Alt text: Trojan Horse meme, Steam Deck bringing Linux to Windows gamers
I used my deck as my main computer when I was traveling earlier this year (I don’t have a laptop). I brought a small keyboard, no mouse, was able to do everything I needed. It’s convinced me I can easily make the switch I’m just waiting to move now and get a laptop when I’m out of tarrif-land
Windows user here.
Idgaf as long as it works and isn’t shit. If it has lots of cool clever stuff, all the better.
Most vendor software works the best on Windows.
Windows also generally has the best compatibility. I always keep at least one Windows 11 VM to install various things in.
Have you run some demanding games in that VM? And what virtualisation have you been using?
I’ve been thinking about trying that out with QEMU/KVM.
You need a GPU if you want to run demanding games
It is feasible but it takes some tinkering
Definitely not trivial to do. You need to use GPU passthrough to allow a VM to have a GPU, which requires manually figuring out a whole bunch of PCI addresses, among other technical things. If you fear the terminal, you will have a bad time.
Thanks for letting me know! That’s one thing I was worried about, but I may very well give it a shot anyway. Luckily, I’m not opposed to messing in the terminal, I do it for work nearly every day :P Messing with PCI Addresses would be new though!
Windows is shit tho. Has been for a long time now.
I’m a power user, I don’t even want to upgrade or have to reinstall because of how much shit I’ve gone through to get it to this point. Easily a decade old install and very active use. I would lose so much random stuff if I ever had to upgrade or switch. Windows is shit and Microsoft are total bastards for that, there’s no denying it. But for me, it is not so simple as one being better or worse. Maybe if I were in a stage to switch I’d consider it, but still windows is not without its own offerings/positives.
If your OS is so brittle that you can’t upgrade it without “losing so much random stuff,” you’re not standing on solid ground, and I’d argue "it doesn’t work properly either. You’re basically balancing on a house of cards that, and eventually it will fall, and it won’t be pretty. Do yourself a favour and switch to a more future-proof solution, now that you still have proper access to your data. Future you will most likely thank yourself.
Lol you aren’t entirely wrong. You do sound kind’ve like a used car salesperson though hahaha.
The user who responded to you is basically my response though. Plus, I’m used to fixing this house of cards, even if I cry whenever it bsod’s or whatever.
Between 2019 and 2023 I troubleshot so many things to try to figure out what was breaking in my computer. Over that time, I rma’d almost all of the core hardware because it failed or seemed like it was failing. The last piece I rma’d was my gpu, an EVGA 3090. It was causing so many problems. Yet, my partner’s EVGA 3080 still runs fine to this day.
My point is, it’s not always the OS. For me, it’s because of a lot of sketchy shit I do and old hardware that barely works. For example, I’m using a VERY nice but very old firewire audio interface.
Also, I’m not as worried about losing my data, that’ll exist on drives and can be pulled off.
Lol yeah fair point.
My main concern was that a fair amount of people tend to customize their windows install into oblivion and end up loosing their data. Did it myself before I learned my lesson 😅
Took me a while to realise Linux was the solution all my issues, been very happy since! But ofc, whatever works for you is good enough, sounds like u know what you’re doing.
I have rainmeter and wallpaper engine, but those things are so unreliable resource hogs and old, that, while neat, aren’t worth spending any emotional energy on. But again, I have, mostly just to see the limits of the thing, and have some nifty tools out of them. I wouldn’t be that beat up if I lost them at this point, and probably wouldn’t install them again unless great strides were made in the underlying tech and efficiency. But brute force pinging stuff that wasn’t made to be pinged ten times a second is just… Maybe in the future, core systems will have data i/o just for this sort of stuff XD who am I kidding?
Linux would definitely solve some of my issues, but introduce like a million others. It’s just an os (or rather, a variety of versions of an os), just like mac or windows. I hold no zeal for any, and do know in my heart that someday, I’ll likely switch to Linux and put forth the energy. But I’m not that young anymore and there are things I have to do, mountains to climb, grass to feel, people to taste, politics to survive, teeth to brush, all kinds of mortality to fight, shows to watch, music to make, parents to try to love before they’re gone, siblings to fix, friends to make, places to go… Linux is pretty far down that list.
It’s on the list, just… Not that high. Higher than MacOS hahaha
If you have a 10 year old Linux intall you wouldn’t want that to go away either. That has nothing to do with the OS.
Stop being so “aggressive” against people’s and let them have their own opinion. It is not helping to get others to get to Linux. What does help is to show people how it can be done.
But no one keeps a 10 year Linux install when upgrading is a trivial command. That’s the whole point.
