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I was under the impression it was for things that only really work on windows, like game pass or stuff with anti-cheat. IMO, the game mode makes it so that you don’t really have to learn linux to use the steam deck.
I’d argue learning how to use Linux, is in fact more time consuming than putting an installer on a USB, booting from USB, and running the installer from start to finish.
So much so that this is already how most Linux installs are.
Sounds reasonable to me. Steam Deck is an open platform, and Windows is officially supported by the vendor with a driver kit. Why not?
I don’t think the vast majority of people installing Windows on the Deck are doing so because they “don’t want to learn Linux”.
KDE Plasma already looks roughly like Windows 10 and is similar in usage, and Steam Big Picture (Game mode) is completely agnostic to the underlying OS.
People install Windows when they want to play games that only run on Windows. Someone could spend 4 years becoming an expert on the Linux kernel, they could start making custom drivers as their morning puzzles for fun… And they still would need Windows to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the Deck.
I dual boot because it’s just way easier to get some games running from Epic or Game Pass on Windows. I use Linux just fine, but don’t want to have to fight anti-cheat systems if I don’t have to.
People install Windows when they want to play games that only run on Windows.
It’s this primarily.
Secondarily Linux is still a pain in the ass in a lot of ways. I’ve been playing with Linux for a few years now after being exposed to it at work. I love Linux but when I dual booted (Ubuntu) and tried to daily drive it a year and a half ago on my desktop it was a nightmare. I literally came back after one day and nothing worked. Sometimes I’m down to troubleshoot, sometimes I just want games to work. Granted, Proton has come a long way and most of what I try on the Steam Deck just works.
I personally do not know anyone who has installed windows on their deck. Me neither. The usage experience does not get any easier.
That’s really not true.
The vast, VAST majority of Deck owners will never install another OS on it, and the number of people who will go through the trials and tribulations of turning it into a dedicated Windows PC is practically negligible. It’s the same problem that Linux has on desktop, but now the script is flipped.
On top of that, I follow a number of mainstream gaming forums and podcasts, and I’m constantly shocked by the amount of Linux ecosystem talk I’ve been hearing since the launch of the deck. All the sudden we have non-computer/linux geeks talking about things like Arch, KDE plasma, flatpak, systemd, etc. Sure, they aren’t like experts or power users or anything, but most of them were never Windows experts either, nor should they need to be.
Finally, when you look at a lot of the failures of the disaster that is the Asus ROG Ally, I think it’s pretty clear that using Windows on a device like this is neither ideal, nor is it actually a big driver of sales. (From what I can tell, the Deck has greatly outsold the Ally, hardware problems aside.)
I really do hope that dev jam project to create a streaming “gaming installation” of Windows takes off and gets picked up by Microsoft. There is very clearly a market for it.
That being said I also think the number of games not supported is really really low and that makes it kind of a non issue. Still, with Microsoft and their ever increasing interest in the gaming division, I don’t feel too unsafe having high hopes. It just feels like something they could pull off easily enough, why wouldn’t they? One more vector for a license sale.
Well I’m biased as a Linux geek, but it’d definitely be a good idea to make Windows better for handheld gaming. Then again, Microsoft have never been very good at adapting, which is why they fell so far behind in the mobile space. I wonder if they wouldn’t rather make an Xbox handheld?
Still, I don’t think Valve could have made the Deck what it is without leveraging the Linux/FOSS ecosystem. Not only did they straight up use open source software (like KDE Plasma desktop) and existing repositories (Arch Linux), but they also wrote a custom window compositor (Gamescope) and even put patches into the Linux kernel itself. Creating the Steam Deck was a “full stack” job, to borrow a phrase. Valve really put a lot of work into the OS at various levels, and I think the results speak for themselves in that sense.
That’s kinda the beauty of the Steam Deck, no? It’s a pretty open platform. Someone who wants to dig into the system can go to desktop mode and use a full Linux OS. Someone who wants to use Windows for whatever reason can install and use it. Someone who wants to treat it as a console can just stick to game mode and never care what OS their console runs, much like how a Switch user doesn’t care what’s behind Horizon.
Isn’t it pretty easy to get windows on a steam deck? I’m familiar with Linux so I haven’t looked into it but I thought you could just boot it from an SD card.
and it’s very easy to learn to use linux, so the statement holds.
I think it’s probably much easier to follow a guide to boot windows from an SD card than to learn a new OS, even one as user friendly as modern, major Linux distros can be. Just the years of muscle memory alone will probably make it easier to boot Windows.
For you? Maybe.
For the average person. It’s a a confusing nightmare where nothing has the same name and nothing is in the same place and none of the programs they want to use work.
Spoken as someone who has never worked tech support a day in their life.
Not even saying Linux specifically, but you don’t know users. They have issues with things they should already know how to do, let alone learning new things.
It is relatively easy, and I’ve done it from an SD card too. But it does kinda suck and its even easier to just leave SteamOS (edit: leave SteamOS in place instead of replacing it with Windows). Windows runs terribly slow from the SD card and just generally is not optimized for the form factor.
You can use Steam Big Picture mode to make most games work, untill you want to do anything outside Steam. Then it became a mess of installing compatibility programs, drivers, UWP hooks for Game Pass games, etc… It was a generally unpleasant experience.
I have not ever run into this “mess” you refer to, but maybe we have different metrics for what is considered a “mess”. It also probably helps a great deal that a vast majority of my games are on steam, the next most being all the free games from Epic, and a few on the other major platforms from free games on Prime Gaming.
