Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.
Is that really needed?
I think what could really drive adoption is if computers with Linux pre-installed was more easily accessible. Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install and then it’s done. It doesn’t need to be SteamOS. Just any good distro will do.
Its become abundantly clear to me over the past few years that Linux is in place where, to get significant share it needs to have a major figurehead. Imagine if all ThinkPads suddenly were only available with Lenovo’s own fork. That kind of thing.
Unfortunateoy, that’s kinda the opposite of Linux ethos, and not necessarily likely to make Lenovo much money.
So the best we can really hope for at this point is a company with the brand awareness of Valve pushing SteamOS into the mainstream. People who play games know and generally trust Valve, so people (like my wife) who are on the fence, or who just need their computer to work without needing too much faffing, could likely trust SteamOS in a way they wouldn’t necessarily trust Bazzite or CachyOS.
Yeah, that’s not at all accessible to the average consumer; they don’t know what a “DE” even is, much less why they should choose any over any other.
Very, very few people want to deal with something other than a ‘just works’ situation.
They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):
Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.
Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.
I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:
And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!
Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?
You forgot the part where the installer fails just right before the end. Every time.
Had this occuring on both my laptop and someone else’s that I was trying to install Bazzite to, which resulted in installing Fedora on their laptop instead (and back to EndeavourOS on my end), and even Fedora’s new installer errored out too. Thankfully the OS was working though.
I am suspecting your 6th point for that one, which even if it wasn’t I consider it a colossal failure on their part because it is NOT TELEGRAPHED AT ALL. I shouldn’t have to stumble upon random forum posts to learn about it, come on.
I tried to go with Bazzite on my wife’s old PC. Fuck knows what happened, but I could not get it to recognise that I’d downloaded the image with the Nvidia drivers built in.
Ended up giving up and rolling Kubuntu. I know Kubuntu and like it. And it works beautifully. Back in the world of RDR2 now, and loving it.
Bazzite is just a shit option vs using cachy. It’s the same goal and work load target. And bazzite manages to just be worse in every respect.
That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.
That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.
I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.
Stop recommending bazzite, just r commend cachy.
It has a steam deck iso. It’s based on the same thing steamos is built on.
Bazzite is literally the worse option and more likely to lead to problems.
I don’t recommend Arch forks as a rule, unless it has fantastic support from the maintainers (e.g. SteamOS curates updates). It’s going to by break eventually, and it’s going to require manual intervention (probably minimal), and users will get mad. Maybe it’ll be fine for 6 months or a year, but it will break eventually.
That’s much less likely with something built on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or OpenSUSE. Those all have solid testing and upgrade rules, unlike Arch, which is basically “works on my machine.” I used Arch for years until I got tired of the random breakage, and now I’m on Tumbleweed which has far less breakage and stays reasonably close to Arch package versions.
My first recommendation is either Linux Mint (I prefer Debian edition) or Fedora, because those have good new user experiences and aren’t super opinionated like Ubuntu.
At least some of the problems I reported about Bazzite are inherited from Fedora. Bazzite didn’t create Anaconda.
Fedora has the problem of being generally fine, but most of the world for the last decade has been targeting Ubuntu as THE Linux distro, so there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora. Way fewer things are packaged in rpm rather than deb. I’ve never seen Linux Mint kernel panic unless I was fucking around with the video drivers, I’ve seen Fedora kernel panic.
The main reason I’m using Fedora right now rather than Mint is Mint tends to have an older codebase, and we’re at a point in PC technology where things like wayland offer support for video and graphics stuff that don’t work well under X11. like my 1440p ultrawide 144Hz monitor sitting next to a 1080p 60hz side monitor. Fedora KDE has it ready to go, Mint Cinnamon does not.
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far. Don’t look for RPMs or debs, look for your distros package, and failing that, look to add a repo tons of people online recommend for whatever you’re using (e.g. RPMFusion IIRC). The vast majority of what you want will be there.
If it’s something you really can’t live without, ask on the forums for your distro, and wait until you get multiple answers from different people saying the same thing. Give it a few days too.
Installing from source isn’t a bad thing, I do it all the time. But a lot of people will trust some random post on SM and then complain that it doesn’t work or broke their system or something (see LTT’s video where he uninstalled his DE by trying to install Steam). Don’t install from source or random RPMs/debs until you’re comfortable tracking down what dependencies you need and are able to read scripts to make sure nothing funky is going on. Many posts online will be outdated, and with Linux getting more attention, malware is a growing concern.
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
Having an older codebase is generally good for new users, since the software tends to be more tested and more people will know the workarounds. Newer software will have different issues, so be careful chasing the latest and greatest if you’re not comfortable sifting through logs to figure out what happened.
EndeavourOS has that kind of menu during the install process. A few screenshots and a brief explanation of each option.
I thought it was nice. It’s something I want to see more with other distros. The DE is what most people will notice about the OS either way.
Some companies sell Linux prebuilts, like System76, but that’s pretty niche for the average person to even know to search for.
Now, if stores like Best Buy had a section for Linux prebuilts, that would reach a lot of people.
The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.
Also Valve will not likely go that path again.