Bye-bye Windows gaming? SteamOS officially expands past the Steam Deck
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I've owned a Steam Deck not quite since day 1, I'm beyond delighted now that I can just buy and play Steam games. I think I've thrown maybe one game at Proton that I just couldn't get working. And things like the Heroic launcher have made GoG games (most of which already ran on Linux since they just run via DOSBox) easier than ever.
Anyone on the fence about keeping Windows around just for games: unless you play online multiplayer that uses kernel anti-cheat, just make the jump. I promise you, almost every game in your library will just work, and almost all of the rest will work after you set them to run with a specific Proton version.
Also, while the competing handhelds are often more powerful, the Deck's trackpads really are a game changer for some games (like Rimworld)
Same applies to Steam on Linux: Proton has opened to us a gaming library of a size we would not have dreamed of a few years before.
Both Valve and MS have been making moves to steer game publishers away from KAC. I think the problem will solve itself when the platforms just say, "you can't do that anymore".
Can you elaborate on this? What sort of moves have they been making?
> I think the problem will solve itself when the platforms just say, "you can't do that anymore".
I hope you're right!
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/steam-now-requires-developers-...
They recently voiced their opposition to kernel level anticheat as some thing that “ might present problematic trade-offs for the end-user in the longer term”:
https://automaton-media.com/en/interviews/the-steam-deck-has...
Kernel anticheat is a major security issue from the perspective of the operating system, as it is a kernel level rootkit. An offline analogue would be giving a corporation the keys to your home and having them regularly come and install new cameras and microphones to see what you are doing. They might say “it is only active when you are playing a game”, but there is no technical hurdle blocking them from watching 24x7 and some of them don’t even bother to pretend it is only when playing a game. Then there is the issue of the wiring being faulty such that it occasionally sets your house on fire (search for BSOD complaints involving anticheat kernel drivers and you will find many).
As for Microsoft, I think that is a misunderstanding that came from this:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-paves-the-way-for-Li...
Here is what someone who claims to develop kernel anticheat had to say about it:
https://blog.freudenjmp.com/posts/microsoft-will-not-kill-ke...
Unlike Apple and the Linux community, Microsoft does not care about end user security to take a stance against kernel anticheat. All of their security initiatives are security theater.
It's not quite as polished, but it works.
Anyway, I love my steam deck
I can't believe how awful the user interface is, they are bascially installing windows 11 in a computer shaped as a portable console, with really small icons and imprecise touch controls, onedrive and microsoft 365 offers, crazy.
If you can install Steam OS on it, all those consolized PCs will end up using native Steam OS, and the next step is the living room (console like desktop pcs).
Microsoft must be really thinking about an Xbox OS, or at least a native and usable gaming interface for windows 11. Valve is trying to remove microsoft as a dependency for their bussines. And i think microsoft sees valve as it's bigger competitor on the gaming space, not Playstation as everyone thinks, that's why they are going with the "everything is an Xbox" ads and rumors about "third party xboxes".
It is nice that GamePass can be used on my Desktop, XBox, or Laptop from my moms kitchen.
From the xbox library (including 3rd party games you got on xbox, old 360 games and so on) only a handful of titles are actually playable on pc, around 10% in my experience (those labeled as "play anywhere", mostly "newish" first party games... 3rd parties want to sell you another copy to play on pc even using the xbox pc client).
And the look and feel of "the platform" is quite different on pc than the console, i think they will try to make the whole library playable and have the same experience (booting up directly to it or running it as a client on any supported device, similar to steam big picture mode)
https://gg.deals/games/xbox-game-pass-games-list/
Currently if I'm filtering right; 553 games are 'free' under Game Pass Ultimate currently, 223 are available on PC. ~42%. That's not great; but not horrible either.
Full Game Pass is 331,461 titles currently, and 240,596 installable on PC; so a bit better ratio.
Probably for gamepass they select games that can be used on pc and console, and the store has xbox and pc versions of many titles, but that doesn't mean that if you bought the xbox version you have rights over the pc version.
They are improving this tough.
They plan game pass to get users to the xbox ecosystem, but i'm not sure if it will be enough.
Or are you talking about multiplayer IAP fests? I'm not sure we should call those "games".
I’m a loyal steam customer because Valve has shown themselves to be the most trustworthy and user-focused of any platform, but even then I know I have decades of games on my account that can vanish in an instant.
I have a setup using HP Pro Mini 400 G9 that boots directly into EmulationStation. It's perfect for playing with my kid, covering everything from NES to more recent consoles, and also Steam and Minecraft (via https://github.com/minecraft-linux/appimage-builder/releases) if needed. The offline aspect of non-steam games is a big plus for easier parental management too.
This was always annoying experience to reboot, hunt for grub, then half year of windows updates until I was able to enjoy my free time.
But thanks to proton, I don't remember anymore when was last time I had to do that, everything just works great on Linux ootb including titles like cyberpunk.
For people wanting dedicated (console like) gaming machine steam os looks really promising.
Maybe you are using wifi like majority of gamers and blame the wrong thing?
This is independent of where the resource limit is.
What does that mean? For most people, the wi-fi is not the limiting factor for internet speed.
As for most people with a less than a decade old dedicated graphics card : I actually do believe that WiFi is a limiting factor for Internet speed.
Packet drops and ping spikes are the problem
But, indeed, the speed of an uncongested hop is irrelevant, in that it could slower by some factor, yet without it making a difference to the packet loss.
Windows gotta update sometime
There's a button called "Pause updates for 7 days"
I run windows update on a sunday then hit the button again when it's done. Works pretty well.
That's the reason.
And as I said, you can run it once a week and control when it happens.
Windows updates are slow as fuck, take forever to download, then forever to install, take your CPU, hog your storage and require multiple boots and MUST be finished after started.
On everyLinux distro I've used, updates were single command/click at most, downloaded in the background, cleaned up from storage automatically, never used much CPU and rarely 'required' reboot.
Yes my Linux distro is updated twice a week and Windows was deleted after being out of ~updates~ use for 6 months, why do you ask?
And sure, the average person won't make sensible decisions for their own good about updates, so forcing them can be a reasonable default, but it should still be possible to override those settings. It's my computer.
As for choosing when to do it, maybe that's possible (although it's not been my experience tbh) but that all falls apart when, for example, an aged relative switches on their computer once a month to do one specific simple task and ends up having to wait two hours while their bargain basement machine grinds to a halt force-updating itself because it's past the update grace period.
