ situation.
They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):
- KDE - familiar, extensible
- GNOME - modern, minimalist
- Cinnamon/Budgie/MATE - something in the middle
- XFCE/LXQT - super lightweight for older systems
Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.
Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.
I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:
- The image is weirdly large, it’s like 9GB in size. It takes awhile to download and a weirdly long time to write to a USB stick.
- Once written, you boot the image, and GRUB has the options to Install Bazzite or Test Media And Install Bazzite. By default, Test Media is selected. It always fails this test.
- If you use the typical non-live environment image, the scaling is tiny on a 4k monitor, and there’s no way to adjust this.
- If you use the live environment image (in beta at time of writing), it might just lock up. I had that happen twice just while clicking through the Anaconda installer.
- The Anaconda installer, which I think they inherited from Fedora, was I think designed by one of the contrarian idiots who work for Gnome. There’s a DONE button up in the far upper left hand corner of the screen that sometimes acts as a back button, sometimes acts as a forward button. You have to move the mouse from the top corner of the screen to the center of the screen a lot, for no reason. The top-left corner of the screen is a dumb place to put a DONE button because most languages read top to bottom, left to right, the DONE button is where a START button should go.
- There isn’t a simple way to tell it “put / on this drive, put /home on that drive.” There’s an automatic installer which will do god knows what…fail, most likely. There’s a “custom” partition dialog which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and then there’s a “custom advanced” one that lets you set the size and position of each partition to the byte. Doing it this way apparently REQUIRES you to not only set up a /boot/efi partition, but also a /boot partition separate from /root.
- If you’re in the habit of putting /, you know, operating system and software, on one drive, and /home on another drive, you have to learn from osmosis that part of Bazzite’s immutableness means that there is no /home, there’s a /var/home symlinked to /home.
And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!
Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?
Bazzite is just a shit option vs using cachy. It’s the same goal and work load target. And bazzite manages to just be worse in every respect.
Having played with it for a little while now that I’ve got it installed…I think it’s alright for a mostly or entirely gaming machine. I wouldn’t want to use it, or any immutable distro, as my main computer.
I’ve attempted to stay out of the trendy distro of the month club, remember Garuda? Remember Peppermint? Remember Endeavour?
That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.
That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.
I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.
Stop recommending bazzite, just r commend cachy.
It has a steam deck iso. It’s based on the same thing steamos is built on.
Bazzite is literally the worse option and more likely to lead to problems.
I don’t recommend Arch forks as a rule, unless it has fantastic support from the maintainers (e.g. SteamOS curates updates). It’s going to by break eventually, and it’s going to require manual intervention (probably minimal), and users will get mad. Maybe it’ll be fine for 6 months or a year, but it will break eventually.
That’s much less likely with something built on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or OpenSUSE. Those all have solid testing and upgrade rules, unlike Arch, which is basically “works on my machine.” I used Arch for years until I got tired of the random breakage, and now I’m on Tumbleweed which has far less breakage and stays reasonably close to Arch package versions.
My first recommendation is either Linux Mint (I prefer Debian edition) or Fedora, because those have good new user experiences and aren’t super opinionated like Ubuntu.
I agree with the other guy, that’s too much choice. People don’t want to deal with it.
Three options is too many? If one is already selected, you can just click through without thinking. Windows already does that stupid “setting up your PC” crap, and this would be far faster.
Yes.
And they need to sort out the defaults to something good. 99% of basic users won’t/can’t change them.
Sure. If you have all three options be properly configured, it shouldn’t matter too much which you pick. The point is to make it apparent that you can change stuff, if you want.
EndeavourOS has that kind of menu during the install process. A few screenshots and a brief explanation of each option.
I thought it was nice. It’s something I want to see more with other distros. The DE is what most people will notice about the OS either way.
Yeah, that is nice. I won’t recommend EndeavorOS or any other Arch installer/derivative for other reasons (IMO, every Arch user should do the official install process once or twice to have a better shot at fixing stuff later), but I do like that UX.
