The ACTUAL State of Linux Gaming

[@ChrisTitusTech]

Linux Gaming Videos: Bazzite Overview: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZWmkKSfe9R7hJYsi=jYEif5bIvcoo2afb Mini PC with RDNA3: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHWYfZZooJ1lhqcsi=j67VJr3Wh9iSj1VW Nobara Overview: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGSkgYWpo71rfKMsi=HcZYSRwcNNQZGx3f

[@Slinky511nx7]

You're probably right. It would be nice, but let's be realistic

[@Orain88]

I literally already installed the steam deck os recovery image on my all AMD laptop, and it already works, it just doesn't have working controls for things like gpu tdp and clock speeds. I wouldn't be surprised if the beta they release later this year will fully work with my AMD asus tuf laptop. It will be a long time before it supports nvidia and Intel rigs but a wide variety of AMD rigs will work.

[@brainstormsurge154]

12:44 Cannot find anything on a portable SteamOS. I do know of portable WINE made by the WINE team but I wasn't aware it was associated with Luke Smith.

[@ChrisTitusTech]

@@brainstormsurge154 I misspoke it is Luke Short and here is that project: github.com/winesapOS/winesapOS

[@packetauditor]

@@ChrisTitusTech You need to stop pretending that Nvidia still isn't there yet and that we're still on Driver 535. The latest drivers work amazingly on Wayland. I use Nvidia and Wayland on my workstation for gaming and many other applications. It's not 2022 anymore... Nvidia on Wayland is nearly flawless, AMD on Wayland is effectively flawless. Please stop spreading misinformation. You DON'T need gamescope to play games, and Nvidia gamescope support is improving continuously. KWin has never failed me. I've been using Nvidia Wayland since 555, and have NEVER had an issue updating my driver or DKMS or my system booting properly. Nearly every distro ships with Nvidia drivers and update alongside your other packages, it's entirely seamless. YOU CAN GAME ON LINUX WITH ANY HARDWARE ON ANY DISTRO (except edge cases with outdated packages, drivers, libraries, etc. **cough** debian based distros **cough** )!

[@Singlephase]

I think most of the misconceptions around this coming SteamOS is peoples overwhelming desire to have an alternative to windows for gaming

[@Singlephase]

Also.... I'd love to see/think it would be hilarious if Valve teamed up with ChromeOS for a gaming version.

[@roklaca3138]

Alternative yes.... Unix / unix like nope

[@SnowyRVulpix]

Linux has been an alternative to Windows for nearly 20 years. Granted, Thanks to valve its a lot easier than back when Blizzard was banning us from WoW, but people underestimate how long Linux has been a good alternative. And we're no longer getting banned from wow

[@ussul6524]

So as I. What do I need.. run games on Steam and go to web, youtube, maybe some photos. Win crap I have at wrk.

[@b.t4604]

@@SnowyRVulpix no.

[@TheTricou]

Valve has a blog post(it was posted yesterday ) where they mention that they will realease a beta version of SteamOS for everyone

[@utherlightbringer3868]

handhelds

[@XOmniverse]

I think by "general release" he means a general, supported desktop OS intended for randos to install on their PCs and laptops like Windows. Valve is going to release their code and an image but it's not going to be a drop in Windows replacement or "just work" on all hardware configurations.

[@LeJimster]

@@utherlightbringer3868 I was listening to an interview with pierre-loup he mentioned the steam os beta. This is for all hardware, unsupported, although I don't know if it will initially work nvidia hardware as all SteamOS devices so far are AMD based. They're also officially starting to support other handhelds starting with the Lenovo legion go.

[@shadowarez1337]

Seen that it literally linked to the steam recovery/repair iso lol

[@daniel29263]

@@utherlightbringer3868 Handhelds are just PCs. It will likely work on any PC with AMD graphics. It's probably not great UI for desktop though. I also don't see the point of running Steam OS on desktop at all. Just install a fresh rolling release distro and install the regular Steam client.

