Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
Only 1 downvote? woah.
I’ve been saying for years: we need a dedicated gaming operating system.
Well here you go: https://bazzite.gg/
cloud native
Already rings an alarm bell, but thank you for sharing regardless.
Also, their website runs like shit. I don’t have much hope for them making a gaming OS that doesn’t, but time will tell.
That is astoundingly judgmental. Good lord.
Cloud native is a weird term I’ll agree, but it just means container based.
Bazzite is amazing and worth a try. I’ve been using it as a daily driver for nearly a year now.
Perhaps you’d prefer the Github over their “shit” website: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite
Or perhaps you’d like to positively contribute to the state of Linux gaming, and make some suggestions for the website in their post just for that: Requesting input: Bazzite’s website
Or even better, a dedicated gaming runtime environment. And that env can then be made multiplatform.
Hello, flatpak exists you know
I have about 7-9 months to decide what to do with my PC. I don’t want to move to windows 11. Because I will have to basically fresh-install my entire system that has 4 drives and god knows how many antiquated programs on it from the XP, Vista and 7 era that I still use. and Im just not ready for it. Im too busy
headache
Try Win10 LTSC if you don’t want to make the switch to Linux.
Sounds like a nightmare. I got sick thinking about it. Lol
Its just gonna be a question of how unsecure Win10 gets , and how fast.
My pc is from 2019, although I’ve upgraded the hardware several times. But I’ve basically reached a ceiling of practicality, its no longer practical to upgrade anything. Im on an outdated chipset (AM4) and jumping from a 3080 to a 4080 isn’t really going to fix the problem of games just being unoptimized. It makes more sense to build a new PC than it does to just change OS on this.
but right now, it just doesnt make sense to build a new PC either… I dont lift a finger on anything unless im going to be able to see at minimum 20% performance increase, I just dont see that without emptying my savings account…
It makes more sense to build a new PC than it does to just change OS on this.
I haven’t made comparisons with gaming, tho I know there is somewhat, but there’s been a big performance boost on desktop and regular applications running Bazzite over Win10.
Im on an outdated chipset (AM4)
Bruh, why do you have to say that? 😂. I just built my PC a couple of months ago and I bought an AM4 and I thought I had some kickass specs.
Realistically the AM4 is still more than enough for now. but its technically end of life. the AM5 isn’t worth the jump until theres no other option.
Oh yeah, it is doing all I want it to do. Plus, on Linux I’ve learnt that having a bit older hardware is always better since the software for it is mature and works no problem in most cases. Absolutely zero complaints for what I paid for it. $500 for a whole PC is unbeatable
As long as they can keep it rolling stable, which is possible even with arch, I can see this pickup up a bit, especially for new users.
Plenty of users are sick of windows 11.
New to the Linux community here; why is a valve owned Linux OS better than any other massive company OS. Like if Microsoft released their own Linux OS, would it be good suddenly?
At the end of the day, we don’t want our OS’s big company owned right?
I am not gonna use SteamOS. But if a bunch of regular folk do, then it might convince peripheral and game makers it’d be worth putting in a modicum of effort to support linux. That’s why I’m excited for SteamOS.
It’s way easier to move from one Linux distro to another if Valve starts enshittifying SteamOS (which would really suck) than it is to move from Windows to Linux. Either way this is a good stepping stone that’s well supported.
SteamOS is better than, for example, macOS and Windows because of licenses.
Since you’re new (welcome!), I should let you in on a little secret: pretty much the entire free software movement is built around licensing. I know, it’s boring and seems insignificant. But the outcomes are profound.
Because SteamOS is built to function within the free software ecosystem, it means users are never beholden to the decisions of one centralized entity (usually the company that owns the software patents.)
If Valve ever decides to, say, include candy crush ads in SteamOS’ start menu (they’d have to make their own start menu, since right now SteamOS uses one that’s already made by the free software community), then users can choose to remove that part of the menu or replace the menu altogether without having to start from scratch.
For wealthy people who can always pay the “proprietary tax,” this might seem like a non-issue. Practically speaking, these people only want their software to work without hassle. They don’t care about the true cost of that software, such as only one entity being able to modify/distribute the software. It’s not until, say, photoshop starts charging a subscription (which they can always increase the price of) that people start to see the value in free software and the importance of licensing.
Microsoft is deeply entrenched and has undergone decades of enshittification. SteamOS is at only the beginning of this cycle. And since SteamOS is linux-based, it’s likely to have ramifications for the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem. Furthermore, if there are two vastly different OSes that developers and graphics card manufacturers need to seriously target, they’re more likely to write more platform-agnostic software that everyone can benefit from.
