Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS
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Sales volumes for general purpose PCs (used by people other than gaming and developers) have been declining for years.
If you don't need Windows to game... and you don't need Windows to run office anymore (office 365).. then the only real reason to run windows would be to run VisualStudio and other legacy dev tools?
Linux is looking more and more attractive to the power user base.
I'm a power user that games... so Windows it is. For now. The moment I don't need Windows to game, and Wine can run all my legacy apps, then I'm jumping ship to Linux.
Consumers have moved on and all that's left in terms of volume are businesses that need a stock general purpose desktop -- legacy lives on for a while but not forever.
This might be the beginning of the end for Windows -- I'm speaking in terms of product lifecycle.
The loss of gaming definitely marks the beginning of the end of Windows as a consumer OS. Windows future might be relegated to a platform to run Microsoft business apps and dev tools.
Considering Windows is the most anti-consumer mainstream OS out there -- if Windows becomes a "business OS" then I wonder what happens to all the telemetry and other anti-consumer stuff they've added over the years?
Seems like a fork in the road for Windows product planning.
As far as gaming goes, I've wondered for a while how much of a burden it is to maintain directx, along with working with the hardware partners to add/maintain features when they want. With the console side there was some symbiosis, but with their current direction and recent xbox fortunes that also looks like an area they could reduce their ongoing spending to stay relevant.
These situations are what keep everyone a hostage of Microsoft.
And of course it's not connected to Internet.
I got an accountant instead of switching away from macOS. Made more sense.
As a power user that games on Linux, and has been for a decade -- what's stopping you right now? Which apps specifically tie you to Windows?
Last time I ran Wine it wasn't up to the task, graphical glitches etc. My financial package is too critical to me to live with downtime. I thought about trying to import to Quicken etc but all of the mainstream financial apps have become online subscription services -- that seems like a downgrade to me. Open to any suggestions here.
So, for the time being I'm still running windows. Until recently it hasn't been much of a problem for me. But with each upgrade Windows is becoming more and more of a thorn in my side. With Windows 11 being force fed to us it seems I'm going to be forced to migrate to Linux this year. Not looking forward to the transition of my daily workflow. I just want to run my apps, not play with a new OS. The pain is real.
Any suggestions on what Linux distro I'll have the easiest time migrating to?
then your main machine can be moved to Linux
i personally just have an old ssd with windows installed on it just in case, always can boot from it if I need to (just don't like dealing with VMs)
Pick the distribution which seems the best fit and try it again. As Money is no longer being updated, support is only going to get better in Wine and worse on Windows from now on.
Even if you don't move to a different OS, since your data and Money are so important and Money is not particularly demanding in terms of hardware, it might still be a good idea to migrate money into a VM with a fully supported OS to insulate it from changes to the underlying OS. That would simplify backups, and guarantee that you can continue to use it essentially indefinitely even if you choose to use an ARM architecture Mac or Chromebook in the future.
Both VMware and VirtualBox are free for noncommercial use, available for all popular platforms, and allow easy snapshots and full backups. If you backup your VM to a cloud service you could lose literally all of your possessions in a disaster and still be in a position to recover everything onto nearly any computer within minutes.
I can think of at least 3 applications in my current environment where Wine almost certainly wouldn’t work and we either get Windows machines or spin up VMs for those applications that aren’t just legacy, they’re in active development.
Some industries build application specifically assuming the client will run them on Windows. The world hasn’t entirely moved to SaaS and until that happens, having local native environments for certain applications will still be needed, albeit for a friction of total use cases across most businesses, but still some fraction will remain for awhile. I look forward to the day that fraction is 0.
I’m not saying all this to voice my personal issues with Linux (lots have already spoken about it). I’m saying this because I seriously doubt the general public would be able to use Linux as easily as windows unless they only use chrome all day long (which, to be fair, is a lot of people). When it’s easier to root an android phone than understand which version of files Fedora uses to edit the GRUB menu, it’s disappointing if you were rooting for Fedora, pun partially intended.
I would argue that Windows design lineage here has conditioned us to accept what Microsoft gives us. Do you really think Windows has good design? There are three control panels in W11 for god's sake.
I really think what you're getting at here is "familiar design is discoverable" - for a majority of users, the familiarity with Windows design is indeed a major driving factor. It's why Linux is scary, because it's unfamiliar. You can get a lot done on Linux desktop these days via GUI on the major distributions, terminal not required. Much like Windows.
