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Comment by cheald | Hacker News Reader

Steam runs fine on Linux, FWIW. KDE's a better Windows than Windows these days.

Does Steam run on Ubuntu 9 (or kernel 2.6)? Because that's what was current when Windows 7 was released.

I think some people stick with Windows 7 (and Windows 10 also) not because they can't upgrade, but because they prefer not to.

On Linux you really have all the same options as you did with Ubuntu 9, you can still get Mate which is basically where Gnome was then, you have a mostly similar userland, the kernel is way better and faster now, what would keep people on Ubuntu 9?

On the other hand, Windows seems to get more resource intensive with every release and the UI gets worse, why would anyone want to upgrade other than EOL?

I think Win 11 itself is just fine but you really have to turn off numerous annoyances. For instance, I uninstalled Teams because i was sick and tired of being harassed to use Teams, then I joined a meeting for the first time with Teams and found the web version was problematic (couldn’t find my microphone, randomly sent sound to my headset or the SPIDF sound bar, showed only the depth channel from my RealSense camera.)

Maybe it is fine, but is it better? Is it good enough to spend the effort to upgrade to if you did not have to?

What about the introduction of systemd? snap? X to Wayland? (I am not expressing an opinion on those topics, merely pointing out that things have changed since then in Ubuntu too.)

Why would that be relevant? People stick with those old Windows versions because of an aversion to Windows 10 and 11, not because they are doing some kind of period re-enactment.

A more relevant question would be if modern Linux distros support the hardware of back then (they tend to).

You can get the same experience of Ubuntu 9.xx on modern Ubuntu, with full support, by just using Ubuntu Mate or installing the `ubuntu-mate-desktop` package. If you want a Windows 7 experience on Windows 11, you have to resort to third party hacky tools that Microsoft absolutely will not support.

Looks like Steam for Linux is supported on Debian 8 (2015) or newer. So it runs fine on Linux, but only Linux that is newer than the latest Windows release losing support today: 8.1 at 2013.

Or to phase it another way: Steam on Linux has worse backwards compatibility.

8 years of no upgrades is not the norm for desktop or laptop linux machines. Old hardware is still supported on newer versions, and you can have an equivalent desktop experience on it today as in 2015, so there's no reason to not upgrade.

Windows folks don't upgrade because upgrades change a lot, newer os is unsupported on older hardware, and/or newer versions have become extremely user hostile.

honestly I have to disagree. I use kde for work 8-5 m-f for the past two years. I still prefer windows 10 ui and features over it. kde isn't terrible, and I'd choose it over windows 8, 11, or any osx ui. but windows 7, and 10 just are seamlessly good for me. everything I need is only 2 clicks away, intuitive navigation, and stable.

I really dislike KDE and Gnome, they seem to be chasing Windows and MacOS, but those are horrible, so they became horrible.

The beauty of linux is that you can use any or all.

> KDE's a better Windows than Windows these days.

Came to the same conclusion recently. And if you really want to sqeeze as much resource as possible out of your rig, game on openbox. Works wonders.

and best thing: you don't have to setup stuff for hours, it just works (yes, not ALL the games). Same goes for the framerate, just check youtube for your favorite game to compare Linux/Windows framerates. There is a good chance fps are even higher on Linux.

Same goes btw for battle.net (even Diablo 4 seem to work)

I'm on Linux for work related stuff since years now and switched recently entirely to Garuda / KDE

My fps is massively worse in sim heavy games (stellaris, rimworld in particular) when running native linux ports. The only exceptions are Java games like Minecraft or Starsector.

Not sure about the Proton versions TBH...

Another issue I have in linux (even in Proton) is presentation smoothness, as Windows tricks like SpecialK or fast/enhanced sync are missing on linux.

There are a handful of games where my best experience is playing the Windows version on Proton/Linux. For a few games, this has been better than native Windows on Windows or native Linux on Linux. It seems weird, but ...

more importantly, do the games run?

Yes, the release of the Steamdeck did wonders for pushing AAA gaming forward on Linux.

There was just an article on the front page earlier today about 75% of the top 100 games on steam running on linux, with the remaining 25% mostly being due to anti-cheat software that isn't updated to support linux yet.

Protondb.com has a database to search for compatibility and if adjustments to command lines or a specific version of Proton are needed for getting games running.

You can look at https://protondb.com for compatibility of games.

That's very impressive.

"75% of the Top 100 Most Played Games on Steam Are Playable/Verified on the Steam Deck"

https://boilingsteam.com/75-of-the-top-100-most-played-games...

The system also does pretty well in the long tail. There's even a set of older (and some newer) games that run better than they do on modern versions of Windows - not a huge number, but not nothing and probably growing over time.

At this point, the largest problem left to solve is perhaps achieving pervasive support for anti-cheat middleware by multiplayer games, which requires vendor participation. A few have started collaborating, but there is more to do on this front.

(Disclaimer: I work on KDE and worked a small bit on the Deck at some point.)

"work"

Beg your pardon?

Out of those 75% some of them don't work properly as they do on Windows.

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I agree, there's a gulf between "Playable" and "Verified" and the latter is a much smaller % (the source has numbers at least).

Playable is good enough. It may have small text, keyboard only references in text, or other minor annoyances but a playable game does work on deck. On desktop or laptop linux for many of them you may not notice any issues at all.

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