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ZorinOS is catching up FAST and QUICK with out-of-the-box gaming support, many thanks to Valve's bankroll into the problem with Proton (primarily) and Wine (sec

ZorinOS is catching up FAST and QUICK with out-of-the-box gaming support, many thanks to Valve's bankroll into the problem with Proton (primarily) and Wine (secondarily) for the Steam Deck. I look forward to see where developments can go from here, but Zorin is pretty good for a solid amount of games... Maybe not most.

k8svet 2y ago
Give me a break. Its the kernel, drm, mesa, and proton. The distro haw scant all to do with it except a bunch of newbies loudly claiming "new distro" is the best because it includes one single extra package pre-installed or something. I will never stop being annoyed at conversations around distros. Ever.
- creata 2y ago
  I get what you're saying, and I don't know much about "ZorinOS", but the discussion is about people who might struggle to install Linux at all, so having the right packages preinstalled is important.
  - k8svet 2y ago
    Okay. Now they have a distro from someone that doesn't care to respect licensing terms. And an end user who apparently can't be trained to click a few times in an app store... Yeah, let's imagine how they react to their entire system being broken and some rumblings of "well maybe if you change time". Yeah, sure, okay, I'm sure a user that can't install a package will be able to handle that. /s Maybe it's simply because I AM a distro maintainer, that I just roll my eyes at all of this. What's pre-installed is so trivial it's almost nothing to me when I think about why I chose my distro. How fast can they react to security reports? Are they abreast of developments in the Linux ecosystem and adjusting and experimenting with defaults? Really truly? Because even in (my distro) where I can tell you the names of owners of specific areas, there's still some gaps we could cover better. The curse of knowing too much. Or maybe my empathy meter is way off tonight. Idk.
- Tarball10 2y ago
  I think you're underestimating how important the out-of-the-box experience is to casual users. Having Steam games "just work" and being able to do the familiar double-click of an exe file to install a Windows app in compatibility mode is valuable to those users.
- HaZeust 2y ago
  The conversation started, to which I contributed to, was about what's easiest out of the box for casual users. What are you on about?
  - k8svet 2y ago
    "how many clicks does it take to install Nvidia or steam" is not a good measure of a distro. I will stand by that statement strongly, I think. Let imagine a totally-not-real distro that definitely isn't pushed on noobs constantly. Let's imagine that include that said distro has, multiple times, let their SSL cert expire and at least once recommended users roll back their clock. Is that a "good distro" for noobs because it slips the Nvidia package in? Fuck. No. I'm sorry but if the way we handle accessibility of Linux to non-Lijux-aware folks is to just push them to the latest flavor that has the most shit crammed in, well, I'm not sure what we expect the outcome to be.
kergonath 2y ago
> ZorinOS is catching up FAST and QUICK This is a perfect example of a frustrating problem with Linux on the desktop. There is always a perfect distro that my aunt can just use and that never breaks. The problem is that once it was Mandrake, then Ubuntu, then Manjaro, then Pop_OS!, and many others. Most of them fade into obscurity after a couple of years, to be replaced by $shiny_distro that this time will be perfect for non-technical users, I promise! And a year later, there will be another one and everyone will start raving about it and dismiss $shiny_distro for being broken. This does not work. To work with a general audience, a distro needs to look nice, behave well, be good at marketing, and last long enough to establish a presence. Maybe ZorinOS is good, I have no clue. But I never heard of it (and I am following what’s happening in tech in general), and i have no clue whether it will be around next year. So I’ll stay on Tumbleweed, and I still don’t have a really good solution for normal people who might want to use Linux.
- k8svet 2y ago
  I can't decide a tone for this comment. But comments like yours make me want to go make a new "distro" that is just triggered when nixos updates and publishes an iso with Nvidia pre-installed. Lol maybe even do it for every major distribution. Nvubuntu, fedoria, etc. And then we can be done with this? Idk. Like you, I find the "hopping" nature of Linux enthusiasts to be exhausting. it's almost always nearly the same fucking bits at the end of the day. Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already. Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    > I can't decide a tone for this comment. Frustration, mostly. I really like Linux and I think it should be more accessible, but the community keep shooting themselves in their metaphorical feet. > Lol maybe even do it for every major distribution. Nvubuntu, fedoria, etc. And then we can be done with this? Idk. That would help. NVidia drivers are a major pain point even for more experienced users, and yet are critical for something that can be used for gaming. > Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already. I know that, and I am very happy with Tumbleweed, but that’s not really something we can say to the general public. > Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set. A huge part would still be missing: the integration of all these pieces and setup so that they look like something that works and not a Rube Goldberg OS. Something that at least Ubuntu is doing, for all their faults. Look at game controllers for example. That’s another major pain point for gaming on Linux. You can use all of them (the various generations of xBox and PlayStation gamepads that work over Bluetooth, not sure about the Switch ones) with quite a bit of fiddling. OTOH, on a Mac, iPhone or iPad you just pair them and they work, and can then be used with whatever game you want. No fiddling with the package manager, no config file wrangling. This integration work is important for an OS we want everyone to use.