The boot experience is not as polished, and I think the pre-OS environment that Micorsoft has built up around Windows is excellent unlike *nix which is dealing with ramfs and GRUB, etc.
To be clear and give it credit, Linux does allow a decent bit of things through buttons. But hit the slightest snag and it’s CLI time.
I am not saying that you are wrong for liking what you like – it’s completely fine to be comfortable with the tools you are used to.
I just think it’s not an argument for what type of person would be comfortable with Linux.
I work in an environment all of Linux, macOS, and Windows are used (what ever the user prefers) and the people that „just want their Job done“ need an „IT person“ to figure out any configuration and complication for them independent of the OS used.
After we broke up but remained friends, she complained about her new boyfriend subjecting her to XP and how nothing "worked like it should", needing to scour the web and download shit from random websites for software, every installer needing you to click next a dozen times, borderline malicious shovelware and how hard it was to get Windows to do things sensibly without scouring the web for hacks and having to edit one giant config file with a really overcomplicated editor.
It's hard to tell the difference between bad UI and unfamiliar UI.
For example, my windows explorer keeps opening at some where location and shape, no amount of tinkering under the hood has successfully made it open full screen all the time. Ubuntu on the other hand just keeps it at what ever i set it at, because of course it does.
Little things like that are the only reason i switched the linux as a daily driver.
I keep the windows partition active because there is no linux alternative for photoshop and lightroom.
Linux simply isn't ready. Not now, not ever. The year of the "Linux desktop" is always 10 years from now. This is the way it has been the past decades and this is the way it will be because the process (bazaar) can't produce anything better.
I'm a long time Linux user. Been using Linux since Red Hat 7.2, Red Hat, Slackware, Ubuntu and now ArchLinux. Have tried KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Fluxbox and various window managers and environments and the thing is: Linux is always broken somewhere.
Graphics glitches, audio glitches, kernel hangs, suspend/resume being broken etc. Yeah and you can claim "it's not the developers fault when they have no specs". Maybe, but that's just the blame game and doesn't change the fact that it's barely beyond alpha quality after +30 years in development.
Every upgrade that fixes something breaks something else.
This produces a feedback loop where problems like these keep the (desktop) Linux in the marginal users group which means it isn't really a viable target product for developers (talking about drivers etc) which means that it's in the marginal group.
You really need at minimum a stable driver ecosystem with stable driver ABIs but Linus refuses to have that. I understand his reasoning and the benefits but one must ask, has it succeeded in producing a viable operating system that is robust and that works and can support various devices including proper graphics? Is this really the best strategy?
Building a product is HARD and BORING work that has a long tail. When you're "90% done you still need to take care of the other 90%".
Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
Just have a look at the Wayland debacle and all the various implementations. Everything is "alpha this" "alpha that".
</rant>
> Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
Valve does this work for Steam Deck, and the ripple effect of their product has improved all distros’ ability to run Windows programs. If they continue to gain market share I could see more of their hard work in areas like audio, Bluetooth, or power management trickling down to general desktop Linux too.
They probably won’t contribute much in the way of desktop productivity software, though much of KDE or Gnome’s core apps have been of acceptable quality for years.
A Linux based Steam console OS is a very different beast, and it's less about "the year of the Linux desktop", and more about "the year/decade of the Steam based console". And my assumption is that the underlying OS is probably meaningless despite the amount of effort Valve devs have put into Steam OS, Proton, and all the other intermediary pieces. If the Linux desktop gets better in the process it's probably a happy coincidence, but I doubt it very much that is an actual KPI for anyone at Valve.
No, it clearly doesn't need a stable driver ABI. Yes, it works very well. Even nvidia works these days.
> Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
You... understand that Linux hasn't been a "hobbyist weekend project" for like 30 years, right? It's mostly developed by big companies and has been for a long time.
As for gaming, my desktop runs Cosmic OS and I have had no issues thanks to Steam/Proton. The only issues people have for the most part are related to online multiplayer games that require users to install rootkits in order to play.
And it's so slow. Excel is the only sluggish app of my Macbook.
