With the Legion Go S, we can now directly compare performance between official builds of SteamOS and Windows
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Marketing and market availability are the biggest problems. People need to be able to go into any store, buy a handheld/laptop/desktop and have it include Linux without them asking.
100% agree. That is coming soon though. Microsoft has had vendor lock'in for the last 30 years which guaranteed engineering dollars (drivers, software, testing) spent by OEMs to support Windows. SteamOS is breaking the grip of Microsoft though. If Microsoft is too slow to react, SteamOS will become entrenched for gaming and that will guarantee engineering dollars are spent on SteamOS support (again, drivers, software, testing), which will upstream to Linux. At that point, 3rd party hardware, peripherals, and software will be targeting SteamOS and Linux. OEMs will have already spent engineering dollars to support their hardware in SteamOS (and Linux), so they wouldn't hesitate to start shipping Linux machines to the big box stores. It's Microsoft's market to lose though.
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Maybe I need Cortana, Microsoft Excel, and OneDrive while I play Doom Eternal. You don't know me.
Me looking up from my speed-running Excel sheets: "what"
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Well it's not a very compelling sales pitch to tell me to ditch the multiple thousands of dollars of hardware and just buy new stuff. If the goal is to get people to switch to Linux from Windows, I hope you're not the one leading the charge.
I think setting expectations appropriately is a reasonable expectation of new users. Microsoft expects it of Windows users. Apple expects it of MacOS users. For Linux, nope, we must have a different standard. If we don't, Linux isn't ready for the average user. Got news for you, average users don't install Windows, they don't install MacOS, and they don't install Linux or any other OS. They buy pre-built machines where everything is taken care of. Average users buying pre-built machines do not experience the woes of a tech nerd.
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100% agree. That is coming soon though. Microsoft has had vendor lock'in for the last 30 years which guaranteed engineering dollars (drivers, software, testing) spent by OEMs to support Windows. SteamOS is breaking the grip of Microsoft though. If Microsoft is too slow to react, SteamOS will become entrenched for gaming and that will guarantee engineering dollars are spent on SteamOS support (again, drivers, software, testing), which will upstream to Linux. At that point, 3rd party hardware, peripherals, and software will be targeting SteamOS and Linux. OEMs will have already spent engineering dollars to support their hardware in SteamOS (and Linux), so they wouldn't hesitate to start shipping Linux machines to the big box stores. It's Microsoft's market to lose though.
Keep in mind Linux had this opportunity during netbooks, Microsoft simply forced them to abandon Linux and threatened contracts. Yes, many computers shipped Linux and in what I can only describe as a blatantly illegal move (and cornering of the market) Microsoft forced them to use Windows. If OEMs like Dell or HP start selling as many Linux PCs as Windows PCs Microsoft can just threaten contracts.
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Goes to show how much bloat is in Windows that it kills hardware like this.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Thibking bout that time a discord admin told me windows and linux use the same amount of resources and she knows cause she works in it.
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Care to explain ?
Not OP, but I assume it’s got something to do with entrusting an unaudited, closed-source 3rd party to significantly alter your OS.
There are plenty of similar tools available, which are both open source and can be run by the end-user over a stock Windows installation.
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Source is this video:
Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D
We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.
Hmm, it's like having spyware constantly run in the background slows down the computer?
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I'd still take this with a grain of salt. Not many games tested, and the SteamOS build might've been tweaked and worked on more to be more optimized.
"Xbox OS" isn't any better, while the XBox Series X is more powerful than the standard Playstation 5, it still ends up being outperformed as Digital Foundry found.
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Not OP, but I assume it’s got something to do with entrusting an unaudited, closed-source 3rd party to significantly alter your OS.
There are plenty of similar tools available, which are both open source and can be run by the end-user over a stock Windows installation.
But it is open source …
https://github.com/meetrevision
The playbook is for Windows AME of which there are some other playbooks and is also open source.
Although it seems like there’s a cloudflare issue accessing their self hosted git but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before
There’s also the unattended scripts and other windows debloaters that can be ran. My original point being I’d like to see a stripped down windows 11 vs steamos
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Best would be optimized Windows
What is "optimized Windows"? Windows is Windows. There's no gaming-focused version.
gaming only distro
There's no such thing, to my knowledge.
base windows vs base distro
What is a "base distro"?
What is "optimized Windows"? Windows is Windows. There's no gaming-focused version.
Removing / disabling useless services, tweaking registry…
There's no such thing, to my knowledge.
SteamOS sure looks like one. Gaming focused if you prefer. I’ve seen a couple on Linux, though I don’t remember their name rn.
What is a "base distro"?
Something like Ubuntu or Mint, which would be more comparable to a desktop experience like windows, ready for productivity
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I’m still waiting for games with big anticheats to run on Linux. Until I can play Fortnite with my nephew on Linux I won’t swap over.
Unfortunately the Epic CEO is explicitly blocking Linux. Fortnite runs, but he doesn't like Linux.
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Source is this video:
Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D
We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.
Valve doubling down on Linux as the default OS on the Steam Deck was such a great decision. It obviously has given them a massive competitive edge. Windows has become so horribly bloated, and Microsoft has almost zero interest in making it run more efficiently.
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That's fair, but unless what you do requires windows in some way (like, say, Photoshop), Linux tends to be better for productivity as well, if you learn it
But of course, I understand that it takes some upfront work and learning to change your workflow, so I don't blame people for not doing it
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sure, but they are comparing SteamOS, which is a stripped down OS that does not have all the capabilities of a full Linux OS.
Just try using any photo editing software on SteamOS. Even ones compatible with Linux.
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Realistically the design goals of a gaming OS vs a general desktop OS aren't that different. You want to balance performance, batterlife/power consumption, and making sure it withstands insane abuse by users and software doing anything you could never imagine that nobody should have ever tried to do. About the only design goal that separates SteamOS from Windows is fleet manageability features
You are forgetting backwards compatibility with ancient software that Windows still supports after 30+ years.
A lot of businesses need that in order to function.
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Yeah its wine/proton and linux together. Wine/Proton efficiently handles translating the Windows programmes API calls into POSIX calls while Linux seems to offer a lower OS overhead so there is more system resource available for the games.
I do think Proton gets a little too much credit. Its wine plus faudio, dxvk and other open source projects combined. Proton is great but it is standing on the shoulders of giants.
I do think Proton gets a little too much credit.
Why? Valve has been sponsoring all these projects for a really long time. While wine existed before that, it wouldn't be anywhere near the shape thats its currently in because gaming was not its main focus. There have been loads of gaming bugs and sharp edges that have been around wine for a long time until Valve put in the money and devs to fix them.
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SteamOS is able to launch a desktop environment where you can do anything you want. It is just an OS like Windows, but better.
Cool, can you run video rendering software on it? How about some cli? Can you delete packages? Or even remove the french language?
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SteamOS is a full Linux build, it's just a different distro like Fedora, Ubuntu, mint, etc, etc
Like a distro with certain bloat disabled to optimize for gaming?
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Hopefully not a dumb question: If Vulkan runs on anything, assuming their game isn't a Windows (Xbox?) exclusive, why don't more people program their games to use Vulkan instead?
Because DirectX is more than a graphics API.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX
A fair amount of what used to make DirectX an everything API has been deprecated, but if you are already using Windows stuff for networking and audio, then you may as well use the graphics APIs too.
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Source is this video:
Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D
We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.
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I disagree. Take Windows, remove the bloat, slap a game-focused GUI on it, call it XBOX and Bob's your uncle.
If Xbox Series S would have run all my Steam games, I'd have bought one in a heartbeat.