For some people, sure. But to force it upon people without any way of skipping it? Kind of disrespectful to control people's computer usage like that when we're talking about "personal computers".
They will just continue to skip forever and never update then blame Microsoft when their machine gets pwned because it wasn't updated.
You're free of course to install another OS on your "personal computer".
Even worse when a modal dialog used to pop up over your game... the way Windows used to constantly interrupt whatever you were trying to focus on drove me nuts (this never happened on macOS or Linux) but I think they also finally fixed that
That sums up my experience with the PlayStation and switch. Don't touch them for awhile and 'we are installing updates for the next 2 hours'. I use my pc often enough that it is not an issue. But I have one computer I do not use very often and then it is update city.
The video games industry wants to own your computer. They don't want you to copy their games or cheat. Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. Therefore they think nothing of shipping literal rootkits directly to you. This is software whose only distinction from malware is a terms of service buried somewhere that you probably clicked through without reading and technically accepted.
There's also the fact they are proprietary software. There's no telling what they are doing. Sometimes there's literal malware in these things. I'm not kidding about this.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas...
https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter...
https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124
https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html
https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit
I seriously doubt there's any effective way to sandbox them either, they probably need extensive permissions to even work. I wouldn't want to run these things in my personal computer.
For these reasons, you might want to set up a completely separate virtualized Linux system just for this purpose. IOMMU and VFIO technologies allow you to map a discrete graphics card to the virtual machine which enables hardware accelerated graphics at near native performance.
You might want to consider a dedicated gaming machine. To me it feels like a waste since the hardware is great and should also be used for other things.
Why do you think that is? I’m sure they wouldn’t bother with it if most gamers were fine playing against cheaters.
Cheating? I don't care enough about most games to even consider it. I absolutely do consider it to be my prerogative, however. If they don't like it, they better run their "anticheat" nonsense on their computers, where it belongs. If they try to usurp control of my computer, I will do everything in my power to stop it.
This is gonna turn into yet another example of illegitimate customers enjoying a superior product while paying customers get treated like dishonest criminals. Legitimate customers get DRM and anticheat rootkits, pirates and cheaters get none of that. Guess which side I want to be on?
The sad state of existence is that if you want to run a multiplayer game, you need to do shitty/controlling things or the game will turn unplayable as soon as it starts to become popular.
Games like BG3 however - Who cares if someone is cheating? Just stick to those (great) games if you want more control
I'd sooner see multiplayer games disappear than accept this sad state of affairs where our computers come pwned straight off the factory in order to please the so called stakeholders by denying us the freedom to do things that hurt their interests. That's a far more damaging outcome than silly video games becoming unplayable. Cheaters are a small price to pay for freedom and I pay it gladly.
Besides, some games should be hurt. Plenty of "free" games out there employing literal gambling and drug dealer tactics to get people addicted to their product. Cheaters are doing us all a huge favor by speeding up their demise.
I came here to warn others about these concerns and to cite virtualization with VFIO as a viable solution. I think people should understand what sort of nonsense they're bringing into their computers when they install these games. That's what my original post was about.
I didn't mean to start another one of these discussions. We shouldn't have to justify ourselves. They're the ones barging in and usurping control of our computers because of "cheating" or whatever. You install some video game and next thing you know you've got some malware exfiltrating private information, taking screenshots, scanning your RAM and disks, making an issue of your developer tools. That's unacceptable behavior, the reason for it is irrelevant.
Well.. no. They are for better or for worse explicitly invited.
It's just like DRM. Like copying, cheating simply cannot be prevented if we are in control of the machine. This technological arms race can only end in one of two ways. Either the corporations manage to own our computers or they lose. Neither result is particularly great but I know which one I'm willing to accept.
TBF; it's net the same thing. People just need it to be hard enough that it (generally) doesn't ruin your game.
You're making the same logical argument people have made against wearing (and then mandating) seat belts, and in more recent times vaccines. It's a sad slope that's led to me being told over Christmas dinner that murder being illegal is stupid because people still kill. He was serious. Boggles the mind.
Even those important life saving items have contraindications. They are well studied. We know their benefits. We know their risks. We know how to balance the two. Professionals do it every day. Most people voluntarily choose to use these items after the facts are explained. Forgoing their use doesn't stop your life either.
We know virtually nothing about anticheat systems. Their benefits, if any, are likely exaggerated to increase profits. Their costs and risks are "explained" in some annoying legalese document that pretty much nobody reads. You're forced to accept this nonsense. You can't play the game otherwise, might as well click next.
Their function is to take over your computer in order to control and limit what you can do with it. That's an affront to the user. Accepting this costs users part of their dignity. We can only hope that they will have lots of fun with their game afterwards. Otherwise their sacrifice will have been for nothing.
I honestly love this. I want to hang out at a bar and get sloshed with you; maybe after hours at a conference. I legitimately think we'd be best buds.
As an aside though - 95% of PC users generally just don't care as long as ItWorks and its fun. It's easy to get mired in the minutia of the systems (technical and societal) instead of thinking about how it interacts with the average person.
Due to some reason a lot of people want to use public servers and matchmaking. Likely they wouldn’t do that if anticheat root kits didn’t exist.
I don’t particularly care about games like this either nor do I play them but that’s entirely besides the point.
> for freedom and I pay it gladly.
That’s great. Again a lot of people feel otherwise. Why do you feel that you have a moral right to impose your personal preferences on them?
Because we can't allow corporations to install rootkits and malware into people's machines?
I find it weird that I even have to justify this. These ridiculous stunts were actual scandals not too long ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I wonder what changed in the last couple of decades. Why did this become acceptable? Why did people start defending corporations that do stuff like this? On Hacker News of all places?
Why are you talking about "personal preferences"? These corporations are shipping literal rootkits to people.
Same applies to products such as CrowdStrike and similar stuff which in my opinion might be even worse (Anticheat rootkits at least provide some real value.. I’m not really an expert in corporate IT so I might be wrong).
In both cases their users perceive that this software provides some direct or indirect value to them.
Is it so hard to believe that some people might value the opportunity to play online games with less cheaters than retaining the control of their PCs?
Would it be better if same software was running on strictly controlled devices like game consoles? If so what if some people treat their PCs effectively as mainly specialized gaming devices?
> start defending corporations
Let’s not get silly.. what makes you think I’m doing that? I’m merely pointing out that the world is not necessarily black and white and there is some space for nuance.