[@Knifey_ZA]

My points on this topic - take them as you may: 1) With wayland getter better support and popularity if enough effort goes into addressing issues I see no reason why the community wont adopt it as the main renderer. 2) Nvidia issues are due to users in the Linux world, Nvidia knows they need to sell their GPU's and if Linux and Steam gain traction I see absolutely no financial reason Nvidia wont support official Linux drivers. 3) Don't worry about different DE's Chris, Pick one, make it work well and if anyone wants to use something different they they can but they will be aware its not officially supported. 4) Same as point 2, with enough Linux share traction hardware will naturally become supported better. 5) Valve is doing such a good job with proton that it almost does not matter that games are built for windows, you know there are cases currently of games running better under proton than natively on Windows. Your points are valid Chris, but if Valve can put love into SteamOS, even if its not perfect people will start to gradually change over. And hopefully in a few years there will be a more even split between OS'es than today. We use Linux and honestly follow your channel because we're fed up with windows.

[@BeckettWarren]

A lot of older native Linux games run better running the windows build through proton.

[@Knifey_ZA]

@@BeckettWarren exactly this! And even some newer games. I believe Last Epoch the Action RPG Devs officially made a post saying they ended their Linux builds because it just worked better on Proton.

[@TerminalWorld]

I'm won't switch to Linux just because "I'm fed up with Windows". As bad as Windows is, it is still a superior desktop OS compared to Linux distros. As a desktop OS Linux is trash because of what it is and the environment of (*good*) software that it's missing. It is basically unusable if you are a power user. And the worst part is that the distros are getting worse not better.

[@Zandman26]

​@@TerminalWorldThat's an opinion, keep using Windows if it suits you. We who do actual work on Linux know how much uninformed garbage you just spewed. Don't see the reason for spewing negative opinions on Linux, did it hurt you?

[@Knifey_ZA]

@@TerminalWorld I'm sorry you had a bad experience with Linux, and your opinion is entirely your own. If you consider Microsoft recall and forced adverts and data collection superior then power to you homie. To me a superior OS is one that treats me like an intellectual and does not force feed me stuff like that. A truly superior OS is always about choice and honesty. And Distro's are certainly not getting worse, if you used any for a period of more than a day you'd see the strides the distro's and Linux as a whole is taking on a monthly basis.

[@clivedamagedgoods]

"It's not there yet" is the Linux tagline.

[@Novascrub]

Because they never had a decent product company come in and build a business model around it. Valve are serious people.

[@gonumx]

hate how true that is

[@cookieface80]

@@Novascrub IBM? Canonical?

[@killertruth186]

@@Novascrub Doesn't mean it will be there at the minute's notice.

[@moussaadem7933]

it's purely because games are built for windows, it's already impressive that windows games work on Linux with good performance. Windows and Microsoft would suffer just as much if games weren't made for windows

[@cloudwolf3972]

Valve is on the right path. Keeping SteamOS exclusive is making people want to use it and can result of a portion of these people try mimic distros like Bazzite and HoloISO while not putting their feet into the danger of releasing it on uncontrolled hardware environment. It is good to have brand new devices supporting SteamOS and showing people that Linux can be a gaming platform. Games will slowsly adopt Linux because of SteamOS and Linux in general will flourish without the need to Valve ever release SteamOS.

[@blackmennewstyle]

Privileges are never a good path. Privileges always empower greed and are against open-source philosophy...

[@cloudwolf3972]

@@blackmennewstyle The thing is, Valve has been supportive of Linux and Open-source when it comes to SteamOS. Everything they do are replicatable, that's why Bazzite and HoloISO exist. Doesn't matter if SteamOS is acessible or not, people just want it because they feel more secure that a big company they know and trust is working on it. Just like many people in the Linux bubble don't trust distros made by 1 or few people and are more leaning towards distros that are older and have big teams or companies backing them up (Like Ubuntu, Fedora etc).

[@arcadeportal32]

​@cloudwolf3972 This, and I trust Valve a whole lot more than I do Microsoft to make pro-consumer and more secure moves. Valve is not perfect, but WAY better than Microsoft imo...

[@Silver-eb7zm]

​@@blackmennewstyle they profit from FOSS and thats why they support it. They want Linux to topple Windows so their Store isnt dependent on an OS.

[@necronyxon]

I get your point, but I don't like your vision of "it'll never work, it'll never change". I prefer to be hopeful.

