Linux

Pointless discussion.

"Fuck you Microsoft, I'm moving to Linux" says the individual that would never move if they haven't already

I posted this in a comment somewhere on Lemmy about a month before I moved. It took me a while because I have a chronic illness, a disability, and the whole process takes a lot of sitting at my desk which is quite hard on my body.

Not everyone's circumstances are the same. I get the sentiment you're trying to share but cut people some slack...

Since ProtonDB (and obviously Proton itself, Wine with its own WineApp DB, SteamOS) there is an easy way to check if your favorite games do work. That being said I understand that people are afraid. They might think "OK... well Elden Ring works but what about the DLC, or upcoming Elden Ring Nightreign?" and believe, probably rightfully so to be honest, that because Windows is still the most popular OS for gaming on PC and that game publishers are economically rational actors, more testing and fixes will be done against that target platform.

So... 100% is a ridiculous coverage because it's impractical but IMHO they are not that silly to "want" it. It's just a simpler way to say they are scared and do not want to bother. They would rather follow the crowd than take a risk themselves and be trail blazers.

All that being said now that ProtonDB exists and Valve is actively radically improving support via Proton, that gamers see in the wild SteamDecks popping up literally around them, in flights, airports, waiting rooms, etc they just can not ignore the fact that support is improving enough to have fun. Mentality will change but it takes time and Microsoft is fighting back because despite having Azure as their dollar printing asset, they are just hooked on bundling.

Of you want something you'll find a solution, of you don't you'll find an excuse

I'm finally moving myself and my parents over to Linux this weekend. I'm putting them on Mint and I think I'll probably be using Debian 12.

For the longest time it was games that prevented me from moving, but with what MS has been doing as of late, and especially with them trying to force copilot/recall onto systems/my Win 11 install refusing to get security updates anymore, I went and checked my entire game library on steam against the proton db and found the following.

95 of my games run natively on Linux. 31 of my games are rated platinum. 73 of my games are rated gold. 12 are rated silver. 3 are rated as bronze. 3 are unplayable.

This shocked me a little when I counted it out as this is a huge improvement compared to a few years ago.

The actual difficulties I will be facing are getting all of my music/sound production stuff functioning well enough to use.

But yes, anyone who claims they won't move to Linux due to gaming in the contemporary is either sorely out of the loop or hard stuck silver in a game like Valorant which they cannot bring themselves to drop and artificially refuses to run on anything where it can't have kernel level anti-cheat.

I refuse to let gaming preferences dictate my choice of operating system. I choose my OS first—Linux—because I demand full ownership of my computing environment. If an entity can extract data without your knowledge or control updates, shutdowns, or reboots against your will, they own your machine—not you. With Linux, I own my system entirely. I decide when updates happen, I control what data—if any—leaves my computer, and nothing happens without my explicit consent. My computer works for me, not someone else.

You ever seen this XKCD about “today’s 10,000?”

Your rant reminds me of that because I think you’ve got this idea in your head that everyone in life is at the same point in their journey as you are now. Linux has been on the edge of my mind for awhile but I’m a really busy working person and learning a new operating system seems daunting when you don’t have the experience.

Then I bought a Steamdeck last year and a switch flipped in my head; I was like hey this gaming on Linux and it looks like it is actually doable. Then a few weeks back a misfortune resulted in Windows getting nuked on my gaming PC and I had some free time so installed Linux for the first time and started trying to figure stuff out.

My point is that there are people who are truthfully interested but overwhelmed with life or it’s just not as high a priority to them so it hasn’t happened yet but that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. This approach of “they would have done it by now if they were going to” just seems silly to me. People have lives and we are all at different places in our journey.

Im ngl, I feel like its posts like these that make people dislike Linux users. Expecting every game that you own to run perfectly isn't some insane requirement, its totally reasonable lol. I get that its kinda frustrating people won't ever switch, but lets be real, the only way Linux is actually going to gain new users is by having it come pre-installed on devices. Look at the increased Linux use because it's the default OS on the steamdeck. It just needs to be the default on more devices, and be solid enough that people don't even notice they're not on Windows. The amount of people who will actually go out of there way to switch their OS is so negligible it may as well not even count. So who cares about these people who will never switch, because they probably won't matter much in the end anyway.

