Comment on Linux gamers on Steam finally cross over the 3% mark
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoThat’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.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Stop recommending bazzite, just r commend cachy.
It has a steam deck iso. It’s based on the same thing steamos is built on.
Bazzite is literally the worse option and more likely to lead to problems.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I don’t recommend Arch forks as a rule, unless it has fantastic support from the maintainers (e.g. SteamOS curates updates). It’s going to by break eventually, and it’s going to require manual intervention (probably minimal), and users will get mad. Maybe it’ll be fine for 6 months or a year, but it will break eventually.
That’s much less likely with something built on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or OpenSUSE. Those all have solid testing and upgrade rules, unlike Arch, which is basically “works on my machine.” I used Arch for years until I got tired of the random breakage, and now I’m on Tumbleweed which has far less breakage and stays reasonably close to Arch package versions.
My first recommendation is either Linux Mint (I prefer Debian edition) or Fedora, because those have good new user experiences and aren’t super opinionated like Ubuntu.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
At least some of the problems I reported about Bazzite are inherited from Fedora. Bazzite didn’t create Anaconda.
Fedora has the problem of being generally fine, but most of the world for the last decade has been targeting Ubuntu as THE Linux distro, so there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora. Way fewer things are packaged in rpm rather than deb. I’ve never seen Linux Mint kernel panic unless I was fucking around with the video drivers, I’ve seen Fedora kernel panic.
The main reason I’m using Fedora right now rather than Mint is Mint tends to have an older codebase, and we’re at a point in PC technology where things like wayland offer support for video and graphics stuff that don’t work well under X11. like my 1440p ultrawide 144Hz monitor sitting next to a 1080p 60hz side monitor. Fedora KDE has it ready to go, Mint Cinnamon does not.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far. Don’t look for RPMs or debs, look for your distros package, and failing that, look to add a repo tons of people online recommend for whatever you’re using (e.g. RPMFusion IIRC). The vast majority of what you want will be there.
If it’s something you really can’t live without, ask on the forums for your distro, and wait until you get multiple answers from different people saying the same thing. Give it a few days too.
Installing from source isn’t a bad thing, I do it all the time. But a lot of people will trust some random post on SM and then complain that it doesn’t work or broke their system or something (see LTT’s video where he uninstalled his DE by trying to install Steam). Don’t install from source or random RPMs/debs until you’re comfortable tracking down what dependencies you need and are able to read scripts to make sure nothing funky is going on. Many posts online will be outdated, and with Linux getting more attention, malware is a growing concern.
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
Having an older codebase is generally good for new users, since the software tends to be more tested and more people will know the workarounds. Newer software will have different issues, so be careful chasing the latest and greatest if you’re not comfortable sifting through logs to figure out what happened.