I wish more distros did it. My distro (openSUSE) does something similar, but I also don’t recommend it because the community isn’t all that good for new users IMO.
Your like 5+ years out of date with your preconceptions of arch.
Arch at this point is breaks less from updates than most other options if your using a prebuild like endeavour or cachy.
Fuck even the aur breaks shit less than windows breaks which is literally the bar for stability for your avg normies.
That tracks since I left Arch about 5 years ago, maybe a little longer, and I used it for at least 5 years.
I used it through the /usr merge which broke nearly everything, and for a few years of stability afterward. But even when it was super stable, there were still random issues a couple times each year. It wasn’t anything big (I’ve been a Linux user for 15 years or so), but it did require knowing what to do to fix it (usually documented clearly on the Arch homepage). This was especially true for Nvidia updates. After switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed, most of those went away, and even the Nvidia breakage seemed less frequent, and if something broke, I could easily
snapper rollbackand wait for a fix, whereas on Arch I had to fix things because going back wasn’t an option (I guess you could configure rollbacks if you had that foresight).I just took a look, and it looks like manual intervention is still a thing. For example, the June 21 Linux firmware change required manual intervention. There were others over the last year, depending on the packages you use or your configuration.
That’s totally fine for Linux vets, but new users will have issues eventually. In don’t even recommend my distro, which solves most of those issues, because new user support isn’t there. The main reason I left was because I wanted to switch to btrfs (for snapshot rollbacks), and Tumbleweed had that OOTB so I gave it a shot.
The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.
Also Valve will not likely go that path again.
Who else has an incentive to do so other than Valve? Even when you buy a pre-built with Windows today, those things are subsidized by bloatware that’s already installed on the machine.
Some companies sell Linux prebuilts, like System76, but that’s pretty niche for the average person to even know to search for.
Now, if stores like Best Buy had a section for Linux prebuilts, that would reach a lot of people.
Ooh, Lenovo is a much bigger deal.
I was really surprised at the price difference. Win11 Home adds $140 to the laptop cost? I would’ve expected $100, but damn.
And Win11 Pro is $200 over Linux lol
I can attest that SteamOS does work on my rigs that are AMD gpu/cpu. It actually works great. I haven’t had one single issue. But I don’t do multiplayer games either.
I’d guess Valve wants whatever makes more games work on Linux so that their Steam Deck works better and is more compatible.
And that means the most important thing is Linux desktop adoption by game developers so they make more native games. So somewhat ironically, I don’t think SteamOS would be as high a priority as other distributions, since it focuses on players instead of developers.
Ironically, some games run better on the Steam Deck through Proton rather than the native Linux version.
A lot of games received their ports during the Steam Machine era, used outdated technologies like DirectX to OpenGL translation, and never got updated, so it’s not surprising unfortunately.
Not directly relevant but I just discovered CachyOS for my AYN Loki and it’s pretty fuckin awesome. I hope we retain some non-immutable options for those of us who want to heavily customize our experiences with these devices. It was hard to find something I could just run syncthing and some standalone emulators on. I don’t want valve and libretro in complete control of what I do and do not do on my handheld linux or not - and it could very easily go that way with the popularity of immutable distros. Maybe I’m just paranoid. I dont know.
Immutable distros will become a massive fucking headache. Just watch
They already are. So many user complaints on popular packages have nothing to do with a bug on the package, but are caused by the moronic permissions systems used by Flatpaks and similar.
I’m watching closely.
Out of curiosity why?
It seems like the perfect thing for BFUs…
Its just replacing closed systems with more closed systems.
I’m dual booting with Windows because of a project I’m finishing that would be difficult to move OS, but Cachy is now my gaming OS. It’s nice to move away from the “forced” behavior from Windows.
Tangentially, a few UI decisions felt locked-in on Ubuntu and Mint too; or at least I couldn’t find an easy way to change them. I’m still a little annoyed my scroll wheel changes form options but it’s a minor thing.
