its honest a boon for gamers as microsoft now actually has to spend more effort making windows betters for gamers then spending all of its effort on windows for arm and AI. one of the things windows as an OS lacks is that the handheld experience is actually trash, and the OS is a resource hog for a handheld device
They tried to make the handheld experience better in windows 8… 🤣
imo the metro take of windows 8 wasn’t the wrong approach for its intended market(tablets) it’s just forcing it on desktop/laptop users as well as a boneheaded decision.
They need to stop forcing windows changes for ALL users, including to the users that can’t use said features properly (as it was designed with touch screens in mind, and not everyone had touchscreens). Same idea with the more recent stuff involving Recall. not everyone has AI capable pcs, so its dumb to include the change to all users that will exist on the main branch of the OS, and would apply down the line to windows handhelds as well, who will likely not need recall as a feature as its using up resources. And im not like a person whose like fully Anti AI either, it just has its specific userbase that may need it, and there are others (like with a windows handheld case) that should not have it at all, as it is likely a detriment to battery if enabled by default.
That’s what I was implying with the elipses, I just couldn’t be bothered writing all that 😅
Honestly the metro design language didn’t look particularly attractive for touch screens either. I knew someone with a Nokia Windows Phone, the interface seemed… clunky. Quirky but not in the right ways.
It has to cater to mice and fingers, and so ends up with the lowest common denominator. Can’t have information density because of the butter fingers, can’t have neat swiping gestures because of the mice and especially trackpads. So, big squares and huge buttons, repeat ad nauseum. Like a DUPLO set.
Surely the UI/UX designers and Microsoft knew this, but I guess Ballmer had his way. Meanwhile Valve didn’t have to contend with cranky executives, so they just slapped Big Picture on top of KDE and let use decide when to switch between console mode and desktop mode.
It’s easy to understate what an unusual project SteamOS is. It represents over a dozen years of work from some of the industry’s finest, is funded by a private company, yet is open source and free for everyone to use. “I’m pretty happy that we’ve managed to find a balance that’s beneficial to everyone, while still being able to help this PC ecosystem in this way,” says Griffais. “I’m really happy about that.”
I can’t wait to try it
That “If” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Really interested to see where SteamOS goes in the future.
See that’s how you get people to like you more. Not whatever the hell social media CEOs keep doing.
The way that’s worded implies that the only way it can hurt Windows is if Windows sucks. Subtle and true. Do better Microsoft. Or don’t. We don’t care, we’re just doing our own thing.
Windows: So you’re saying there’s a chance
I was saying death to Windows.Windows feels like a bit of a sinking ship. Not entirely, and it’s slow, but the feeling is present and consistent. I don’t want to keep having to rip apart the OS to remove shit they shoved onto my hardware without my consent. I just want an easyish experience that I can do my shit on, and they aren’t really interested in that it feels.
In comparison to that, alternatives like steam os sounds great to your average user.
Well yeah… Windows users can still use Steam. They sell games. They don’t want people to switch anything; they wanna sell more games.
It’s about making more steam users. Windows is great, they can use steam. They’re going after people who can’t afford a pc. If people get a deck or steamos who already do own one, that’s just gravy
The weird thing with this is i became a pc gamer precisely because it was the cheapest platform.
Most homes had/have a desktop pc. The hardware was mostly irrelevant because Low graphics settings where default and actually looked more readable then the dlss blurs of today.
Agree, depending on what you prefer it can be the cheapest or most expensive option. I remember playing left 4 dead windowed at 480p when it first came out
yup. valve makes a ton off windows users.
in the end, it’s all about money. or rather, the endless pursuit of more.
The killing is more a side effect than the actual goal. Got it.
I’ve finally banished Windows to a virtual machine, and am gearing up to fistfight Easy:
Anti-cheatRootkit AKA Fucking piece of shit that does precisely fuck-all to stop cheating despite having access to kernel space in order to get Sea of Thieves working on my virtual machine.Lemme know if you figure out how to get that working
Update: It’s now working.
Oh nice, congrats! Could you share info about it? That’s been my biggest barrier to dropping Windows as a gamer with many games that I enjoy using root access anti cheats.
I followed a tutorial meant to bypass Easy: Anticheat for VRchat. I manually defined the hardware names and versions of some of my computer’s components in KVM’s XML code. It wasn’t very difficult and only took about 30 minutes in total, setting up GPU passthrough was difficult though.
Thanks so much for the info!
SteamOS is about Valve not paying Microsoft a license fee. It’s not some egalitarian move by them but a cost saving. From a game dev’s perspective it’s additional cost and effort to port a game, or hope it runs under emulation with Proton.
I am surprised they haven’t used it for cloud gaming yet since that’s where the real cost savings kick in but I bet they’re still saving on each Steam Deck they sell without Windows on it.
Honestly almost everything works on my steam deck. The only things that don’t work are online only games with anti-cheat, and I barely ever touch those. I could possibly make the leap on my main pc to be fully steamos
Make the switch to Linux, by all means but I don’t think you should use SteamOS as a desktop OS.
Especially if SteamOS remains immutable when it lands, then I really won’t be able to suggest it except for situations like “my kids have a habit of blowing up their computers” or something.
I actually like immutable OSes exactly because most people do have a habit of blowing up their computers.
All I want is for people to make informed choices when picking an OS for a machine. An immutable OS has value in the right circumstances, but if you weren’t expecting that it would definitely be frustrating.
My kids play on my Steam Deck so I know all too well how useful it can be lol. I’ve done many Windows reinstallations in my time.
But have you tried to use one as a daily? Concept is great, but I wanted to erase kinoite from the face of the planet about 4 hous in.
Other than SteamOS on my SteamDeck, no but I was considering making the switch to Kinoite.
Maybe try vm first, make sure you want it.
Probably a good idea but I hate switching distros and generally try to avoid it until I break the one I’m using and then I go all in. I have a bunch of backups so it should be fine.
Yet or ever
Ever. It’s not a desktop OS.
Darn, so you mean “We expect most SteamOS users to get SteamOS preinstalled on a Steam Machine” meaning handhelds?
Here I thought maybe they would go full fledged desktop OS 😞
I don’t think they mean necessarily handhelds but definitely console-like machines. Like the OG steam machines.
Thank you
the only one that can kill windows is microsoft
