Boots up gaming PC
Windows: “YOU IN DANGER ZONE! NEED WINDOWS 11! BUY NEW PC U SCRUB!!!111”
Load up Steam
Steam: “Hey, I see MS are being assholes - click here to install SteamOS instead”
Reboot PC
Millions of people never run windows again
I’m dreaming but that would be amazing. That would make this the year of the Linux desktop. C’mon GabeN, make it happen!
If Linux had better nvidia support I would swap in a heart beat.
Using Pop for almost 2 years on nvidia laptop and pc, no problem, whats the issue?
…Ok no problem is a lie, but it wasn’t GPU related problems…
I had issues with my specific hardware combo of i9 14900k and 4090 and multi display issues that windows doesn’t seem to have. Though that could just be my ignorance.
Amd cpu and 4070ti super here without issues. I suspect intel being the usual dumpster fire.
Things which are holding this back
- Collaboration with OEMs to provide SteamOS OTTB (Lenovo is an exception)
- Nvidia support. Most gamers use Nvidia GPU unfortunately
- Certain industry-standard software which don’t have a Linux port. PSA: Most people don’t want to learn alt software. Johnny Mainstream is scared of new softwares. This cannot be changed
- End-users suffer from choice paralysis and Linux offers endless choice. Maybe SteamOS can help.
What we know so far, SteamOS won’t be a general purpose OS, so it might not support every random piece of h/w.
We might not have the year of the Linux Desktop, but we can expect 2025-2026 to be the year of the Linux handheld.
SRC: Linux fanboy for the last decade
Choice paralysis is a surprisingly big issue. I’m waiting for the parts for my new gaming PC build to arrive, and the amount of time I’ve spent choosing a distro has been asinine.
But I did make the choice to leave both the NVIDIA and Windows eco systems on my desktop after seeing most my games run fine on the steam deck ( along with disliking windows 11, and NVIDIA ending gamestream support)Distro doesn’t really matter too much. Just don’t get some obscure distro that no one has heard of before.
Plus it’s pretty common for newbies to jump around to test out different distros anyway.
Most of the time, the differences you will see are just desktop environment.
After you have used Linux for some time, then you will understand the major differences between the distros other than the way they look.
If you have any questions about Linux feel free to send me a DM. I’m always happy to help.
Surprisingly for a choice that I realize doesn’t really matter, it still ends up burning alot of time researching.
Intially looked at Bazzite, which seemed great other than I wasn’t a fan of it immutability, I’ve had to remove the read-only property from my steam deck a few times.
Then I looked at CatchyOS/Arch, decided to avoid that as I know I’m too lazy to read notes every update, and while I don’t mind tinkering and fixing stuff… I want it to be on my schedule lol.
Avoiding Debian, my server currently runs it, but I remember it giving me headaches installing older JREs on it to run modded minecraft servers.
So I’m going to try OpenSuse, not for any real valid reason other than the last time I tried Linux as my daily driver ( 2004/2005) it was the first distro that worked smoothly without any driver headaches.
I use CachyOs and it’s been a joy. If you want Debian but gaming optimized check out PikaOS. If you want Bazzite without immutability checkout Nobara.