The last version of windows I could tolerate was Win 7. I could find a webpage something like "how to unbloat Win 7" after a fresh install and happily use it.
Linux was a hobby I learned slowly but gaming hold me back and best I could do was dual boot.
I hated everything about Win 8. Win 10 was too demanding hardware-wise. So when Steam bridged the gaming gap, Linux as the only OS was a no-brainer.
I'm interested in the philosophy of open source and I use open source when there is a viable option. But at the end of the day, I prioritize convenience and practicality and Steam is convenient.
I was using Linux before there was a Steam, and I’m still here. You speak as if the “default state of being” is being on Windows.
Disregarding that, why would a single launcher/client/whatever dictate what OS I use? What I enjoy while using steam is not the openness of steam, what I enjoy is the freedom of choice on my home turf. I enjoy living in an age where I can boot up my trusty Linux rig, finish my work, and contemplate three or four launchers before picking one and facing choice paralysis while picking from hundreds of games (yes I’m very excessive and haven’t even finished 0.01% of them) that actually run like a charm.
This is a reality I love and celebrate. This is the year of the Linux desktop for me.
I don’t love the Steam store, but I love Valve, because they made all of this possible. Even if all of the above is incidental in their pursuit to build their steamdeck. At least they did it the right way by contributing back upstream to the FOSS community at large.
Windows 11 is a bridge too far. I’m done with having my operating system being sold to me as a service, or monetizing my usage. Windows 10 was already unusable in any format other than LTSC.
The strides we’ve seen in gaming on Linux are possible largely with Valve’s support, and I might have made the jump earlier if we had those abilities sooner. Dual booting has never been a realistic use case for a computer given the way I use one.
I try to protect my privacy as best I can. I prefer the use of open source software where I can get it. Libre is even better. My reasons are both practical and ideological. But I don’t live in a world where I can reasonably cut out all proprietary software, and I honestly wouldn’t consider trying. There are far more important fights in my world.
I’ve been using it for various reasons for about 15 years. So “familiarity” is one of my main reasons now, but a big part of it is to avoid being advertised to in my OS.
I always wanted to learn. I had a number of failed attempts with Linux back in 2000, 2006, etc. I always gave it a shot every 5 years ago just to see.
I fully made the switch with pop os a couple years ago and it ended up sticking. I was in a better place to learn linux and pop os is just easy and noob friendly. This last time was also spurned on when the rumour was going around that windows 11 was going to have ads right in the explorer. I don’t know if that ever happened but it was enough to get me to give it another shot haha
Mostly smooth. When I jumped onto pop os I think it was the 21.10 version which was good. Only the ng that I never got working was lutris. When 22.04 was released I updated to that and had some weirdness afterwards that I couldn’t quite iron out. I ended up doing a fresh install with 22.04 and it’s been great since.
Nice, thanks. I've been (slowly) preparing to switch, for me its probably gonna be mint at first but if that doesnt pan out popOs sounds like a good fallback.
I use it in some similarities to you such as owning my own OS and supoorting FOSS but as well as not having my OS spy on me. Since I got into the realm of Linux maybe two years ago I have found out about GoG and have been slowly rebuilding my library there and not playing Steam anymore. There are a few games I’ll miss such as Snow Runner but I’ll live. Ultimately I want to own what I have and not be spied upon by so many things now a days.
Steam is made by Valve, and Valve, dispite their many failings, have shown a very strong commitment to FOSS.
Their contributions to Proton have played a massive part in making Linux a viable platform for gaming. Without them, Linux gaming would be stuck back 10 years at least. Back to the dark days of naked Wine and fighting with configs for hours just to hope to launch a single non-native game.
Valve has also locked themselves in with the Steam Deck. By creating a fresh hardware platform based almost completely on a FOSS software stack and by making it open, moddable, repairable, and upgradeable, they have made it very tough for themselves to break away to a proprietary solution further down the line.
All these things cause me to trust them quite a bit. Make no mistake, I’m committed to FOSS first. If and when Valve goes down the enshitification path, (once Gabe dies, sells out, or otherwise passes the torch), I will move off of the platform and only use FOSS games/software and resources like Lutris, Bottles, GoG, etc.
But until that dark day, I will support Valve at least passively. because by committing to so much development towards FOSS platforms, they are locking themselves into it and proving to us that they aren’t just giving lip service to the FOSS community.
I wish Steam was FOSS, I wish Steam wasnt DRM itself, but in a world where things are mostly grey, I personally feel comfortable currently supporting them with my money.
If you don’t like the way Steam works you can always game without steam. Heroic is a free and open source game store front end. It lets you buy games from DRM free online platforms like GOG.
It uses the same Proton compatibility software as Steam. It’s a win win, you can support your favorite game publishers and have a free and open source platform.
Because I want my devices to do what I want, not what Microsoft wants.
I didn’t really have a problem booting windows to play games occasionally until Microsoft decided that my machine must shut down without me telling it to. You can only lose so much in-progress work before it gets tiresome.
Beyond that I’d rather support community driven open source projects, especially my operating system, than keep giving Microsoft my attention to sell.
I don’t really get why some people cultivate FOSS so much that they refuse to install anything that even remotely contains proprietary parts. Of course I understand the advantages of FOSS, but I won’t go against proprietary software. I use whatever offers the best functionality, stability, usability for my tasks.
And that’s actually the exact reason why I use Linux.
