It doesn't seem like this challenges anything but the market for gaming devices (not general purpose PCs). Is that correct? And if so, is the title ("terrified") a little overblown?
Unfortunately, the potential popularity of Linux is closely tied fo gaming and to some professional and creative software suites.
If SteamOS devices become popular enough, Linux for gaming becomes popular enough, therefore more games will be made for Linux and more people will finally find a way to abandon Windows forever.
So let's say someone made a complete Windows clone that only ran Linux software. By your reply it would seem that the majority of PC users could have their OS swapped overnight and feel absolutely zero difference, right?
I am not sure how that is relevant. What would be relevant would be that I have installed Linux for a few now former Windows users on laptops and they found the end result to be better. They experienced better battery life, faster boot times and faster program launches.
I keep wondering what the market for general purpose devices actually entails nowadays. We see more and more applications move to the web, which means your OS doesn't actually lock users in. The only things for which your OS really matters nowadays that I can think of are games, some productivity tooling like Adobe stuff, and legacy enterprise software.
The compatibility stack Steam has set up to run games also allows stuff like Photoshop to run, so that's also becoming less and less of a reason to remain on Windows.
The market for general purpose computing is Mac. Native apps are still superior to any web based solution and there's a healthy market of consumers who prefer paying for a better computing experience. You basically have three main categories of computer users today:
1. Corporate users on Windows, because the computer salesman bribed the person responsible for purchases at corporate to buy PCs with Windows. These users don't want to even touch a computer when they're not at work. Rather they'll use their phones or maybe an iPad for personal computing.
2. Gamers on Windows, because they didn't want to buy a gaming console (such as the Steam Deck).
3. Mac users. You see them everywhere in coffee shops. They're usually self employed or working remotely.
The other category of users are so small as to be marginal.
You write that you can only think of games, some productivity software and legacy enterprise software as the reason for why your OS would matter. That sounds like you're a Linux user? Linux users have been starved of having quality software for so long, that they've grown accustomed to using web services, even though these are second rate. Anybody else I've met wants to use native apps.
In my perspective, it doesn't make sense that somebody would use a web application for things such as e-mail or calendars or RSS. Why torture yourself with a bad experience, when you can use state of the art native apps for almost anything on MacOS?
> You write that you can only think of games, some productivity software and legacy enterprise software as the reason for why your OS would matter. That sounds like you're a Linux user?
Steam OS, at least in the form that exists on my Deck, is not suitable for general purpose. True, it has a desktop environment, but it's "jailed" - of course with an option to jail break it, but anything you do outside of the user space is subject to being wiped the next time you get an OTA update.
Then again, OTA updates are necessarily only a thing on the Deck and I suppose this wouldn't be a problem on the Steam OS distribution available for installing on other hardware.
> [...] anything you do outside of the user space is subject to being wiped the next time you get an OTA update.
You mean outside of /home? This is actually excellent. Rock solid base OS that can be A/B booted, deliver extra apps via Flatpak/AppImage - this is close to what macOS achieved, minus all the crap Apple has been pulling recently. I'm tempted.
More precisely it would be /home and /var. Persistant changes can in theory also be done with systemd-sysext, but it isn't exactly the most user friendly thing currenty.
Jailed might be OK for the general audience vs technical people but does it come with a package manager that lets you install things such as OpenSSH, assorted open source VPN daemons, email clients, etc... or do such things have to be shimmed in or run from /home or break OS updates? Or do such things have to be purchased or installed through an app store like on cell phones? If so it may still be usable. I rebooted a telco mainframe switch using Telnet from a Nokia 9000 back in the day whilst on call.
This underestimates the absolute hold MS currently has in this space. It's not that they have nothing to fear because the opposition is small, but rather the terror comes from the fact that serious opposition in the OS space exists at all. I think a lot of this site doesn't realize precisely how important easy-to-use gaming is to the popularity of an OS. It's 90% of the reason gaming consoles exist at all, even.
The "desktop" (which includes laptops and enterprise desktop) is the last remaining bastion of windows. Servers, database, cloud computing, AI, supercomputers, tablets, smart phones, TV's... all that was taken by Linux. Every small dent on the desktop should be a cause of concern.
There is a reason azure is their cash cow nowadays.
The question is how much consumer PC purchases are predominantly for gaming, and what the longer-term implications of a slow shift away from Windows in the consumer market are.