Hard to believe? Absolutely.
This issue is just like privacy. It's one of those important issues where people not only refuse to care but actually look down on you as a loony if you do. They will suddenly start caring a lot when the corporations are fully entrenched and start exploiting them for profit.
The problem is by that point there will be nothing they can do about it. They gave up control of the machines to play games. They will not be able to do a thing when the machines start extracting profit out of them. They are no longer in control.
> Would it be better if same software was running on strictly controlled devices like game consoles?
For some interpretations of "better". Consoles are a huge waste. They are all perfectly good computers which could do so much more. At least dedicated gaming machines at least keep the damage contained. I said this in my original comment.
> If so what if some people treat their PCs effectively as mainly specialized gaming devices?
I have no trouble believing Windows users think that way. If you use Windows, it's because you do not care.
I seriously doubt someone who cared enough about computers to install and learn Linux will enjoy watching his omnipotent general purpose system get turned into a glorified gaming appliance just because corporations aren't happy about the fact he could theoretically use the system's immense power against them.
> Let’s not get silly.. what makes you think I’m doing that?
The words "moral right" gave me that impression.
What gives these corporations the moral right to tell me what I can or can't do on my computer? The whole idea is comical. If I want to cheat, I will cheat. They can only hope that I choose not to. That's a truth they just need to accept. If they won't we'll make them accept it.
I personally do it mainly because I don’t want to be associated with certain types of loud ideological fundamentalists and zealots. I might occasionally use Linux or even BSD in private without telling anyone but certainly not where anyone can see, don’t want other people to think I’m a loon..
> What gives these corporations the moral right to tell me what I can or can't do on my computer?
Nobody and they obviously don’t have that right. Or are game dev company executives literally forcing you to install and play their game?
They have done it before.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas...
Shipped a browser stealer to users and exfiltrated data on an unencrypted channel.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/1cibw9r/valorant...
https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/634974-...
Screenshots your computer screen and exfiltrates the picture to their servers.
Trusting these game companies is a huge mistake.
And I shouldn’t have the right to do that because?
I don’t really play any competitive online games but I’d certainly rather install anti-cheat software than garbage like Crowdstrike if I was forced to choose. Anyway different people have different preferences, it’s their business.
TBF - this is You dictating what tradeoffs others are able/willing to make in their off time. I grew up playing competitive FPS; and still have a 'gaming rig' for downtime. I would looove a better state-of-the-world; and am picky about what I will play (I won't run Rivals as an example as it requires Administrator; simply won't trust the developer that much)
> These corporations are shipping literal rootkits to people
i agree most/all kernel level anti-cheats are garbage - but I also dislike strict "We can't allow..." overarching statements also. A world I dread is one where Consoles are our only legitimate home gaming option.
Then you should agree with me.
A computer you don't fully own and control is nothing but a glorified game console appliance.
Don't you see? That's what they are trying to turn our computers into with their rootkit nonsense. They want to own our computers. Turn them into consoles, appliances fully controlled by them.
It's 2025. The only difference between a console and a PC is the console refuses to run software not signed by the manufacturer. It only runs software they approve of. They literally have the keys to the machine, they're just letting us get some limited use out of it, on their terms of course.
That's what they would reduce our PCs to. Glorified appliances that refuse to do what we want. What if you want to cheat at video games? Computer says no. Because the corporation said so.
Averting that world is my objective. It's the reason why I wrote all these comments. The computer must say yes at all times.
As I've spent weeks of my life getting kernel modules to build/sign/release properly in a secure boot environment :D
The issue is the kind of game that doesn't allow you to host public servers, and which instead has an automatching system with an undisclosed algorithm.
And since this also tends to be the kind of game that has DRM, doesn't even allow offline/private servers (is online only), and worse, engages into microtransactions and gambling, the sooner these games are made illegal, the better off the society will be.
If you don't have the power to cheat at video games, it's because you do not actually control the machine. There's something above you preventing you from doing what you want. It's not your computer, it belongs to the game company. The computer does their bidding, not yours.
So people are not "practicing their digital freedom", they are practicing only what the game company allows them to do. They don't "own a computer" either, the corporations own their computers, they're just letting people use them. In the end it's up to them to decide if games are worth their sacrifices. Personally I think that's an indignity. It means your PC is no different than a game console.
I for one want to play games but don't want to make those sacrifices. I look for ways to make the game run on my terms instead of accepting the corporation's take it or leave it offer. It's pretty sad that people will just give up all their power just to play games but it can't be helped. I can only post these comments and try to convince others.
> argue for something like server side anti-cheat
I have done that. Here's the direct quote from an earlier comment from me:
> they better run their "anticheat" nonsense on their computers
There is no inherent problem with server side anti-cheating measures. Their servers are their computers. I'm not gonna tell them what software they can or can't run on their machines. I just wish they'd extend me the exact same respect.
Whether server side anti-cheating measures are effective is a completely separate issue. It's also completely irrelevant. The failure of server side anti-cheating software does not excuse their invasion of our computers to compensate.
> rally against games that include crapware
I do object to that as well.
> Seek nuance or find a middle ground instead of grandstanding on absolutism like this, it hurts your (fundamentally very good!) point.
I have no problem with nuance. I just refuse to compromise on many fundamental ideas. The fundamental idea I defend here is: I own this machine, therefore I can and should be able to do anything.
The idea that someone should be prevented, by his own computer, from cheating at video games, is offensive. Who are they to tell you what you can't do with your computer? It's your machine. If you want to freeze your character's health in memory so that you cannot be damaged, it's your god given right to do it.
Before I can consider nuances, I need to defend the above idea first. Because if I compromise on that, it opens the door to their invasive anticheat rootkits.
Because I'm not at all saying "all multiplayer games should die", I am saying they should die if that's the price of our freedom. Cheating is a literal non-issue compared to corporations policing what we do or don't do with our computers. If stopping cheating requires that, then just let people cheat. If they can't find a way to prevent cheating other than installing a literal rootkit in my Linux kernel, maybe it just wasn't meant to be.
Just like it’s the “god given right” of the organization running the server you want to connect to to boot you from it for whatever reason they want to. Or do you disagree with that?
And you are free to do whatever even in most (AFAIK) games that use have anticheat software and allow you to turn it off. You just have to stick to single player mode which I assume makes “cheating” less fun.
