our university put linux mint on all the desktop computers this year.
Cool. Which university is that? How did it go?
they put linux mint (cinnamon edition) on computers. people more or less used it normally, i'd say most people barely bothered that it's not windows. essential software that we needed to use was pre-installed (with neatly visible icons on the desktop to click on), and web browser was installed too. that covers basically all use-cases.
one colleague asked how to do screenshots. i showed her.
Let us know, I'm very curious. At our school (cal poly pomona), our comp sci professors were upset Ubuntu got put on their lab computers and they were upset because IT didn't give warning and some didn't know how to use it.
Compsci labs or everywhere?
the department where i am. don't wanna say which one because privacy concerns.
Wir petzen schon nicht.
I've been gaming on Linux mostly if not entirely full time since 2014. Back when you had to look to see if there was a Steam icon alongside the Windows and sometimes Apple logo because Proton wasn't the "everything works" magic it is now.
Anyone complaining about the state of Linux today look like diaper shitting babies. "WAAAH! My privacy invading rootkit requiring multiplayer CoD Fortnite meme slop sippy cup game is specifically designed to not run on Linux. WAAAAH!" Yeah, I remember when hair didn't grow near my genitals too, but then I stopped acknowledging any of my feelings in public except anger and pretended to like beer out of sheer force of peer pressure, and thus became a fully grown man by the standards of my culture. Get on my level.
What were we talking about?
You're definitely living up to your username 👌
I always have since before joining this experiment in mediocrity we call the Fediverse.
In an age of enshitification, pretty ok most of the time is to be celebrated
Entering my 12th year as a Linux user, I can't disagree with that.
Seriously, all the lutris & co mess is obsolete now.
Open Steam > add non-steam game > properties > compatibility > force proton 10 > profit
Worked for all the cough responsibly ripped .exe's I've thrown at it so far
I still use bottles to have a persistent virtual drive for things like modding tools.
Most things work perfectly in Steam though.
Yeah. I also use Bottles for GOG / itch games that don't have a native linux version. And I'm pretty happy with how it works. Things install smoothly and easily, and it has a very nice menu for the games I've installed. Here's what it looks like:

However, there have been some hiccups along the way that might have caused less patient people to give up. In particular, it took me awhile to work out that although I could tell bottle to launch a windows .exe from anywhere on my computer, it would only actually work properly if I first move the exe into the virtual drive - which deep inside a confusing directory structure. (The "troubleshooting" menu option goes directly into talking about this issue; but even finding that menu option isn't totally straight forward, especially if you're just launching the exe from a file browser or something.)
Anyway, the upshot is that I like bottles; because it is easy to use but also very transparent about how it works and what it is doing, which I like. But I wouldn't say it's the best option for everyone.
do steam games run on linux already or something? Like do you only have to do that for non steam games?
Lutris has allowed me to use battle.net though which I don't think steam can do, afaik. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though
I am brave enough to say it: The ocean has water in it.
Praise me for my braveness.
I get the sentiment but the article is more targeted at the PC gaming crowd that isn't exactly tech-illiterate but probably only knows Linux from memes about it requiring you to recompile a kernel to install Chrome or some other BS like that
I think a good portion of Lemmy and the fediverse already know it's been at this level for a long while now but I'm excited to see articles like this since it means the tide is turning against Windows for the average user
I'll take whatever positive press Linux can get at this point. More people switching over is a good thing.
I only have one problem with my linux mint distro: Sometimes cheats for video games don't work.
Like I like to use savegame editors for Cyberpunk 2077, but they don't work on linux despite all my attempts, and PINCE (Pince Is Not Cheat Engine) works for almost all games but just not for some.
And that, ladies and gentlemen (and all those in between or neither) is when I finally found a reason to actually code after tinkering on-off for decades: I want to make those save game editors for linux! That is something that legit doesn't exist but needs to.
Some of y'all are showing your bubble side; outside of our communities here, Linux very much is obscure. That said, there really does seem to be a leak in the mainstream and it's nice to see it mentioned in a publication. Even if just a little gain, thanks in large part to Steam raising awareness for gamers, US decline in Europe and Canada, and Windows 11 blunders with security.
I've gone from people being completely oblivious when I mention Linux, to going "oh, like steam deck?" but there's still plenty of others who still are oblivious. Then again, mentioning file extensions goes over the heads of 95% of who I talk to, so I wouldn't have too high hopes.
Everyone acts like it's all about gaming, but people want to use Lightroom, Photoshop, Excel, their banking and tax software etc. They don't want the alternatives because they're not integrated well, they can't access their Dropbox/Apple Cloud/whatever and they gave Linux their Google password already, why does it need it again for that mail software that has some stupid bird name instead of "mail".
Yup. Although I've become a fan of things like GIMP, you do need to learn a new software and depending on who you are, it might take a while. Lucky (?) for me, I was too poor to afford it for school and since it was for official assignments, I didn't want to pirate.
That said, Microsoft integration is more a curse than a blessing at this point. Privacy and junk aside, it's dumped hundreds of GB of files onto my tiny SSD C: since it kept changing settings and ignoring my preferences. That's why Microsoft messing things up is converting people who even prefer integration, when there's an option to anyway!
I think it's also down to windows 11 being increasingly enshitified, and unwanted AI stuff being forced on users. A lot of people are frustrated and are more open to alternatives.
Linux very much is obscure
To paraphrase Bill Hicks about drugs...
See, I think ~~drugs~~ Linuxes have done some good things for us! I really do. And if you don't believe ~~drugs~~ Linuxes have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight, take all your ~~albums~~ bookmarks, all your ~~tapes~~ links and all your ~~CDs~~ websites and burn 'em. 'Cause you know what? The ~~musicians~~ servers who ~~made~~ host all that great ~~music~~ web content that's enhanced your lives throughout the years?
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreal fuckin' ~~high~~ hosted on ~~drugs~~ Linux.
:3 Well, that nearly worked. n_n
(I had intended to add a "they[servers]'re all running linux" meme... but failed to find... instead, this'll do nicely too...)

