(note: this ended up being long, but I promise it’s worth it to read)
Learning to use Linux is as easy (if not easier) than when you learned to use Windows, and you probably did that when you were younger, even less experienced with technology, and didn’t have the benefit of comprehensive online help resources.
To start, the main thing to know is that unlike Windows or MacOS, the Operating System “kernel” (the bit that actually handles the core tasks of an OS which allows software to run on your hardware which you don’t ever need to understand) does not have many of the usability features you associate with Windows or MacOS such as the Desktop Environment, default programs, apps store, etc.
Instead, Linux comes in different **“distributions” (“distros”)**which facilitate all these things. So it’s more accurate to think of a Linux distro as analogous to “Windows” or “MacOS” rather than just Linux.
The awesome thing about this is that while they’re all similar enough that almost anything you learn will be applicable to all of them, the variety of options means you can find one that works well for you. So when it comes time to try Linux, here’s what to do
Pick a Linux distro that is super non-tech user friendly. If you want to have it chosen for you, just “Linux Mint” (but also look into “Pop OS.” Both are very user friendly)
Search for “How to install <name-of-linux-distro>” on the Internet
Follow the most official guide you find
Done.
Then, once it’s installed, any time you want to learn how to do a thing on it that isn’t intuitive to you, try the following in order until you get useful results:
Search for "how to do <thing-to-do> on Linux"
Search for "how to do <thing-to-do> on <your-linux-distro>"
Make a post on a distro-specific subreddit, Lemmy community, discord server, etc asking how to do the thing
Realistically, #1 & #2 should solve all your problems unless you’re doing complicated stuff, but #3 will almost always solve the rest.
Also, welcome to the club! You won’t wanna go back, trust me :)
The reality is that those people just run Windows 10 (or even 7) until WELL after updates have stopped being pushed. There is a narrow window of people who care about updates who won’t upgrade (because EOL for Windows 10 is 2025), but they are very much the minority.
And of those who care about gaming? You are likely already running “ps4/x1” levels of hardware and we are going to be seeing the refresh SKUs late next year (probably). So it is even more likely that an upgrade will occur.
That said: Linux Mint is pretty much plug and play for most people. Hell, I reformatted my parents’ laptops to Linux Mint and they still think they are running Windows but I have fewer weekends of “Okay, time to do tech support until they start blaming their viruses on jewish space lizards” because they can’t break it. And with the ever bigger push for Steam Deck support, most games, once you enable proton (which is a checkbox), “just work”.
Can’t forget Apple pissing off all their devs to the point that there’s so few popular games supporting Mac now. And older games don’t work because they killed the backwards support.
It is also 1.96% versus 1.84% so it is largely “meaningless” and could just be the noise of when people get the hardware survey pop up.
But this is still actually really good. I finally switched my primary gaming over to Linux a few weeks back. And a big part of that is the Steam Deck. Because, while I was going down the list of my top games on ProtonDB, I had to keep reminding myself “Of course that works on Linux. I literally was playing it on my Deck on my deck the other day”.
And this is good. Because I still don’t think there is a good reason for developers/publishers to even care about linux desktops. But if they care about the Steam Deck then we get that for free.
Me neither. But it makes sense. In some countries there are a lot of OS X users.
Just like there are a lot of iPhone users. Generally they are users that get a Mac the same way they get an iPhone. It’s from Apple. It looks like premium hardware. And it seems simpler to use than the alternative (Windows).
They don’t get the Mac for gaming. They don’t care about the GPU at all. But considering there are many users if just a few of them decide to try the MacBook to play some light game they can put a good number in the steam survey.
I was thinking about people with basic software knowledge and 0 hardware knowledge. That also never used Linux. This is why I excluded Linux. I consider Linux a bit more advanced.
I am kind of the opposite. I always assumed there were a decent number of mac users. If only just people using work or “school” laptops to play a few games.
This makes me really happy to see. Desktop Linux is fucking amazing nowadays. Gnome and KDE being as excellent as they are, Flatpak massively simplifying package management for end users, and Pipewire being Pipewire have all gone a long way in making desktop Linux more easily approachable and incredibly stable. If I’m allowed to be controversial, I’d include Wayland in that list as well.
People meme on electron, and I think most of it is deserved, but it does make a lot of stuff way easier for devs, and that means more software for users. There’s a reason it’s so popular.
Yeah, but as far as I know, if you want to run Linux applications, they run in a virtual machine after you enable and download Linux support in ChromeOS. Otherwise you are limited to the Google Play store.
How much of that unknown is linux tho? I feel like linux computers are most likely to be unidentifiable (ignore the 5 ppl who use templeOS and freeBSD)
The bump in Unknown is Windows. If I recall correctly, there was a Windows update (in March, I believe) that caused it to stop registering as Windows with the site. A subsequent update fixed the problem. That’s why, if you look at another chart on the site, you’ll see an equivalent increase in Unknown as Windows decreases during that same time period. Then it reverses after the update.
This isn’t the whole reason, and likely only a small fraction of it. There are a whole lot of other OSes that don’t fit into these categories, or that simply refuse (on purpose) to share their OS type. That wouldn’t be Windows.
I edited to include the chart I’m talking about (here). It includes a section for Other as well. I’m not saying it’s the whole picture, but it’s the reason for that bump in Unknown which may be increasing the overall percentage depending on when that data in the OP was pulled.
I usually install updates as they pop up: drivers, apps, whatever. Between the 2 days of TF2 working and then TF2 not working, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any real updates.
I’d recommend installing the flatpak. Tf2 stopped working for me when I upgraded to fedora 38. The flatpak seems to fix whatever dependency issue is causing it. It also fixes portal 2 and Gmod cause those also stopped launching on f38.
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