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Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS
(www.pcworld.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Linux Gaming
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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.
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I just installed Linux and holy shit it is so much easier and more straight forward than a windows install. Really wish I would have done it sooner.
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.
Because Windows is a data-mining and advertising tool these days, more than anything. So they want to make sure you have a MS account on day 1 and that you have to opt out of all of their services 34 times over before they let you use the damn thing.
Yep, and then have to opt out all over again the next week when an update decides you need to verify you really mean to opt out again...
And if you managed to not have an MS account when you installed, interrupt your login and say "you cannot proceed like you have been doing for the past year without adding an MS account now", and then look up how to get out of that dialog without doing the MS account...
Yep 100% this kind of shit drove me away a couple years ago. It had nothing to do with Linux getting better and everything to do with Windows getting worse.
Also, some (most) annoyances with installing Linux, still, is primarily due to Microsoft managing to fuck things up in subtle ways.
Creating an offline account to install windows is worse than installing 99% of the Linux distros out there.
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.
Haha you had me, ngl
That said I've never had issues with drivers on Windows, like ever.
The last time I tried Linux was probably a good 5 years ago (Mint) and it was good, but I kept having to do what you described, adding repos (had no idea what they were or how they worked) and running command line updates, and it all looked like random code executing on my system. I could definitely see why the average person would be intimidated.
Eventually I gave up when I couldn't get the most simple thing I did in windows working on Linux, updating my keepass automatically via Gmail.
I'll have to give Mint another shot, I'm sure it's come along even more.
I haven't used Windows in a bit, but I had to help two friends with display driver issues on windows recently. When they break they have to be uninstalled using a third party tool before you can perform a fresh install of them.
Guessing your machine uses the one-two punch of Nvidia + Broadcom / Realtek?
Which distro ? I've been rocking Bazzite for a year, and holy mother of christ, it requires less maintenance than my smartphone.
I've been rocking endeavourOS.
It's really nice, but I hear great things about bazzite. I'm going to have to take bazzite & steamOS for a spin
I installed EOS and I'm liking it.
If you like endeavourOS, CachyOS is really good too. It's also Arch based and includes a really fast custom kernel. It also has lots of gaming enhancements whatever that means. I've been trying to spread the word, not a lot of people seem to know about it. I hear Bazzite is pretty good as well. I definitely need to try it out.
Bazzite for the win!
Ive been looking at Bazzite, but Ive tried to make the jump to linux for a while but always run into dumb issues and go back to windows.
Is it 'it just works' or is it actually dad gamer easy?
If you plan using Steam, gaming will be super easy. There's also a good store to install new programs. Everything worked out of the box.
That's actually what I went with too. I considered Mint and Pop!OS but really my PC is a gaming machine with a nvidia card. A friend recommended bazzite and its exactly what I was looking for.
I'm also on a gaming/graphics workstation rig with nvidia and fedora runs games windows can't run no longer and overall is more stable when gaming. Only issue is vr and games that are intentionally disabled on linux via anticheat. But they're slop anyway other than delta force, which is unplayable due to hackers.
Yeah. Windows install and Linux install quietly switched which was the difficult shitty experience sometime when I wasn't watching.