While it's true that Windows may face challenges in some areas, claiming it has become irrelevant outside of PC gaming feels like an exaggeration. Here are some recent statistics from Wikipedia [1] to put things into perspective:
Desktop/Laptop operating system browsing statistics
Windows 72.17%
macOS 15.42%
Unknown 6.1%
Linux (excluding ChromeOS) 4.03%
ChromeOS 2.27%
FreeBSD 0.01%
Other 0.01%
Desktop OS market share according to StatCounter as of February 2024. ChromeOS is also based on the Linux kernel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
This is completely absurd. If you look at Steam’s own hardware survey Windows still has 96% user share.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Legion isn't a single device. How many models under the Legion branding are there? Even if they sold a million and change, break that up amongst multiple formfactors and I'm sure the Steam Deck outsells any individual one of those devices.
The second contender would be something like an Asus Rog. In my circle everyone loves the Rog more than the deck. Could not tell you how well sales numbers compare between the two but there are definitely other options in the market and have quite a strong community around them.
youre mixing up a computer (brand) with the OS that runs it
How many of the 96% windows PC's are 'alienware'?
how many are 'Acer' of some sort, and so on?
thats what the article is trying to say.
its not saying windows isnt the most widely used OS for gaming devices.
> That could threaten Microsoft's hold on PC gaming
Sure. But so what. PC gaming is a very small market that Microsoft don't actually care much about. Well, they have a Windows store that sells games, a Windows xbox app and PC game pass, and they put a bit of effort here and there, but not really. Microsoft doesn't really care about your Windows license key either. They could have made pirating much harder, but the fact that you can find Windows activator on their own GitHub says that Microsoft thinks it's a waste of time to do anything about it.
(In fact, Windows license is free on handheld gaming devices. So Microsoft doesn't earn any money anyway. https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-9-remains-free-oems-ann...)
Most of Windows installations come from OEM and enterprises. Everything else is a marginal error. They also can't sell (much) more licenses just as they want, because pretty much it's tied to PC sales that's more about whether people are buying devices.
Which is why they are stuffing ads everywhere in Windows. It sucks for users, but is a good (short sighted) business strategy -- you can only earn so much money from license, but you can earn infinite money from ads.
Seems hard for people to understand this.
I think you're very much wrong. The game pass market is said to have ~30 million users. Having them be able to play on PC is probably quite important as not everyone can afford an extra Xbox if they already have a computer.
> not everyone can afford an extra Xbox if they already have a computer
Gaming PCs are much, much more expensive than consoles at same performance. Most people have consoles and no gaming PC. In markets where that's not the case (e.g. China), game pass and Xbox in general happen to be also less relevant -- if they get a console, they'll get a PS5.
You've literally provided the evidence that Microsoft cares about PC gaming in your original post.
Steam OS, at least in the form that exists on my Deck, is not suitable for general purpose. True, it has a desktop environment, but it's "jailed" - of course with an option to jail break it, but anything you do outside of the user space is subject to being wiped the next time you get an OTA update.
Then again, OTA updates are necessarily only a thing on the Deck and I suppose this wouldn't be a problem on the Steam OS distribution available for installing on other hardware.
You mean outside of /home? This is actually excellent. Rock solid base OS that can be A/B booted, deliver extra apps via Flatpak/AppImage - this is close to what macOS achieved, minus all the crap Apple has been pulling recently. I'm tempted.
More precisely it would be /home and /var. Persistant changes can in theory also be done with systemd-sysext, but it isn't exactly the most user friendly thing currenty.
https://blogs.igalia.com/berto/2022/09/13/adding-software-to...
The compatibility stack Steam has set up to run games also allows stuff like Photoshop to run, so that's also becoming less and less of a reason to remain on Windows.
1. Corporate users on Windows, because the computer salesman bribed the person responsible for purchases at corporate to buy PCs with Windows. These users don't want to even touch a computer when they're not at work. Rather they'll use their phones or maybe an iPad for personal computing.
2. Gamers on Windows, because they didn't want to buy a gaming console (such as the Steam Deck).
3. Mac users. You see them everywhere in coffee shops. They're usually self employed or working remotely.
The other category of users are so small as to be marginal.
You write that you can only think of games, some productivity software and legacy enterprise software as the reason for why your OS would matter. That sounds like you're a Linux user? Linux users have been starved of having quality software for so long, that they've grown accustomed to using web services, even though these are second rate. Anybody else I've met wants to use native apps.
In my perspective, it doesn't make sense that somebody would use a web application for things such as e-mail or calendars or RSS. Why torture yourself with a bad experience, when you can use state of the art native apps for almost anything on MacOS?
