PC gaming is one of the few places left that Windows has any relevance, without that there very few reasons to continue running Windows.
Sales volumes for general purpose PCs (used by people other than gaming and developers) have been declining for years.
If you don't need Windows to game... and you don't need Windows to run office anymore (office 365).. then the only real reason to run windows would be to run VisualStudio and other legacy dev tools?
Linux is looking more and more attractive to the power user base.
I'm a power user that games... so Windows it is. For now. The moment I don't need Windows to game, and Wine can run all my legacy apps, then I'm jumping ship to Linux.
Consumers have moved on and all that's left in terms of volume are businesses that need a stock general purpose desktop -- legacy lives on for a while but not forever.
This might be the beginning of the end for Windows -- I'm speaking in terms of product lifecycle.
> PC gaming is one of the few places left that Windows has any relevance
While it's true that Windows may face challenges in some areas, claiming it has become irrelevant outside of PC gaming feels like an exaggeration. Here are some recent statistics from Wikipedia [1] to put things into perspective:
Desktop/Laptop operating system browsing statistics
Windows 72.17%
macOS 15.42%
Unknown 6.1%
Linux (excluding ChromeOS) 4.03%
ChromeOS 2.27%
FreeBSD 0.01%
Other 0.01%
Desktop OS market share according to StatCounter as of February 2024. ChromeOS is also based on the Linux kernel.
Quite a lot of methodological caveats being noted in that section...a couple of questions I would ask are how much computing is done inside a browser now, making the platform irrelevant, and how much is done on a mobile device rather than a desktop. Anecdotally, I see a lot of them collecting dust in the houses of friends & family, and very little being done outside of Zoom and Chrome.
I think this is a big leap. Organisations worldwide use Windows. Office 365 is not a good replacement for Office on-device, and I bet it will never be. I'm a big fan of this happening, but I don't think this is the nail in the coffin. It definitely is a nail, and I use Steam on Linux happily, but not the nail.
My mom was on the market for a PC upgrade. I so badly wanted to get her moved to a MacBook Air, but she's forced to use some niche accounting software made by Sage (I think specifically for the Canadian market even?) that only exists on Windows.
These situations are what keep everyone a hostage of Microsoft.
I can relate to your pain, in Canada the overwhelming majority of accountants use Sage 50, which has a burgeoning cloud version but still lives as Windows software.
I got an accountant instead of switching away from macOS. Made more sense.
The other bit of speculation I've seen for long enough that I can't pin down when it started is if consumer windows is a large enough burden for maintenance, then what potential is there in minimizing that through virtualization, at least for the legacy compatibility. If they're making money through services, do they really care if the underlying OS is full-fat windows, a streamlined windows, or some other OS if they can support external projects doing what they need.
As far as gaming goes, I've wondered for a while how much of a burden it is to maintain directx, along with working with the hardware partners to add/maintain features when they want. With the console side there was some symbiosis, but with their current direction and recent xbox fortunes that also looks like an area they could reduce their ongoing spending to stay relevant.
Agreed... still a pretty big nail. A turning point.
The loss of gaming definitely marks the beginning of the end of Windows as a consumer OS. Windows future might be relegated to a platform to run Microsoft business apps and dev tools.
Considering Windows is the most anti-consumer mainstream OS out there -- if Windows becomes a "business OS" then I wonder what happens to all the telemetry and other anti-consumer stuff they've added over the years?
Seems like a fork in the road for Windows product planning.
I would say - it's still not a loss. Not every game is available on Linux, at all, or if it is it's not very easy for a regular person, or if it is there might still be a better experience on Windows. It's amazing progress, but it's a long way off what you're describing.
The Windows version of Excel has the add-ins necessary to connect to ERP systems and just more connectivity options in general. This alone will prevent most organizations from leaving Windows. Excel for Mac isn't great (find/replace is really annoying) and neither is LibreOffice Calc (formatting norms).
As for gaming, my desktop runs Cosmic OS and I have had no issues thanks to Steam/Proton. The only issues people have for the most part are related to online multiplayer games that require users to install rootkits in order to play.
Yes, Numbers opens files much faster. Excel’s find, despite years of complaints, continues to not highlight the background color of what you’re looking for. Makes it tough to find what you need in a dense sea of cells.
> I'm a power user that games... so Windows it is. For now. The moment I don't need Windows to game, and Wine can run all my legacy apps, then I'm jumping ship to Linux.
As a power user that games on Linux, and has been for a decade -- what's stopping you right now? Which apps specifically tie you to Windows?
Great question -- I run Microsoft Money -- it's managed my finances since 1995 -- I've got 30 years of financial transaction history in there I don't want to bail on. Sure it's old but it's always got the job done, I have no complaints other than it can no longer update stock prices from the internet. It's actually my most critical app to me, much more than gaming.