[@homuraakemi9556]

There's no historical basis for being hopeful about this

[@bluscorpio]

@@homuraakemi9556A couple years ago it was easy to say “Valve won’t do this again” after the flop that was steamOS v1 or v2. Or that valve would never make another controller because the first one wasn’t popular. They have the money, resources and audience. It’s just a matter of if they want to or not.

[@guguludugulu]

​@@homuraakemi9556since you've said that i assume you must have not used linux for any extensive period of time. The amount of change that happened throughout its lifetime often despite the lack of financial incentive is incredible, and it's far from the system it started as. With valve the financial incentive is there, with windows 11 release being a trashfire the incentive to move for many people is there too, just a few days ago James Lee made a video about making a complete switch to Linux and while I don't think the floodgates will open just yet with time more and more people will decide to switch and the bigger the user base the faster it will grow. It's already much better than windows for everything I do as a job, hobby and entertainment, and each month new things get added and fixed in the OS and relevant projects. The usability for new users is incredible if you use something like linux mint and there are several projects working on open nvidia drivers to bridge the gap with AMD. As for application support, if there's enough demand it will be solved eventually.

[@ai-spacedestructor]

also your objectively always wrong when you say never because time is infinite and every second is an oportunity where valve could make that release. so you have a near infinite oportunities to be proven wrong. sure, maybe not in 2025 and maybe not until 2030, thats something i can accept as a take because thats realistically possible that it just takes a few more years to be good enough for the general public. however the never part is near impossible to be true unless valve suddenly goes bankrupt in our lifetime and it becomes impossible to continue the development but fortunately thats rather unrealistic. maybe we personally will not be alife to see it happen but im confident that due to the power of statistics eventually it will happen. anyone opting in to the never happening pessimism train will be disapointed to find out that persitent development on a project regardless how slow will always eventually mean that you catch up and reach a state thats ready for release.

[@edwardecl]

And if people do fix gamescope and the nvidia drivers for nvidia/wayland, wont these thing be part of SteamOS because of how the nature of open source works? in that case it will then just work. It might not be Valve doing it but it will still happen eventually.

[@TurntableTV]

There is a recent PCWorld inteview with Valve dev Pierre-Loup Griffais where he said that they're working on expanding hardware support and the experience will only get better as they do that work behind the scene. The question was about SteamOS on PC's. So SteamOS will come to the PC. I don't understand the point of this video, Chris.

[@MrDanielcool13]

Valve literally promised a "general installer for PC" years ago. The PCWorld interview just illiterate stuff we already know about, but I do agree it will not come out this year or anytime soon.

[@myralchista]

It can already be installed on any amd hardware with hvme memory

[@ToYoNiX]

Exactly, I don't understand the purpose of this video. Like if it was two years ago I would say yes but now every thing he is talking about is old and not relevant now or some problems that are close to being completely solved.

[@matthiasbendewald1803]

Yes, I think Chris did get things quite right, but there were some points that might be wrong: 1. SteamOS might come to PCs this year when taking all information from different interviews combined. No official announcement though, so this is a big MIGHT. 2. Compatibility on Linux will never be as good as on Windows. Well, not in the forseeable future, right, but just 10 years ago I doubted that gaming on linux would ever be really good. And now here we are and the experience is already a lot better than on Windows with a few games not working because of anti-cheat. And Valve didn't give up yet, quite the opposite, new players enter the market already. So things are speeding up, getting even better and Linux becoming more widespread among gamers. Game Devs will see this. They will slowly put more and more effort into making sure their games run well on Linux as well. From now on I see only one direction, by 2030 we might have complete compatibility for Games on Linux.

[@YsMining]

i suppose he made it for me. i can't even install a mod for a game yes, i'm computer illiterate. just saying

[@Nick-bn6ch]

I'll say this, I started using Linux in 2009. Never in my wildest dreams would it be in the state it is today. Everybody says the year of the Linux desktop is not coming but to me it already came

[@contramuffin5814]

The year of the Linux desktop is inherently a title that can only be earned in retrospect. I agree - I think the year of the Linux desktop has already happened. We just need to figure out which year it was. People are getting increasingly frustrated with Windows, and Linux (and SteamOS) is getting more enticing. This won't be an sudden switch, but I think we've already crossed (or about to cross) the inflection point

[@ralph4370]

Used Linux off an on since redhat workstation in early 00s, today is alot more viable and usable, I actually using Kubuntu on my laptop for over 1 year. That is the longest so far for me.

