this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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[–] sun_is_ra 159 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Are they trying to kill windows on purpose?

[–] [email protected] 126 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The sad thing is they know the large majority of users will comply. Most people put familiarity and convenience above their own privacy and general well-being.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Once valve drops better nvidia support into the kernel, and steamos starts coming pre-loaded on laptops and pre-built desktops it's over for their consumer division.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There's nothing special about SteamOS. Linux has been available as an option from several manufacturers for years.

What we need to see is a major studio pushing for Linux like valve has been doing.

Imagine if call of duty or fortnite had a Linux promotion to have a penguin hat. That would help

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There kind of is though. I'm not here to argue it's enough to unseat windows but it is markedly different

From a technical standpoint it's just another linux distro with some nice tweaks for gaming but from a human perspective it has brand recognition, familiarity, a known company behind it. Those things do really matter for adoption. No idea if that'd be anywhere near enough, I'm not inclined to make predictions, but it does have explicit advantages over consumers hearing they can get a laptop with Ubuntu or fedora on it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah I agree. I just don't wanna see more apps made exclusively for the steam deck with SteamOS and winderp. So I feel it's important to highlight it's just another Linux distro.

https://youtu.be/5KYQRk_SIB8 this is what pulled my attention to the matter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's very fair! I was concerned by that video too, though I would point out that if I remember right, the games in that video don't work on non-steamdeck devices including if you install steamos on a laptop or desktop

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

From my understanding of this video. That's because they intentionally locked the game to work on the steam deck.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

What we need to see is a major studio pushing for Linux like valve has been doing.

That's it. That's literally what makes it special. You, me, and half the fediverse probably aren't going to use steam os unless maybe we buy a steam deck.

The fact that there's a multi-billion dollar company throwing money at both it and proton is what makes steam os special. Its what's going to give Linux a unified brand name that every machine can put on their case badge.

Normal people and the companies that sell them computers need that unified brand name. Why on gods green earth, I don't fucking know, but I know that they do. Its how you get them to use shit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Call of duty is a Microsoft game now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

No it's not, multiplayer games with anticheat that hard-locks you into Windows and productivity software with DRM that hard-locks you into Windows is still a thing, if that were to stop being a thing, then Windows' dominance on the desktop might finally be threatened, but until then, sadly, no.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago

The fact that Facebook still exists is proof of this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Also, I will not be surprised if they audaciously disable Win 10 Home edition for security purposes once end of life is reached.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

They already said they are going to charge $30/year for patches. They want recurring revenue from ads in 11 or from you paying yearly for 10.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

I've still got a windows XP computer that I fire up once in a while for the LOLs. it continues to remind me that support ended in 2014, but it keeps working.

I also have a Windows 8.1 tablet that continues to work, and receive Windows Defender updates.

They won't disable anything, stop spreading FUD, that's Microsoft's job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Games. Most of the games I play don't play well with Linux.

I keep a Linux laptop for banking that only connects via ethernet cord while I'm banking. Which is nice, I don't worry about key loggers now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What games do you play? I've been gaming exclusively on Linux since Windows 7 went EoS, and especially since the Steam Deck came out, I've had very few problems. That said I don't play competitive stuff, which is what tends to have anti-cheat rootkits.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. Gaming isn't the issue for a long time. Productivity is. Rantmode

Proper CAD for Linux? Nonexistent, even worse, some manufacturers intentionally make sure you can't use a VM either until you massively pay extra.(Looking at you Dassault) FreeCAD is a shitshow (and that is entirely the communities fault) and no professional competitor has shown any incentive - even though there is a increasing market for Linux in some professional capacities. And the current projects to get bottles/wine/etc. to work are maintained by a single guy (bless him) who tried to do it for multiple systems at once and seems to have given up mostly.

Graphic design? While the situation is a little bit better,it's still a shitshow. No, GIMP and Inkscape are not sufficient replacements for Adobe or even Affinity. They are "good enough" for most things,but they are not nearly ready for production use in any professional capacity.