Last time I ran Wine it wasn't up to the task, graphical glitches etc. My financial package is too critical to me to live with downtime. I thought about trying to import to Quicken etc but all of the mainstream financial apps have become online subscription services -- that seems like a downgrade to me. Open to any suggestions here.
So, for the time being I'm still running windows. Until recently it hasn't been much of a problem for me. But with each upgrade Windows is becoming more and more of a thorn in my side. With Windows 11 being force fed to us it seems I'm going to be forced to migrate to Linux this year. Not looking forward to the transition of my daily workflow. I just want to run my apps, not play with a new OS. The pain is real.
Any suggestions on what Linux distro I'll have the easiest time migrating to?
Microsoft Money has basically been discontinued at this point, so there's no real guarantee it's going to keep working on Windows. Meanwhile Wine-HQ lists Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe Sunset as a "Platinum" level supported application, which means it should run essentially perfectly on any current Linux distribution.
Pick the distribution which seems the best fit and try it again. As Money is no longer being updated, support is only going to get better in Wine and worse on Windows from now on.
Even if you don't move to a different OS, since your data and Money are so important and Money is not particularly demanding in terms of hardware, it might still be a good idea to migrate money into a VM with a fully supported OS to insulate it from changes to the underlying OS. That would simplify backups, and guarantee that you can continue to use it essentially indefinitely even if you choose to use an ARM architecture Mac or Chromebook in the future.
Both VMware and VirtualBox are free for noncommercial use, available for all popular platforms, and allow easy snapshots and full backups. If you backup your VM to a cloud service you could lose literally all of your possessions in a disaster and still be in a position to recover everything onto nearly any computer within minutes.
I haven’t tried Wine lately but I will say many applications I’ve used over the years in business environments businesses to some degree depended on for some function did not run in Wine very well and almost always required a Windows machine.
I can think of at least 3 applications in my current environment where Wine almost certainly wouldn’t work and we either get Windows machines or spin up VMs for those applications that aren’t just legacy, they’re in active development.
Some industries build application specifically assuming the client will run them on Windows. The world hasn’t entirely moved to SaaS and until that happens, having local native environments for certain applications will still be needed, albeit for a friction of total use cases across most businesses, but still some fraction will remain for awhile. I look forward to the day that fraction is 0.
As much as I’d love to not just use but daily Linux, unfortunately it’s nowhere close to Windows (and presumably MacOS) in user friendliness. Good design is discoverable. A CLI unless well designed is not, a GUI with only buttons is (as you can keep clicking and navigating).
I’m not saying all this to voice my personal issues with Linux (lots have already spoken about it). I’m saying this because I seriously doubt the general public would be able to use Linux as easily as windows unless they only use chrome all day long (which, to be fair, is a lot of people). When it’s easier to root an android phone than understand which version of files Fedora uses to edit the GRUB menu, it’s disappointing if you were rooting for Fedora, pun partially intended.
I dunno, Linux does what i tell it to do, where as i have to constantly fight Windows for really simple UI things that should be a given.
For example, my windows explorer keeps opening at some where ___location and shape, no amount of tinkering under the hood has successfully made it open full screen all the time. Ubuntu on the other hand just keeps it at what ever i set it at, because of course it does.
Little things like that are the only reason i switched the linux as a daily driver.
I keep the windows partition active because there is no linux alternative for photoshop and lightroom.
That’s probably fine for someone who either doesn’t need to change settings, or has an “IT guy” who does everything for them. Unfortunately for me I’m the sort of person who likes tweaking and having a nice customized UI and whatnot. On windows you can change so much using GUI tools, or at most using the registry (which itself is a gui app). Linux, unfortunately not so much (many?) dice.
To be clear and give it credit, Linux does allow a decent bit of things through buttons. But hit the slightest snag and it’s CLI time.
If you managed to figure out how to edit the Windows registry, you probably would also be able to figure out how to edit config files on Linux. Navigating to the correct paths can be done in any GUI file explorer and there are plenty of GUI Text editors. Most config files are also much better at self documenting than any part of the Windows registry.
I am not saying that you are wrong for liking what you like – it’s completely fine to be comfortable with the tools you are used to.
I just think it’s not an argument for what type of person would be comfortable with Linux.
I work in an environment all of Linux, macOS, and Windows are used (what ever the user prefers) and the people that „just want their Job done“ need an „IT person“ to figure out any configuration and complication for them independent of the OS used.
People get used to using Windows and think that being used to something is the same as something being intuitive. Years ago (like 20) a previous girlfriend had never really used computers before and ended up adopting one of my old machines using KDE.
After we broke up but remained friends, she complained about her new boyfriend subjecting her to XP and how nothing "worked like it should", needing to scour the web and download shit from random websites for software, every installer needing you to click next a dozen times, borderline malicious shovelware and how hard it was to get Windows to do things sensibly without scouring the web for hacks and having to edit one giant config file with a really overcomplicated editor.
