Yeah I am baffled at this point anyone at all would consider a MSFT portable PC.
Linux has finally actually arrived, Proton works amazingly well compares to just a few years ago and honestly Valve as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals has a shockingly good track record for solid build quality, even if some of their devices are not super popular.
Oh right did anyone mention you can emulate basically anything other than current gen consoles on a Steam Deck, and the operating system is not going to fight you on that?
I think a lot of people would be more interested in the SteamOS over windows on handhelds if they got to try SteamOS first and see how smooth it is. But without full knowledge on it, a lot of them either assume they’ll like windows more because they already know how to use it, or they assume it’s steam UI only with no desktop mode (even if people won’t actually use desktop mode much, they want it as an option).
I am shocked, shocked I tell you that MSFT using PC Gamers still have not realized they are MSFT fanboys basically exactly the same way you had console fanboys a decade ago.
But, but, they spent so much time learning how to do so much weird esoteric bullshit to make Windows actually run games well, and nearly none of that translates over to a Linux system!
You mean my decades of mastery of an increasingly enshittifying Operating System is… worthless?
That a better alternative exists if I would only take the time to do literally any work to learn something actually out of my comfort zone?
…
I think the modern equivalent of Socrates getting old and complaining about the youths being disrespectful and dancing too lewd of dances is basically people who styled themselves as early adopters and technologically savvy in their childhood and early adulthood, and then just entirely gave up on that while basically simultaneously still claiming to be tech savvy but also being inherently afraid and dismissive of any /actually/ useful new tech innovations.
Gaming has been literally the only thing keeping me on windows for at least a decade now, and with SteamOS/Proton reaching their current levels of compatibility I finally feel like I can make the switch with my next PC and not have to worry about it.
I could put linux on my current gaming tower, but I’ll fully admit that it’s just easier not to. It’s a comfortable shoe at this point that I can’t be bothered to change while I already have it. Though if my hand was forced and I had some kind of catastrophic drive failure and lost my OS volume linux is probably what would go there in its place.
There are two other “PCs” in my home that I own, my Steam Deck and a NUC that I use as a home server. Both run linux.
I’m fortunate in that basically nothing I play uses invasive anti-cheat garbage, which is still a huge compatibility problem. It has skeeved me out on windows for a long time, and I’ve avoided games that use many of them. I had many friends disappointed that I wouldn’t join them in Star Wars: The Old Republic back when that first came out precisely because I wouldn’t tolerate how invasive the anti-cheat was.
But there are lots of gamers for whom Proton still isn’t enough. A single game they want to play that won’t run is a dealbreaker. Or the only game they want to play won’t run. An OS that won’t run the game(s) they want to play isn’t fit for purpose for them, and those people are a huge proportion of gamers.
I’m glad that Linux is getting backing from a huge company in this way. However, at its core the steam deck is a Linux based device with a heavily tailored UI running on known hardware with 1st party drivers. Consumers have been using Linux in this way for years without realising it. Sure, this one gives you far more control than you normally get but (in my opinion) the problems with Linux desktop come from support for a wide range of scenarios and peripherals. That hasn’t improved enough for me to switch last time I tried.
I never considered one of the windows-based portables. In fact when I saw that the steamdeck was linux based and was well received, I jumped.
Once I saw how well it worked, I stopped dual-booting my laptop and get to live in linux all the time.
If the article is correct and the market is starting to push this way, that is great news for linux, linux-gaming, and everyone.
Yeah I am baffled at this point anyone at all would consider a MSFT portable PC.
Linux has finally actually arrived, Proton works amazingly well compares to just a few years ago and honestly Valve as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals has a shockingly good track record for solid build quality, even if some of their devices are not super popular.
Oh right did anyone mention you can emulate basically anything other than current gen consoles on a Steam Deck, and the operating system is not going to fight you on that?
I think a lot of people would be more interested in the SteamOS over windows on handhelds if they got to try SteamOS first and see how smooth it is. But without full knowledge on it, a lot of them either assume they’ll like windows more because they already know how to use it, or they assume it’s steam UI only with no desktop mode (even if people won’t actually use desktop mode much, they want it as an option).
I am shocked, shocked I tell you that MSFT using PC Gamers still have not realized they are MSFT fanboys basically exactly the same way you had console fanboys a decade ago.
But, but, they spent so much time learning how to do so much weird esoteric bullshit to make Windows actually run games well, and nearly none of that translates over to a Linux system!
You mean my decades of mastery of an increasingly enshittifying Operating System is… worthless?
That a better alternative exists if I would only take the time to do literally any work to learn something actually out of my comfort zone?
…
I think the modern equivalent of Socrates getting old and complaining about the youths being disrespectful and dancing too lewd of dances is basically people who styled themselves as early adopters and technologically savvy in their childhood and early adulthood, and then just entirely gave up on that while basically simultaneously still claiming to be tech savvy but also being inherently afraid and dismissive of any /actually/ useful new tech innovations.
Gaming has been literally the only thing keeping me on windows for at least a decade now, and with SteamOS/Proton reaching their current levels of compatibility I finally feel like I can make the switch with my next PC and not have to worry about it.
I could put linux on my current gaming tower, but I’ll fully admit that it’s just easier not to. It’s a comfortable shoe at this point that I can’t be bothered to change while I already have it. Though if my hand was forced and I had some kind of catastrophic drive failure and lost my OS volume linux is probably what would go there in its place.
There are two other “PCs” in my home that I own, my Steam Deck and a NUC that I use as a home server. Both run linux.
I’m fortunate in that basically nothing I play uses invasive anti-cheat garbage, which is still a huge compatibility problem. It has skeeved me out on windows for a long time, and I’ve avoided games that use many of them. I had many friends disappointed that I wouldn’t join them in Star Wars: The Old Republic back when that first came out precisely because I wouldn’t tolerate how invasive the anti-cheat was.
But there are lots of gamers for whom Proton still isn’t enough. A single game they want to play that won’t run is a dealbreaker. Or the only game they want to play won’t run. An OS that won’t run the game(s) they want to play isn’t fit for purpose for them, and those people are a huge proportion of gamers.
I’m glad that Linux is getting backing from a huge company in this way. However, at its core the steam deck is a Linux based device with a heavily tailored UI running on known hardware with 1st party drivers. Consumers have been using Linux in this way for years without realising it. Sure, this one gives you far more control than you normally get but (in my opinion) the problems with Linux desktop come from support for a wide range of scenarios and peripherals. That hasn’t improved enough for me to switch last time I tried.