https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED455/6859360c6abcc.jpeg
Idk one of my siblings who I never chalked up as a non-windows user and not particularly tech savvy sent me a screenshot of their linux install. If like the tech barriers to linux are falling then the only thing left to fall is software developers for commercial software.
THIS is the year.
Posts 30 year old photo of Linus
Posts 30 year old photo of Linus sourced from Getty Images. They paid for the image to discuss FOSS.
I switched my gaming pc to Linux and all the games I tried so far worked good.
As a 20+ year Linux user, no shit. It's been great every year.
I have been a user since around 2000, I work in Linux every day, and I get where you're coming from - but in the context of gaming Linux has really only recently come into its own.
Like, could you imagine, circa 2010, telling a naive user that practically their whole Steam library would work with one click? Wine has always been a minor miracle, but at some point there was an inversion between being surprised when it worked, and being surprised that it didn't work...
I was so reluctant to transition to Linux for gaming. I've been using Linux since 2007, so I'm not new to the OS.
I took the plunge a handful of months ago, and it is an amazing experience. The games I like to play actually saw performance gains when switching over.
I still dual boot a Win 10 partition for outliers, but so far the only game to get installed there has been BF6, due to the requirements of their anti-cheat.
Wow. So brave.
I'm brave enough to say it

IMO, the hardest part of moving over is relearning a bunch of things you've taken for granted. However, Windows has been changing and breaking things at such a rapid pace, that not even my friends who still use it can keep track.
Given I'm actively avoiding modern multiplayer games for more reasons than just the fact that they pretty much all have rootkit DRM (I know kernel-level anticheats have a different target than traditional DRM, but they're functionally DRM so they count as DRM to me), and one of the few games I have left which were unplayably broken on Proton work now (Civ3, still has audio issues that to my knowledge can't be corrected for non-destructively, but the black-map issue is now fixed, at least on my end using proton-cachyos), I have no plans on running Windows again any time soon, not even in a VM.
I too, am super brave for switching to Linux from Windows 11.
Joking aside, I love it. My relatively new laptop runs so much smoother on it. W11 always was doing something in the background and making my fan blast even when I wasn't using it. That's all gone and it's a much happier device.
My printer works, my wacom intous tablet works, all my steam games so far work (I haven't played every single one, but the ones I have played are fine).
Honestly, there was some things I had to troubleshoot at the beginning. I just asked AI and it gave me the terminal commands that I needed to get it done.
10/10 would recommend... if you're brave.
PC Gamer saying this is a good sign though, still one of the most popular special interest magazines that's not porn
o7
(tears streaming down my face, Born in the USA on soundtrack)
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