It's hard to tell the difference between bad UI and unfamiliar UI.
I would argue that Windows design lineage here has conditioned us to accept what Microsoft gives us. Do you really think Windows has good design? There are three control panels in W11 for god's sake.
I really think what you're getting at here is "familiar design is discoverable" - for a majority of users, the familiarity with Windows design is indeed a major driving factor. It's why Linux is scary, because it's unfamiliar. You can get a lot done on Linux desktop these days via GUI on the major distributions, terminal not required. Much like Windows.
The boot experience is not as polished, and I think the pre-OS environment that Micorsoft has built up around Windows is excellent unlike *nix which is dealing with ramfs and GRUB, etc.
If screwing around with Proton and the different versions of it weren’t a thing, I’d move away from Windows like ten times by now. Well, that, and I’m not entirely sure how supported or unsupported VR (Meta specifically) is on Linux.
Linux simply isn't ready. Not now, not ever. The year of the "Linux desktop" is always 10 years from now. This is the way it has been the past decades and this is the way it will be because the process (bazaar) can't produce anything better.
I'm a long time Linux user. Been using Linux since Red Hat 7.2, Red Hat, Slackware, Ubuntu and now ArchLinux. Have tried KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Fluxbox and various window managers and environments and the thing is: Linux is always broken somewhere.
Graphics glitches, audio glitches, kernel hangs, suspend/resume being broken etc. Yeah and you can claim "it's not the developers fault when they have no specs". Maybe, but that's just the blame game and doesn't change the fact that it's barely beyond alpha quality after +30 years in development.
Every upgrade that fixes something breaks something else.
This produces a feedback loop where problems like these keep the (desktop) Linux in the marginal users group which means it isn't really a viable target product for developers (talking about drivers etc) which means that it's in the marginal group.
You really need at minimum a stable driver ecosystem with stable driver ABIs but Linus refuses to have that. I understand his reasoning and the benefits but one must ask, has it succeeded in producing a viable operating system that is robust and that works and can support various devices including proper graphics? Is this really the best strategy?
Building a product is HARD and BORING work that has a long tail. When you're "90% done you still need to take care of the other 90%".
Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
Just have a look at the Wayland debacle and all the various implementations. Everything is "alpha this" "alpha that".
I agree for arbitrary hardware that’s out there, but SteamOS + Steam Deck are well tested and fit together tightly, and they “just work” to a much greater degree than Windows + ${equivalent hardware}.
> Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
Valve does this work for Steam Deck, and the ripple effect of their product has improved all distros’ ability to run Windows programs. If they continue to gain market share I could see more of their hard work in areas like audio, Bluetooth, or power management trickling down to general desktop Linux too.
They probably won’t contribute much in the way of desktop productivity software, though much of KDE or Gnome’s core apps have been of acceptable quality for years.
> You really need at minimum a stable driver ecosystem with stable driver ABIs but Linus refuses to have that. I understand his reasoning and the benefits but one must ask, has it succeeded in producing a viable operating system that is robust and that works and can support various devices including proper graphics? Is this really the best strategy?
No, it clearly doesn't need a stable driver ABI. Yes, it works very well. Even nvidia works these days.
> Taking a hobbyist weekend project and turning it into a PRODUCT means spending long boring nights fixing those sharp edges and fixing bugs and looking for issues etc. This is work that very few people do in the open source world (due to lack of skills or motivation or whatever), but without this grind the product isn't a product yet but just an alpha demo.
You... understand that Linux hasn't been a "hobbyist weekend project" for like 30 years, right? It's mostly developed by big companies and has been for a long time.
I think you're talking about generic Linux distributions without a corporate backed concerted and invested effort into it succeeding.
A Linux based Steam console OS is a very different beast, and it's less about "the year of the Linux desktop", and more about "the year/decade of the Steam based console". And my assumption is that the underlying OS is probably meaningless despite the amount of effort Valve devs have put into Steam OS, Proton, and all the other intermediary pieces. If the Linux desktop gets better in the process it's probably a happy coincidence, but I doubt it very much that is an actual KPI for anyone at Valve.
I understand the joke, but I gotta point out that that's exactly what the PS/2 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2 ) was. And it failed because it was an attempt to claw back the ecosystem from open/commodity systems into a proprietary alternative, which is... a nice outcome to bear in mind, IMO.
Is there any possible second contender even? In terms of single-device gaming PCs it seems like it's cornered the market. Everything else is random gaming PCs made for moms to buy for their 9-year-olds which no one could name, people making their own PCs from parts, unnamed prebuilts (again, made from off-the-shelf parts), and the Steam Deck's competition which are obviously playing catchup. Steam Deck is probably the closest that market has to an "iPhone."
