Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
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For those brave enough, this year I finally took the plunge and went with Linux on my desktop.
I went with Pop OS, and after a few days decided to try the cinnamon desktop env. since it's a little more familiar. Some things took about a week to get figured out, but now I don't ever want to go back.
Gnome, even with Pop's perinstalled extensions, is not the most familiar DE for those coming from Windowd. KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, XFCE are much closer and at least a few of those you can make to look like Windows (if you for whatever reason want to)
Familiar is bad imo, just switch to something different. It is different, embrace it. I use Fedora gnome btw
I disagree. I think that at least looking slightly familiar can help with the transition to something new. It helps you feel comfortable in a new space.
I love cinnamon. I guess that makes me a classic guy. It’s nice without being too flashy.
Linux desktop main for about a year, and I mostly use it for gaming. Thank you Valve and Wine developers!
Yeah Cinnamon reminds me of the old Gnome 2 days, before it started trying to get all flashy and stuff.
TBF that is literally the exact motivation behind Cinnamon. Mint was like "yo, GNOME 3 sucks for what were trying to do" and forked. I think that's also why you see such string MATE support with Mint, too. Those developers fucking loved GNOME 2 (with good reason, GNOME 2 was genuinely excellent).
Back in the day I thought GNOME 3 would eventually stabilize into something suitable for daily use, but their constant breaking of APIs frustrates me to no end and makes me view the GNOME project as just being... Out of touch with the reality of the kinds of people who use computers. They're so hyper focused on their usage patterns they don't recognize they've made themselves irrelevant to most of us.
I genuinely mean it when I say KDE and LXDE-Qt (these days just LXDE, but I want to make sure its clear what I'm talking about) are the future. Its not so much because I think their platforms are intrinsically superior, but instead their philosophy to how developing for the desktop works. And for those who think KDE is too heavy and LXDE is too idiosyncratic, running a desktop without any desktop environment has become downright easy as of late. I'm running MX Linux with fluxbox and Antix with IceWM and I rarely miss features of the big DEs and I'm just running what those two ship with.
I loved GNOME 2. It got so much right and really did a lot to get out of your way. GNOME 3 meanwhile has some truly stellar core ideas for how humans computer interactions can be performed but everything surrounding those core ideas (the ecosystem) sucks because GNOME doesn't value stability anymore. That's probably somewhat fine on a rolling release distro, but... I don't... Think the average person looking to GNOME's ease of use are going to trend toward rolling releases and are going to prefer pointal releases. Probably the best place to run GNOME on a pointal releases these days is Fedora since that's where so much GNOME development happens anyway, but Fedora has issues I frankly don't want to deal with because fedora doesn't offer me (emphasized because if fedora is offering you special value, that's fine abd valid) value thanks to being a somewhat unstable pointal release distro (be stable or be rolling release. Ideally be both. Don't be neither)
And all of this is kind of a shame, too. There's a whole ecosystem of GTK apps that are effectively decaying because no one trusts GNOME to provide a stable platform and for people who've come to rely on those apps, there's gonna come a time they're gonna have to migrate to unfamiliar Qt apps. They'll be able to handle it of course, but most people just want their shit to work how they know it works and to not deal with their system being different from how they're used to.
Gnome 3 was a regression of what I still believe is a perfect UX metaphor for computing. Gnome 2 was perfect in every way. I've since gone to Xfce, but it feels like Gnome 3 and beyond is trying to make using Unix fool-proof for a touchscreen paradigm, and you really can't.
You should give people the keys without difficulty, but give them everything they need to not need them. And you're never going to run Gnome on a tablet. There's no point in making everything pronounced, you'll have an input device that's not a finger on a screen. Emulating something else like Windows or macOS doesn't make you seem unique, it makes you seem similar and if the paradigms aren't the same, its confusing. Have some audacity to be different.
It's important to remember Gnome exists because KDE was in a license fiasco of its own making. And we're in a new fiasco with GTK over mismanagement.
I switched to Mint from windows 10 about three months ago (when I upgraded my video card). Everything is so much smoother and just works. Except Remote Desktop… can’t figure that one out.
There are a few ways to go about it. You can try to use the microsoft RDP like system with XRDP. Or you can go over to VNC.
But I agree, it is a little bit of a fiddle. Keep at it!
Did you try remmina?
Try ThinLinc and ThinLinc server - they work great for me.
Aaaaaarch aaaaaarch btw
I know logically that people can do whatever they want and it doesn't affect me in any way so I shouldn't care, but I do still get a visceral eye-twitching feeling whenever someone talks about installing Windows on a Steam Deck. It's like someone buying a sports car and using it to tow a caravan or something.
It's like buying an electric sports car and immediately converting it to diesel.
People fear what they don't know. Valve has made Linux gaming stupid easy and still people are more worried about FOMO of that small percentage of games that don't run on Linux. Maybe we'll see a shift if someone releases a banger game that's designed to be really really good on steam deck (so Linux exclusive, basically) and have it out in Linux for a few months before the windows version comes out
Valve has made Linux gaming stupid easy and still people are more worried about FOMO of that small percentage of games that don't run on Linux.
