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Very good news! I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days, so it is definitely time for Valve to jump in and win some percentages in the m

Very good news! I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days, so it is definitely time for Valve to jump in and win some percentages in the market. We know for sure that Windows shares will not drop drastically based on this move, and that the tendency will progress among years (not months). Now, we have to make sure that Valve is not evil... and I do not believe they are angels they claim since the beginning. To me Valve is like Google was in beginning of 2000s : invest on open-source, have a good fanbase, ... and once you have a significant percentage of the market share / users then you can move evil.

coffeebeqn 1y ago
I think they’re showing us how mature user-facing Linux in 2025 really is. With a little focus and investment on the UX for the end user on top of the open source core OS it has already beat any console OS by a mile.
- Manfred 1y ago
  SteamOS actually does the opposite. It does not use any of the popular desktop environments (unless you drop into Desktop Mode). It heavily curates hardware, kernel, and drivers to keep the platform from breaking and install with sane (performance) defaults for gaming. It doesn't rely on a common package manager. Beside a Steam Deck I also use a Linux PC for gaming and even with 25 years of Linux experience I still struggle sometimes to keep hardware acceleration working after a driver update, sometimes spending an evening of troubleshooting instead of gaming. Certain parts of the desktop environment sometimes lock up to the point where I have to SSH into the PC to fix it. It's like owning a vintage car in a certain way. And yes, I prefer all of that over the Windows experience, but it's not seamless and not simple enough for anyone to just jump into.
  - selivanovp 1y ago
    Quit using Arch. Normal linux distros have no such problems.
    - Manfred 1y ago
      That's a pretty weak argument given that I use Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, and Debian and have had these issues with all of them. You can look for things like "nvidia drm broken" and find thousands of threads of people all types of problems spanning decades, meaning; old and new. Some of them are pure driver issues caused by NVIDIA but that doesn't matter because we're not trying to assign blame, but we're trying to see if the ecosystem is "mature".
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    They have a custom window manager because they had to build a controller friendly UI from scratch since one didn’t exist already. Not because existing DEs are broken. Their package management also isn’t that exotic. It’s a lot like Fedora Silverblue where the OS is an immutable image and user software is installed with Flatpak.
    - Manfred 1y ago
      I'm not saying existing desktop environments are broken, my point is that SteamOS does not show that KDE / Gnome / etc are "mature" because it doesn't actually use them. In the same way that we know all dogs are good dogs but my house doesn't show that because there is no dog here.
- Ygg2 1y ago
  Linux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. In essence Linux suffers from a Lisp curse. Whenever two OS nerds disagreed on something they made their own slightly different distro. This means wasted effort on multiple DE, window managers, app flavors, installed libraries. To this day, almost no two distros can agree on baseline libraries every Linux must have.
  - spookie 1y ago
    I love how in this context people call it wasted effort while in other areas is just competition.
    - ashdnazg 1y ago
      Competition works because the more successful a company is, the more resources it gets (money from the customers). If a free Linux distribution is more successful, its resources don't scale accordingly.
    - Affric 1y ago
      Cooperation/Symbiosis: win-win Predation: win-lose Competition: lose-lose This is how dynamically coupled systems work.
    - Ygg2 1y ago
      Yeah, duplicating/triplicating/n-cating bugs, feature development and support effort, really paid off for the Linux desktop ecosystem. Which year will be the year of the Linux desktop? One, when we get brain to brain communication and abandon desktops entirely?
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    > Linux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. It's only a problem if you think it is. In practice I use at least 3 or 4 different distros on a daily basis and I never have any issue juggling between them. For most of the typical use cases it does not even matter, and on the desktop side flatpak resolves many issues.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  By in essence using none of desktop Linux... Steam Deck shows just how bad things are. Regular users will spend their entire time in very limited application launching other applications. Distant way from any traditional personal computer model.
  - tuna74 1y ago
    There is no "desktop Linux". There is desktop infrastructure and Desktop environments that run ON Linux.
    - akagusu 1y ago
      Please, don’t tell this. People are not ready for the TRUE.
nfg 1y ago
> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days. I’d be interested in hearing you expand on that! Disclaimer: I work there :-)
- Aleklart 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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- petepete 1y ago
  I suspect it's not about Gaming not working well on Windows but that gamers are likely enthusiasts and Windows 11: * is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account * has ads baked in * is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care * comes preinstalled with bloat It's a pity. There's a great OS hiding in there somewhere. A consumer version of LTSC would probably make gamers very happy.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account Gamers probably already have a Microsoft account as its required for games like Minecraft or services like Gamepass. A Microsoft account is needed for Windows Hello to function. >has ads baked in Do you have an example. I think it's more likely the user installed malware if ads are showing up unexpectedly. Gamers are more likely to install malware like this and Windows's security is not good enough to stop it especially when gamers use admin accounts and disable uac. >is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care How is it being forced? I haven't seen it on my machine. I assume people who don't care could just ignore it or disable the feature if they don't want it. Being able to look up help for games using Copilot seems like a feature that gamers may find valuable. >comes preinstalled with bloat Bloat is subjective. Actual performance issues caused by unneeded things running while in games would be. The mere existence of unused pteinstalled applications doesn't necessarily cause problems to gamers.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bitmasher9 1y ago
> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days Have you seen the Microsoft Merger and Acquisition list for the last ten years? They are spending money like they care about gaming.
BlueTemplar 1y ago
Spending billions to buy Activision-Blizzard-King ? I haven't heard about Microsoft giving up on Xbox ? And in the last few months Windows 10 has started nagging (via notifications!) about Game Pass. Valve is a private company led by Gabe Newell. Once he's gone and Valve goes public, Valve will become evil too. And people who relied too much on Steam will be sorry.

coffeebeqn 1y ago

I think they’re showing us how mature user-facing Linux in 2025 really is. With a little focus and investment on the UX for the end user on top of the open source core OS it has already beat any console OS by a mile.