The thing is every PC is a "gaming PC". The only distinction is how powerful you make it. And PC manufacturers generally sell a line of laptops/desktops branded for gaming. I found random numbers from 2021, where Lenovo said that they sell over a million of their Legion gaming laptops every year (https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-legi...). Has Steam Deck sold more than a few million since it launched in 2022? Unlikely.
A gaming PC is a PC that's marketed as a gaming PC. Lenovo obviously isn't marketing their Thinkpads as a device for gamers, even if they'd be happy to sell them one.
Legion isn't a single device. How many models under the Legion branding are there? Even if they sold a million and change, break that up amongst multiple formfactors and I'm sure the Steam Deck outsells any individual one of those devices.
If you have to ask that question than you might not know the market that well.
The second contender would be something like an Asus Rog. In my circle everyone loves the Rog more than the deck. Could not tell you how well sales numbers compare between the two but there are definitely other options in the market and have quite a strong community around them.
Someone who doesn't know the market well should give an insight as to what's selling the best. People know about the Steam Deck because it's popular. We're not talking about what's the best or what has passionate fans.
You asked if there is a possible second contender. I told you, Asus Rog would be one. To not know that means you don't know the market well. I would assume the Deck has sold better but they don't have the market cornered.
> That could threaten Microsoft's hold on PC gaming
Sure. But so what. PC gaming is a very small market that Microsoft don't actually care much about. Well, they have a Windows store that sells games, a Windows xbox app and PC game pass, and they put a bit of effort here and there, but not really. Microsoft doesn't really care about your Windows license key either. They could have made pirating much harder, but the fact that you can find Windows activator on their own GitHub says that Microsoft thinks it's a waste of time to do anything about it.
Most of Windows installations come from OEM and enterprises. Everything else is a marginal error. They also can't sell (much) more licenses just as they want, because pretty much it's tied to PC sales that's more about whether people are buying devices.
Which is why they are stuffing ads everywhere in Windows. It sucks for users, but is a good (short sighted) business strategy -- you can only earn so much money from license, but you can earn infinite money from ads.
> PC gaming is a very small market... and PC game pass
I think you're very much wrong. The game pass market is said to have ~30 million users. Having them be able to play on PC is probably quite important as not everyone can afford an extra Xbox if they already have a computer.
Your argument is not very convincing unless you can show numbers of people who have an Game Pass Ultimate subscription and use it for PC gaming.
> not everyone can afford an extra Xbox if they already have a computer
Gaming PCs are much, much more expensive than consoles at same performance. Most people have consoles and no gaming PC. In markets where that's not the case (e.g. China), game pass and Xbox in general happen to be also less relevant -- if they get a console, they'll get a PS5.
Every teen wants a gaming PC because all their favorite streamers and YouTubers play on PC. It's not 2010 anymore. Walk into any big box store and there's pre built gaming PCs of various price bracket. Even Costco has like 5 different models right near the entrance.
You've literally provided the evidence that Microsoft cares about PC gaming in your original post.
Anecdotally, the number of people I know who bought a Steam Deck and ended up using it as a docked desktop replacement is now in the upper single digits. All of them are in IT or IT-adjacent, but were not desktop Linux users before, either at work or at home.
For me it is about having the option to sit at my desk or on the couch with a controller. Saves are synced, there is no an annual subscription, and I don't have a full PC next to my TV. It just sits on a shelf next to the Switch that hasn't been touched in years.
It doesn't seem like this challenges anything but the market for gaming devices (not general purpose PCs). Is that correct? And if so, is the title ("terrified") a little overblown?
Unfortunately, the potential popularity of Linux is closely tied fo gaming and to some professional and creative software suites.
If SteamOS devices become popular enough, Linux for gaming becomes popular enough, therefore more games will be made for Linux and more people will finally find a way to abandon Windows forever.
So let's say someone made a complete Windows clone that only ran Linux software. By your reply it would seem that the majority of PC users could have their OS swapped overnight and feel absolutely zero difference, right?
I am not sure how that is relevant. What would be relevant would be that I have installed Linux for a few now former Windows users on laptops and they found the end result to be better. They experienced better battery life, faster boot times and faster program launches.
I keep wondering what the market for general purpose devices actually entails nowadays. We see more and more applications move to the web, which means your OS doesn't actually lock users in. The only things for which your OS really matters nowadays that I can think of are games, some productivity tooling like Adobe stuff, and legacy enterprise software.
The compatibility stack Steam has set up to run games also allows stuff like Photoshop to run, so that's also becoming less and less of a reason to remain on Windows.
The market for general purpose computing is Mac. Native apps are still superior to any web based solution and there's a healthy market of consumers who prefer paying for a better computing experience. You basically have three main categories of computer users today:
1. Corporate users on Windows, because the computer salesman bribed the person responsible for purchases at corporate to buy PCs with Windows. These users don't want to even touch a computer when they're not at work. Rather they'll use their phones or maybe an iPad for personal computing.
