It’s not the gotcha that they think it is. Increasing share of Linux, steam deck or not is progress. Any development or considerations made for the SteamDeck and its Arch based OS benefit the non SteamDeck Linux gaming scene too.
Mostly a stab at Reddit PCMR, Lemmy PCMR has a different vibe.
‘you have to struggle thru a Linux experience like I did or you’re not a real Linux user’
I’ve noticed some posters in these communities have that toxic attitude of superiority and exclusivity–they simultaneously want people to use Linux, but also take pride in their “chops” and look down on people who don’t know as much. It’s along the same lines as those rude or hostile responses to more basic questions. I haven’t seen it as much here on Lemmy, fortunately.
It’s a bell curve. Believe me, after spending my entire work day doing Linux shit as a SRE/Devop/cloud engineer over the last 12 years of my career, the absolute last fucking thing I want to do when I stop working is fiddle with one more goddamn Linux issue before launching a game. True elites don’t give a fuck and just want to play the damn game. You can spot a poser the second they take it too seriously and bitch you out for running vanilla mint or whatever
100% this, the more you know about Linux the less you care about the distro. Realistically I use Arch because I’m lazy and the AUR and wiki are fantastic, but the company laptop came with Ubuntu and that’s what it will keep on running, I have servers running Debian, I’ve worked with devices running some flavor of Red hat, it’s all the same, and whenever I see someone trying to be elitist for running Arch I imagine a 15YO living in their mom’s basement thinking they’re cool because they managed to follow simple instructions.
Year of the Linux Desktop may never be a relevant measure, but it was Steam Deck and Proton that marked the transition for me.
The deck is awesome because it’s Linux
I’d argue it’s awesome because it’s a great product that lets you play games on the go.
The huge win is that its running on Linux, and valve contributes to open-source with Proton!
Bought my child the Steam Deck and that convinced me to switch to Linux. Games were the biggest reason I didn’t make the switch earlier and seeing how well they ran on SD helped me realize most of the games I play, will run just fine.
My understanding is that it implies most Deck owners aren’t using them for anything other than purely gaming, then switching back to Windows for everything else. I kind of agree with that point, sure there are more Linux machines out there, but people are still using Windows over them, if the Deck was a standard PC and people were ditching their Windows machines for it that’d a different story. That said, it still means more people using Linux at the end of the day even if just occasionally and in a very restricted way, make of that what you will.
I think it’s because generally speaking, thanks to the efforts of Valve with game mode etc to create the console like experience, many that have a Steam Deck don’t “use” Linux…they use Steam, they click Install and they click Play and that’s it.
Does it really matter? How many Windows users’ usage just launch a browser and use that, aren’t they effectively not “using” Windows per se?
The point is that these people don’t care or might not even know it’s Linux in the background, the Deck could auto launch Steam in full screen mode from Windows for all they know.
Hell, I’m tech savvy and I honestly don’t care that it’s Linux based, I would have bought it no matter the OS running in the background, for me it’s basically a game console, anything that needs a regular OS I do from my PC.
I would even have preferred to have it run a modified version of Windows because of the 100% compatibility with my library (I’m expecting a portable Xbox to come out at some point and to be exactly that).
My point was twofold: that the type of user that wouldn’t care about it being Linux or not just wouldn’t care either way, and that making a distinction based on… intent (?) is arbitrary. They’d have perfectly counted as Windows users if the Deck was a Windows machine, after all…
That’s right. Had Steam Deck run Windows, or even for those that install Windows and join the survey, they would be lumped in with the Windows metric and nobody would care as it would be a drop in the ocean.
Linux is the underdog, always has been, maybe always will be. So any uptick in metrics is far more significant than a twitch in the Windows numbers and gets a more exciting response. I think the problem is many don’t see it as true adoption when Steam Deck has such a console-like experience for a lot of users…for the naysayers it is like including PlayStations in the survey and saying FreeBSD users are everywhere. Technically yes, but also no, right?
That doesn’t make a great example because you don’t even have the option to exit PlayStation and use BSD, but I hope it gets the idea across.
Sure and that’s why I think they should be in their own category (no matter the OS)
People are buying a game system that uses Linux. They aren’t choosing Linux, and most of them aren’t using it as an operating system of any sort aside from gaming. So yeah. It only half counts.
Because they are more concerned with the fact that devs aren’t making the games for Linux natively in most cases than they are with if you can play most games on Linux.
I’m more concerned with native Linux ports often being worse than windows in terms of performance and support, succumbing to disrepair years later
Yeah I don’t get the argument either. Sounds like some Microsoft-bros not wanting to see a 3rd option for OS’.
Am I the only one, who thinks Linux gaming is a Valve/Steam walled garden?
It’s more of a white picket fence than a wall.