Or a windows user. Like myself as well.
If SteamOS devices become popular enough, Linux for gaming becomes popular enough, therefore more games will be made for Linux and more people will finally find a way to abandon Windows forever.
There is a reason azure is their cash cow nowadays.
I tried to do linux on the box instead of windows, but I ran into: - No fractional scaling support except for KDE. - I can't for the life of me, stop X from using the discrete Nvidia card (I use AMD integrated for display). It wants to sit on the card even when there are no processes running on it through X. - Wayland fractional scaling is unsupported in chrome and electron still. - No HDR. - Font rendering is painful to look at with fractional scaling.
Wasted a LOT of time trying to get this working before giving up and just using WSL2. Everything works in Windows, which is not unexpected. It's amazing already what a community of volunteers is giving me for free!
I generally keep my Steam Deck at home and play from the couch. It’s awesome to be able to pick it up, play a game for 15 minutes, hit the power button to suspend. Come back later and pickup where I left off. The Switch does this as well but the Steam Deck supports games more my genre and style so it gets more use.
I think it's hard to genuinely appreciate how big the thing is until you hold it. Today I realized it's exactly the same size as my keyboard. And almost as wide as a 12-inch macbook.
Say what? I'm playing 1080p fine. Sounds like you could be bit by drm ("that's not a bug, it's a feature"). If so the issue lies with your streaming service - some withhold bitrates unless they detect a "trusted" browser and OS (ie you'd have to fake Edge on Windows User-Agent at least).
1. Not all gamers use the features that may be annoying to use on Linux. Anecdotally, only a handful of friends use streaming and most of the time it's to play party games.
2. I think you're understating the impact of the growth of game playability now versus 2013. While the Wine developers deserve unbound praise for their impressive work, I would not say Wine in 2013 was truly viable for gaming. There were wikis with compatibility information but it was a mixed bag. Sometimes newer versions would break what was already working and it's unreasonable to expect volunteers to test every game on every version of Wine. Sometimes you had to copy DLLs from a Windows box and do all sorts of kludges to get things working.
3. Steam puts compatibilty information right next to the game before you buy. It sounds like you can request a refund if it won't run. To me, this gives a lot more confidence in Valve's vision as they're putting their money where their mouth is.
4. Most importantly, the Steam Deck now exists as something you can hold in your hands to see the viability of certain games on SteamOS. Many gamers have heard of the Steam Deck or even know someone who owns one. In 2013 there could be all sorts of hardware compatibility reasons why SteamOS wouldn't work or wouldn't be viable. It was too easy to dismiss before you'd even start touching a game. Now? The Steam Deck standardized the hardware side of the equation so the feasibility conversation starts with game compatibility.
Gaming isn't really a thing, with corporate use.
I use a Mac. Macs are some of the worst gaming platforms on Earth. If I'm lucky enough to get an AAA game, it's seven years behind its PC version, and a huge bug farm.
SteamOS might actually get me to consider a console, but gaming hasn't ever really been a priority for me (obv.).
Microsoft has a very long time to respond, tho, and that assumes Valve even prioritizes a general use OS. This problem is not urgent, if it is real at all.
Looking at the data, in 1995 Microsoft charge consumers $210 for a retail copy of Windows 95. That's $434 in today's money adjusted for inflation. Windows XP Home retailed for $200 at launch, which is $356 in today's money. Meanwhile Windows 11 Home today retails for significantly cheaper at $140 for a product that's hugely more complex than Win 95 or Win XP were, while requiring way more staff and dev effort to build and support.
The finances just don't work out for me to see how the sale of a Windows 11 copy alone for $140 could make a profit at price given the 10 year lifecycle dev and support of a major Windows version.
I would guess a copy of Windows today would have to be sold for probably $500+ in order to be remotely profitable for Microsoft without ads or promotions, which no consumer would ever pay so I assume Microsoft is subsidizing it with ads/data collection or even taking a loss just to keep the retail price low to avoid loosing market share to Linux.
A difference so small that Microsoft initially intended to market Windows 11 as a new version of Windows 10. Other than those two massive, almost insurmountably significant errors, your reasoning was sound.
You're omitting the fact that earlier versions of Windows were more or less a one and done deal and not required massive continued development and updates modern Windows requires. Plus the much more numerous workforce Microsoft has on the payroll now versus back in those days on the Windows teams.