2. Gamers on Windows, because they didn't want to buy a gaming console (such as the Steam Deck).
3. Mac users. You see them everywhere in coffee shops. They're usually self employed or working remotely.
The other category of users are so small as to be marginal.
You write that you can only think of games, some productivity software and legacy enterprise software as the reason for why your OS would matter. That sounds like you're a Linux user? Linux users have been starved of having quality software for so long, that they've grown accustomed to using web services, even though these are second rate. Anybody else I've met wants to use native apps.
In my perspective, it doesn't make sense that somebody would use a web application for things such as e-mail or calendars or RSS. Why torture yourself with a bad experience, when you can use state of the art native apps for almost anything on MacOS?
> You write that you can only think of games, some productivity software and legacy enterprise software as the reason for why your OS would matter. That sounds like you're a Linux user?
Steam OS, at least in the form that exists on my Deck, is not suitable for general purpose. True, it has a desktop environment, but it's "jailed" - of course with an option to jail break it, but anything you do outside of the user space is subject to being wiped the next time you get an OTA update.
Then again, OTA updates are necessarily only a thing on the Deck and I suppose this wouldn't be a problem on the Steam OS distribution available for installing on other hardware.
> [...] anything you do outside of the user space is subject to being wiped the next time you get an OTA update.
You mean outside of /home? This is actually excellent. Rock solid base OS that can be A/B booted, deliver extra apps via Flatpak/AppImage - this is close to what macOS achieved, minus all the crap Apple has been pulling recently. I'm tempted.
More precisely it would be /home and /var. Persistant changes can in theory also be done with systemd-sysext, but it isn't exactly the most user friendly thing currenty.
Jailed might be OK for the general audience vs technical people but does it come with a package manager that lets you install things such as OpenSSH, assorted open source VPN daemons, email clients, etc... or do such things have to be shimmed in or run from /home or break OS updates? Or do such things have to be purchased or installed through an app store like on cell phones? If so it may still be usable. I rebooted a telco mainframe switch using Telnet from a Nokia 9000 back in the day whilst on call.
This underestimates the absolute hold MS currently has in this space. It's not that they have nothing to fear because the opposition is small, but rather the terror comes from the fact that serious opposition in the OS space exists at all. I think a lot of this site doesn't realize precisely how important easy-to-use gaming is to the popularity of an OS. It's 90% of the reason gaming consoles exist at all, even.
The "desktop" (which includes laptops and enterprise desktop) is the last remaining bastion of windows. Servers, database, cloud computing, AI, supercomputers, tablets, smart phones, TV's... all that was taken by Linux. Every small dent on the desktop should be a cause of concern.
There is a reason azure is their cash cow nowadays.
The question is how much consumer PC purchases are predominantly for gaming, and what the longer-term implications of a slow shift away from Windows in the consumer market are.
I started using Windows fully after like 15 years. I really like Windows 11 after running the debloater. WSL2 seems to work pretty seamlessly. I built this machine for gaming but now I use it as my primary machine and have stopped using my macbook completely.
I tried to do linux on the box instead of windows, but I ran into:
- No fractional scaling support except for KDE.
- I can't for the life of me, stop X from using the discrete Nvidia card (I use AMD integrated for display). It wants to sit on the card even when there are no processes running on it through X.
- Wayland fractional scaling is unsupported in chrome and electron still.
- No HDR.
- Font rendering is painful to look at with fractional scaling.
Wasted a LOT of time trying to get this working before giving up and just using WSL2. Everything works in Windows, which is not unexpected. It's amazing already what a community of volunteers is giving me for free!
I tried to switch to Linux a few times over a couple of years but had a hard time switching from Windows to Linux until I found a replacement for Visual Studio (non-VSCode), which I replaced with VSCode on Linux. Aside from a few games that wouldn't work for any reason (Kernel level anticheat, WINE bugs, manually setting export env variables) it's been great. Being a tinkerer/developer I wonder whether this made it harder or easier to switch, you have more knowledge of how to fix things but the same amount of time as everyone else and if you don't depend on specific programs / workflow like using a browser you may be able make the jump to Linux easier.
It's a very interesting observation. IMO people who just use want to use their computer for browser and email stuff are the easiest to migrate to Linux.
The funny thing with wine is that as the market grows for Linux, more and more bugs will be fixed. I could see a tipping point where even the elusive Adobe Creative Cloud runs on Linux.
I bought my wife a Steam Deck and she loves it, her biggest complaint is that it's a bit too big for women's hands. She isn't highly technical but I haven't had to provide much in the way of assistance, it largely just works.
I don’t mind the size but it does make it prohibitively more difficult to travel with compared to the Switch (slightly) but especially so compared to old handhelds like the DS and Vita.
