Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)
I’m not so sure Valve is the right maintainer for the core desktop. The Deck works well, but mainly what Valve is maintaining is the Game Mode feature and Proton. Everything else is largely better handed off to a bigger group.
I’ve definitely run into some snobbish “Accept my incorrect solutions and be grateful, or go back to Windows, newb” types of people. I don’t have much love for them. I recognize it takes patience to acclimate new users, but it’s part of the job.
By and large I’m preferential to just stay with something that works; part of what pushed me off it has just been Microsoft themselves enshittifying the experience. I feel like I remember a day when Windows start search actually took you to what you wanted, and now “notepad” immediately queries the shopping network before your own program list, and when you get Notepad open it has a Copilot button.
You’re doing the right thing as long as you stay on an OS that keeps you going day in and day out. I tried Linux earlier in the year on two distros that did NOT work as well as the internet said they would, and went back to Windows. More recently, tried another one and there were stupid difficulties - but I got past them, at a time when Windows issues were just giving me “This is the way it is now, just put up with it”.
I’m dual booting with Windows because of a project I’m finishing that would be difficult to move OS, but Cachy is now my gaming OS. It’s nice to move away from the “forced” behavior from Windows.
Tangentially, a few UI decisions felt locked-in on Ubuntu and Mint too; or at least I couldn’t find an easy way to change them. I’m still a little annoyed my scroll wheel changes form options but it’s a minor thing.
How do people feel about this company using generative AI? That was a concern of mine around The Finals; they’ve defended the decision on voice acting and it made me wonder where else they’re using it.
EDIT: Learned some new things from the responses, certainly an interesting situation. I’ll consider them.
IGN: “Traditional gamer journalism is dying. Please support honest journalists.”
Also IGN: “Good work, 47. Now publish the article and locate an exit.”
Did anyone else know the reason Morpheus is “reborn” in an odd way in Resurrection is because he canonically dies in the MMORPG? I remember wanting to play that as a kid…probably didn’t miss much though.
There are definitely some ways I’d like to see media shifts, but I’m always very cautious about govt regulation around it.
For instance, I always hated how much we parodize authoritarian dystopias. The “parody” element is often lost on people, and they end up respecting it; like people who lose the irony in vouching for Helldivers’ “For Managed Democracy!” or feel like Warhammer40k’s Imperium of Man is awesome.
We probably need more Spec Ops: The Line’s, but also more hero fantasies about destroying those dystopias.
Just get a Steam Deck, and add a hub and wireless controller.
Oh, but it won’t run full-detail AAA releases at 4K? Nothing cheap will. That is exclusively the domain of consoles, earned through direct-contact optimization with developers. That’s still enough horsepower for the thousands of great indie games on Steam, many of which are simple enough to run fine on a midsize TV on the small Deck CPU.
Basically, if someone is adamant about running high-detail games on their TV using Steam, they’re already a niche enough market that it really doesn’t make sense to build up a single SKU for them and hope for bulk manufacturing savings the same way you could for consoles.
It’s probably better off for developers to keep targeting the Deck as a general metric point anyway. The especially good news there is, once devs do that, Linux desktop gamers benefit anyway.
The whole appeal, the whole marketing, in the game is about making this gigantic steampunk thing. But then, hidden in a corner is a Pollution metric - how much harm your factory is doing to this planet, thus angering the bugs.
By being so indirect about the messaging of your grand conquest, you’re made aware of how horrifically abusive corporate empires can dominate continents without really considering their goal state and its damage; and how their response can end up being violent and destructive without initially planning to “Wipe out all other life in this region so I can have it for myself”
I think Mint is the cleanest recommendation when you don’t want to be held liable for issues; but for gaming specifically, I ended up liking CachyOS a bit more.
It’s very bleeding-edge, which if you know tech is often a good and bad thing. But games work well. It is not quite so clean with things like installing popular apps - I’m using a package manager called “bauh”, which is relatively new, unrefined, but works. I still end up installing a few things from terminal, which I know shouldn’t be needed for casual users.
Last I tried Mint was early in the year and I think I installed from an old version. It could be what few gaming issues I saw are gone.
The only games I’ve seen to have issues with online multiplayer are the biggest ones: COD and Battlefield. If you’re into those, I guess you do need to go Windows.
Some others I play are fine; Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Space Marine 2.
(No, I’m not a furry, I just like a Bad Company 2 style with infantry focus, and the abilities are pretty nice)
It’s the first test bed for every developer, which means something like a headset utility is more reliably going to work on Windows. But it’s impressive even that margin is falling.
Imagine seeing Nvidia drop Shadowplay features to push their own beta app improvements, while the Linux imitator for Shadowplay still works simply and fine, and doesn’t even drop for “DRM detected” issues.
Or trying to install/update Epic/Ubisoft games needing to go through another terrible UI upgrade while Heroic and Lutris still look the same.
A year ago, I tried Linux and felt frustrated about some minor UI inconsistencies and fiddling. Recently, I tried again, and it still had stuff to work through, but I was patient for it because now I’m dealing with all that same shit on Windows.
Oh yeah, though to hotkey audio switching I ended up writing my own bash script which was clunky. Curious if anyone better than myself might take charge there.
I guess I should have some stance on this. I played Nier Automata, and the combat was horrendous to me. I still think there must have been some core mechanic that was unclear to me, but even on brief review, I didn’t see anything.
I dropped the difficulty down to nothing so I could quickly force through all the story content and see “what’s so amazing about this game”. And the story did nothing. It had me burst out laughing in mockery at the times players were supposed to be crying.
That could just be a quirk of that game’s story in particular. I do think some scenes I’ve enjoyed out of long JRPGs were only notable because I’d invested time and effort in them, so I think a lot is lost if the player isn’t interacting with the premise at all. It’s why I’d prefer forms of difficulty adjustment, removing just one form of challenge, over total removal of the entire gameplay system. Unfortunately, I think a lot of action games handle that poorly, in a very lazy way that doesn’t appreciate what challenges players.