Anyway what right do you have to deny anyone’s god given right to deny anyone the right to install software (even one that runs in the background and verifies/checks the memory of other processes) they chose to? After all it’s their computer..
They don’t prevent you from editing your computer memory or even from cheating as such. Rather they merely inform the multiplayer server i.e. other players about that fact which allows them to make the choice to not play with you.
You’re free to edit your memory as much as you want or even “cheat” as long as you don’t impose your choices on unsuspecting victims..
I agree, but there are other issues involved.
For one thing, this is an issue with the hardware and operating system design more than about anti-cheat software. The installation of anti-cheat software should be ineffective due to a better design of the computer, not due to the anti-cheat software itself.
Furthermore, there can be such thing as going to a room where they have a tournament with multi-players game, where they are not your computers, so they can set it up according to the tournament. (There is still then accusation of the tournament organizer giving someone unfair advantages or of someone tampering with the computer, but those are issues which must be managed regardless of such a thing anyways.)
Furthermore, for some kind of games they can install server-side anti-cheat software which does not own your computer (unless you are running the server yourself (e.g. in case of LAN play), but then you can choose if you want to put that anti-cheat software (or to put your own software)).
And, even more furthermore, sometimes people will manage to defeat and work-around anti-cheat systems and then cheat at the game anyways, so it still doesn't guarantee for sure, anti-cheating.
And, not having the anti-cheat software does not necessarily mean that you will cheat at this game, anyways.
Also, whoever runs the server might have the terms of service, that if you need an account on their server, they can still ban you from cheating or whatever, since it is their server and they can do what they want with it. However, doing what they want with it, should not include spying on your computer.
Due to all of these things, I think that you are right, that you should be able to change your own computer even if they have someone else's software.
You tell the server you're on the other side of the map and it just trusts you. Teleport hack. The other guy is on the other side of the map and behind a wall but the server is still sending you his position. Why send the client information it shouldn't have?
They want to pwn your computer so that you can't tamper with the game. They should fix the game so that tampering with it doesn't matter.
But there are some cases where you just have to rely on client side. Like when other player position is partially obscured, server have to send it's position but it might be almost not visible by naked eye.
Teleport hacks are unfortunately also not that simple, I think most of games do not trust client input but give some wiggle room for network latency, that can be exploited (it should be limitted to reasonable amounts to allow max like 200ms or so of latency)
Most "pro" cheaters (there is market for this stuff) use protocol level tools that are invisible to anti cheat software as those work as proxy on physically separate computer.
Wouldn’t be a great experience though. Especially not for a competitive game.
> They should fix the game so that tampering with it doesn't matter.
By making it effectively unplayable?
Well yes, but millions of people feel otherwise.
Why do you think that game developers have some nefarious reasons for this and want to usurp your computer? To what ends?
I mean sure the current approach is flawed in many ways however without it many multiplayer games couldn’t really exist in their current form i.e. public servers, matchmaking etc. would become near impossible since the experience for most users would become extremely unenjoyable.
> pirates and cheaters get none of that
True in regards to single player games but I’m not sure how do you think this would work for multiplayer games? How can cheaters bypass the anticheat root kits and still play onlie?
Because that is what they do. They think we are all potential cheaters who need to be preemptively stopped and controlled lest we crack their games open. They feel absolutely justified in doing whatever it takes to "ensure" their precious games aren't "tampered with". There are no limits they wouldn't cross.
It's just what I've come to expect from the copyright industry as a whole. Our computers already come pwned straight off the factory just to appease "content creators". We really don't need game companies making the situation even worse.
> To what ends?
It doesn't matter. The result is we have to install their rootkits to play games we paid for. There are no excuses for that.
> many multiplayer games couldn’t really exist in their current form
Not a big deal. Maintaining control over our machines is more important. If that's the price I'll pay it gladly.
> How can cheaters bypass the anticheat root kits and still play onlie?
You'd have to ask them. I'm far from an expert on the subject. I just know that whatever it is that they do no doubt leads to their customers having to put up with a lot less game company malware than they would have needed to otherwise.
These rootkits are now considered the cost of admission to playing games, because gamers won't fight the practice, and they hate cheaters so much they are willing to accept anything.
Also consider: HN is full of software developers. If it's a choice between "What Software Developers Want To Do To Your Computer" and "What Users Want To Stop Them From Doing," HN commenters tend to be strongly on the side of the developers.
Thanks for replying. It's good to know that I'm not alone. That's the real reason why I comment these things.
I completely agree with you.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because if you apply this situation to pretty much any other consumer product it gets ridiculous fast. What if a car doesn't allow you to turn off an approved road? What if it limited your speed to posted limits? What if you could only use fuel from one brand of station? If parts used DRM so the dealership had to do your brakes and any repairs?
All of these things would cause a massive backlash.
But computers are so hard people can't be trusted with them. It's just nuts.
However, if you want to run a tournament then you can go in the tournament room where they should have the computer without cheating software, so that can be the "anticheat", instead of installing unwanted software in your own computer.
It's easy. Don't play competitive multiplayer crap. Especially if it's free to play. You get to not waste your time on predatory grindfests, besides not having to install a rootkit.
Also stay away from the companies requiring their own account system, like EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar.
There are plenty of "competitive multiplayer crap" games which I think actually deserve to be botted to oblivion. If you load a game and you see a timer anywhere, it probably deserves it.
The timer exists to delay you rewards and resetting it is probably wired to the credit card button. They do this to create reward schedules in order to get players addicted. They want them logging into the game every single day. Automating those silly "daily tasks" is an absolutely moral thing to do and I will never fault anyone who does it. They are cures for video game addiction and should be prescribed by doctors.
I would. You should just dump the game then.
As for free to play games, they're all too expensive. Since you pay for them with your time.
Problem is that most good multiplayer online games have gone F2P.
I bought Team Fortress 2. Then it went F2P and got overrun with bots. Overwatch also went F2P after I bought it.
I like online team shooters, but like many genres it's dominated by the F2P business-model.
(Alas my motherboard appears to lack a ton of controls in Linux. I have been having to go into bios to do cpu undervolting and fan speed controls.)
More recently, I turned on the newer power tuning utility 'tuned' and it's been amazing. I'd fought down from 140 to 110w on my desktop but it still felt absurdly higher than it should be. Turned on tuned and now it idles at 85w. I haven't tried to sit and tweak it and see what it can do, but my impression is it's not as good at letting users tweak stuff endlessly. But it does do a ton of tweaking itself, and it's smart about adapting - switching to gaming profiles when games start.