I generally keep my Steam Deck at home and play from the couch. It’s awesome to be able to pick it up, play a game for 15 minutes, hit the power button to suspend. Come back later and pickup where I left off. The Switch does this as well but the Steam Deck supports games more my genre and style so it gets more use.
It's a bit big for my hands as well, but the huge touch screen is amazing for programs like sunvox so I don't even mind.
I think it's hard to genuinely appreciate how big the thing is until you hold it. Today I realized it's exactly the same size as my keyboard. And almost as wide as a 12-inch macbook.
The size opinion varies dramatically by person, apparently, because everyone I’ve personally talked to (including women) prefers the Steam Deck’s larger size over the Switch. (The Switch is so tiny!)
I read all the same articles word for word in 2013 when SteamOS first launched. Yes more games are playable on Linux today because of Proton, but everything else is still a mess. You still can't stream video >720p from any major streaming service, for example. I don't see people rushing to put SteamOS on their PCs or entertainment centers while these basic gaps still exist.
> You still can't stream video >720p from any major streaming service, for example
Say what? I'm playing 1080p fine. Sounds like you could be bit by drm ("that's not a bug, it's a feature"). If so the issue lies with your streaming service - some withhold bitrates unless they detect a "trusted" browser and OS (ie you'd have to fake Edge on Windows User-Agent at least).
This sentiment misses the point. It's not that Linux is not capable - it's plenty capable, and has been for decades now. It's that support for it is lacking. The lack of support makes Linux look bad, because, from the perspective of the end user, it doesn't matter who actually is responsible for the failure of something. If negative experience comes after installing X, then surely X is to blame, right? Wrong, as we both know, but this is the experience that needs to be managed, in order to make Linux successful. Entities who managed this experience made commercially successful Linuxes - Red Hat, Canonical, Google, and Steam as well.
You can, though the supported combinations of browsers and operating systems depends on the service. Netflix will do 1080p on Linux, but only in Opera for whatever reason. Other browsers, even other Chromium-based, are limited to 720p.
1. Not all gamers use the features that may be annoying to use on Linux. Anecdotally, only a handful of friends use streaming and most of the time it's to play party games.
2. I think you're understating the impact of the growth of game playability now versus 2013. While the Wine developers deserve unbound praise for their impressive work, I would not say Wine in 2013 was truly viable for gaming. There were wikis with compatibility information but it was a mixed bag. Sometimes newer versions would break what was already working and it's unreasonable to expect volunteers to test every game on every version of Wine. Sometimes you had to copy DLLs from a Windows box and do all sorts of kludges to get things working.
3. Steam puts compatibilty information right next to the game before you buy. It sounds like you can request a refund if it won't run. To me, this gives a lot more confidence in Valve's vision as they're putting their money where their mouth is.
4. Most importantly, the Steam Deck now exists as something you can hold in your hands to see the viability of certain games on SteamOS. Many gamers have heard of the Steam Deck or even know someone who owns one. In 2013 there could be all sorts of hardware compatibility reasons why SteamOS wouldn't work or wouldn't be viable. It was too easy to dismiss before you'd even start touching a game. Now? The Steam Deck standardized the hardware side of the equation so the feasibility conversation starts with game compatibility.
If Valve went for the corporate market, then, maybe, yes, but I think MSFT has always made most of its OS money on corporate stuff (home users often use Windows, because that's what they work with).
Gaming isn't really a thing, with corporate use.
I use a Mac. Macs are some of the worst gaming platforms on Earth. If I'm lucky enough to get an AAA game, it's seven years behind its PC version, and a huge bug farm.
SteamOS might actually get me to consider a console, but gaming hasn't ever really been a priority for me (obv.).
You're right in the short term, but in the long term (decade+), the home and corporate markets are symbiotic. People buy for the office the tools they expect employees to be comfortable and familiar with. It's not the only factor in consideration, but it's a significant one. Any meaningful erosion in employees' understanding of how to use Windows, in the long term (definitely not the short term), poses a threat.
Microsoft has a very long time to respond, tho, and that assumes Valve even prioritizes a general use OS. This problem is not urgent, if it is real at all.
I’m curious how much msft makes in windows from gamers vs actual game sales. They seem to be hedging their bets hard on cloud gaming and actual game sales for Xbox.
I assume selling Windows to consumers at the retail price is a loss maker to Microsoft and they make up for it via the ads and product monetization or subsidized from enterprise subscriptions.
Looking at the data, in 1995 Microsoft charge consumers $210 for a retail copy of Windows 95. That's $434 in today's money adjusted for inflation. Windows XP Home retailed for $200 at launch, which is $356 in today's money. Meanwhile Windows 11 Home today retails for significantly cheaper at $140 for a product that's hugely more complex than Win 95 or Win XP were, while requiring way more staff and dev effort to build and support.
