325
Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS
(www.pcworld.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
325 points (95.5% liked)
Linux Gaming
16531 readers
225 users here now
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
Resources
WWW:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I can't speak for everyone, but many hardware peripherals software for configuration and control don't work.
For gamers that could be companion software for RGB and mwcro customization on keyboards, controllers and other peripherals too.
For myself, it would be music production software (VSTs and otherwise.) I know about different compatability layer softwares out there, but it's a band-aid.
I made the switch to Arch and these 2 things have been my struggle.
For my music hardware I have run a windoes VM with virt-manager/qemu with USB passthrough. That sort of works, but it's an extra thing to fuss with.
I even went down the rabbithole of trying to use usbip to get wine to recognize my hardware, with no success of wine seeing the bound port.
Its not flawless but I'm getting there.
I will not go back to windows. Even if it means changing my habits and use cases.
Yeah, that's the one thing I lost when switching to Bazzite. I'm on an Acer Predator and I'm stuck with auto fan controls (which work fine) and I can't customize RGB. There's options to replace the Predator Sense program to get that working on Linux but I just don't care enough to mess with it.
For RGB try OpenRGB!
I haven't tried VR in Linux, I did sell my oculus, and haven't gotten a replacement.
I use Reaper, and it'd fantastic. It's more so the plugins that are an issue since VSTs aren't supported too well on Linux. There are peripherals that don't play well as well, but that's vendor specific. My Line 6 gear for example.
I am full time on Arch. Ditched Windows 6+ months ago, and i won't turn back. It has come with issues, but I've treated like a learning experience.
I am using an EVGA 3090 FTW on Arch, and if I had known when building my PC that Nvidia has issues, I would have gone the AMD route. But, I have gotten my 3090 usable, quite well actually with some tweaking.
I had issues using Wayland at first, but driver updates have helped.
I have wanted to check out NixOS, but I haven't yet.
Valve Index, SteamVR, install, setup, play, no tinkering.
Now... if one does want to buy hardware from Meta (... which sadly I understand, it's so damn cheap) and Meta refuses to support Linux, well, it's kind of a decision on the buyer. Still, if one still want to tinker, because they have the hardware now, plenty of good solutions listed on https://lvra.gitlab.io e.g. ALVR (very convenient nowadays) or WiVRn and more.
I refuse to buy any meta product, let alone use their platforms. If I get back into VR it'll likely be Valve products
Thank you for the resource!
The ability to stream media from legit paid sources. (Netflix, Comcast, max, disneyplus, prime, I don't know where the list is currently, but anything that bitches about user agent.)
TPM.
The ability to play multiplayer games that rely on anti-cheat ( seriously, make Linux a hit with the fortnite crowd and the upcoming generation will think of windows as boomerware )
The ability to use an HDMI cable at full speed. (It's the leading A/V cable standard and the only one some people understand. )
Then there's the stuff I'm unsure of the current status of but that I know was a problem once upon a time: Online banking, online doctor stuff, encrypted emails from mainstream providers, you know, anything that could qualify as "every day stuff" that works out of the box on windows and yet sometimes requires complicated (for grandma) setup on Linux.
Agreed, that's critical. That said, I periodically subscribe to all of those, and all of the ones I've tried in the last year on Firefox on Debian, have worked perfectly. If there's any left that still don't, I haven't tried/encountered them.
Office software is covered by LibreOffice.
Just general software and hardware support. And ease of use. So basically everything.
Sadly, LibreOffice isn't up to the task.
However, more and more this stuff is done in browser anyway.
Being done in the browser means it's being done in the cloud which I'm personally not okay with. LibreOffice works well enough for my use.
Yeah, but the O365 crowd is pretty much 99% tied to the cloud anyway they slice it (MS really wants you to work exclusively in OneDrive).
LibreOffice may be able to handle it's own documents fine, but interoperate with an MS Office user and it frequently is unable to be consistent.
What does libreoffice not do? And what about onlyoffice?
Basically when I open up an MSOffice file, if there's anything vaguely complicated it will not look like the way the office user intended.
The main hiccup for hardware support is GPU support, and as a side effect of the bigger business being in messing with LLMs and that use case preferring Linux, GPUs are getting more Linux attention.
For example, nVidia drivers went years and years with a status quo of "screw open source, compile our driver and deal with the limitations". Only after they got big in the datacenter did they finally start working towards being fully open in the kernel space (though firmware and user space still closed source, but that's a bit more managable)
Yeah I mean especially for professionals, most hardware requires special software for it to function properly and they don't bother making it available for Linux.
That's entirely use case specific. CUDA is actually used more on Linux than on Windows (I don't have data, but even Azure by Microsoft runs on Linux...) so for e.g. NVIDIA hardware for professionals the support is better there.
It's not. But I wasn't referring to GPUs anyway, I was referring to peripherals. Audio equipment, drawing pads, cameras, etc.