I could be wrong but it seems like there aren't standards for motherboard management around platform details like fan speed control. And there's many many ways motherboards do things. Where-as gpu's apparently are just much more normative, are tweaked via pretty standard interfaces. Still, a lot is possible. I definitely recommend tuned, as a very all encompassing system tuner.
On the other hand, GeForce Now is what let me get rid of Windows and my gaming desktop altogether. For the supported games, it's a truly superb experience, launching into max graphics with a single click. I don't have to install or upgrade anything (patches or drivers) or worry about hardware obsolescence. It's insanely powerful (RTX 4080 equivalent), has no local heat or noise, and barely sips battery life (compute is all in the cloud).
Completely changed the way I game. And this is as someone who grew up on BBS door games and configuring sound blaster and vmem in config.sys. GFN is so so nice and much better than dealing the nightmare that is modern Windows. And a lot easier than managing Proton and WINE too. Nothing beats it for sheer ease of use when I just want to game for a few hours without headaches.
> And a lot easier than managing Proton and WINE too
I can understand wanting to avoid having to manage Wine, prefixes and all that jazz. But Steam + Proton is literally zero management. You install Steam, start it, install the game and hit "Play", the only Proton thing you notice is that it download and installs it before the actual game runs. Otherwise there is nothing you have to do as a user.
Eh? As in, proximity to the streaming server?
Otherwise, fiber is prolific in Spain (in major cities at least, to the best of my knowledge). I get 500Mbps down here in Valencia (for just €15 too!)
Exactly! I've had symmetric fiber in countless of apartments in Barcelona, with latency to mainstream sites down to something like 2ms at the lowest. But the game companies who do streaming don't seem to cater to Spain (or Barcelona) at all since the latency always been horrible regardless.
Have you tried any of them and seen if the latency is shit or not?
> But Steam + Proton is literally zero management.
Absolutely. I had a Steam Deck for a few weeks* and that experience was amazing. Valve did a really really good job there. Unfortunately that's just not how it is in the Mac world :( We have Whisky and Crossover, which are much much harder to use.
(* The Steam Deck is a great piece of kit. I eventually sold it only because I already had a Logitech GCloud, https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/products/cloud-gaming/cloud-..., which does the same thing except streamed from GFN and with a bigger/better display than the Deck.)
What's funny is I think if Google had said upfront "if we kill this service we'll refund all your games/hardware purchases" they'd have got a lot more traction.
GFN has much more powerful graphics (because they're Nvidia), supports 4k, 10-bit color, HDR, ultrawide, etc. Nvidia Reflex helps with latency. You can use your own Steam or Epic or Microsoft library and play with those players. You don't have to rebuy the games like you did in Stadia.
And Nvidia actually cares about it and is constantly improving it. Google abandoned Stadia pretty much right after launch because they're Google.
I'm sure GeForce Now has improved a lot since then. I should give it another shot. I miss gaming in bed from my iPad.
Some games, especially simple indie titles, run flawlessly. Others won't launch at all. Most mainstream AAA titles launch but with severe lag and/or graphical anomalies. It's a far cry from native, Proton on Linux, or GeForce Now. I wouldn't recommend it except as a last resort.
We experimented with macOS support prior to launching Proton, but Apple had spent the previous decade repeatedly kicking Valve and game developers in the nuts[1], which meant no one on the team had any particular passion for it. Between Apple's hostility & unreliability, and the small market share, we decided it wasn't a good use of time, so dropped the idea before launch.
You may know this, but CodeWeavers integrates most improvements to Proton into upstream Wine and also into their CrossOver product. So if you use CrossOver, you actually are getting many of the same improvements that are going into Proton.
[1] Garbage OpenGL support; killing 32-bit support, which killed a huge chunk of users' Steam libraries; no Vulkan support.
For what it's worth, I did buy and occasionally use Crossover (thank you!), but only when the game isn't supported on GeForce Now.
My M2 Max, even at its best (as in Baldur's Gate 3 running native Apple Silicon code), is still no match for a 4080... not even close. Crossover works well for simple indie games, but AAA games often have more demanding requirements. The extraordinary performance of DLSS (Nvidia's AI upsampling and frame interpolation algorithm) alone makes non-Nvidia GPUs less viable these days. And that's just the performance side.
Then, Crossover's UX is a whole other issue. Crossover's Steam takes forever to launch every time (I'm not really sure why this is; never bothered to really look into it). It's never clear to me which proper combination of D3DMetal/DXVK/Esync/Msync to use (I still don't even know what the "sync modes" mean). Some games only work with a certain version of Apple's GPT (for others: Game Porting Toolkit, not AI) manually installed, or requiring the bleeding-edge preview version of Crossover, etc. The idea of user-managed "bottles" and disks is a lot more complicated than GFN's model of individually vendor-managed sandboxed/containerized games, preconfigured to work right the first time and every time. That's the kind of arcade/console like experience I want these days since it's zero fuss. (But it often does preclude mod and trainer support, as a tradeoff.)
Overall... I'm grateful Crossover exists. It's easier to use than Whisky, and Codeweavers contributes a lot of code back upstream. Again, thank you. There are some games I wouldn't be able to play at all otherwise.
But most of the time these days, as a working man and not a teenager anymore, I have limited time to spend on gaming. GFN lets me just click a button and play without fuss, vs all the tinkering required of virtualized & emulated games. It's the difference between "wait a few seconds and I can play at max graphics" and "if I tinker with this for a couple hours, it might eventually launch and maybe I can squeeze 30 fps out of it on low-medium".
1: https://bit-tech.net/news/gaming/john-carmack-steve-jobs-hat...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-...
Gaming has been mostly good. You can trust the steam verification badge. Some games just won’t work but most do.
Lately I've taken to using an Arch btw install on an SD card for testing GPU compute stuff on it. It's so smooth...
Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now...
Just to be clear, this is not even needed, you can use the desktop mode straight up on the Steam Deck without any added accessories, terminal and everything included. Dope for quick maintenance without having to hook it up to anything. Or, if you happen to have a USB-based WiFi antenna with the right chipset, a portable aircrack-ng device :)
> Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now...
Doesn't Steam Deck have unified memory and 16GB available? I think it's more of a implementation issue than the amount of VRAM it could theoretically use.
On the other hand portability is also great, and so is the additional software customization on top. Having an easy slider for custom TDP is a great feature.