MacOS is quite good too, but I cannot afford the hardware necessary for it, plus I hate Mac keyboard layout so freaking much. Yes, it’s possible to get used to it, but only if I exclusively use Mac. Since I’m switching between computers all the time, this is a deal breaker for me. Plus I enjoy the better customisability of Linux. And last but not least, although macOS UI is packed with clever solutions, I still find a KDE or a Gnome UI a little bit more usable.
As for Windows… where do I even begin lol… Let’s just say, it’s way too buggy, way too unreliable, way too much hassle for me. Back in the days, when I started using Linux (about 15 years ago), this wasn’t the case. Around that time Windows was a stable, reliable OS, which worked very well and it was convenient to use. I’m talking about XP and later 7. (Vista and 8 were the poor ones in the infamous good-bad-good-bad-… pattern.) Meanwhile on Linux it was sometimes quite hard to make some hardware work, and the applications weren’t very robust, sometimes they crashed, sometimes the whole OS crashed, and generally the whole thing felt like a hobby-OS.
But things changed over time. In the past decade I haven’t experienced any serious anomaly on Linux, all my hardware work out-of-the-box, and in maybe the past 5 years or even more, I absolutely haven’t experienced any issue at all, not even minor ones. Nothing. This thing is just super stable. You install it once, keep updating it, and it just runs perfectly forever. Windows went the opposite way: my graphics card, for example, stopped working, because Windows deleted the driver during an update, it’s a hassle to set up everything, it doesn’t just work out-of-the-box, it crashes sometimes, it’s pumped full of bloatware and ads.
And I generally find a UNIX-like system much more comfortable to use than Windows, especially for programming. Yes, there’s WSL on Windows - but that didn’t always work out well for me. I could go on and on and on all day, but long story short, the structure of Linux is more convenient and more comfortable to use for me.
So why I switched to Linux back then, you might ask. That time was different: I was experimenting with everything, and at first I used both Windows and Linux, former one being my main system. And as time went by, I slowly got more and more familiar with Linux, and I realized how convenient it was for my tasks. And at some point I stuck with it despite the occasional issues, which - as I mentioned - have gotten resolved long ago already.
I still use proprietary software. I use Steam, because that’s probably the biggest game library and it supports Linux. I use JetBrains developer tools.
There’s this Affinity suite that I would love to use, or even Corel software, but unfortunately both of them failed to provide a Linux version, and I refuse to purchase software that doesn’t run on Linux. Thus I’m stuck with Inkscape (awesome, but always crashes with bigger files), Gimp (I hate its UI so much), Darktable (kinda slow, plus some modules broke in the latest update, but otherwise awesome).
Luckily photo/graphics editing is less than 5% of the tasks I have, so the inconvenience of this area is negligible. For what I mostly use my computer, Linux is the best platform for me.
@netchami@XenoStare I feel like devs who make games for windows and apple should use the open source tools to port their games to Linux, I.e steam. There needs to be some formate where we can play games on the deck that are deck compatible without steam. Hell, without heroic, too.
What you described is not a Linux-specific problem, it’s the exact same on Windows. What major games nowadays are available outside of Steam, Origin, Battle.net or Epic Games? Practically none. (Except maybe for Minecraft and Runescape)
I check for every game if I can get it on gog.com instead before I buy on steam, except if multiplayer would lock me into my gog friendlist. There’s some surprising stuff over there, not only ancient games.
I use it because I’m more comfortable with working with it under the hood than Windows (day job experience). It’s also less of a PITA when it comes to bloat, updates (not just OS, general software too) and telemetry.
I did use Windows on my desktop until about a year ago to be fair, as I didn’t feel gaming was quite good enough - but after trying again it’s brilliant now. No reason to ever go back.
I was already a full time Linux user when steam came to Linux. Most games are closed source anyways, so I don’t see a problem in using a closed source game launcher. In fact as a general point I’m not against closed source, I use NVIDIA proprietary drivers since the performance is simply better, but I prefer open source software which is why my next GPU will be AMD. However the games are still closed source, so getting them from GoG, itch or Steam is very similar, but buying them on Steam gives money to Devs working on open source projects that improve game performance on Linux, so I’ll keep buying from them.
Because I wanted to use a computer and OS is needed. When I got a first computer, I didn’t even understand what OS is. Then researching further, I thought Windows is just another distribution. I tried it, and it was confusing. Linux Mint I immediately liked, so that’s what I stuck with.
No special reasons, I am just used to Linux.
I guess this would be the case for more people if Windows wasn’t the default as it usually is.
What do you mean by peak performance? I’ve installed Manjaro GNOME on my Asus Tuf Gaming laptop and am able to play Steam games with good performance. I set the power saving mode in GNOME settings to minimal, that’s all.
I usually uninstall armory crate and other manufacturer bloat from gaming laptop while using windows and i use high performance power plan on windows. But armoury crate unclocks better high performance modes delivering more power to cpu. Since you have no armoury crate/msi centre on linux you will never know the performance you are leaving behind. Correct me if i am wrong.
You can at least do this by using the performance CPU governor although there is a fair amount of nuance here in that how it’s implemented depends on the CPU and a few other things. In general, it’s a safe starting point, however.
If armoury crate is a CPU overclocking utility, than that is another matter. There is some CPU overclocking support on Linux, although I’m mostly familiar with AMD CPUs and this support differs by manufacturer. This page isn’t a bad starting point if you use an AMD CPU.
Our asus-linux community has implemented support for most of the ASUS ROG models. There’s some TUF support available AFAIK but the focus was mostly on the ROG machines.
Check out asus-linux.org for the software details, there are binary repos available for Fedora and Arch.
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