--And I say this as someone who has been on Linux full time for a little over a year now.

I've used linux on my laptops and non-gaming devices for a long time, but it took me a long time to switch my gaming desktop over. I've felt i could use linux full time most of the last 8 years (and especially for games since 2020 as i rarely play anything with anti-cheat anyway), but i only went linux on all devices as of 2 years ago when i built a new gaming PC so it required starting from scratch anyway, and aside from a few components i intended to retain for the new one, i could easily drop back to play a game if i ran into problems.

They won't do it, whether they just fear change or think it'll break stuff or they can't bother

Not everyone has the time nor feels the need to just rip and replace on a dime. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple devices to gain confidence. Some people only have a handful of hours a week to play games, so switching OS isnt going to be an immediate priority sven if its their desire.

And I'm not going to lie, I don't hate them or debate with them for it, I just hate the bold lies they tell just to get with the crowd

The world already has enough things to tear us all down, why flip a table and possibly be unable to game for a time just because doing it right away, according to you, is the only way to be honest or whatever. A vocal desire to dump windows doesnt equate to lying. Let people be excited about linux even if they dont make the switch themselves. Maybe their excitement inspires someone else to take the plunge who wouldn't have done so otherwise.

Also, if you felt the need to write this rant, seems like you do kinda hate them.

At least don't lie that you'll move to Linux at a goal post that you'll just move whenever you get close, maybe say that you'll move to Linux when you finally get a new pc with a new disk or something?

even tho i knew i was "done" with the windows since like 2018, I just simply waited until it was convenient to switch. Should i have qualified every conversation where i discussed linux gaming with this? Idk, maybe just let people be excited about something, even if it takes them a long time to get to it.

Maybe they will, due in fucking 2028 or something when they invent a really easy way to use built in Linux tools to move your files from NTFS to Linux and then when you launch steam you have a perfect library of Linux compatible games that are as good or better than windows

Uh... This has existed a long time. Mounting ntfs on linux is rather easy. Even a windows boot disk. Just point steam at the library folder. In fact, my steam library is installed on ntfs in case i ended up dual booting or using gpu passthrough to a windows vm for a few items. If you're gonna sit here and virtue signal about who is a real linux gamer or not maybe you'd at least know something as basic as mounting ntfs in linux...

I switched to linux because Windows10 is going EoL, and my hardware is ineligible for Windows11. It's been fine, once I got it set up. There wasn't any single thing that pushed me over the edge. I just had a free weekend and I knew I had to do it eventually.

I really wanted the install to be smooth so I could tell everyone how great it was. It was not. Somehow it borked itself, and I couldn't boot from the usb stick a 2nd time until after I manually edited a file on it. Then installer hung on the last step, and I couldn't find any answers other than "Use the previous LTS". At least that worked.

"I want to be able to use my expensive hardware for the reason I purchased it in the first place" seems like a pretty solid argument to me.

I mean moving from linux now is a bit like moving from reddit back when they screwed with the api. I don't care really if other people do but its long past due that I move along. Should have done it years ago.

This made me never want to try Linux.

Frankly, I probably wouldn't move either if Windows didn't permanently break my ethernet and WiFi drivers

I think this might be colouring your expectations a bit, and you might be projecting your experiences on to others.

I've said for years that it was gaming that was holding me back from running Linux full time. I don't do a huge amount of gaming, but it is important to me, so for many years it was a deal breaker.

Now, gaming is good enough, even though it's not perfect, and I moved to linux full time around 9 months ago.

People aren't "lying". They just have different priorities to you...

That list keeps getting smaller

Why does it matter? All that matters is that plenty of people do use Linux - literally millions of people. There is a healthy vibrant ecosystem of distros, and devs working on Linux.

I don't care if people aren't interested in Linux. I'm much more interested in ensuring those people who choose Linux are happy because that is good for all.of us.

And the best thing anyone can do is donate to the projects they care about. That helps projects fund development and support. It's much more useful than trying to convince people to try Linux when they have no real interest in it.

Switching from Windows to Linux was a refreshing experience. I’ve never encountered any problems running Windows games on Linux.

The only thing I miss is ShareX.

The games I want: emacs, golang, docker, nginx, prometheus, grafana...