Because valve is a private company. They don’t have to answer to shareholders. That means, they don’t go through enshitifaction, they care about their product and their customers. Are they perfect? Absolutely not, are they good? Better than every single company out there that tries to be like them. Period.
I’m glad people bring this up.
Private companies are not intrinsically better than public ones, but at least they have the capacity to be.
Valve is one of the very few examples of a company that sees the value in working with customers, not against them. This would be impossible if Valve were publicly-traded.
Exactly. They’re (as far I know) the only company that emailed me to tell me that I can take to court directly without an arbitration. Not that I’ll ever be able to afford it, but seeing how confident and pro-consumer (I fucking hate the word consumer lol) they are is amazing.
Because it’s open source and based on the Linux kernel. It’s owned by them but you can do what you want with it. You can’t with Windows.
So if a game works on the Steam OS, it works on pretty much any distro
I game with Steam on Linux, but I’m not using Steam OS
Also, that means that every effort made by Valve to improve compatibility is beneficial to everyone.
Edit: Also, even if it were closed source, I think it would still be good as it gives us alternatives to Windows. But
Not answering your comment directly, and I don’t even use Linux, BUT…
One reason a lot of us don’t use Linux even if we really want to us because it’s biggest strength is also one of its biggest weaknesses, that being it’s modularity.
There isn’t a single packaging system, window manager, file system, shell, etc etc.
This makes it hard for companies (and devs in general) to target Linux for releases. For example you want to release something for Windows, you build a single exe, apple is a dmg (I think) etc so you just build for one single platform with a consistent API.
When you want to build for Linux there can’t be just one build/package. This has actively been cited as reasons why some commercial software doesn’t support Linux, as it takes far more effort to support all major permutations of platform and package management.
So back to your question, why is Valve’s Steam OS going to help? Because it’s going to be a single platform with a single way of doing things. You can always go and replace the bits like any Linux distro but out the box it will be easy enough for vendors to support, it will hopefully also get more adoption because it has commercial support.
Look at Android as an example (I know it’s not entirely the same), but that is just a customised version of Linux, but as it’s consistent and has a single way to manage packages it’s widely adopted.
I am pretty sure Linus himself said how one of the reasons why Linux desktop doesn’t have mass adoption is because no one can agree on how things should be done, so we have hundreds of libs all doing the same thing in a different way. Valve will pick what they think is best (even if it isn’t technically the best) and through that we all have a singular point of effort and adoption to centralise on.
Like IBM and Red Hat!
The source is always free so you could fork it if you disagree with them. Also it means broader support for Linux gaming
This is so great to see, and the timing is perfect.
My son already calls the PC Steam, as in “we played game A on Xbox and game B on Steam,” so maybe by the time he has a PC in his room Steam really will run the whole platform.
Hell yeah, brother.
I thought this had already happened?
I remember seeing ads on Steam for SteamOS years ago—wasn’t there a point at which you could download and run it on your own computer? What happened?
Old steam os was an Ubuntu derived OS. Ubuntu has issues relating to the organization that runs it. New steam os is basically a coat of paint on top of Arch which is community based. The old os is deprecated.
The version on steam deck is fantastic, but they have been polishing it for desktop use for a while now. I can’t wait to have it available.
If I recall correctly, this has never happened the way it’s happening now. It was a matter of “hey, you can fork it on GitHub and make your own iso thing”, hence why there was a “holoiso” or something like that that (I keep forgetting the name) where people used if they wanted to install steamOS on a device. This one is straight supported by valve. Like “hey, here is our official steam OS that we use on our steam deck. Use it and we will support you”.
I think modern steamos is based on a different distro then it was then. Also proton is good enough now to justify switching for a lot of people
This is the fifth person I see misinterpreting what Steve said about doing Linux performance testing, they aren’t going to start doing this soon, they will only start doing it WHEN SteamOS is released for desktops! It was very clear on the video FFS
I’m also really fucking excited for that tho, I recently switched to mint and helldivers 2 actually feels smoother than on windows, it has been such a good experience!! I cannot imagine how much better things will get with more people jumping to Linux and thus game makers actually pay attention to us
My apologies. Fixed it in the main post with an edit
Thanks you! And sorry if I was too aggressive, reading it again it sounded way more aggressive than I expected, I just wanted to sound energetic instead, my bad
Of course, and no worries. We are all good :)
I’ve been daily driving Linux since 2017, I started with Ubuntu and it’s been great. I recently got a Lenovo T14 Gen 1 and put Linux Mint 22 on it, and I’ve been playing some games on it and it’s been pretty nice for such a portable laptop.