On the other hand, it's much easier to find any laptop at all than the Steam Deck... because the Steam Deck is not yet available in my country, while there are plenty of laptops from many different brands (Dell, Lenovo, Positivo, even Apple) at all price points.
I am currently borrowing a friend’s Steam Deck to try it out. It’s absolutely amazing, particularly around starting and stopping gaming sessions.
The only thing holding be back from buying it is that the processing power is a couple of years outdated at this point. It still works fine for older AAA games (or newer lighter games), but it can’t keep up with new AAA.
Having the option of newer hardware with the Steam OS experience is amazing!
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-introduces-ryzen-z2-series-c...
Edit: although some people say the slide meant that the processor was coming for "devices like the SteamDeck", not literally the SteamDeck
"Some people" being Pierre-Loup Griffais, who works on the Steam Deck at Valve.
https://bsky.app/profile/plagman.bsky.social/post/3lf36y66gg...
I doubt it, the Lenovo Steam-OS option is utilizing Ryzen R2 Go, which has the same RNDA architecture as Valve's handheld and pretty similar (though slightly better) specs.
There's newer architectures but they chose the same as OG Steam deck for... compatibility? Ease of OS support? Something else? I doubt Vavle would help Lenovo with support on a device they'd shortly eclipse with better specs.
Why wouldn’t they? It more or less locks the user into the Steam store where Valve gets a cut of every sale. That’s their primary income stream.
They existed, and they didn't really take off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer). But it was 10 years ago, things are different today
Source? My recollection was that it didn't. Wine had awful direct x translation, I'm not sure if it could do dx11 at all when the steam machine came out. DXVK is a proton project and without it few games could actually run at all.
That's not fair. Vulkan didn't exist when the original Steam Machines launched. Wine's Direct3D implementation also had different goals than the DXVK project, such as supporting macOS, older hardware, and non-gaming DirectX uses.
You can build one yourself pretty easily and just install Bazzite [1], basically SteamOS for generic PCs on it.
You can select "Do you want Steam Gaming Mode?" "Yes" on the download and it will automatically start into gamescope & Steam Big Picture Mode.
I personally wish that Framework works with Valve to release a version of Steam OS for their motherboards, so one can retrofit an old Framework laptop motherboard as a TV console.
Where it is slightly annoying is the anti cheat/the recent Sony shenanigans about their overlay not running in Linux/such issues.
But with such huge PC gaming library...i don't think I'll run out of new games to try on the deck any time soon...
It works amazingly well and I can't imagine going back to Windows for a PC that is built only for video games. I use it on my "Gaming HTPC" (Ryzen 3600, Radeon RX6600, Fractal Design Node 202) and it brings a great console experience to my TV, with access to my PC game library, without being locked into a console ecoystem, and without the enormous cruft and user hostility that Windows has you manage these days.
I'm a pretty casual and patient gamer, and for that use case this Steam machine experience is unmatched - despite being built on desktop Linux, it works out of the box and requires zero manual maintenance. For dedicated gaming boxes this Linux user experience is significantly better and easier to use than Windows - we're truly living in the future.
[1]: https://bazzite.gg
[2]: It's built on top of Fedora and Universal Blue, so under the hood it's different from SteamOS which is built on a custom immutable version of Arch Linux. However, that implementation detail is actually almost totally irrelevant if you want to play games since all software is managed by Steam and Flatpak on both systems.
> Bazzite is a cloud native image built upon
Seems to be targeting cloud somehow? Very different from SteamOS where everything works offline, except the game purchases/downloads of course.
I do think this marketing is unnecessarily confusing. The dayjob of the original master mind behind Bazzite and Universal Blue is working with cloud systems IIUC, so they find it an important thing to highlight.
While the "happy path" in SteamOS is truly amazing, there are dark corners where it falls down. Third party launchers (like EA's garbage) are extremely janky. Hardware support in Linux/SteamOS is questionable for exotic peripherals (I have a TrackIR which never worked right, a MS XBox USB controller dongle that requires third party kernel modules, and a HP Reverb G2 which has only preliminary support through third party software). And some types of multiplayer anti-cheat are completely unavailable.
Some of this is solvable, some probably isn't. But there's a reason I still keep Windows on the gaming PC - sadly.
Linux and running games under steam/wine/proton is great in the broad strokes, but users will have built up their own collection of tools or ways of doing things they will seek out equivalents for and judge the linux experience as a whole on whether they can do that. Many of the windows applications are very mature compared to linux because that's the ecosystem and audience its had for decades, there's nothing touching Foobar2000 for example (and the UI glitches in wine). Now add in all the other things gamers regularly expect to do, what's needed to accomplish them and how well they do it, overlays, screen recording, using modding tools, etc.
It also strikes me with the win10 end of life there's going to be a huge variety of hardware configurations people want to 'just work', in terms of age and which model someone chose in a particular generation. For example support for fan control on my Z270 board doesn't exist, presumably because of the way ASUS made that model.
I can appreciate Valve and their direct partners picking their battles on what to support as it's a huge gauntlet to pick up, but I really doubt the needle is going to move large distances and saying "bye bye windows gaming"
What I'm highlighting if you just want to sit down to play some damn games already in your library, especially on a dedicated "console" like a handheld or HTPC, then the Linux experience is superior to Windows. And I expect that there's a sizable audience for that.
I disagree, PC gaming has always been rife with papercuts, especially relative to console gaming.
The real moat that Windows has is that anonymous-matchmade competitive multiplayer games are decreasingly going to want to run on hardware that supports user freedom. Which for me personally is fine, because I find anonymous-matchmade competitive multiplayer games to be dogwater that I ain't missing, but for a lot of people that's a non-starter.
(Disclaimer: proud owner of a Steam Deck which has also served double duty as my desktop machine while I wait for a replacement power supply for my laptop.)
I’ve also heard about ChimeraOS. How do all the different gaming focused Linux distro compare?
That said, over recent years Nvidia has made some efforts to improve compatibility. Just a few days ago Bazzite announced a Steam Deck beta image for Turing and later Nvidia cards [1]. It's too early to run though if you want the seamless experience you get on Intel and AMD, and progress mostly depends on Nvidia and Valve, but I hope they get there.
[1]: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/new-bazzite-deck-nv...
Microsoft lost interest in Windows. It doesn’t care what windows users want, it just wants to wring every dime out of it with crap ware and artificial restrictions on hardware so you can’t run it in your perfectly capable old machines.