Office? Yeah. Sadly equally bad. I really really really hate Microsoft and Office. But: They are inherently good at what they do. Not because people get used to it - but because they work. I used LibreOffice since back when it was still StarOffice. (And have used Lotus before that) But we as the open source community still rather fight about ribbons (even though they became the standard everywhere) than get LibreCalc halfway production ready or make proper collaborative working possible. Or get a proper fucking search into thunderbird.

And this is the problem: OSS is so damn up its own ass, that it does not see the bigger picture. We can fight about the kernel allowing Rust, having Ribbons, which is the proper workbench in FreeCAD or about packet managers, distro flavours,etc. In the end what will happen is that the other side will be alienated, excuse themselves from further contributions and, and this is even worse, a lot of possible future contributors will also not contribute. And wow, someone was right and can think he (and it's almost always a he) thinks he knows the only truth.

While the actual truth is held by the others. The ones that don't even are bothered by the whole fucking discussing because they make the money, they influence millions and they are the ones setting de facto standards. And yes, that will mean we will need to adapt.

Including adapting market standards. When 95% of the world does a thing "that way", it's simply preposterous to claim "your way" is the right way, even it's for historical reasons. (Easy example: CTRL C / CTRL V)

Same goes for adapting software. If 10% of the development power of Libre Office,GIMP, etc. would have been used to further Wine/Proton to get people to be able to use their industrial standard software we would have seen much much much larger adoption rates,both professionally and for private users.

Because that is literally what happened in gaming. Once Valve basically put massive efforts into allowing Windows games to be played on Linux - and not into developing native Linux games all of a sudden Linux gaming went ahead. Because it is a advantage for your game to work natively and well on a steam deck.

This is even more relevant for production software. If a CEO/CIO has reached a point where his main production software runs on Linux and he has deployed Linux in his company his next software contract for other software will go towards the company who runs better in their environment.

Rant out

(Nothing personal,mate, I just spent the last two days to get fucking CAD to work on Fedora...)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Blender at least has gotten to the point where an indie flick made with it actually won some Oscars and other big awards, so that pretty much put it on the map as a viable Maya or 3DSMax alternative, so there's that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, Blender is one of the few points where it works. QGIS is the other.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Do you play exclusively esports games or something? It’s rare I encounter a title that doesn’t work just fine on Linux. It seems I barely need to tweak any settings anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I do play eSports games

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

companies do things like this when they feel they have the power in the business/customer relationship and there's no regulations to stop them.

[–] IrateAnteater 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don't know what is going on at Microsoft. I'm starting to think that they are trying to pivot to a completely different business model. In addition to this Windows 11 crap and XBox seemingly being given up on, they appear to be losing their embedded market as well. In the past, if you saw any screen in an industrial setting, there's a good chance that there was the embedded Windows version behind that screen. Lately, all the new products are moving over to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago

They are, and have said they are.

Subscriptions are the wave of the future.

[–] sun_is_ra 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What advantage embedded windows gave to a manufacturer for it to be worth paying license fee for? I kinda feel this part is difficult for Microsoft to compete at

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

It was because developers historically were familiar with Windows and would just default to making a Windows product. You want a POS interface? Your developer is probably going to hand you a .exe and not a .deb. Then your next move is to tell the hardware division to put that .exe into production systems, at which it is too late for the hardware division to argue you just chose the more expensive option without thinking.

This is changing, particularly as many platforms make it trivial to compile for different OSes.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

I wouldn't say that, more just abusing a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah, they probably want to kill it and switch people over to a cloud service with a monthly subscription.

[–] heavydust 2 points 3 days ago

They have done that for years, and every time there is an army of geeks and gamers who look for registry hacks or PowerShell scripts to install Windows anyway. If even those geeks do not want to spend 5 minutes looking for doc on how to install Ubuntu (which is a billion times easier to use than Windows), you can be sure Windows will never die.