I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case — gaming — for which Windows has a newly viable competitor. It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be switching to Chromebooks.
In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how many of the titles they care about are likely to work.
Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.
Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl
Back to games, there will be issues with either really old niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same publisher/developer might have one of them be available on Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but Enlisted doesn't).
In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1 replacement and some things just won't work for a variety of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional - it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular folks.
This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine and other software like that.
Does that ultimately matter? Proton/WINE etc. create a compatibility layer for Windows on Linux, and WSL/Cygwin etc. creates a compatibility layer for Linux on Windows. If one is cheaper and offers less bullshit, the other one is threatened. It's a moat coming down.
A lot of games run on Linux natively and newer games are using Vulkan. We can't help that the feds didn't go after Microsoft for paying game devs to try to lock non-console games to Windows.
If you search for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8,...., versus Linux, you will find similar arguments being made as prophecy of the great migration.
previously there wasn't an extremely profitable, market leading, privately owned gaming company with a founder that is completely and utterly determined to ditch Microsoft
and share the result of that freely with the world
I am an employee of a well known Fortune 500 consulting company, but definitly not Microsoft, better luck with your search next time.
Microsoft is a company, there is no such thing as honour for business, only money and profits.
Same applies to dumb quotes like "do no evil" and similar.
You're right, Windows isn't the main target platform for AAA game studios, Playstation, XBox, Switch, iOS and Android are the ones briging big bags of money home.
Dunno man, I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for almost 3 decades. It’s been ok for me :) conversely I can’t stand using windows for more than a few minutes - luckily I don’t have to do this often.
If you're a veteran Linux user, you probably know where to look for config files and how to hack them. Trying to use Linux using GUI only, whichever you choose, is awful. It's like the designers copied the worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS on purpose and then added some of their own.
You don't need to hack config files. The big DEs have GUI settings for pretty much everything macOS or Windows does. The only reason it might not seem like it is tutorial websites where it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs.
"it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs"
Yeah, that's the thing. It often feels GUIs on linux are meshed together from at least 7 different styles and paradigms and too often they are indeed made like this.
So in Ubuntu for example I sometimes had to click left to close a window and sometimes right.
What laypersons want, is one single way to do things, that works.
But you just won't get far, without the terminal. That is, things do run pretty much out of the box if you are lucky - until they don't. And then good luck trying to fix it without the terminal. I can parse and usually fix cryptic error messages and logs, but my father (who is a trained engineer, but no english speaker nor programmer) cannot.
Unless of course there is a driver issue. I seldom can fix them and I encountered too many over the years.
In either case, I am lucky that linux exists and I am now off to try out EndeavourOS ..
I get this effect much worse on windows. Right click the volume icon in the task bar and look through the windows you get. There's three different styles dating back to Windows 95!
Flip through stuff on the control panel and you'll get the same mash of code heaved forward from the 90s. It's a bad look, and I've always been so confused why Microsoft doesn't do anything about it. Seems like a great pet project for some nth level middle manager to get sweet bonuses for.
Do you remember the two control panels from Windows 8, where some settings were available only in one and others in the other? One did look quite modern.
I prefer using the GUI, but frequently find I have to hop back into the terminal to chmod/chown some file that's ended up without the appropriate permissions. I think a casual user would probably give up at that point.
Yes. The only problems are that the control panels are incredibly illogical at best (this is one of the things I meant with the "worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS and some of their own), and often just don't seem to work or need to be used in a specific non-intuitive way. Command line and config files are the way to stay sane and get things done.
Why? Looking at top PC games lists of 2022, almost all of them are supported on Steam Deck. All the games I’ve played on there run fantastically well. On a sale I bought Assassin’s Creed Odyssey which is an older AAA game and Steam Deck even runs fine.
The FPS in the top 100 currently most popular games on Steam[0] and their status [1]:
#01 CS:GO - native
#04 PUBG - anticheat
#05 CoD MW2 - anticheat
#06 Apex - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#07 TF2 - native
#09 Rust - Works
#12 Destiny 2 - anticheat
#21 Rainbow 6 - anticheat
#22 DayZ - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#26 Warframe - Works
#69 Payday2 - Works
#78 Arma 3 - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#79 CS:S - Native
Native or working: 9/13
Broken: 4/13
Non-steam or outside top-100:
OW2 - Linux is second class and not actively supported - but Blizzard have unblocked Linux support when issues were reported
Battlefield (all?) - Works
CoD (before MW2) - Works
Gundam Evolution - anticheat
I'm probably spectacularly unlucky as I play Siege, Destiny 2, CoD MW2, Hunt Showdown (#63), and the occasional Fortnite (EGS) and Valorant (Riot), none of which work.