Unfortunately, most of the non-working games are also the ones people tend to have FOMO about. I feel like they're mostly online games with anti-cheats which, by their online nature, means that you will feel really missing out when all of your friends except you play the game, more so than single player games.
Dude, same. I cannot understand it (for games. I'm sure people have valid reasons if they're using the Deck for some other purpose). It seems there is a cohort of otherwise relatively tech savvy people who are just terrified of all things "Linux."
Maybe they heard horror stories from friends or family while growing up and aren't aware of just how close to complete compatibility Proton is. In fact, in some cases, it can somehow run games better than if one were to dual boot and install in Windows.
Even Valve's own Steam Deck verification should be taken with a grain of salt, it seems as though they're being extra conservative with those. I've gotten several "unsupported " games working (very easily), for example , Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition is listed on Steam as "unsupported," but it works great (with DSFix even) on my Deck.
ProtonDB is a far better resource for anyone reading this who hadn't heard of it.
But yeah, it's almost like this subconscious aversion to Linux. And they want to be in their comfort zone I guess.
The only times it's OK are when it's planned for specific softwares. For example, I can't run Rocksmith 2014 on native Deck but it works fine in Windows. Similarly, software that's OS limited would be another use.
But if your main thing is gaming, and you aren't dual booting... Yeah, I'm judging you. (And I mainly use Windows on PC. But why, why, why would you need to only run Windows on a Steam Deck without a specific purpose
User Experience matters. And Valve knows that very well.
Unfortunately it doesn't always matter. It matters after the sale is made, so many hard thinking departments think they can skimp here. Apple and Steam know different and it's working for them. But they built trust for years.
Offline mode is still kind of an issue with some stuff, unfortunately.
Someday, Windows might be as good at gaming as Linux.
All this because Windows 8 started to evolve into a walled garden with the Microsoft Store and that pissed off Valve.
Here's to Windows ownership significantly dropping thanks to SteamOS.
If you want Steam Deck experience on these handhelds, take a look at Bazzite. It already supports the Ally X. Runs like a dream on my Legion Go.
This is a sensible recommendation. Even though I despise windows and Asus has support issues historically ( very lame ones even), the hardware itself is very good and any Linux distro can be easily flashed.
I wouldn't dismiss the handheld based on a windows review really ( hint : windows will forever suck).
Uncomfortably rare Windows L
Windows/Xbox needs a handheld specific OS for these devices.
But my guess is if it they ever do have one, it's first going to be on their own handheld.
After that other companies can pay a steep price to have it on their handhelds, I bet.
other companies can pay a steep price to have it on their handhelds, I bet.
Probably not, they still need market share. More likely it would be just locked down, filled with ads, and generally unusable.
It's not going to be great, they can't refrain them selfs to put some kind of ads into it. But it's still windows, so easier to play those few games that can only be played or is easier on windows.
But I've no experience with Windows handhelds, they'll need to pry my steam deck out of my cold dead hands
They optimized Windows for touch/portable devices last year. The need for a handheld OS is no longer an issue for Microsoft's most popular virus.
How do I know? I'm not just (an) owner of a Windows-running handheld, I'm a victim!
I run Linux on my server and Windows on my Legion Go. If it were easier to tackle switching from an AMD iGPU to an AMD eGPU on Linux, I'd probably abandon Windows completely.
Ah oke, didn't know that to be honest. So you don't boot up on desktop environment anymore? I saw some videos that showed it was a regular windows 11 installation and barely usable with the touchscreen.
Is it something like steam now? That start at nice clean interface.
No, it's still the desktop version. Have you noticed how ugly Windows 11 got recently? It's because of these optimizations.
Menus have become more touch-friendly and window controls become comparatively more robust as your screen size decreases. I'm surprised how much more frequently I interact with my touch screen than my keyboard and mouse sometimes.
I bought my Legion Go for portable photo and video editing and get a free Adobe license through my work, which is why I went with Windows. I've heard that you can install Creative Cloud on Linux, but I've been told by our technologists that the Enterprise login might not work when it detects the operating system.
At this point, most of my reasons for sticking with Windows boil down to laziness. If I really felt like taking the time to test Adobe, my eGPU, StarCitizen, and the various Legion Go hardware features, I could probably deliver more informed explanations. But alas... I'm too lazy right now and spend my non-lazy time working on other projects.
I had it running on my PC for awhile but switched back to 10 because my performance wasn't great. It isn't even running anymore because my videocard died this week, haha.
If only I could get the steel series software to run on Linux for my apex 350 keyboard I would've stayed on Linux. My next one will be Linux compatibiliteit, haha.
I mean I have the original ROG Ally and just threw Bazzite on it, I was able to pick it up for close to $300 used
Eventually Microsoft is going to be forced to adapt and make an operating system that doesnt use 20% of your system resources, right?
surely they wont continue to make the same bloated, sluggish OS every year since windows 7 right?
I strongly believe they will do that. Then a week later, slowly introduce bloat again.
ah yes, the internet explorer/chrome/firefox but then firefox got better but then worse again/chrome/is internet explorer good now?/opera/operagx/Microsoft edge is actually fast now/back to opera effect