[@ofca]

@@contramuffin5814 In my opinion it was 2022 or 2023. I have this unsupported, unimaginable, non-working, nvidia 3090+intel PC and are happily playing new games on wayland. I need to suffer unimaginable pain of DKMS building proprietary nvidia drivers, because I didn't bother to switch to MIT/GPL ones yet. (disclaimer: words containing "un" and "non" were used with sarcastic intentions)

[@playtimeplay4518]

there's this concept called a "SMART" goal. it's an acronym. I feel it applies here because "year of the linux desktop, does not adhere to the S or M at all

[@Novascrub]

You are really missing the point. Valve isn't going to ship linux. They are going to ship Steam OS. They aren't trying to get people to use linux, they are trying to get them to abandon windows. The devs will follow the market. The drivers will follow the market. They will ship wayland. No Choices. They will ship a stripped down KDE. No Choices. If you break out and install some stuff from arch, then they aren't going to support you. They will tell you to reimage. You are silly if you don't think the proprietary nvidia drivers are ready for prod in the next couple of months. You are further silly if you don't think this ships this year along side a first party set top box.

[@Winnetou17]

Yeah, I agree. How did he got to the conclusion that Valve needs to support Gnome or Cinnamon to release SteamOS, I have no idea. But I'd drink what he drank :D

[@floppa9415]

I could easily see SteamOS becomming another Android or ChromeOS in the future, where yes its technically a Linux distro but extremly locked down and with a totally different userspace from other distros.

[@markbarzen9218]

Two months ago, I took the leap from Windows 11 to Linux. I started with Linux Mint, then switched to Bazzite, and now I’ve landed on CachyOS. CachyOS offers the best overall package for me. I’m sticking with CachyOS now, and I’m happy :-D

[@tatsuya2112]

Currently on garuda linux for about 2 weeks, i see no reason to go back to windows (helps i don't play online games).

[@AhuizotlXiuh]

Damn I'm basically on the same path. Just under 2 months with Mint to Bazzite and about to try CachyOS.

[@TheZorch]

My best friend loves CachyOS. He got No Man's Sky working with virtually no effort other than installing Steam, proton, wine, and the game itself. I'm switching to CachyOS my self very soon on my all AMD system.

[@zerotactix5739]

How is CachyOS better than Bazzite? Just want to know so I could give it a try. I tried both Mint and Bazzite, but always reverted back to Windows 11, and I don't even care about online games. Noted some loss of fps and minor latency issues that wasn't there on Windows 11 playing the same games. (Yes, I'm on an all AMD system). The latency issue isn't obvious when you play casually, but when you dual boot and play the same game, you notice it's just more snappy on Windows. A vast amount of people shitting on Windows for gaming becuase it's bloated bla bla, but it still gives you the better gaming experience on MOST games in terms of fps and better latency ALWAYS if I'm not wrong. Mint was noticably bad for gaming becuase of the latency, Bazzite was better though. Just feeling lazy to try Cachy because I assume things won't be much different there. And another major reason I stuck with Windows - AMD's updated drivers for AFMF2. It's so good that the latency of the games with AFMF2 ON on the latest 24.12.1 actually has a lesser latency than simply gaming on Bazzite WITHOUT any framegen. I can't notice any artificats on any game I"ve used with a controller so far. This was not at all the case previously with AFMF1 which felt like I was streaming the game. I'm just very latency sensitive.

[@TheZorch]

@@zerotactix5739 CachyOS has all the benefits of using Arch Linux without the insane learning curve. Out of the box, CachyOS uses a kernel and scheduler fine-tuned for gaming, but you have the option of selecting different ones to further fine tune the best performance for your hardware. You also get the choice of several X11 or Wayland desktop environments, some distro only gives you 2 or 3 choices. Overall, it is just plain fast, and being Arch-based it doesn't use code that is 3 or more years old like Fedora and Debian.