I play gamepass games via the browser. I understand that this is probably the sticking point for many people who would like to install those games locally instead.
Basic personal computer stuff is no more or less difficult on any modern linux distro than it would be on Windows, except that if a person is used to windows they might need to learn new muscle memory and application names.
I encourage anyone who cares to try to check out Linux. The old “Linux is only free if your time is worthless to you” half-joke isn’t really applicable these days-- most distros marketed widely work out of the box, as do most basic “personal computer” type actions.
Sorry, I might not have been clear above. I’m saying Windows on the Steam Deck is a bad experience and the best thing to do is stick with SteamOS. You’re using SteamOS, too right?
Oh man, yeah I think I totally read your comment backwards. It was the “just leave SteamOS” part. I read it as “leave it for windows”, but it seems you meant “leave it on the deck”. haha
Ah yeah sorry, bad phrasing on my part!
No worries! I didn’t realize “leave/left” was a contronym until today!
Yeah, because Linux is a genuinely unpleasant OS to use for anything but ridiculously limited tasks. Windows is preferable in almost all cases.
And what did you write this on, a Android device or a iOS/OSX device?
Unfortunately, yes it’s Android Linux, since my Windows Phone device stopped working, I have been all but forced into using a linux device if I want to make phone calls. I’ve debated on going back to a “feature phone” to avoid it, but those are all Java based, so that’s almost worse on its own. And since the easiest tablet to watch YouTube videos on is BSD iOS, I have one of them too. If the Surface was more suited to that purpose, I would switch immediately.
My primary daily computers are both Windows as a main OS. One of them multi-boots Windows 7 32-bit, DR-DOS 7, and ReactOS. On the other, it’s Win10x64, but I usually jump straight into DOSBox-X or my Windows Me VM/emulator if I’m not doing anything important and modern.
Sir, you are a living meme.
Not sure what your point is, but both of them are not Linux, and more user friendly, comparable to windows.
One of them is not, its iOS/OSX. But its more or less the same, a software guy would call it a Unices. But Android is in every way, sense and form, a Linux.
iOS is a BSD, so it’s a Unix. Android is just a Linux distro.
Technically its not BSD either. It uses parts of it, but it uses a different kernel. Its XNU.
Fair enough. Thank you for helping correct my ignorance here.
I agree Linux is not the most beginner friendly OS, but Windows is also dog water in many other aspects.
If your used to windows and nothing else and you don’t go out of your way to use a windows like linux like zorin os then I guess yeah.
Tried Zorin on a Thinkpad, installed rather than live disc. It ran slower than Windows, had trouble with networking (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), and Wine was unable to run just about anything well. I uninstalled it and fixed my Windows boot loader.
wow. I have been using it for years and its been fine. guess I lucked out hardware wise. Im way to lazy to do a more common linux. sorry you had a bad experience. Its funny to because I buy the cheapest pieces of crap. right now im on an acer.
Ew, no.
Oooooh, a real expert here.
Linux is for industrial/professional work. Windows is for consumers.
Ironically it’s always industry folks who think consumers are idiots for using windows and not ‘learning’ Linux/Unix.
I feel that setting up and administering Linux is still out of reach for most people. But for day to day use? Considering most of that is web browsing? It’s totally there.
I’m actually kinda astonished at how polished the GNOME desktop environment is
I’m actually kinda astonished at how polished the GNOME desktop environment is
Blink twice if you want me to call the police to rescue you.
Same for KDE, in fact, I would go as far as saying that most Windows users could find their way around KDE very easily within a matter of minutes.
I would never recommend a Windows user KDE, they would think this Linux thing is much worse then Windows. KDE simply said is trash, a buggy mess beyond reason and a very poorly made Windows clone.
All Linux interface options I’ve seen are basically crap. Either they look like a Mac, they’re too slow, or they make everything too damn fiddly.
Usually all three.
I think I know what you mean by “look like a Mac”, but there is no similarity beside that there is some kind of slim bar on the top and some kind of app icon thingy elsewhere on the screen. But then you could call Android “Mac” look either, or many of the interfaces designed in the time of the netbook craze which is where the Gnome 3 interface originated.
But ya know what, not even KDE makes me wanna smash my head against a wall until I pass out, only Windows can do that.
Funny. Any time I encounter trouble from Unix derivatives I get anxiety issues.
I’m anxious a lot lately around computers, and I’m only really happy with my older machine.
What issues do you have with KDE? It’s been solid for me for many years. The initial release of KDE 4 was a bit of a shitshow, but they hadn’t EOLed 3.5 at that point yet, and once they did, 4.X was solid.
Honestly KDE 4 > KDE 5. And every time I have to use the desktop on my steam deck, I wanna cry. Thankfully I have to less and less. Basically not at all anymore except for file management, that’s still a sore spot.
That would be fine, except that every professional job I’ve had, the office uses Windows - specifically MS Office, sometimes with an additional program for the industry or Tableau or a CRM. Same goes for every industrial place I worked at as an admin - except in cases where the OS was still DOS on the floor, it was always Windows on the production equipment (usually 9x). This was in the 7/10 transition days too, so it’s not eons ago.
The only place I ever saw Linux in use in an office was a “server” the owner’s nephew set up for a LAN and left running. Whenever there was an actual problem, he came in and rebooted the machine into Windows Server to actually diagnose and fix it. He just didn’t want anyone to know that the Linux side was there so that it had a command line with a bunch of data, so that the uncle didn’t get any funny ideas about fixing it himself.
Where did these misconceptions even come from… Linux is ideal for end users, many tools commonly used in professional work are only available on Windows