k8svet 2y ago

Give me a break. Its the kernel, drm, mesa, and proton. The distro haw scant all to do with it except a bunch of newbies loudly claiming "new distro" is the best because it includes one single extra package pre-installed or something. I will never stop being annoyed at conversations around distros. Ever.

creata 2y ago
I get what you're saying, and I don't know much about "ZorinOS", but the discussion is about people who might struggle to install Linux at all, so having the right packages preinstalled is important.
- k8svet 2y ago
  Okay. Now they have a distro from someone that doesn't care to respect licensing terms. And an end user who apparently can't be trained to click a few times in an app store... Yeah, let's imagine how they react to their entire system being broken and some rumblings of "well maybe if you change time". Yeah, sure, okay, I'm sure a user that can't install a package will be able to handle that. /s Maybe it's simply because I AM a distro maintainer, that I just roll my eyes at all of this. What's pre-installed is so trivial it's almost nothing to me when I think about why I chose my distro. How fast can they react to security reports? Are they abreast of developments in the Linux ecosystem and adjusting and experimenting with defaults? Really truly? Because even in (my distro) where I can tell you the names of owners of specific areas, there's still some gaps we could cover better. The curse of knowing too much. Or maybe my empathy meter is way off tonight. Idk.
Tarball10 2y ago
I think you're underestimating how important the out-of-the-box experience is to casual users. Having Steam games "just work" and being able to do the familiar double-click of an exe file to install a Windows app in compatibility mode is valuable to those users.
HaZeust 2y ago
The conversation started, to which I contributed to, was about what's easiest out of the box for casual users. What are you on about?
- k8svet 2y ago
  "how many clicks does it take to install Nvidia or steam" is not a good measure of a distro. I will stand by that statement strongly, I think. Let imagine a totally-not-real distro that definitely isn't pushed on noobs constantly. Let's imagine that include that said distro has, multiple times, let their SSL cert expire and at least once recommended users roll back their clock. Is that a "good distro" for noobs because it slips the Nvidia package in? Fuck. No. I'm sorry but if the way we handle accessibility of Linux to non-Lijux-aware folks is to just push them to the latest flavor that has the most shit crammed in, well, I'm not sure what we expect the outcome to be.

kergonath 2y ago

> ZorinOS is catching up FAST and QUICK This is a perfect example of a frustrating problem with Linux on the desktop. There is always a perfect distro that my aunt can just use and that never breaks. The problem is that once it was Mandrake, then Ubuntu, then Manjaro, then Pop_OS!, and many others. Most of them fade into obscurity after a couple of years, to be replaced by $shiny_distro that this time will be perfect for non-technical users, I promise! And a year later, there will be another one and everyone will start raving about it and dismiss $shiny_distro for being broken. This does not work. To work with a general audience, a distro needs to look nice, behave well, be good at marketing, and last long enough to establish a presence. Maybe ZorinOS is good, I have no clue. But I never heard of it (and I am following what’s happening in tech in general), and i have no clue whether it will be around next year. So I’ll stay on Tumbleweed, and I still don’t have a really good solution for normal people who might want to use Linux.

k8svet 2y ago
I can't decide a tone for this comment. But comments like yours make me want to go make a new "distro" that is just triggered when nixos updates and publishes an iso with Nvidia pre-installed. Lol maybe even do it for every major distribution. Nvubuntu, fedoria, etc. And then we can be done with this? Idk. Like you, I find the "hopping" nature of Linux enthusiasts to be exhausting. it's almost always nearly the same fucking bits at the end of the day. Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already. Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set.
- kergonath 2y ago
  > I can't decide a tone for this comment. Frustration, mostly. I really like Linux and I think it should be more accessible, but the community keep shooting themselves in their metaphorical feet. > Lol maybe even do it for every major distribution. Nvubuntu, fedoria, etc. And then we can be done with this? Idk. That would help. NVidia drivers are a major pain point even for more experienced users, and yet are critical for something that can be used for gaming. > Great, you know how to use the package manager? Everything you like about NewShinyDistro's defaults can probably be hadon the distro you're on already. I know that, and I am very happy with Tumbleweed, but that’s not really something we can say to the general public. > Christ maybe the better approach is my other idea - customnixos.org. You always get nixos, but you get to pre-pick the desktop environment, theme, background, etc, and then it slips you an iso with those options set. A huge part would still be missing: the integration of all these pieces and setup so that they look like something that works and not a Rube Goldberg OS. Something that at least Ubuntu is doing, for all their faults. Look at game controllers for example. That’s another major pain point for gaming on Linux. You can use all of them (the various generations of xBox and PlayStation gamepads that work over Bluetooth, not sure about the Switch ones) with quite a bit of fiddling. OTOH, on a Mac, iPhone or iPad you just pair them and they work, and can then be used with whatever game you want. No fiddling with the package manager, no config file wrangling. This integration work is important for an OS we want everyone to use.