Comment on Linux gamers on Steam finally cross over the 3% mark

• damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install

  Yeah, that’s not at all accessible to the average consumer; they don’t know what a “DE” even is, much less why they should choose any over any other.

  Very, very few people want to deal with something other than a ‘just works’ situation.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):

    • KDE - familiar, extensible
    • GNOME - modern, minimalist
    • Cinnamon/Budgie/MATE - something in the middle
    • XFCE/LXQT - super lightweight for older systems

    Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.

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    • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.

      I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:

      1. The image is weirdly large, it’s like 9GB in size. It takes awhile to download and a weirdly long time to write to a USB stick.
      2. Once written, you boot the image, and GRUB has the options to Install Bazzite or Test Media And Install Bazzite. By default, Test Media is selected. It always fails this test.
      3. If you use the typical non-live environment image, the scaling is tiny on a 4k monitor, and there’s no way to adjust this.
      4. If you use the live environment image (in beta at time of writing), it might just lock up. I had that happen twice just while clicking through the Anaconda installer.
      5. The Anaconda installer, which I think they inherited from Fedora, was I think designed by one of the contrarian idiots who work for Gnome. There’s a DONE button up in the far upper left hand corner of the screen that sometimes acts as a back button, sometimes acts as a forward button. You have to move the mouse from the top corner of the screen to the center of the screen a lot, for no reason. The top-left corner of the screen is a dumb place to put a DONE button because most languages read top to bottom, left to right, the DONE button is where a START button should go.
      6. There isn’t a simple way to tell it “put / on this drive, put /home on that drive.” There’s an automatic installer which will do god knows what…fail, most likely. There’s a “custom” partition dialog which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and then there’s a “custom advanced” one that lets you set the size and position of each partition to the byte. Doing it this way apparently REQUIRES you to not only set up a /boot/efi partition, but also a /boot partition separate from /root.
      7. If you’re in the habit of putting /, you know, operating system and software, on one drive, and /home on another drive, you have to learn from osmosis that part of Bazzite’s immutableness means that there is no /home, there’s a /var/home symlinked to /home.

      And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!

      Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?

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      • LupertEverett@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        You forgot the part where the installer fails just right before the end. Every time.

        Had this occuring on both my laptop and someone else’s that I was trying to install Bazzite to, which resulted in installing Fedora on their laptop instead (and back to EndeavourOS on my end), and even Fedora’s new installer errored out too. Thankfully the OS was working though.

        I am suspecting your 6th point for that one, which even if it wasn’t I consider it a colossal failure on their part because it is NOT TELEGRAPHED AT ALL. I shouldn’t have to stumble upon random forum posts to learn about it, come on.

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      • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Bazzite is just a shit option vs using cachy. It’s the same goal and work load target. And bazzite manages to just be worse in every respect.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.

        That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.

        I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.

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    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      EndeavourOS has that kind of menu during the install process. A few screenshots and a brief explanation of each option.

      I thought it was nice. It’s something I want to see more with other distros. The DE is what most people will notice about the OS either way.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yeah, that is nice. I won’t recommend EndeavorOS or any other Arch installer/derivative for other reasons (IMO, every Arch user should do the official install process once or twice to have a better shot at fixing stuff later), but I do like that UX.

        I wish more distros did it. My distro (openSUSE) does something similar, but I also don’t recommend it because the community isn’t all that good for new users IMO.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I agree with the other guy, that’s too much choice.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Three options is too many? If one is already selected, you can just click through without thinking. Windows already does that stupid “setting up your PC” crap, and this would be far faster.

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  • sparky@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think the “friendly” distros like Linux Mint with built-in driver detection/management and pretty broad package repositories (surfaced as an “App Store”) are probably to the point where many normal people could use them, without significantly more technical chops than Windows. Particularly as a gaming rig where you basically just need Firefox, LibreOffice and Steam.

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• Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  A brand name that people trust is a huge deal in marketing

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• psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.

  Also Valve will not likely go that path again.

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• ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Who else has an incentive to do so other than Valve? Even when you buy a pre-built with Windows today, those things are subsidized by bloatware that’s already installed on the machine.

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• Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Strong agree. Everyone agrees chromeos is not THE best OS but you won’t see a single person dualboot windows on their personal chromebook.

  How google fucked up gentoo I wish not to talk of.

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• The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Some companies sell Linux prebuilts, like System76, but that's pretty niche for the average person to even know to search for.

  Now, if stores like Best Buy had a section for Linux prebuilts, that would reach a lot of people.

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  • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Lenovo too news.itsfoss.com/lenovo-cuts-windows-tax/

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    • The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ooh, Lenovo is a much bigger deal.

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      • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I was really surprised at the price difference. Win11 Home adds $140 to the laptop cost? I would’ve expected $100, but damn.

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