The finances just don't work out for me to see how the sale of a Windows 11 copy alone for $140 could make a profit at price given the 10 year lifecycle dev and support of a major Windows version.
I would guess a copy of Windows today would have to be sold for probably $500+ in order to be remotely profitable for Microsoft without ads or promotions, which no consumer would ever pay so I assume Microsoft is subsidizing it with ads/data collection or even taking a loss just to keep the retail price low to avoid loosing market share to Linux.
That would be true if the sales volumes remained static, but somehow you seem to have missed the fact that there are somewhat more Windows licensees today than there were in 1995. Also, you're discounting the enormous differences between Windows 95 and its predecessor, versus the relatively small differences between Windows 11 and its direct predecessor.
A difference so small that Microsoft initially intended to market Windows 11 as a new version of Windows 10. Other than those two massive, almost insurmountably significant errors, your reasoning was sound.
>Also, you're discounting the enormous differences between Windows 95 and its predecessor, versus the relatively small differences between Windows 11 and its direct predecessor.
You're omitting the fact that earlier versions of Windows were more or less a one and done deal and not required massive continued development and updates modern Windows requires. Plus the much more numerous workforce Microsoft has on the payroll now versus back in those days on the Windows teams.
Your argument is factless and only based on the subjective opinion of "Windows 11 doesn't seem to different to me compared to Windows 10, so it can't cost too much to develop" which is silly and childish and shows your lack of understanding here.
No my argument was based on the fact that Microsoft themselves were going to release Windows 11 as Windows 10X and decided at the last minute to rebrand it.
That my friend is what we call a fact.
Just because you don't like being wrong doesn't mean you arent, and resorting to calling me childish for arguing with me reflects more on you than it does on me.
How come this topic dropped off the main page in a flash? One second it was there and then literally a few seconds later it had disappeared... just wondering..
Does Microsoft make money from consumer gaming OS sales? Is there an onroad from that market to others -does there enterprise sales rely on gamers getting jobs and demanding microsoft? I think the author vastly overestimates how much of a market this actually is.
I think they make a bunch of money having Windows being the default installed OS on prebuilt PCs and laptops. Gaming PCs and laptops are a pretty large market included in that. There's a chance vendors/builders might start to sell cheaper options which don't include Windows installed, savings for both them and the customers.
Will have to see if that actually happens though, even as a power user myself there are still a bunch of pain points with SteamOS/steam deck that are harder to deal with than similar issues in Windows.
You don't always make money because you sell to a specific customer. Sometimes it's about support and network effect. Devices (Scanners, Printers, ...) are compatible with Windows and sometimes only Windows because that's what people use, NVIDIA drivers used to be Windows only because that's where customers were. Does Microsoft make money from these sales? No. Do they make money from having an ecosystem that everyone is supporting? Most definitely.
They make money from lots of random stuff that they advertise in Windows.
The Edge browser for instance, which pushes Bing.
Also, office applications like Word, OneNote, and OneDrive.
They’ve got an app store as well, which is not much used, though probably does bring them some money.
I think they show ads by default in the start menu. Pretty sure it even comes with certain third party applications, like Netflix, which they are no doubt paid for.
Very much agreed with SteamOS possibly occupying a lot of gaming PC market share in the not-too-distant future (though not sure if Microsoft cares/should care too much about that).
However, I expect that this process will still take a while. Proton seems to be working well esp. for single-player games (haven't tried it yet though), but it seems like
- DLSS-like features still have some way to go,
- and a lot of multiplayer games require kernel-level anti-cheat which is often developed for windows only.
Those two are I believe the only remaining blockers for me.
But that's a chicken-and-egg problem, same as native (non-proton) support for games on Linux. Once SteamOS is big enough, I expect those to quickly follow.
I really want to install steamOS on my gaming laptop, but it has an NVIDIA card.
So, I'll be waiting for a while until that kind of support happens. It's not a big issue but I'm really sick of windows.
Even though my laptop is much more powerful I find myself constantly using the steam deck because the thought of booting up windows, closing up all the apps that open, trying to get it to connect to the tv... It's a lot.
For work and general use I have a MacBook, happy with it for that purpose.
Until SteamOS gets MS office and comprehensive Active Directory integration, I think it will have almost zero penetratation into the corporate PC market
How so? Because younger kids are using more macs and will want to take that into the workplace? Microsoft has the enterprise virtually locked up still. I don’t see most companies offering macbooks as an option.
Linux though? My former university uses it as their desktop OS on all machines.
I'd say they're more a threat because of iOS than macs. This thread is replete with everyone ignoring that your average laptop/desktop user who wasn't much of a gamer probably abandoned laptop/desktops for a mobile phone only life years ago. PC Gamers may well be the largest remaining consumer segment on Windows but that segment pales in comparison to the corporate space where Windows is going to remain strong for the foreseeable future.