[@Tinch92]

I get the objections but you gotta start somewhere. The hiccups won't be solved if you don't get the ball going to begin with, and a "general" release, even with caveats, would be something that might start luring people in, which in turn would make other developers and platforms give linux gaming more importance. Same with nvidia. If a bunch of people start using steamOS and buying AMD cards just to get on that recommended spec list for it, nvidia might be forced to open up their drivers in a more genuine way instead of the way it all works now. The line of thought in the video just seems pessimistic; I understand we have been going about this for years and it's yet to happen, but I'm hopeful but I think if someone had said a linux based handheld would take off like the steam deck did a few years ago we would be saying the same thing we are saying now about a steamOS general release.

[@gordonfreeman9733]

The only thing I dream about is SteamOS for desktop, to completely replace Windows and never see this scam ever again.

[@StaceyAyodele]

that will never happen. There are a plethora of programs and games with anti-cheat that will NEVER run on Linux. And for normies, if their game doesn't work, they won't use the newer OS (SteamOS).

[@Daonexus]

@@StaceyAyodele There can be a solution if Steam creates a general framework for anti-cheats and gaurantees the developer that it is as good if not better than what Windows offers.

[@gordonfreeman9733]

@@StaceyAyodele you have no clue about programming, aren’t you? Everything is possible, Valve just need to put time and work in it.

[@StaceyAyodele]

@@Daonexus the question is...would they? Also there's a lot of Windows only programs that either won't port to Linux or had in the past and stopped supporting Linux because of "lack of users". I just don't see Linux ever going mainstream.

[@The8bitbeard]

I don't think SteamOS is that. There's already plenty of different Linux distros for general use out there that Steam runs beautifully on. SteamOS itself is more focused on creating a console-like experience for PC gaming. Think handhelds or TV set top boxes. Yes there's the desktop environment available, and yes you CAN do some general computing. (I'm typing this on a Steam Deck plugged into my TV with a wireless keyboard right now.) I just don't think SteamOS will be the thing that necessarily will be your Windows replacement. Give a more general-use distro a try. You can play with it using a bootable USB drive without touching your Windows install if you want.

[@zeus1117]

Something you are getting wrong here. SteamOS does NOT have to account for all HW out there. They will just post a compatible HW list that makes sense for them and people will gladly by those or similar components to have a stable and good gaming PC. No question about this. Also. People wanting this to happen are actually happy that Valve chooses all the elements for their Linux flavor. Most users don’t want to interact with terminal on a dedicated stable gaming rig. Like ever.

[@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7]

What is this article? The landscape especially around Wayland and NVIDIA has changed very rapidly. 3 years ago I would've agreed with you, but this information is out of date. Practically all of the issues you present already have proper answers: Xorg vs. Wayland: gamescope is a Wayland compositor. And driver support for Wayland is good everywhere these days. NVIDIA: Baking in the latest NVIDIA proprietary driver is the way to go. It supports every NVIDIA GPU from the last 10 years or so, and supports Wayland properly. Any GPUs older than that would belong to computers that aren't supported by Steam on Windows anyway due to the Steam client requiring Windows 10 or later. DE: They already picked KDE and they're probably not going to offer any other desktop environment options. They have no reason to. Doing so wouldn't be intuitive and would heavily bloat the system apps menu. Incompatible HW: At best, they could poke at hardware makers to improve their compatibility. And at least they can achieve the same hardware compatibility every other Linux distro has. Built for Windows: And yet despite that, some Windows games on Linux perform better. Windows apps aren't encouraged to syscall the Windows kernel directly. Everything needs to go through the Windows API, essentially a bunch of wrappers. Native Linux software can syscall the kernel directly. Because of this, and Wine being an implementation of the Windows API, there are no extra layers between something running on Wine and something running on Windows. DXVK is the only exception, unless a game supports Vulkan. Then there are really no extra layers between the game and the hardware compared to Windows. But more importantly, none of this matters! SteamOS fundamentally isn't meant to compete with Windows to such a degree at all! This is a console OS, first and foremost. If an enthusiast wants to install it to their system, they know what they're doing, and what potential caveats there are. And if Valve releases an official Steam console for the average Joe, they'll make sure their OS works perfectly on it. Installing a different operating system on a computer is something only technicians do. Most people will only ever use whatever OS ships with the hardware. Unless Linux manages to convince hardware makers to ship systems with Linux preinstalled, it'll inevitably remain small in marketshare. Without the Steam Deck, none of this would be happening in the first place. It took just one odd little machine to shake the entire Linux world.

