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Joined 29 days ago
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Cake day: November 26th, 2024

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  • For some devices, gaming is all they need to do.

    Serviceable isn’t good, even if gaming is all you do, you’re better off with a regular distro — this was brought up already in the comment you’re replying to.

    EmuDeck, Heroic and Lutris integrate directly into Steam. With a single click you can add a shortcut in your Steam library

    Adding a secondary launcher to a launcher is bad design. Again, this is something that I brought up in the comment you’re replying to, along with having to use hacky software that only exists to remedy SteamOS usability problems, of which emudeck is one.

    I’m not sure how they can make it any easier

    They don’t have to. The problems I mentioned only exist because of SteamOS dumb decision to completely segregate the “desktop” and “gaming” experiences. They’re fixed by just letting me use my computer. Imagine if Steam logged you out every time you exited Big Picture mode, because this is pretty much how SteamOS currently works. I think you guys are cutting a LOT of slack to SteamOS because of what Valve did for Linux gaming but there’s really not a single reason to use it over something like Bazzite (not the Steam Deck version, obviously).



  • Let me preface by saying I love everything Valve has done for Linux gaming and I’m fully aware that Linux wouldn’t be where it is now without Steam. With that said… I really don’t get the hype for SteamOS on other devices. I mean, it’s serviceable if all you do is gaming but it’s honestly one of the worst desktop experiences I’ve ever had (and I’ve used gnome had many): You need to go into desktop mode to do pretty much anything a regular computer should be able to do and, when you get back into Steam, it closes everything you opened while in desktop mode. This means you have to rely on hacky software to do things you would just be able to do if Steam was better integrated with the desktop. For example, why do I need to install a plug-in to import all of my games from different stores into Steam when I should just be able to alt-tab into whatever launcher I want? No, I will not import other launchers into Steam’s launcher and then launch the launcher from the Steam launcher to launch the game — I’m not a crazy person. It feels as if Steam is doing everything in its power to keep me from leaving it and punishes me for daring to try, which honestly reminds me of a certain fruit company. Now, Valve obviously designed SteamOS to be used with a controller and only for games bought from Steam (which is delusional but I digress), so let’s assume you are that person: you have your entire game library on Steam and you use a controller as your main input device so you don’t see the need to ever leave Valve’s walled garden. Then you’d still be better off with any one of the other 37 thousand distros that come with Steam preinstalled because then you at least have access to the desktop Steam UI.

    tl; dr: SteamOS kinda sucks, just use a normal distro. Yes, even if you exclusively buy games from Steam.









  • Honestly, I don’t get the hate of Windows 11. Sure, compatibility is a shitshow but if you can install it, it’s better than W10. I updated a couple months back and was pleasantly surprised. Things I like:

    • Improved tiling
    • The new terminal app is actually usable.
    • More consistent theming
    • Settings menu is no longer useless
    • Last two points combined result in me not getting flashbanged nearly as often as I did in W10
    • Improved volume mixer. I even ditched EarTrumpet.
    • Most people won’t care about this one, but the little pop-ups that appear when you hover an icon in the system tray don’t get stuck in your screen as much as they did in W10.

    Things that got worse:

    • The start menu. Seriously. Stop with the redesigns.
    • Taskbar is no longer movable. I liked it on the left.
    • They hid the right click menu under an additional “More options” menu for some reason

    Disclaimer: I only use my Windows computer for playing games. I do all of my regular day to day computing on my laptop with Fedora (KDE spin because I’m not a godless heathen I like it better). I’m also running the Education version, which is basically Enterprise so I have feature updates straight up turned off and only get security updates. It also doesn’t have any ads but my ROG Ally has W11 Home and it doesn’t have any ads either, so I don’t even know what’s real anymore.