Your argument is factless and only based on the subjective opinion of "Windows 11 doesn't seem to different to me compared to Windows 10, so it can't cost too much to develop" which is silly and childish and shows your lack of understanding here.
That my friend is what we call a fact.
Just because you don't like being wrong doesn't mean you arent, and resorting to calling me childish for arguing with me reflects more on you than it does on me.
Will have to see if that actually happens though, even as a power user myself there are still a bunch of pain points with SteamOS/steam deck that are harder to deal with than similar issues in Windows.
The Edge browser for instance, which pushes Bing.
Also, office applications like Word, OneNote, and OneDrive.
They’ve got an app store as well, which is not much used, though probably does bring them some money.
I think they show ads by default in the start menu. Pretty sure it even comes with certain third party applications, like Netflix, which they are no doubt paid for.
However, I expect that this process will still take a while. Proton seems to be working well esp. for single-player games (haven't tried it yet though), but it seems like
- DLSS-like features still have some way to go,
- and a lot of multiplayer games require kernel-level anti-cheat which is often developed for windows only.
Those two are I believe the only remaining blockers for me.
But that's a chicken-and-egg problem, same as native (non-proton) support for games on Linux. Once SteamOS is big enough, I expect those to quickly follow.
So, I'll be waiting for a while until that kind of support happens. It's not a big issue but I'm really sick of windows.
Even though my laptop is much more powerful I find myself constantly using the steam deck because the thought of booting up windows, closing up all the apps that open, trying to get it to connect to the tv... It's a lot.
For work and general use I have a MacBook, happy with it for that purpose.
Linux though? My former university uses it as their desktop OS on all machines.
I really do think Linux is the threat, not apple.
Like IBM.
That might be true, but businesses and governments are not.
Visual Studio is also full of AI/Copilot junk now, and I've basically just had enough of their "not now" / "ask me again later please, I am a sucker" options when I really want "be ashamed for asking and never ask me again", all the user-hostile shit they pull... enough is enough.
I think Microsoft sees Azure as its future, not Windows, and would be generally happy for people to use a thin cloud client rather than an expensive-to-support general-purpose OS. But we are where we are, thankfully. How long it will stay that way, idk.
As for VS - yes its annoying but you can turn all that stuff off.
But yes, I am constantly frustrated with the constant pushing in your face of CoPilot features in all Microsoft products - Office and Teams especially so.
Dammit.
...only one of those was a linux showstopper.
I agree that the 10/11 migration has been an infuriating experience for a lot of users. A Microsoft unforced error, seemingly in the name of insisting on forcing TPM on people.
You can install SteamOS on any machine, but AMD GPU are somewhat required if you're not up to major tinkering. Valve does not officially support NVIDIA gpus atm; they are working on it.
Here's a video from Linus Tech Tips on how to do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdR-bxvQKN8 .
Not providing official support for random hardware seems reasonable. Neither do Microsoft nor Apple.
> Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases.
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam/?emclan...
Given NVidia's reluctance to support DRM (direct rendering manager) and Wayland, plus the general levels of nightmare that their official Linux drivers are, I wouldn't say this is Valve's fault. They've already been a poor choice on Linux 20 years ago. Even Apple has always been uneasy about their relationship (while Radeon was a less powerful choice for "premium" machines).
Also consider the ongoing AI hype. NVidia is right now very busy making their GPUs do exceptionally useful work on Linux - except the money is not in the graphics.
Interestingly, the SteamOS documentation mentions Nvidia driver support:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/wiki/Getting-Starte...
That is for SteamOS 2. The newer SteamOS 3 does not officially support anything other than AMD hardware because the Steam Deck uses AMD hardware and their current focus is on improving support for that.
This is changing very soon - Lenovo announced the Legion Go S at CES 2025, and it will ship with SteamOS.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/52983491...
Or you can get a community distribution with the same set of packages with +/- QoL patches or a different base: ChimeraOS or Bazzite.
Looks like this will get a refresh, though, as per my other comment.
Once Proton made it feaaible to easily play most Windows games on Linux, I could transition to Mint and not look back. Gaming is what kept me shackled to Windows.
I always thought that there were some things that kept people on Windows, and the main ones are Office and Gaming. Nowadays the latter is not an issue anymore.