With the widespread support for Steam/Valve on this forum because of their contributions to making Linux gaming easier, I'm now confused as to why people here are using Linux in the first place.
I personally do so out of support for FOSS software, the customizability, and actual ownership of software, which I thought were most people's primary reasons for using any Linux distro. Steam seems antithetical to all of these. The software in the first place became popular as a form of DRM, and it gets publishers to use it for the allowance of DRM on the platform. The Steam client has the absolute minimum customizability. Your account can be banned at any point and you can lose access to many of the games you have downloaded.
Whenever I game on Linux I just use folders to sort my game library and purchase any games I want to play on itch.io or GoG. On my Linux PC I stay away from clients like Steam because I want a PC that works offline, and will work if all of my accounts were banned. It's more of a backup PC.
Since Steam has every characteristic of Windows, 0 customizability, DRM, plenty of games that are spyware, I see no reason to really not use Windows instead for the much easier time I can have playing games.
Yes, I prefer many of the features of Linux distros, but using a client like Steam defeats the purpose of them. Ridiculous storage requirements due to unoptimized dependencies, having to have a background client running for some games and wasting resources on doing so.
So, why use Linux and support Steam, or use Linux and use Steam?
I always wanted to learn. I had a number of failed attempts with Linux back in 2000, 2006, etc. I always gave it a shot every 5 years ago just to see.
I fully made the switch with pop os a couple years ago and it ended up sticking. I was in a better place to learn linux and pop os is just easy and noob friendly. This last time was also spurned on when the rumour was going around that windows 11 was going to have ads right in the explorer. I don't know if that ever happened but it was enough to get me to give it another shot haha
You stuck with popOS ever since? Had any issues or had to reinstall after switching or was it smooth sailing pretty much?
Mostly smooth. When I jumped onto pop os I think it was the 21.10 version which was good. Only the ng that I never got working was lutris. When 22.04 was released I updated to that and had some weirdness afterwards that I couldn't quite iron out. I ended up doing a fresh install with 22.04 and it's been great since.
Nice, thanks. I've been (slowly) preparing to switch, for me its probably gonna be mint at first but if that doesnt pan out popOs sounds like a good fallback.