[@Philipp..]

If SteamOS would become widely popular, manufacturers would have a much higher incentive to develop drivers for brand new hardware as a result. And NVIDIA has already shown commitments in better supporting Wayland and Linux in general. So never say "never" :)

[@LeJimster]

They're already planning to release a beta of SteamOS for all hardware, it'll likely remain "unsupported" until they've gained more market share with other products that are officially supported. It makes sense to release a beta and keep updating it because it allows people to test it and submit bug fixes etc.

[@Soundwave142]

I am in not in that much of a hurry for Steam OS since Valve has not been slacking on Proton. I am still very interested though. This could make up for Valve's failed attempts with the Steam Console and the Steam Link.

[@PaulHenning84]

No they aren't.

[@LeJimster]

@@PaulHenning84 They are but they changed the wording of the press release to "we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other devices" to "other handhelds". Do a search for "SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck"

[@adfjasjhf]

Expecting a video "I was wrong about SteamOS" really soon :)

[@vaisakh_km]

I am not sure though.. he kinda know what he saying :)

[@adfjasjhf]

@vaisakh_km the thing is, Valve announced yesterday that they will release beta of SteamOS to everyone

[@thejackimonster9689]

@@vaisakh_km Nah man.... he mentions Xorg vs Wayland as relevant point in current discussion about Linux desktop. He lives in the past. Pretty much every major distro out there is setting Wayland as default and the ones who aren't, are working on a transition. Nvidia GPUs work with open-source Mesa drivers since last year. So we can finally get rid of the Nvidia driver fragmentation bullshit. We basically have default configs for a Linux desktop these days: - Wayland (compositor) - systemd (init system & service management) - Pipewire (audio) - flatpak (application packaging) - Mesa (graphics drivers) The only thing most people switch around is the desktop environment and that is nothing really to scare away users.

[@sk2279]

Not gonna happen.

[@xviii5780]

@@thejackimonster9689 are those new Nvidia open source drivers different from nouveau? Because I have tried nouveau and my desktop was lagging xd

[@zoltan1953]

Calling Steam Deck/SteamOS users "Linux gamers" is like calling PS5 users "BSD gamers".

[@Hobbitweed]

"It's how business is done, they're never going to build hardware for Linux" *Lenovo enters the chat* This is the first CTT video i completely disagree with.

[@farishanafiah8461]

To be fair, we won't be seeing SteamOS Legion GO S until May 2025, so Chris is still technically correct. Also, we don't know how Lenovo will take care of SteamOS, so only time will tell.

[@yogibarista2818]

The problem with the Windows model is perhaps not that you tack on drivers, but that 3rd parties are allowed to develop/install kernel-mode drivers. Cutler himself said that this was not the original 3.1 design, but that user-mode drivers on existing hardware just couldn't meet the performance expectations already set by their DOS based platform, so they pulled some subsystems (e.g. Graphics) into the executive and allowed 3rd-party kernel drivers to access them. Modern hardware would no doubt support an all-user-mode approach with ease, but VARs won't accept that due to their existing investment, and push back with legal challenges every time MS tries it.

[@shahnawazshahin3781]

Gamescope integrated with Steam on Linux forms the basis of SteamOS. Yes, a few tweaks are required (e.g, auto launching, Switch to Desktop fix, etc) but you can build your own quite easily when you know how.

[@gaua31415]

I still choose to believe valve will release one someday The fact that the old steam OS is still on their website I can't believe they will not update it And if handheld with steam OS keeps getting more market share it's gonna be up to epic, Activision and others to make something that we can install on it. I'm not gonna not buy something because they won't make a Linux compatible app or something

[@shadowarez1337]

Holo was a steam Os iv used in my AMD APU builds for gaming on the living room tv. It looks just like the steam deck because it was coded from the iso of Steam Os 3.0 the last version I seen and downloaded was 5.0 and they had Nvidia working.