There has to be a ChromeOS good enough for the US military complex (and only available for AWS, GAE, Tencent) to see Microsoft worried. All they're doing is showering MS with cash working with Microsoft sanctioned APIs.
BazziteOS is far superior and gets faster updates than SteamOS. It even supports secure boot, FDE and other important security enhancements. SteamOS didn't even had a login mechanism on release
I love when businesses do this. They keep improving their products in their lane, releasing new ones, etc, without anyone noticing a vision, and then, boom, an entire industry gets uncomfortable.
I think this conflates Microsoft and Windows. SteamOS threatens Windows, maybe, hopefully, but Microsoft is, and has been for a long time much bigger than Windows is.
Microsoft don't give a rat's ass about operating systems since ages, and their policy on no more Windows 10 updates this year will finally push me to Linux (probs ElementaryOS) after a lifetime on DOS/Windows.
Visual Studio is also full of AI/Copilot junk now, and I've basically just had enough of their "not now" / "ask me again later please, I am a sucker" options when I really want "be ashamed for asking and never ask me again", all the user-hostile shit they pull... enough is enough.
> Microsoft don't give a rat's ass about operating systems since ages
I think Microsoft sees Azure as its future, not Windows, and would be generally happy for people to use a thin cloud client rather than an expensive-to-support general-purpose OS. But we are where we are, thankfully. How long it will stay that way, idk.
As for VS - yes its annoying but you can turn all that stuff off.
You can uninstall CoPilot from Visual Studio - it's a separate entry in the Visual Studio Installer - and you need to set an option in Visual Studio to hide the buttons.
But yes, I am constantly frustrated with the constant pushing in your face of CoPilot features in all Microsoft products - Office and Teams especially so.
Microsoft's cash cows are increasingly Office 365 and of course Azure. Everything that can serve as an Office 365 client OS is surely fine. A shrinking Windows operation may just save them money in the long run.
Maybe, but we're not quite there yet - Valve still restricting the OS to their hardware. Come back when people who build their own gamer PCs start choosing SteamOS en masse. That's then the start point of a movement away from Windows.
I agree that the 10/11 migration has been an infuriating experience for a lot of users. A Microsoft unforced error, seemingly in the name of insisting on forcing TPM on people.
You can install SteamOS on any machine, but AMD GPU are somewhat required if you're not up to major tinkering. Valve does not officially support NVIDIA gpus atm; they are working on it.
Easier access to SteamOS images for generic HW also appears to be in the works:
> Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases.
> Valve does not officially support NVIDIA gpus atm
Given NVidia's reluctance to support DRM (direct rendering manager) and Wayland, plus the general levels of nightmare that their official Linux drivers are, I wouldn't say this is Valve's fault. They've already been a poor choice on Linux 20 years ago. Even Apple has always been uneasy about their relationship (while Radeon was a less powerful choice for "premium" machines).
Also consider the ongoing AI hype. NVidia is right now very busy making their GPUs do exceptionally useful work on Linux - except the money is not in the graphics.
That is for SteamOS 2. The newer SteamOS 3 does not officially support anything other than AMD hardware because the Steam Deck uses AMD hardware and their current focus is on improving support for that.
Nvidia had best in class support for linux and freebsd as a result of essentialy using the same driver across all three operaating systems. If you wanted good opengl support they were the only choice 20 years ago! Valve not supporting nvidia gpus at the moment has more to do with SteamOS on ly shipping on the steam deck which uses AMD hardware.
Yeah, if you wanted a low power x86 device (which pretty much means iGPU) then AMD is the only game in town. The open source drivers probably helped in this regard but if things were different I doubt Valve would have turned their nose up at Nvidia.
The thing is that the benefits ps SteamOS extend to other distros.
Once Proton made it feaaible to easily play most Windows games on Linux, I could transition to Mint and not look back. Gaming is what kept me shackled to Windows.
I always thought that there were some things that kept people on Windows, and the main ones are Office and Gaming. Nowadays the latter is not an issue anymore.
I think this is actually an outdated link. Modern SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, this refers to the old Debian-based OS from the "Steam Machines" era.
Looks like this will get a refresh, though, as per my other comment.
Sales volumes for general purpose PCs (used by people other than gaming and developers) have been declining for years.
If you don't need Windows to game... and you don't need Windows to run office anymore (office 365).. then the only real reason to run windows would be to run VisualStudio and other legacy dev tools?
Linux is looking more and more attractive to the power user base.
I'm a power user that games... so Windows it is. For now. The moment I don't need Windows to game, and Wine can run all my legacy apps, then I'm jumping ship to Linux.
Consumers have moved on and all that's left in terms of volume are businesses that need a stock general purpose desktop -- legacy lives on for a while but not forever.
This might be the beginning of the end for Windows -- I'm speaking in terms of product lifecycle.