Year of Linux on the Desktop
Year of Linux on the Desktop
2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago
I don't think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore
People don't care about security until they get hit. Source: working in IT for 10 years.
And then suddenly they care a lot and do all the wrong things for wrong reasons because they know shit
I see it more in: people won't switch for security reasons if it means giving up usability
Even IT people don't give a shit about security until it's way too late. Source: getting out of a job where the median age of a server is around 3-4 years old with no updates and runtimes hard installed outside repositories.
And I bet they blamed you when it went to shit
Nvidia gpu drivers wont even install on win 7 anymore. That by itself causes huge performance issues on new games that have driver optimizations.
Probably the same story for amd drivers
Why would you need new Nvidia drivers in Windows 7 if every new game released requires Windows 10 or above?
Isn't SteamOS based on Arch? Did I miss something?
the way SteamOS works is extremely different to how a regular Arch Linux runs so I wouldn't really conclude anything from that
it just shows how little the underlying distro matters
It's based on Debian.
There's this certain subsection of Win7/8 diehards that absolutely confuse me. It's one thing to keep using them on old systems, but I've seen a few people posting about their brand-new PC, equipped with RTX 4090s and 13th gen I9 processors, who are adamant on running those outdated operating systems as their only OS. Such a waste of money.
Nah I think it's just that windows 7 and 8 was and still is quite literally one of those ones where it hit the sweet spot between good UI and UX and actually having huge range and compatibility straight off the bat. Plus everything was pretty smooth back then, but hell, nobody ever says how many viruses and dumb apps were floating around for Windows 7x32 and x64
I think they do by proxy since they only distribute it via .deb (and with Steam of course) and all games in the store that have a native Linux version mention some kind of Ubuntu version in their requirements as well. Which is funny since the Steam Deck doesn't even run Ubuntu.
.deb are the Debian package format. Ubuntu is actually a Debian derivative, among others, which is why they use the same format. Debian lists a few of those derivatives in their docs: https://www.debian.org/derivatives/
Here's my Debian setup for gaming: https://lemmy.world/post/9543661
https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/pool/steam/s/steam/
They have a tarball also, which is what the Arch PKGBUILD uses and probably other distros.
Valve releases Steam as Flatpak too
The way steam works for package maintainers is basically "ok we need at least kernel xyz+, graphics drivers, valve already packaged the rest". Supporting it is trivial unless you insist on replacing libraries steam includes as runtime with your own versions, which you shouldn't. It's kind of its own user-level distribution in a sense.
I think there have been some small groups making their own security patches for windows 7
To be fair they've got enough market share to start a distro they got enough market share to be platform agnostic
They already have their SteamOS, which has 43% of the Linux market share on Steam (I guess almost all Steam Deck)
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linux
SteamOS isn't included in the combined numbers, but comparing it to Arch which is only 0.15% of steam, the deck is <1% of the total.
I actually quite like the read only incremental update model of SteamOS combined with flatpak. It makes the OS a lot simpler and I rarely ever change the OS much outside of apps that I can install in home or with flatpak. And if you have special hardware, you are probably already looking at other distros anyway. There is enough choice.
Yeah, Windows 7 is very old. It's definitely a concern. I keep him highly firewalled on the network so that hopefully he won't get hacked.
I usually play on Debian, but when I contacted Steam for support regarding Proton, they said they only supported Ubuntu or Steam OS. Since Steam OS isn't currently available for PC, that means Ubuntu.
And yet the Deck uses Arch...