[@PaulHenning84]

Hey I also choose to believe the Hooters waitress really likes me.

[@tuerkwurscht]

I really don't understand the "Games are made for Windows" point. What about PS 4/5? Aren't their OSes based on BSD? Shouldn't every game that runs on PS also run on linux? Does PS 4 / 5 have DirectX? I don't think so... so how do the problems come?

[@bitcortex1991]

So, the Windows driver model is "a terrible system", but the Linux approach "isn't nearly as easy" for regular users. Linux is "much more stable", but only "when it works". Thanks for clearing that up.

[@MaartenT]

The Linux system is that all drivers are in the kernel, so it just works out of the box (you can not get it easier). I recently installed the same model of mini pc for my sister with Windows 11 as I did a year and a half ago for myself (EndeavourOS) and it was a pain to find some of the drivers on Windows. The Windows installer couldn't even find the wifi card or network card, so I had to load network drivers later on by USB stick. Everything just worked out of the box on Linux for me. The problem with the Linux way is that the drivers need to be open source to be included in the kernel and some manufacturers don't want to do that (like nVidia used to), so that means they will need to be added afterwards like Chris explained which is a process that can be difficult for new users depending on how easy/user friendly the distro makes it. I agree with him that the Linux way is better than the Windows way where everybody has to find drivers for themselves with a chance of grabbing infected drivers, but it also relies on the companies putting some work in providing their drivers which doesn't always happen. When they do, you don't even have to think about it, when they don't it either doesn't work at all or some clever people need to reverse engineer the drivers and make those open source to make it work. TLDR, if all companies would just provide linux drivers to the kernel, the linux way would be a better system without downsides.

[@Christobanistan]

@@MaartenT Linux supports dynamically loaded, non-kernel compiled drivers, just like Windows. How do you think it detects your hardware and then loads them? Do you think it recompiles an entire kernel from scratch during the installation and installs that? As for drivers, I've never found any hardware that didn't just work on Windows, unless it was realllly bleeding edge, and in that case the driver was included on the installed OEM version of Windows in a custom partition. If you totally wiped the machine and the network driver was the one in question, you could need to provide that bleeding edge driver on USB probably. However, the Linux drivers are often low quality and lack features for desktop system peripherals like printers. But they do better at providing network drivers that "barely works" so that you can at least get online to download something better, if available.

[@bitcortex1991]

@@MaartenT "The Linux system is that all drivers are in the kernel" If that were how Windows worked, Linux fans would call it "kernel bloat". "it was a pain to find some of the drivers on Windows" Your PC vendor didn't provide Windows drivers? Not even for download? I hope you realize how unusual that is. "I agree with him that the Linux way is better than the Windows way where everybody has to find drivers for themselves with a chance of grabbing infected drivers" You make it sound like Windows users are on their own for every driver. In reality, Windows ships with a TON of drivers, and every WHQL-compliant driver is up on Windows Update. So, if your hardware isn't covered out of the box, you can install drivers easily (Windows), build drivers yourself (Linux), or be out of luck. In what way is the Linux approach "way better"? I'd say it's way worse, especially since IHVs tend to support Windows before Linux, Linux has no stable driver ABI or central repository, and not all IHVs are willing or able to release driver source code.

[@homuraakemi9556]

​@@MaartenTYeah that's great until you need another driver and you need to modify the kernel with a kernel module and the module doesn't work.

[@MaartenT]