Also, this is advice you’re already being given for free, no one here cares if you stay on Windows or not. No one is going to help you more than that.
You are missing the point and for some reason bring up the non updating.
It’s about the switching from something you know and customized for 10 years to something new.
The first mistake is not keeping your 10 year old installation updated
There a Debian installs that are like 20 years old. They have been continuously updated over time.
An old install doesn’t mean no updates
Yeah I’m not really sure why an old install means not updating it or anything on it.
Also, just because it’s windows, doesn’t mean there aren’t package managers. And I DON’T want to update a ton of stuff for production reasons. I’m not sitting over here blindly. Are there are a lot of Linux users that think Windows users are morons or something?
That’s not even a discussion if it was or wasn’t update
If there was a way I could like magically gender-swap my pc from Windows to Linux, I’d absolutely try it.
Like take all the programs, and scrape all the internal data and stuff and move it to Linux. Take all the settings and logins and customizations from my ide’s and workstations and drives and directories and symlinks and apos and drivers.
God. That would be like a dream. Just press one button, and copy a system but switch its fundamental kernaling and systems or whatever. Honestly, that ease and already-built-up-systems-and-tools is part of the reason that I LIKE Windows.
Some Linux distros have things like that, but they fall very short of the robustness of windows’s job in these regards. Like, except for all of the MASSIVE GLARING PRIVACY AND ETHICAL PROBLEMS that the windows 11 upgrade kindly offers without compromise, it kind of is like that magical switch.
But you’ve gotta realize HOW much I hate having to tear things out and add things and set them up again. It’s a MASSIVE waste of time to me. And switching to an os that has less options and comes with none? That’s madness to me. Absolute madness. Things running through my head about how to get certain midi controllers to work and stacking audio apos on each other reliably with minimal lag and routing in software… Ughghh… It was hard enough in Windows. I’m traumatized. And I bet random things all over just wouldn’t work.
I’m one of those people that feels limited by my 32thread 128gb ram system. My next build will likely be either epyc or threadripper. Unless the tech (hardware) industry is just nuked from orbit by our inbred nazi conservative drooling overlords. Times are a’ changin’.
Dual booting Linux and Windows can really help to move your operation to Linux. I have been using Linux machiens besides my main for a while and now in the proces of moving to Mint. I won’t be able to move everything and some things are more annoying (like Nvdia GPU drivers), but the vast majority is easy. Especially because most people these days work in browsers for the most part. I (and probably you from the sound of it) are one of the few who still use a lot of desktop apps.
Running an os, then a browser, then everything through a browser feels… Like an unnecessary middle man.
Slowly switching may be an option for you. You could always dual boot a Linux distro alongside your current Windows install.
Then once you have Linux running with all your apps, etc, you can see what you’re missing from your Windows install and if you can move stuff over, etc.
You could even try it in a VM, see if you can set it up in a VM to how you like first before doing the whole install, may or may not be a bit easier (easier in the sense that you can directly compare whatever you do on Windows with the Linux install in a vm).
Why would they want to switch to Linux if Windows works for them?
It takes a lot of effort
They don’t have to, I was simply providing a solution to a problem they don’t have.
If they want to, but can’t because of they decade old configurations, this solution could ease the process or allow them to figure out if it’s even a possibility.
Basically just letting them know they can try it without destructing their existing Windows setup.
That’s a totally valid path. Which I kinda already do. I have a few distros that I either vm or use as repair/emergency spaces because they’re different and so reliable. Oh what’s that? The index of my os drive is corrupted because I did something stupid? UBUNTU TIME.
But honestly, the amount of pirated software that I’ve gotten to work and all my sql databases and workstation software and licences that work are things that I probably can’t get again. There’s so much stuff. Like I have an installation of postman with almost a decade of just temporarily saved api settings, or that all of my vsts are all setup nearly exactly as I want, or that my Firefox has the css and extensions and settings in those extensions set. That stuff just doesn’t sync.
I could maybe go through and methodically cut out each and every thing, but chances are, you really can’t, it won’t translate, and I’ll forget all kinds of stuff. I’m honestly panicking about losing windows 10 at the end of this year. I REALLY don’t want to switch to windows 11 and deeply deeply hate Microsoft for taking back their word that windows 10 would be the last windows. I’ll never forgive them for that, even though I basically knew they were going to.
Anyways, your idea is a good one, but I’ve already tried it and several distros. I probably won’t switch to linux or mac os because there’s just too much obscure stuff that I use that is either not on Linux/MacOS or is so old that I’m using compatibility and will never ever be updated. I really have tried to use linux before, even the big main distros and the really heavyweights.
