Ars Technica declares SteamOS the victor (plus other 🐧🎮 news)
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SteamOS, at this point, is not officially supported outside of select hardware (Basically, Steam Deck and other handelds), so while it is prominent and talked about - it may not be the best choice for home PC usage.
As @[email protected] said already: Bazzite is probably the closest equivalent, it also has gaming optimisation, but a more fully-fledged Desktop experience along with it. There are other gaming focused distros (e.g. Garuda, PikaOS) as well, but if you are prone to choice anxiety, just go with Bazzite - and check the others out if you get sucked down the "I want to tinker more with my system and try out more, different Linux flavours" pipeline later.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Unfortunately, seems bazzite may not survive. A proposed fedora change would make it so the main maintainer would basically need to shut the project down.Edit: I stand corrected
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Im thinking of changing my daily driver for Win 10 to SteamOS. Any reason not to?
Pop! OS might be a good option. It's Ubuntu-based and is pretty easy to get running. I switched from Windows 10 earlier this year and it's been mostly fine. A couple points to ask yourself before experimenting with Linux:
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Is your data backed up? Will it be okay if you lose all of your computer's data? I backed up all the important documents just in case I made a mistake.
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Do you need Windows specifically for anything important? For example, do you use your computer for work? Stuff like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud either doesn't or can't run on Linux. However, there are tons of FOSS alternatives to replace Office and Adobe software.
I really like Pop! OS because it's a nice bridge distro from Windows to Linux. It's possible that I'll switch to a more "advanced" distro like Arch in the future, but it's nice just not having to worry about Windows 10 or having to upgrade to 11.
Keep in mind though, I still keep an install of Windows 10 on my machine in case I need to switch back for work software.
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Unfortunately, seems bazzite may not survive. A proposed fedora change would make it so the main maintainer would basically need to shut the project down.Edit: I stand corrected
Oh boy, this is gonna be floating around for a long time.
The founder did an interview on Gardiner Bryant's youtube channel either yesterday or the day before where he clarified that statement. The short version is not to worry about that possibility any time soon.
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Im thinking of changing my daily driver for Win 10 to SteamOS. Any reason not to?
I'd say CachyOS there is a learning curve but if you know these windows terms: registry, batch, sfc /scannow ... then you already have enough technological know how to get started with rolling release.
My advice for gaming on Linux is to have a seperate hard drive where you store things you care about (including games) so you are able to wipe everything in case something goes wrong.
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Unfortunately, seems bazzite may not survive. A proposed fedora change would make it so the main maintainer would basically need to shut the project down.Edit: I stand corrected
That's actually addressed in this video - he interviews the main maintainer in the last segment. The issue was Fedora announcing they want to retract support for 32 bit libraries eventually, and that sparking fear in the community, because some apps like the Steam client would be affected. As it looks as per the interview, to quote the maintainer: "Bazzite is not going anywhere". The Fedora maintainers took comments to heart (in fact, their announcement was to get feedback from the community), and critical libraries for certain applications will remain maintained, until apps like Steam and OBS and such can switch to 64-bit architectures.
But don't feel bad for thinking otherwise - in the interview, the Bazzite maintainer laments how many outlets used the announcement to fearmonger, so that was a widespread sentiment. Sensationalism, anxiety and outrage tactics to get clicks, basically.
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Last time I used Windows was 10, and I was able to find 4, 4 different fucking historical UI schemes/frameworks by digging deep enough into arcane settings menus.
I was working at MSFT when 8 released.
Broke every server tool, SQL Manangement Studio, fucking everything, for weeks.
We asked them if there was a way to go back to the 7 UI.
Nope! It's been removed!
... And a few days later, word of mouth and email chains start spreading an arcane series of override procedures to get back to the Win 7 GUI/Desktop, that is almost entirely still there... and after almost a month, our team finally gets the whole process forwarded to us or our team lead unofficially obtained it or something who fucking knows.
So much for 'its been removed'.
After a month of so of that, MSFT realizes that a tablet only interface for desktop PCs is fucking stupid, they make the 7 UI/Desktop into an easier toggle, and kablamo, thats Windows 8.1!
We totally planned this the whole time everyone!
I hate MSFT more than most, because I used to work for them, they're fucking awful.
haha, I was a Windows Kernel dev for Intel. What a shit show. Both companies would fuck each other over. So many times. We would start project, get Microsoft to buy in. Microsoft would pull in a bunch of engineers to support it, 3 months later, we cancel on Microsoft. Or Microsoft does the same thing to us, I get pulled on to a team to support Microsoft, 3 months later, Microsoft cancels. No wonder those two companies are imploding. Good riddence.
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haha, I was a Windows Kernel dev for Intel. What a shit show. Both companies would fuck each other over. So many times. We would start project, get Microsoft to buy in. Microsoft would pull in a bunch of engineers to support it, 3 months later, we cancel on Microsoft. Or Microsoft does the same thing to us, I get pulled on to a team to support Microsoft, 3 months later, Microsoft cancels. No wonder those two companies are imploding. Good riddence.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Damn, you actually wrote kernel code?
That's some real graybeard, dark wizard shit imo, I am unironically impressed.
I've always been sort of a jack of all trades in my prior corpo work... anything related to a database or data or analytics, backend, frontend, input forms, data analysis/reporting... somehow I always end up doing all of it, because wheeee ever expanding job description!!!