Manfred 1y ago
SteamOS actually does the opposite. It does not use any of the popular desktop environments (unless you drop into Desktop Mode). It heavily curates hardware, kernel, and drivers to keep the platform from breaking and install with sane (performance) defaults for gaming. It doesn't rely on a common package manager. Beside a Steam Deck I also use a Linux PC for gaming and even with 25 years of Linux experience I still struggle sometimes to keep hardware acceleration working after a driver update, sometimes spending an evening of troubleshooting instead of gaming. Certain parts of the desktop environment sometimes lock up to the point where I have to SSH into the PC to fix it. It's like owning a vintage car in a certain way. And yes, I prefer all of that over the Windows experience, but it's not seamless and not simple enough for anyone to just jump into.
- selivanovp 1y ago
  Quit using Arch. Normal linux distros have no such problems.
  - Manfred 1y ago
    That's a pretty weak argument given that I use Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, and Debian and have had these issues with all of them. You can look for things like "nvidia drm broken" and find thousands of threads of people all types of problems spanning decades, meaning; old and new. Some of them are pure driver issues caused by NVIDIA but that doesn't matter because we're not trying to assign blame, but we're trying to see if the ecosystem is "mature".
- Gigachad 1y ago
  They have a custom window manager because they had to build a controller friendly UI from scratch since one didn’t exist already. Not because existing DEs are broken. Their package management also isn’t that exotic. It’s a lot like Fedora Silverblue where the OS is an immutable image and user software is installed with Flatpak.
  - Manfred 1y ago
    I'm not saying existing desktop environments are broken, my point is that SteamOS does not show that KDE / Gnome / etc are "mature" because it doesn't actually use them. In the same way that we know all dogs are good dogs but my house doesn't show that because there is no dog here.
Ygg2 1y ago
Linux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. In essence Linux suffers from a Lisp curse. Whenever two OS nerds disagreed on something they made their own slightly different distro. This means wasted effort on multiple DE, window managers, app flavors, installed libraries. To this day, almost no two distros can agree on baseline libraries every Linux must have.
- spookie 1y ago
  I love how in this context people call it wasted effort while in other areas is just competition.
  - ashdnazg 1y ago
    Competition works because the more successful a company is, the more resources it gets (money from the customers). If a free Linux distribution is more successful, its resources don't scale accordingly.
  - Affric 1y ago
    Cooperation/Symbiosis: win-win Predation: win-lose Competition: lose-lose This is how dynamically coupled systems work.
  - Ygg2 1y ago
    Yeah, duplicating/triplicating/n-cating bugs, feature development and support effort, really paid off for the Linux desktop ecosystem. Which year will be the year of the Linux desktop? One, when we get brain to brain communication and abandon desktops entirely?
- ekianjo 1y ago
  > Linux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. It's only a problem if you think it is. In practice I use at least 3 or 4 different distros on a daily basis and I never have any issue juggling between them. For most of the typical use cases it does not even matter, and on the desktop side flatpak resolves many issues.
Ekaros 1y ago
By in essence using none of desktop Linux... Steam Deck shows just how bad things are. Regular users will spend their entire time in very limited application launching other applications. Distant way from any traditional personal computer model.
- tuna74 1y ago
  There is no "desktop Linux". There is desktop infrastructure and Desktop environments that run ON Linux.
  - akagusu 1y ago
    Please, don’t tell this. People are not ready for the TRUE.

nfg 1y ago

> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days. I’d be interested in hearing you expand on that! Disclaimer: I work there :-)

Aleklart 1y ago
[flagged]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
petepete 1y ago
I suspect it's not about Gaming not working well on Windows but that gamers are likely enthusiasts and Windows 11: * is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account * has ads baked in * is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care * comes preinstalled with bloat It's a pity. There's a great OS hiding in there somewhere. A consumer version of LTSC would probably make gamers very happy.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account Gamers probably already have a Microsoft account as its required for games like Minecraft or services like Gamepass. A Microsoft account is needed for Windows Hello to function. >has ads baked in Do you have an example. I think it's more likely the user installed malware if ads are showing up unexpectedly. Gamers are more likely to install malware like this and Windows's security is not good enough to stop it especially when gamers use admin accounts and disable uac. >is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care How is it being forced? I haven't seen it on my machine. I assume people who don't care could just ignore it or disable the feature if they don't want it. Being able to look up help for games using Copilot seems like a feature that gamers may find valuable. >comes preinstalled with bloat Bloat is subjective. Actual performance issues caused by unneeded things running while in games would be. The mere existence of unused pteinstalled applications doesn't necessarily cause problems to gamers.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bitmasher9 1y ago

> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days Have you seen the Microsoft Merger and Acquisition list for the last ten years? They are spending money like they care about gaming.

BlueTemplar 1y ago

Spending billions to buy Activision-Blizzard-King ? I haven't heard about Microsoft giving up on Xbox ? And in the last few months Windows 10 has started nagging (via notifications!) about Game Pass. Valve is a private company led by Gabe Newell. Once he's gone and Valve goes public, Valve will become evil too. And people who relied too much on Steam will be sorry.