Technology

The biggest weakness is multiplayer games with aggressive anti-cheat. So those are the types of games you play, continue to stay away from Linux.

But for most games on Linux, it is just install and play now through a platform like Steam. I haven't run into a game that I want to play that doesn't basically "just work".

I installed Bazzite last month, installed my games on Steam and I just played all my games. Cyberpunk, RDR2, Cities Skylines, Divinity Original Sin 2, no additional setup involved, no turning off the wi-fi just to create a local account. I was ready to reinstall Windows if it got too difficult. I got rid of Mint too. I thought I'd need it as people say it's easier.

Yup. Lack of game support is a big roadblock -- having just one or two friends on linux makes finding games your group can play together a real headache.

Another weird-ish hiccup, is the lack of good/cheap/trustworthy tax software. Installing windows once a year to do taxes is bonkers. Some solve it by having a VM that runs windows that they only use for taxes, but that isn't really a fix. You'd still be a microbitch.

I have Linux on my "gaming" pc and I just stopped gaming, I have like four hours of uninterrupted leisure a month and they're spent in terminals trying to troubleshoot games

Thanks to Trump, there appears to be some initiatives in Europe for governments to switch to open source. It seems they want to try and get out of relying on US companies for their technology. That would make a large jump in the user base.

They have tried before, and not had the best luck in dropping US vendors. Things seem to run out of steam at some point and they switch back. It will be interesting to see if things stick more this time.

I'm pulling for them to succeed.

Admit it already, we know you run Arch.

I did the same this month. My hardware wasn't supported by Win11, so I installed Bazzite. It works so smoothly that I've already installed it on another PC and will do so on every PC in my household. I've been able to run every single game so far, whether they were from Steam, Ubisoft Connect, GOG, Battle.net or the EA app. I had no idea we were at this point already.

congratulations, you now walk with the righteous.

They've been showing ads in the start menu for years now. Since windows 8 honestly.

sparky linux LXQt was the one i settled to in the end. Despite having a top spec laptop and desktop PC, i wanted a light weight Linux, based on Debian, with no "fluff" at all. PC boots fast, shuts down in 2 seconds, no updates, secure, every program is instant. Windoze is plain stupid now with ads.

Welcome! Because we Linux aficionados are incorrigibly nosy and passionate, which distro did you pick and how are you liking it so far?

Same. It should be illegal for them to be forcing this shit on us. At least I only have to endure it on my work pc. No windows on personal devices

I bought a Dell with Ubuntu preloaded in 2019. I think it should still be possible (It's their "developer edition" models).

better than Linux ever was before

I did Linux on the desktop for 15 years. I was primarily Windows at home, Linux at work. With a job change, I took a detour through Mac for a couple of years, then WSL hit, and I ran Windows for quite a while.

I dropped back in, but only at home when Bookworm landed. I was playing Steam games with video acceleration right out of the gate. For a lot of people, it's just going to work right out of the gate, and updates are just going to work. Now that a lot of shit's going Electron, a lot of apps that had an edge in windows are now identical through their web interfaces.

If you're not playing games with a lot of anti-cheat, using proprietary hardware or don't need access to some windows-only apps (or you can put up with Wine), all the distros are up to the point where they operate just as you'd expect them to.

It's so much easier than I had anticipated. Funnily enough, the most complicated thing was organizing a 16Gb USB stick to boot because I only had 20 year old ones with 4Gb. On a newly purchased bare AMD PC, I was able to set everything up after work and play games with my buddies the same evening.

I opted for Bazzite and everything ran right out of the box without any additional hardware drivers: gaming mouse, wifi, wireless PS4 controller, printer, NAS, Android phone. The game libraries from Steam, Epic, gog etc. can all be easily connected via Lutris and so far all the games I've tried have run. For programs that are only offered for other distributions, I have installed BoxBuddy, where you can create Distroboxes. For most Windows native programs Wine just works.

It really depends on your hardware. I have a Dell XPS with an 11th gen Intel i5 that I'm running Fedora (Gnome desktop environment) on and it was rock solid from minute one. Things to check:

• Make sure your network card is supported. Intel network cards are some of the better choices for open source compatibility. On most laptops this can be swapped out if necessary.

• Camera

• Touchpad

• Fingerprint sensor

• Sound driver

• Any niche functions or modules. Think things like a secondary display on the keyboard, speciality ports etc.

Support is much better now than in the past and remember you don't need everything to work to have a good time. My fingerprint sensor doesn't work but it didn't work well under windows so no big loss for me.

• You can always use a live bootable USB drive to test your hardware without having to commit to anything. This will tell you a lot about the experience you might have after installation. Heck, if you're board you can try this right now and it won't touch your current hard drive or operating system.

That HN thread was such a shitshow lol. Also I dont think there is anything credible to suggest this increase from 4.6% to 5% is due to 'non linux users' or steamdeck. Steamdeck has contributed sure but desktop linux is growing but every single metric (steam hardware survey, PH Desktop user survey, US Gov traffic, tech youtuber trends, etc).

useless antidote: My friend who is a non techie gamer and she plays a lot of anti cheat type multiplayer games ASKED me to help her switch to linux mint and even when I said thats a bad idea she shouldnt switch she still wanted to. She ended up loving it even though there was a few pain points (fucken nvidia dual screen config on x11) and i think a few of her other friends have even switched after hearing her say it works well.

I'd honestly be curious to see what percentage of Linux is steam decks now

I remember when Walmart sold boxed releases of RedHat and Mandrake. My first installs were fueled by $20 boxed releases at Walmart. I was so bummed when they stopped. But I could send away for Ubuntu releases on a CD for free.

I think the fastest way for linux to spread are a) a state-sponsored (totally open source) product that sees a free and open OS as part of a commitment to a free and open society. or 2) one of these fuckhead billionaires drops $200M or so into a trust, rather like the Poetry Foundation, which has the singular commitment to create an OS for people and to support it indefinitely.

I don't think the answer to any of society's ills is to get Wallmart involved. ed: walmart however its spelled WGAS.

Im a long time Mac user but recently got a steamdeck. Desktop mode uses a version of kde and I really like it, if I had to switch from Mac I would definitely go with linux instead of windows. I think the steam deck will introduce a lot of people to linux.

Hey, don't knock customization as a reason. A couple of decades ago, I was sold on Linux by silly Beryl/Compiz videos such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=038RHEGu4OY