With the Legion Go S, we can now directly compare performance between official builds of SteamOS and Windows
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I've tested out Manjaro, KDE Neon, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Fedora - across two desktops and a laptop.
Problems have been all over the spectrum. Not being to install at all, trouble getting it to dual boot after installing (despite following a guide), getting NAS drives to be writeable, hardware compatibility, finding alternatives to proprietary software which may or may not do everything the original did, and more.
I'm semi enjoying the tinkering for now, and I'm not regretting trying to de-Windows as much as possible, but I think people who say Linux is ready for mainstream are out of touch with the average person's computer literacy.
dual booting anything with windows (including another copy of windows) is an insufferable nightmare caused by windows.
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dual booting anything with windows (including another copy of windows) is an insufferable nightmare caused by windows.
Not all instances were dual booting, nor are all of the problems I've encountered or described above related with dual booting.
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Even gamers do more than just game on their PC, though.
Most people just need a web browser for most of their needs, unless you have a need for a specific software that's Windows only and doesn't have a good Linux alternative,
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Not all instances were dual booting, nor are all of the problems I've encountered or described above related with dual booting.
completely valid. just pointing out windows is a malicious cohabitant on a drive -
I am a little curious how something like Ubuntu would do on one of these gaming handhelds. Steam OS is a nicer user experience but I always wonder if it also adds any significant optimization.
What do you mean? It's just steamos is arch linux with a fancy suit.
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completely valid. just pointing out windows is a malicious cohabitant on a drive
Even among that I've varied. In one installation I have Windows sharing a drive, separate partition for Linux. In another computer they're on completely different drives.
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I am a little curious how something like Ubuntu would do on one of these gaming handhelds. Steam OS is a nicer user experience but I always wonder if it also adds any significant optimization.
I think you're a bit better off with SteamOS's gamescope rather than going through gnome-shell.
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Even gamers do more than just game on their PC, though.
Most people dont use Windows because its compatible with more software, they use it because thats what their computer came with. If computers just starting shipping Linux then software will come.
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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.
Goes to show how much bloat is in Windows that it kills hardware like this.
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I could barely get Minecraft to run 20fps on this old laptop I had given to me a few years ago. Loaded Ubuntu on it and Minecraft ran near 60fps. Blew my mind.
Pull the DE out and you could probably squeeze that performance out on a modded instance
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Goes to show how much bloat is in Windows that it kills hardware like this.
Maybe I need Cortana, Microsoft Excel, and OneDrive while I play Doom Eternal. You don't know me.
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It'd be great if they truly believed this, but that's just the image they like to project, the truth is that this has them deathly afraid.
You've got mainstream media covering it, folks like digital foundry openly talking about how Windows is the worst part of Windows handhelds. They can't let this stand, so they're actively working against it.
Just like the faster zombies blog post in 2012 scared them into boosting d3d development and eventually led to the release of d3d12, this will make them actually invest in gaming for a change.
All the chatter about xbox branded handhelds is an easy tell, but like the blog post we might not discover the true extent until years later.
I am sure that MS is very concerned. If i take my usecase, the things that held me on windows from dos5/Win3.1 up to Windows10 were gaming and that i grew up with it. I sometimes dabbled in linux, but since there was no meaningful way to use my game library, i switched back, because even dualbooting made no sense (what for? just so i can boot back after browsing a few web pages?)
This time after 3 days i deleted my windows partition, even while i was still fighting a bit with the Wayland/NVidia combo - that was shortly after the explicit sync drivers were available.
The young'ins want to play their games, and now they can without ever coming into contact with microsoft at all if not for the anticheat-outliers (who knows, maybe there's some money flowing that stops them from activating linux support? i know most anticheat in theory does work under linux). And if they start playing on Linux, there's no reason for them to switch over to Windows at all.
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What's nice is that Microsoft today doesn't have capability to improve in the short or even medium term. They could drop a billion dollars into it and it would still take them years to improve their offering, if they can at all.
It's worse than that. MS could quickly turn the boat around. They have the cash. They have the manpower (well, have recently fired). The only thing they don't have is THE ABILITY TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT AI AI AI AI GOTTA HAVE AI AIIIIIIII. The brainrot has eaten Nadella, and eaten the whole board.
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I've tested out Manjaro, KDE Neon, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Fedora - across two desktops and a laptop.
Problems have been all over the spectrum. Not being to install at all, trouble getting it to dual boot after installing (despite following a guide), getting NAS drives to be writeable, hardware compatibility, finding alternatives to proprietary software which may or may not do everything the original did, and more.
I'm semi enjoying the tinkering for now, and I'm not regretting trying to de-Windows as much as possible, but I think people who say Linux is ready for mainstream are out of touch with the average person's computer literacy.
Imagine the hardware compatibility issues you'd have trying to install MacOS on your machine. Probably a nightmare. Better to just buy hardware that is compatible with the OS you want to run.
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Imagine the hardware compatibility issues you'd have trying to install MacOS on your machine. Probably a nightmare. Better to just buy hardware that is compatible with the OS you want to run.
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.
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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.