Unreal, unity, wwise, visual studio, cubase, protools, flstudio, and a bunch of other editors and stuff that I use all the time, including all kinds of bullshit in ms office (like api extensions and inter-database calculations and backend extensions some that I’ve written!), either don’t have support or the support is worse that it already is on Windows. I’m already trying to keep from blowing my brains out with windows things and keeping them stable. I already have waayyyy too much work to do. Switching os’s is like… Fuck. I don’t have the time for that.
There is no good os for me. They are all all shit. But right now, the one I’ve got, and all the work I’ve put INTO it, is the closest.
Trying to get me to switch to Linux is like going up to the front door of a mad wizard’s lair or castle or something, and being like, “Have you thought about perhaps you might want to build a new house? Our construction company that builds these nice little boutique custom homes could help you with that. We use sustainable, green, all kosher materials, and you can build it however you want!” Like I’m sure for other people that would be great. Or if mine ever explodes and I have to start over (it already regularly explodes).
I’m lucky all the apps I use worked on linux when I swapped over, native or otherwise (through wine).
Sounds like if you fully migrated over, you’d have to give up quite a lot of software and relearn different tools, which is probably close to impossible (given the ones you listed).
Hope the Windows 11 transition is at least a smooth one for you!
Does the steam deck come with socks?
There isn’t some magic to this. Someone puts out a game thats as popular as say bg3 but doesn’t run on steam deck and all these memes will go away overnight. Just hope that doesn’t happen.
Well, I feel like the Steam Deck has partially positioned itself as just a convenience device. I imagine quite some folks have it in addition to their (Windows) gaming PC and just use it on the couch or when travelling.
In particular, the genre most likely to cause problems are competitive games (because anti-cheat freaks out when it notices slight differences compared to real Windows). And it wouldn’t be my first thought to buy a Steam Deck to play those, simply because the screen is small and the primary controls aren’t mouse+keyboard (even though you can of course dock the Steam Deck)
I got both. Of it doesn’t run wel on the deck, I just stream it from the PC.
Oh my god! I thought I bought a gaming handheld but i bought… communism!
Excusme sir, the word is now wokeness/wokeism.
Fuck, if it’s easy to mod games and run script extenders, I’ll be in-Stalin it this week.
I replied one too deep. Fuck.
I replied one too deep. Fuck.
I’m collectivising this comment, this is now our mistake, comrade. 😉
I don’t understand the comparisons people make between OSS and comunism. Comunism is a flavor of old-world authoritarianism, based upon the idea that mankind is incapable of choosing the right thing, so the right choice is instead mandated by law. OSS’s emhasis on freedom, choice, and the lack of any kind of governing authrorty or social dogma, as well as the inherent trust in the majority public to choose the right (to donate or contribute) has a lot more in common with liberalism than comunism.
Just a heads up, you were lied to about what communism means.
Who lied?
People richer than you and their useful idiots.
Society broadly. 🤷
The oligarchs in particular paid the propagandists to brainwash everyone
Well that’s rather indeterminate.
Mostly because it’s dependent on who told you “Comunism is a flavor of old-world authoritarianism, based upon the idea that mankind is incapable of choosing the right thing, so the right choice is instead mandated by law.”
A good working definition of the ideas of communism is democracy of the work place and the economy. As it stands work places are dictatorships run by bosses that effectively have unilateral control over all choices of the company. Socialism and communism are built on the idea since workers are the ones actually doing the work that make the money and bare the brunt of the choices, they should be the ones making the choices.
Really it’s actually capitalism that supposes people are too dumb to make their own choices or know how a business is run, and thus shouldn’t have say over company choices.
Really it’s actually capitalism that supposes people are too dumb to make their own choices or know how a business is run, and thus shouldn’t have say over company choices.
Really it’s actually that businesses with that structure tend to perform better in a market economy, because no one forces businesses to be started as “dictatorships run by bosses that effectively have unilateral control over all choices of the company” other than the people starting that business themselves. You can literally start a business organized as a co-op (which by your definitions is fundamentally a socialist or communist entity) - there’s nothing preventing that from being the organizing structure. The complaint instead tends to be that no one is forcing existing successful businesses to change their structure and that a new co-op has to compete in a market where non-co-op businesses also operate.
If co-ops were a generally more effective model, you’d expect them to be more numerous and more influential. And they do alright for themselves in some spaces. For example in the US many of the biggest co-ops are agricultural.
Your understanding of communist ideas are on a par on your spelling of it.
I don’t understand the comparisons people make between OSS and comunism.