It’s time for better options on the Intel platform.
Windows just works for gaming and all connected devices. SteamOS maybe works well for dedicated handhelds, but I can’t imagine a casual user bothering with Linux and wondering why the newly bought xyz Bluetooth device doesn’t work on it.
If someone just wants to play games, why pay extra for Windows? Especially if all they are going to do is play games on a handheld / console.
There are a few reasons, but I agree with you that if you use only a handheld, SteamOS probably will work fine.
Interestingly enough PS2 had printer support[0], and so did PS3[1]. But it seems it didn't work very well.
Windows is no walk in the park. And Linux is easy to use these days.
So… sure maybe this is still sorta true. But we’re long past the days of needing to be a hacker to use a Linux OS and it’s only getting better, while Windows is only getting worse.
I have to uninstall crap all the time. :’)
I’m not against Linux; for developers and servers, it’s awesome. But for casual users, I don’t see the appeal. There’s no reason to bother as long as it works—and it does. Do you genuinely think, that a user who complains that Windows is bad and doesn’t work, will be able to install Linux and be happy? First thing someone like that will do, is probably try to execute an exe file and the complain under some YouTube video about it.
This very much used to be true. But most gamers (i.e. the group we’re talking about here) are more than technically savvy enough to run Linux. Most gamers have seen a terminal once or twice and know how to google the solution to common fixes.
And yes, I do believe most motivated users (those unhappy with windows) can install Linux. It’s SO easy these days requiring nothing more than a USB and an hour or two of time.
Why would anyone want to bother with a terminal just for gaming, a little bit of browsing, casually installing mods, using Photoshop, etc.? I mean, just watch the video, and this is coming from a guy who at least knows one or two things about computers.
Plus, don’t forget, Linux also has its quirks, just like Windows, only in different areas. Like not so awesome Nvidia drivers :P
https://web.archive.org/web/20200219180230/http://slated.org...
That, Mac and Mobile ownership and I do have to wonder what MS's long-term strategy to avoid pissing away Windows Desktop users is, because I can't see it.
Give private users up because you can't extract money from them, but keep milking Office 365, governments and enterprises that Just Can't move away from Windows due to decades of legacy garbage.
In my opinion, what will most likely happen is the same thing that happened when Windows XP was retired: nothing at all, people just kept running the same Windows XP they had already installed. That is, people will just keep Windows 10, not caring that Microsoft does not care about it anymore. And, for them, it will work even better, since without constant updates, Windows 10 will become more stable (as in: not changing all the time, not having random automated reboots due to updates, etc).
(We might be concerned that, without software updates, the security bogeyman will catch and eat us, but most normal people don't worry about that.)
> and wondering why the newly bought xyz Bluetooth device doesn’t work on it
It's not the early 2000s anymore, things just work now.
>Photoshop or whatever
No one who _needs_ Photoshop is a casual user.
Even if we ignore Windows-specific software entirely, there are still other pain points: DRM support, HDR support, certain drivers, and even the variety of package managers and ways to install things. You know what I mean—these things are nothing special for us, but for someone who’s just casually gaming or doing some creative hobbies, being forced to use the terminal to, for example, update Nvidia drivers or find a workaround to get an unsupported game launcher to work, can be a total dealbreaker
Even something as basic as swapping out PC hardware as a gamer isn’t as seamless on Linux as it is on Windows. That’s a lot of friction for someone who just wants things to “work”. And you know I’m right because if I would be wrong with all these points, we already would have a year of Linux desktops … as it’s being said every year.
You underestimate how most people just value ease of use, familiarity and don’t care about freedom and control over a system. Most don’t want to spend their time tweaking or figuring out why something doesn’t work and that’s totally fine.
Windows has momentum, but it certainly isn't because it is easier or more reliable anymore.
Funnily enough Valve tried to make Steam OS happen before Proton was a thing, for some reason they just expected game developers to port their games to Linux on their own dime. Thankfully they realized that was never going to happen at scale, so Proton was born instead.
Proton is just a fork of Wine. Wine had already been around for decades, and there were other commercially-supported versions of Wine, like Cedega, long before Proton was around.
On top of that, the increasing dominance of off-the-shelf game engines was already making it trivial to "port" games to Linux -- in Unity, for example, it's often just a few extra mouse clicks to produce a Linux build in parallel to your Windows build. So lots of game developers did start releasing native Linux versions, and continue to do so.
If the SteamOS version of the portable gaming handhelds start to outsell the Windows variants because of the lower price, Microsoft will probably offer to subsidize the cost of the Windows 11 license in the handhelds to bring their cost to parity with the SteamOS devices, in exchange for a promise from the manufacturer that the hardware line will not include a SteamOS offering.
> A promised beta version of SteamOS will be released publicly before May, Valve said, "which should improve the experience on other devices, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases."
so if you want this to build a custom SteamOS machine, presumably May it is!
The current version (Steam OS 3) is rebuilt from scratch and there are a lot of under the hood changes...
"Proton" wasn't even a thing that existed back then :)
> you had to run a separate win32 Steam instance under wine.
If I remember my trying days during that period, all the Steam games you ran that way (unless hacked around) also shared the same Wine prefix, with all the fun stuff that comes with...
Proton also include DXVK and VKD3D which weren't a thing at that time (Wine had ok DX9 support, awful DX10/11 and non-existent DX12).
Its website is still up https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown
Today gaming on Linux is feasible because of Proton, a compatibility layer for Windows binaries. Meanwhile the app distribution and fragmentation problem on Linux is as bad or worse than it was a decade ago. If you asked Linus whether Linux was "saved" by Proton, I bet he would have a very different opinion than everyone here.
Unclear if parent is referring to "Gaming" as a whole or just including boring capitalism numbers like "marketshare" etc.
The rest have kernel level anticheat, unfortunately.
For example, I recently went and played some World of Warcraft for old times sake with some friends on Linux. All I had to do was open Lutris which is available through a Flatpak on the SteamOS discovery tool, and then from Lutris you install the Blizzard Launcher. Opening the Blizzard launcher lets one install and play any of their games.
I was able to play Overwatch on an AMD ubuntu laptop flawlessly.
SteamOS is really about bringing that final experience to the most number of people, and I am really supportive of their efforts!
Maybe I'll try to dual boot Linux and SteamOS, just to have a "safe" and working Steam environment.
Install Steam, install game, play it. That is mostly it.
