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This would have been cool 10 years ago, but nowadays it feels more like rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship. Windows is becoming more and more locked down,
by weberer 4y ago
This would have been cool 10 years ago, but nowadays it feels more like rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship. Windows is becoming more and more locked down, with increasing difficulty to disable the bundled bloatware. And every new update runs the risk of completely undoing all these customizations. Not to mention the MS legal team could pull the rug at any second. All this effort would be better spent on a Linux gaming distro such as SteamOS.
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoWhy? Windows is what most gamers use and need
- falcor84 4y agoI get "use", but why do gamers "need" Windows?
- jahnu 4y agoGraphics drivers
- pjmlp 4y agoDirectX for starters. NVidia and AMD usually design their GPUs together with Microsoft, OpenGL and Vulkan then play catchup with extension spaghetti until some subset of it gets available as standard feature.
- bpye 4y agoIs this totally true? Vulkan supposedly derives from AMD’s Mantle API. Yes Vulkan and OpenGL have extensions in between major releases, but is that worse?
- pjmlp 4y agoYes, coding against extensions means multiple code paths, hardly any different than using multiple APIs when the semantics from multiple vendors don't match 1:1. https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php https://opengl.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php https://opengl.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php At least with Vulkan they learned why proprietary APIs have profiles.
- rstat1 4y agoDirectX isn't much better with regard to the extension spaghetti. At the very least when you see a OpenGL or Vulkan version you can be assured that w/e that version includes is supported. With DX you can have something claim DX12 support but in reality it only actually supports some variation of DX10 or 11 through the feature level nonsense.
- bolt7469 4y agopretty much all peripheral software (RGB control, anything customization) is Windows-first or Windows-only
- notcowtools 4y ago
- lbwtaylor 4y agoIn addition to graphics libraries, a lot of anti-cheat is still windows only. Many gamers hate anti-cheat, but by popularity many top games require it.
- nivenkos 4y agoMicrosoft is likely to tie future games in to being Games Pass exclusives, as well as using Microsoft Pluton and TPM chips to use remote attestation in DRM and anti-cheat - so you can't replace your OS or bootloader and still play, etc. (like anti-jailbreak checks on phones).
- llanowarelves 4y agoMost computer games only have native first-class Windows support from the developer. OS X if youre lucky. Linux basically never (not worth it).
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoThis can be explained in a single URL: https://www.protondb.com/explore https://www.protondb.com/explore This is a list of games (by default sorted by popularity) and their compatibility with Linux. Some games work great, but there are major games like PUBG and Destiny 2 that don't work at all. Some major games like Apex Legends require tweaking to work. If you're a hardcore gamer, then you need Windows because the games need Windows. Though this may slowly change over time since Valve put out the Steam Deck which runs Linux.
- slipheen 4y agoTo echo a comment I made elsewhere in the thread, one thing that's worth considering is that WHAT TYPE of games you play makes a big difference. Most single player games work well, most multiplayer games don't. Both are very valid ways to play games, but it can give different gamers very different experiences with what's supported.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y agoNo, only if you play those specific, multiplayer only games. You can be a hardcore gamer and not play any of those. There are very different type of gamers out there, don't forget about us, people who play single players!
- weberer 4y agoI feel like I already explained why. It goes against Microsoft's business trajectory. Most gamers don't care at all about privacy or ads. The ones who do have most likely already made the switch to Linux.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoWhat bubble do you live in? There are a lot of games that don't work well in Linux in addition to a lot of other issues with using Linux for gaming in general. For instance: VR on Linux is still a shit show, with only one company kinda supporting it and not doing a very good job of it at that.
- chaostheory 4y agoThat was his point
- weberer 4y agoThe pro-privacy, power user bubble, obviously. The one company that supports VR on Linux you're mentioning is Valve, which lets you use their headsets in any OS with no fuss. They fully support Linux, so I don't really know what you're talking about there. The Occulus line on the other hand, requires a Facebook account and tracks your data constantly. Obviously the overlap of Linux gamers and people fine with the Occulus ToS are pretty small. Conversely, the overlap of Windows users and privacy-conscious people who are knowledgeable enough to modify their OS is also very small.
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoIt may surprise you how many people use Linux and have a Facebook account or an iPhone. You seem to have conflated a standard Linux user with a staunch privacy advocate. There did used to be a strong corrlation, but as lack of privacy becomes more normal, and young people grow up in that world, that lessens significantly.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoEven if you accept that only some models of Vive and Index really work... > They fully support Linux No power management for base stations, the Index camera doesn't work, asynchronous reprojection causes issues, no automatic audio switching, and a host of other little issues. Yup, fully supported.
- scythe 4y agoI think you're misinterpreting. It's not Windows itself that's sinking, it's the customizability of Windows. As people who care about user control switch to other OS's, the demand for custom Windows drops. Even gamers may simply dual-boot or own two setups if they want customization or privacy — you don't need much in terms of an OS to simply start a full-screen video game. By contrast, XP was very customizable. I used to like BBLean.
- officeplant 4y agoWindows ME + Litestep shell made my old K6 Athlon machine I had as a teen a lot more usable.
- weberer 4y ago>Windows ME I'm sorry to hear that
- officeplant 4y agoIn it's time and place it wasn't so bad. Had I been a wiser 16yo I might have just asked a friend for a pirated copy of win2k.
- toastal 4y agoYes please. The Linux space needs some modernization too with a lot of applications, like Steam, segfaulting on 10-bit color, breaking at shebangs like #!/bin/bash, or some shared lib hell—and that's not even crossing the mess that is Windows-kernel-based anti-cheat systems.
- mariusmg 4y ago>All this effort Effort ? That repo consists of a few Windows Registry tweaks and some bundled 3rd party installers. Not exactly ground breaking engineering that could have been better deployed to improve SteamOS/Linux....
- highwaylights 4y agoI actually feel like Windows has made massive steps forward with 11. I say this as someone who works on Windows some of the time but hasn't had to daily-drive it for a while. The bloatware is minimal, mostly removable without adverse impacts and the UI has improved markedly. Windows 11's support for TPM root of trust is a great step forward, and the settings screens actually feel very logically laid out now. Winget, while not anything revolutionary if you're coming from Linux or even Mac/homebrew, is decent - and fills out a big missing piece for technical users that have missed this functionality. I don't see it as a sinking ship at all, but maybe I'm being really naive (and I mean that sincerely).
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> and the UI has improved markedly Oh fuck no it hasn't. The UI is actually what's stopping me from upgrading to Win11. Win11 is trying to be macOS with its UI, and that's a bug, not a feature, because I fucking hate everything about macOS's UI. I hate multiple windows from a program coalescing into a single icon on the task bar. I hate the task bar not including text from windows. I hate that I can't have a task bar on multiple monitors. And I just generally hate how flat everything looks. What I hate most of all, is that Microsoft has decided to go the Apple way and disallow you from choosing what you want it to look like. There are no options to make it look like it used to. IMO, Windows UI peaked with Win2K. When I used Win7, I used the classic theme. I use Win10 now, and use WindowBlinds to skin it to look like Win2K.
- highwaylights 4y agoI mean, and I’m just putting this out there, don’t you feel a little bit like at least some of that is your own preferences? The one thing you’ve called out that I can’t refute is that the option to customise it to the win2k look has been taken away, but I imagine it gets harder to maintain the further they move from those metaphors (e.g. you already needed to use WindowBlinds on 10). I really like the new UI. The window snapping is far better than it’s been previously. It takes quite a bit from macOS, but I think they’ve left the worst parts of macOS out like the horrific monstrosity of a settings screen and the janky mess of a permissions system.
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