It shows.
heads up, neither USSR nor China were ever communist
Comunism is a flavor of old-world authoritarianism, based upon the idea that mankind is incapable of choosing the right thing, so the right choice is instead mandated by law.
You know capitalist nations also have laws, right…?
Seems I alerted the hoard, lol
There is a vast difference between communism the theory and communism the real world application as it occured in 20th century.
If a theory and every attempt at real world application of a theory yield wildly different results, shouldn’t that suggest something in the theory is deeply flawed?
It’s a joke because Bill Gates once called it that. Nobody actually thinks that other than some tech bros that are high from huffing their own farts.
Which is ironic now that they have WSL, And Azure
Communism is a classless stateless moneyless society based on the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”
Removed by mod
It’s working, I know people who don’t even own a steam deck who are considering swapping to SteamOS once it’s available for desktops.
I’ve told them they don’t need to wait and can get a similar or better experience with distros that are already available, but steam’s name is gold for a lot of people and it seems like the only option they’re really interested in.
Knowing that with Steams’ support of Linux through proton means a vast amount of games just work out of the box was enough for me to switch to EndeavourOS.
I’ve been on it for a week, and I’m so sold.
Yeah, I had mostly stayed away from arch based distros after having a really bad time with Manjaro. But hearing the Steam Deck’s version of SteamOS was switching to an Arch base got me to try Endeavour on my desktop, and I’ve been using it ever since.
Manjaro has been one of the worst Arch-based distros I have used so far. It broke constantly, where normal Arch wouldn’t. Also, it’s just not a good look when their website certificate runs out and they tell users to turn back the clock a few days until they fix it (archive link, changed to this). Also it expired again a year later (archive)
Same. (Are you me?)
I am indeed you. You, or rather we, are having a mental breakdown due to the tumultuous journey of installing and using an Arch based Linux distro.
Jk, I just hit install and it worked. Pretty nifty. Don’t forget to eos-update!
While this would be great, it’s also a little unfortunate, since the general desktop experience on Steam Deck is IIRC currently a bit below other comparable distros, and I’d hate for people to get an incomplete picture of what the Linux desktop experience can be like. Hopefully the time that’s led up to the wider release of SteamOS has been spent on getting that desktop experience up to snuff.
Desktop experience is just KDE, only part that I’m worried will trip people up is it being immutable. Usually that’s fine, but occasionally you run into an issue where something doesn’t work because of flatpak sandboxing, and it can be confusing how to overcome it.
And there’s stuff that just can’t be made into a Flatpak. Someone mentioned in another thread that they wanted to use Waydroid on their deck, Bazzite has it built in but Steam OS doesn’t - maybe there’s a way to layer it on SteamOS but that’s sort of tricky to do (idk I don’t have a Steam Deck but I run Bazzite on my laptop).
https://github.com/ryanrudolfoba/SteamOS-Waydroid-Installer
Not disagreeing with your point, but at least for waydroid there’s a specific SteamOS installer available.
I discovered if you go down the rabbit hole of nix you can install and use anything you want through nix and it just installs works and is permanent unlike someways of using pacman
Distrobox is also a good option for installing stuff without flatpak.
Gaben you sneaky devil
Buddy of mine mentioned how talking about computers with me always eventually leads to Linux yesterday.
I got a Steam Deck recently and hadn’t dabbled in Linux since the Raspberry Pi 3 like 7 years ago. It’s so much easier with a gui instead of command prompts! And now I see what all the fuss over Proton was about - it’s amazing how many Windows games just work!
You’ve got a friend in horse!
Doesn’t it run on Arch? Crazy to think there’s a bunch of Arch users that don’t say they use arch btw
It isn’t true Arch though, so the Arch forums would never accept them. They would have to go install from scratch to be able to get “I use arch btw” badge.
I use endeavouros btw.
True Arch: you write the image to the usb stick yourself, boot it on bare hardware, and don’t use archinstall. This is the minimum requirement BTW. If you use archinstall you can only use “btw” in lowercase. /s
I use Stearch btw
I eat starch btw
It is but it’s a Valve managed version of Arch. It will get recent packages but not as cutting edge as upstream Arch.
Steam deck was the main draw of moving away from windows after the security updates for 10 end in october
Yup. Fussing around in Desktop mode (aka handheld Arch) got me into it. It was weirdly easy to get Phantasy Star Online Ephinea working with luteix, and that game was easily one of my favorite Deck experiences running on 3W of power lol.
When they bring a desktop version of steamOS to market… it’s gonna be a dark day for MS share holders.
Gnu manifesto + linux