Very few games require some fiddling with Proton versions, but I reckon that the fiddling would be the same on SteamOS.
By far the biggest difference is that SteamOS is an immutable OS. As far as I understand, any additional package (outside of flatpacks) you install will wiped out on an OS update. So everything is fine if what you need is packaged as a flatpack, otherwise you have to hack around.
From this interface you can launch games, modify all your settings, pull up performance metrics, change refresh rate, change your CPU / GPU TDP, enable FSR or other scaling methods, etc. all using just a controller with no assumptions about you having a keyboard / mouse handy.
You *can* launch into a regular desktop environment optimized for keyboard and mouse whenever you need to do certain things on it, but the main focus and value add of SteamOS is the controller friendly interface, and lightweight, resource optimized environment.
I’m curious to know how much Microsoft charges for these licenses
https://www.tomsguide.com/gaming/handheld-gaming/lenovo-legi...
very comfortable margin for Lenovo there
I dare say this is a game changer.
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1gh3aik/apex_legends...
(Darktable is great, but network effects and integrations keep people in Lightroom; stuff like youtube videos, uploader plugins to gallery sites, presets, education and shared knowledge among photographers.)
The nice bonus is that there are plenty of guides out there to teach how to migrate between Lightroom and darktable/rawtherapee. As someone who doesn't have much experience with Lightroom it was actually more difficult to learn I think because I wasn't sure how best to even edit photos, now that I have learned some basics there it was mostly figuring out how to do that in darktable.
Masks were a little bit of an interesting conundrum, and I think one of the bigger losses switching to darktable might be the lack of AI masks, if someone is dependent on those for any reason.
As a hobbyist darktable fills the need for me I think.
It is true that if you manage to start it at all, it works completely fine.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195250/EA_SPORTS_FC_24/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2669320/EA_SPORTS_FC_25/
There's a little "Steam Deck Compatibility" section that currently says "Unsupported".
If Steam OS can run productivity software like 3ds max, maya, photoshop and etc. I will leave windows and never look back.
There really is absolutely nothing about Windows I use other than clicking games on Steam.
Gamers keep Windows relevant and fresh. Once we’re gone, it really will be a legacy OS that people still use because their printer won’t work with shit else.
With gaming quickly moving to Linux, especially with support of Valve, I wonder if there is an opportunity to disrupt Office. While Libre Office suffice for my needs, I understand that it may lack for more professional usage.
You can even register these as 'non-steam-games' to your Steam install and then you can open them from the regular non-desktop interface. I do this with Discord and Firefox.
Most older games on steam run seamlessly on Linux these days (I have been gaming on Mint for 3 years at this point).
Also, with some minor tinkering, you can get games you acquired on GoG (or even some you may have lying around that you pillaged when sailing the high seas) running smoothly using Lutris.
If emulation is your thing, Retroarch is a marvel, better than playing on original hardware in many ways, and treat Linux as first-class citizen.
The only thing that should stop you is some modern online competitive games that require nasty anti-cheat software. Those games are cancer anyway, and should be avoided.
If gaming is holding you back on Windows, I am mostly confident you can unshackle yourself brother.
It focus on Steam Deck, but if it runs on Steam Deck, it should run at least on any Debian-based distro.
https://github.com/safijari/Reshadeck
For others, the built in support is enough if you'd like to apply some retro shading "filters" to a game or two you play. I really enjoy this VHS effect for games like The Messenger and Slipstream https://github.com/safijari/Reshadeck/blob/main/defaults/sha...
.. then they laugh at you
.. then they fight you
.. then you win.
This comes from an old Red Hat Linux advert, likely way back to the late 1990s. At the end of the advert it says "you are here" which shows an old-style plane (before commercial) about to take off. Point is its just a matter of time it leaves the ground and "about to win"
Love or hate GNU/Linux, but it has been extremely successful and while not a winner in the desktop field - it has on servers!
Many people would never believe Linux getting the popularity it deserves. Of course things are changing - though slowly. Here we have Linux getting the love it needs as a serious gaming system anf Microsoft making some poor decision in the last couple of years especially with Windows.
Still a long way to go, especially breaking into the corporate world. Imagine - we could be seeing business laptops/desktops slowing gaining in Linux rather than Windows. That is not going to be easy. Again, it is not about Linux -- but the SOFTWARE. If the Office-space software and tools get more love in the Linux world, Microsoft start to focus away from their Windows platform and be purely about Software/Azure focus.
"You are here" -- getting closer off the ground!
Consensus attribution appears to be: Union leader Nicholas Klein in 1914:
> And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
Yes, I was aware this quote was from elsewhere... and likely inherits from others as well.
Thank you for sharing.
Just because you are somewhere on that sequence, it doesn't mean you have any chance of moving forward. Also, most things don't follow those steps at all.
But yeah, those are the steps that "disruptive innovation" follow. The real kind, that the famous book was written about. Not the bullshit kind that people throw around to confuse others.
(Also, apparently, Carl Sagan wasn't much of a history nerd, just a physics one. I expected that phrase coming from somebody else. But well, at the time people knew very little about things that were not their specialty.)
Yes, it is a painfully slow journey. People acting as individuals or in organizations have enormous inertia (which is not totally a bad thing- upgrading a Linux desktop is still a dance at the precipice). But the real cause is mostly the extreme centralization and suppression of competition in the broader tech space. This has not helped the adoption of mass-market oriented devices based on Linux. But slowly the wheels of computing history are turning...
Remember how Android is technically Linux ?
The risk here is for SteamOS to go the Android way...
but I have more faith in today's Valve than in Google of a ~decade ago.
At least for now, while Valve is still a private company and Gabe Newell is still leading it and still seems to be in good health and sound mind.
Sadly, this will probably only last for a couple of decades at best, but hopefully this is all the time that Linux (and libre software in general) needs.
The only downside to all of these new portable gaming are the docks, and the living room experience. "HDMI out" usually works (depending on the game), but it's not as seamless as simply hitting power on your PS5/Xbox. I spend way too much time fiddling with graphics settings, and second/mirror/display issues.
SteamOS docking experience generally works pretty well too IME, although we still need a damn controller with dual trackpads that mimics the Deck's layout.
But with Windows I don't need to do any of that - and that's my point. I don't need to install additional apps, configure workarounds or hacks.
I turn on my Legion Go, enter my Windows pin and then launch whatever game I want using the built in UI or Steam or Epic etc. Why would I complicate that?