I’m excited, but I wish gpu manufacturers would jump on board with physically compatible cards with ffs or smaller form factor business machines. HP, Dell, et al like to limit space for traditional GPUs in those machines. If there was a half height mid/low grade gpu with components on the reverse side that would be a great couch gaming machine.
Every game I bought on Steam under Windows runs great on Steam in Linux Mint. The few games I didn’t buy on Steam (Deus Ex, Giants: Citizen Kabuto) run great on Wine, using the default settings.
Adopting Proton was the smartest thing Valve ever did. They’re going to get about 90% of gamers migrating from Windows to Linux, who don’t want to fiddle with configuration settings.
I saw a post on bluesky saying Steamdeck can’t be widely adopted because of linux. I asked why is that the case? He says "Linux doesn’t run as many games as windows ". I said “only a few and the anti cheat ones”. He kept arguing. I asked him about nintendo and he goes “It has the games to back it up” and I blocked him lol.
Millions of games are not enough because its FOMO.
Linux doesn’t run as many games as Windows
I’d argue it runs more due to compatibility breaks. Wine just-werks with a lot of old installers.
Indeed. I couldn’t get a couple of old 3DO games working on windows 10/11 even though I bought them on Steam.
Work great on Linux w/ Photon (aka wine).
Hit or miss sadly, but still damn close to magic. I can play skyrim and it runs… As expected, but can’t install dark souls rn.
Old Gfwl bullshit, probably
The psychic damage from that acronym still hurts after all these years.
I’ve got Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (with DSFix) working just fine.
I don’t remember having to do anything weird… Have you tried ProtonGE? Maybe it was DSFix that makes it work? I don’t remember if I tried playing without DSFix first.
My copy’s pirated thats prolly Why u don’t have issues, I’m launching the installer wine installer.exe
Sadly the repacks like fitgirl is a hit or miss
Rip. At least my gta5 dodi repack plays… OK. Either play a pirated copy of gta5 or simply don’t play it at all cus my legitimate copy can’t play cus its epic games and the cockstar launcher won’t connect to the internet thus locking me out of the game, even offline🤡. It has issues with light, when it hits at certain angles the whole map becomes white AF and things from a distant draw poorly, like mountains and such. Other than that thank god triple a games are at least playable on gnux. Ty crackers and ty wine+proton :3
It has issues with light, when it hits at certain angles the whole map becomes white AF and things from a distant draw poorly, like mountains and such
WTF
I have both. As a pure console I still prefer the Switch, and there is a huge overlap in the games. But the Deck is much more than just a gaming handheld, it is now my only PC as well.
I understand why there are so many Nintendo gamers. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy of people. Whenever it comes to linux, they demand everything be perfect. They never show the same attitude towards others. Captialism shills.
Nintendo has fans and is an established brand. But I think what most people dislike is the uncertainty. With the Switch you can know for certain all games you buy will work, but with the Steam Deck it’s not guaranteed though it will scan your library and give you a rating. Though in my case I had many “unsupported” games actually work flawlessly.
I think is more of like the fear of the unknown than the uncertainty, for example is uncertain if a new switch game will run well(looking at you pokémon)
any game that needs to install a rootkit on my computer to play it was never going on my computer anyway. Proton can more or less handle every else on linux at this point. Hardware driver support is getting quite mature too. 2025 is legitimately the year of the linux gaming desktop imo.
When SteamOS releases on all devices people will say “I’ll switch when every peice of Windows software is compatible” or some other unreasonable and impossible accomplishment. Even if every peice of Windows software was compatible people would say “ill switch to Linux when it looks and functions identically to Windows”.
These guys should not wait for Linux but support reactOS, lol
Absolutely this, Linux is not a Windows replacement but ReactOS is (granted its not ready yet)
With bottles, boxes, and all the other small environment virtualization solutions available right now, switching to Linux with a few ‘almost native’ Windows application is easier than ever. The mileage will vary from distro to distro. I’ve managed to get bottles to run some annoyingly old statistics software I need for work. It works great. Sometimes it can be a bit of a headache to figure out where the software saves files but playing detective for a file somewhere in the system is better than enduring all that Windows imposes on the user.
Didn’t know about Bottles, Cool find, may have to test it out.
Yep. I recently started using bluesky and it’s filled with linux hate posts farming likes. People just complaining about random things that don’t even make sense.
I believe fomo is a real thing. Even if one doesnt play fortnite or valorant or kernel level shit, they still are afraid of missing out. So unless and until Microsoft goes bankrupt, I doubt Linux will replace it.
the biggest wall imo is still getting companies with anticheat games on board.