Battlefield 2042 is on Steam but not supported, though I'm not sure if that's the anti-cheat solution or Proton.
Since the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve has made various promises to work with the AC providers to bring support to Linux. So far they have brought support for Epic's EAC, and it seems they are working on bringing it for other titles as well.
With Win 11 I get Micro-stuttering which makes gaming a nightmare. I’ve given up on getting it fixed. I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to accidentally kill their cash cow via an accumulation of small mistakes and a loss of key competence.
M1 Macbooks are alien technology compared to Windows (performance and battery life) or Lunux (professional app support) ones. The main barrier to switch is different keyboard layout — after a month of using Mac as a home PC (switching from workplace-issued Linux) unfamiliarity with keyboard is the main hurdle, especially on non-English layout.
People keep saying this and then run into minor problems becoming bigger problems because frequently used programs end up being unusable or 3rd class citizen, behind both mobile and Mac users.
Unless Linux is braindead easy to use without frustrations, it won't happen. Gamers pay more for lesser ease of access increases.
It's not 'every problem'. People know Windows. People understand most of Windows. They took years to do so, and they still run into problems. Now you ask them 'switch over to Linux, it doesn't have problem X', without understanding the average person doesn't want to invest the time or effort learning anything more complicated than downloading and installing a random .exe (why do you think phishing and malware are so prevalent in their infantile state?).
This is reinforced by most major apps which eventually become cross-platform starting out treating Linux as a 3rd class citizen. For games, Discord and Parsec come to mind, where the former took years, and the latter still doesn't allow hosting from Linux. Nothing about this reinforces the idea of Linux being easier to use. It's the opposite: it reinforces the mentality that Linux is still two decades behind, regardless what the reality may be.
How many complaints form when YouTube pushes a minor UI or UX change? Now multiply that by a few magnitudes of order. That is the problem we're dealing with, and no amount of chastising or belittling Windows users will change that (in fact, it does the opposite). Did people forget how Apple managed to get a foothold in the market despite their ludicrous prices and dev-unfriendly practices?
It's not even this. It's just that for vast majority of 'average' people, they just use whatever OS comes with their devices. "Installing an OS" is an alien concept for most people. So it is automatically either MacOS/iOS or Chromium/Linux (Chromebook), Android or Windows. That's it. And although Linux the kernel features in two of these, that's totally beside the point. The point is people mostly don't even know how to change their preinstalled OS, no matter how irritating it is. If it develops too many issues, they take it to the local tech shop who almost always will reinstall/reset the same OS and give it back.
The only people who use Linux are the tech oriented crowd, including gamers, who naturally tend to be more tech oriented than most. This is still a very small fraction of the world though. And this isn't changing unless a healthy fraction of devices and PCs come with Linux preinstalled. Even then a lot of people will complain and ask for Windows (or whatever) the very next day after purchasing their device.
> People know Windows. People understand most of Windows.
Not in my observation. They get something pre-installed, they click on things they know. I am always amazed by the fact that most don' t have the smallest mental image of how it works.
I mean, this is pretty easily explainable.
People have grown up around Windows. The problems for the most part don’t change over time, so people have gotten used to them and have developed their own tried and true ways of doing something that sidesteps the problems they had.
Switching to Linux brings with it a whole new swath of problems and fixes Windows problems so not only are users seeing new issues, their workarounds now have to be worked around because whatever was wrong in Windows works in Linux. Add to that the fact that most Linux users are power users and instructions therefore lean towards that, and you’ve got a problem that also seems insurmountable to solve.
It’s the classic boiling frog dilemma. Windows has just had decades of heating water to get to where we are.
Many people highly value continuity, if it’s working it should keep working the same way for a very long time. Once a Linux computer is working, even if it’s more work to get it to that state, keeping it working is much easier than with Windows. Using updates to force major breaking changes should be a crime.