But yeah, that exact corporate nonsense dynamic of how projects are proposed and then we agree, and then we don't agree, and then we do agree but only according to one party and then the project is csncelled, and then its not...
This is fucking everywhere in tech megacorps, both internally within themselves and also with external partnerships, and its basically just impossible to explain to a lot of try hards, normies, and non corpos that like...
At a certain point, the actual technicals of implementing whatever solution in code... doesn't matter.
Because if everything is a fucking exploding clownshow driving off a cliff on the project management side... making a sensible technical solution is fundamentally impossible.
No one even knows what they are supposed to be doing, who is supoosed to be responsible for what.
I can't tell you how much time I've spent emailing a person to email a person to email a person to figure out who I am supposed to email about to report a very niche but critical bug in something my workfloe is dependant on...
And wow hey wouldn't you know it, no one is actually maintaining that thing any more, and also no one knows that!
So what do we do? Hire another, different contractor for that, and make this all worse!
I would literally rather put my balls in a wood chipper than do large scale corpo tech work ever again. My mental health is not worth it.
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Damn, you actually wrote kernel code?
That's some real graybeard, dark wizard shit imo, I am unironically impressed.
I've always been sort of a jack of all trades in my prior corpo work... anything related to a database or data or analytics, backend, frontend, input forms, data analysis/reporting... somehow I always end up doing all of it, because wheeee ever expanding job description!!!
But yeah, that exact corporate nonsense dynamic of how projects are proposed and then we agree, and then we don't agree, and then we do agree but only according to one party and then the project is csncelled, and then its not...
This is fucking everywhere in tech megacorps, both internally within themselves and also with external partnerships, and its basically just impossible to explain to a lot of try hards, normies, and non corpos that like...
At a certain point, the actual technicals of implementing whatever solution in code... doesn't matter.
Because if everything is a fucking exploding clownshow driving off a cliff on the project management side... making a sensible technical solution is fundamentally impossible.
No one even knows what they are supposed to be doing, who is supoosed to be responsible for what.
I can't tell you how much time I've spent emailing a person to email a person to email a person to figure out who I am supposed to email about to report a very niche but critical bug in something my workfloe is dependant on...
And wow hey wouldn't you know it, no one is actually maintaining that thing any more, and also no one knows that!
So what do we do? Hire another, different contractor for that, and make this all worse!
I would literally rather put my balls in a wood chipper than do large scale corpo tech work ever again. My mental health is not worth it.
Yeah man, have code in Win8, WinPhone, and Win10. Bet you didn't know Intel had a WinPhone device. Of course, Intel cancelled it. I definitely avoid mega corporations now. Won't even take their interviews. The small company I work for now, they said, "Can you make this integration in 8 months", I said yes. Two months later, all done and deployed to production. Everything is much easier when you can actually talk to other teams and submit PR's you need.
I'm with you. I'll never work for another big corporation. The have no interests in making good products. All Intel did was use their money to artificially keep AMD from selling chips. Which is crazy, Intel pretty much did everything first. Now they do nothing.
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Yeah man, have code in Win8, WinPhone, and Win10. Bet you didn't know Intel had a WinPhone device. Of course, Intel cancelled it. I definitely avoid mega corporations now. Won't even take their interviews. The small company I work for now, they said, "Can you make this integration in 8 months", I said yes. Two months later, all done and deployed to production. Everything is much easier when you can actually talk to other teams and submit PR's you need.
I'm with you. I'll never work for another big corporation. The have no interests in making good products. All Intel did was use their money to artificially keep AMD from selling chips. Which is crazy, Intel pretty much did everything first. Now they do nothing.
Bet you didn't know Intel had a WinPhone device. Of course, Intel cancelled it.
Entirely seriously, and... also ironically:
I think I actually do remember hearing about that from a decade + ago... when I was at MSFT.
... and what I heard was we cancelled it.
Jesus fucking christ, lol.
I'm with you. I'll never work for another big corporation.
I like to think of this as 'we both chose the former corpo preamble to cyberpunk 2077'.
Anyway, yep, I am fully linux and fully team red now.
What a fucking world.
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Bet you didn't know Intel had a WinPhone device. Of course, Intel cancelled it.
Entirely seriously, and... also ironically:
I think I actually do remember hearing about that from a decade + ago... when I was at MSFT.
... and what I heard was we cancelled it.
Jesus fucking christ, lol.
I'm with you. I'll never work for another big corporation.
I like to think of this as 'we both chose the former corpo preamble to cyberpunk 2077'.
Anyway, yep, I am fully linux and fully team red now.
What a fucking world.
… and what I heard was we cancelled it.
That might have been true. There were actually two phone teams at Intel working with the same hardware. WinPhone and Android. Our budget came from the Android budget, as they had already been funded and working on the Android version for 6 months already. It came time to demo the phones and our WinPhone could make calls, get internet, and connect to wifi. The android phone could only boot. So the Android team took back what remained of the budget, because it was felt that more Android phones would sell. The WinPhone was put on pause. Then, the android team ran out of budget and the whole thing was scuttled, including WinPhone. I bet MSFT was doing Intel a solid by not trashing Intel because it's Android team dropped the ball. Props to MSFT for that.
Anyway, yep, I am fully linux and fully team red now.
Same. And I'm never looking back.
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If I could install it on my desktop I would.
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If I could install it on my desktop I would.
https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS
You can turn basically any Linux distro into "Steam OS". There's nothing magical or different about Steam OS.