I’d rather kick them off the boat.
IMO, no one should be playing games with kernel level anticheat. There is no way I would let any big gaming company have that level of control over my PC. It’s a security nightmare.
If gamers were buying in their best interest nintendo would be bankrupt, there is what gamers should do and there is the real world. The sad reality is that only the low end gamers care about vanguard and they aren’t paying the bills in riot
I wouldn’t say it has anything to do with the financial affluence of the gamer, but I agree with you that the vast vast majority of gamers simply do not care. Like with a lot of things, that same majority would be better off if they did.
sadly theres a line between shouldn’t and how the market responds to it. Regardless of the fact, it is a hurdle, and the reason why not all of the top games on the concurrent player list on steam is playable on SteamOS, whether one likes it or not.
They’ll come around when the userbase increases. We live in a capitalist world, and these fuckers will always follow the money. They have zero principles, they just want the money.
i have faith this will be resolved eventually/they will have to admit kernel anticheat isn’t even meaningfully more effective and give up on it. anyway loads of people don’t play multiplayer AAA so it’s a no brainer already for them. as the mass of people migrating continues to grow devs/publishers hopefully will have to catch up. 2% of the steam hardware survey is linux now, it could be 5% within the decade. that’s my optimistic outlook, i know i shouldn’t underestimate how out of touch the epic games suits etc. are though
Or getting players & friends to stop playing those types of games when there are so many compatible games to choose from.
It’s true that a big slice of gamers play games with anti-cheat solutions that don’t work on linux. That said most of those aren’t even on steam, which is the biggest pc game marketplace, so I’m not sure it’s that big of a dealbreaker for that many people.
you don’t have to onsider off platform titles on its own. just take proton DBs list and sort by playercount and youll have your handful of misses on some of the top currently played titles. that already filters the non steam games already, and it still has its small handful of titles not on board yet.
A Linux distro with a great OOTB experience for gamers would go a long way.
- Steam pre-installed
- trustworthy Flatpak packages for popular gamer apps like Discord (not uploaded by some nameless rando)
- TeamSpeak for curmudgeons like me and my friends
- desktop environment tailored to Windows users
- auto-install and configure graphics drivers for AMD and Nvidia
- configurable automatic updates and system backup
- choice between Chromium, Firefox, etc. for default browser during setup
- included in Steam Deck compatibility testing
Luckily for you this already exists, and it’s effectively SteamOS:
You can even put this on a Steam Deck as a drop-in replacement.
Bazzite is fantastic and it’s what I’m running on my gaming laptop, but I’ve always wondered why you would want to put it on a Steam Deck? Is it for the people who use it as a laptop replacement?
People who want to run a lot of different emulators, for example. You can play all your Steam Deck games and all your other console’s games, from a single device with a great Big Picture mode.
Bazzite also includes Waydroid, which means you can use all your Android apps.
I know that it’s possible to do some (perhaps all?) of that on a stock deck by doing all the setup yourself, but Bazzite handles it OOTB.
Don’t forget real, well-tested HDR and VR support on all GPUs out of the box.
Bazzite
I’d also add automatic configuration for multiple monitors, perhaps as much as 3 or as much as tmmy laptop’s GPU allows for.
I’ve been doing some research and it seems like arandr has the best GUI for doing this.
I was so impressed with Garuda that I adopted it for my primary workstation OS even though I’m using the “gaming edition”.
take a look at bazzite perhaps?
Thanks Steve
I recently switched to fedora and I didn’t think it would be difficult, but it was even easier than I expected. Every game I’ve tried to play has worked perfectly.
Fedora was my first distro. But i hat issues with Hardware in my framework laptop, which should have good Linux support. But what was even more annyoing was that Video and audio codec die not work right away because it does not support proprietary which made life horrible difficult for a noob. What are your thoghts on that?
Different person here but I’ve been using Fedora for many, many years. This discussion comes up all the time and though RPMFusion is a checkbox in the software store GUI people obviously would like to have Nvidia proprietary drivers and proprietary codecs as an easy install like from a button click on install.
The problem is that Fedora has had a FOSS only core value since the beginning and I’m sure a big part of that is to keep Redhat out of legal troubles but it also resonates with a lot of the actual Fedora volunteers (those folks on the SIGs that do all the work).
I don’t think it’ll change anytime soon. Normally the response to this is “then new users will go elsewhere” or “If Linux wants to (something number of users or something market share)”. The thing is the Fedora project doesn’t ‘care’ about that and why should they?