@@Christobanistan No of course not, I might have misinterpreted or misunderstood how that exactly works and I do know you can download extra drivers. But I know some drivers are in the kernel and that it just worked when I installed my machine without having to download extra drivers. It is a Minisforum minipc, I was honestly surprised myself that it didn't recognize it out of the box because that PC is 1.5 to 2 years old now on Windows 11 23H2. It's an AMD 6900HX cpu, the ethernet chip seemed to be an intel chip (I forgot which one). Minisforums offers some drivers on a page (which doesn't seem to work any more at the moment), but some of them linked to mediafire and things like that which I didn't trust whatsoever. For wifi/bluetooth I had to use a driver from an other vendor (Lenovo I believe) since it seemed to be an AMD rebranded mediatek card and I couldn't find any drivers on mediateks website nor on AMD. Yes, this is absolutely minisforums fault (and my stuborness of not wanting to use a driver from mediafire), but I don't think that hardware is that exotic. I assume it's just laptop hardware like most minipcs. Fun thing about printers, I put linux mint on my dads old laptop (on his request) and the printers just worked without any issue while there aren't drivers for newer Windows versions on some of those printers we had back then. But I have heard horror stories from people as well, so I can imagine that your milage may vary on printers (which is the case on all OS's honestly).

[@hanifarroisimukhlis5989]

So as far as i can see it, SteamOS is more akin to Android. A specific Linux fork maintained by big company. Only this time it isn't Google, so that's a plus.

[@nguyentruongson8612]

Not exactly but I agree with you. Google heavily modified Linux kernel just for Android. With Arch based we have more freedom.

[@vaisakh_km]

Google forked only the kernal and made everything on top of it... and haven't contributed much back steam actually using a linux distro.. and almost all changed done for it they have cotributed back or useful for wider linux community

[@RecoveringFpsJunkie]

Gonna end on a positive note. Gaming on Linux in 2010 was ABYSMAL. We're light years ahead of where we were. Now with the momentum of the Steam Deck and Valve pushing gaming farther ahead and with the efforts of Glorious Eggroll it's come a long way.

[@kirayoshikage90]

I downloaded fedora yesterday and I downloaded drivers from rpmfusion. It was wayland. But, being an NVIDIA guy sucks in linux. I cant play finals properly. I got around 25fps with low settings with rtx 4060!! I want linux to grow and give windows a good competition. Now that NVIDIA is slowly open sourcing the gpu drivers. The future is sure bright for linux!!

[@fi.delio_]

Give cachyos a try

[@rafadardzinski7461]

Maybe you're running Nouveau drivers? Install proprietary ones and you're golden.

[@Z_fentomFentom]

4060 :skull:

[@user-po9wd7hk5m]

Are you talking about "The Finals"? Are you also on a laptop by chance? If so, I can help. There's a bunch of things you need to do to make that game run with the same performance as windows. Nobody posted about these things on protondb yet but I found the solution.

[@kirayoshikage90]

@@user-po9wd7hk5m I am on laptop.

[@matthiasbendewald1803]

The integration from steam to heroic doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work the other way around. You can integrate your Games from Heroic into Steam with one click; works even when using the native steam and a flatpak heroic launcher, which is actually quite cool.

[@Auxxua]

At this moment, I'm just enjoying Linux gaming. CachyOS is one of the best experiences OOTB that I've had with Linux gaming. Also, we're a small community, and it has some perks also.

[@andrewkelemen2854]

been on cachy for about 8 months after trying linux for the first time on mint and nobara, amd lets just say, im not leaving Cachy/Arch anytime soon

[@TuxUser-X11]

​@@andrewkelemen2854 Same here. Started on Mint 2 years ago then moved to Debian 12. Always had issues with gaming in both. Then I found CachyOS 3 months ago. It's been the best experience I have ever had on Linux.

[@slaapliedje]

The thing is... we don't need SteamOS to have a general release. We already can install Steam on any Linux distro.

[@HydrapleMortar64]

Yeah literally any distro works even distros not designed for gamming

[@slaapliedje]

@HydrapleMortar64 I game on Proxmox. Mind you, it is FoundryVTT with 4x VMs for the players and the host for the GM... but I do game on it!

[@DubsCheckum]

that's what people don't understand who have never tried linux in the first place (95% of viewers here). also many of the points mentioned by Chris here are not relevant to gaming (it doesn't matter what freaking DE you use or if your GPU support gamescope or not). All you need is install steam and that's it. I also don't understand what his issue is with "what if you want to play WoW or Epic Games titles?" ... well the answer is you install heroic and play all of these. You can do that on SteamOS just like on any other distro. JUST LIKE ON WINDOWS. If you want to play WoW you intall battle net launcher and don't expect it to work from steam? (for those who don't know Heroic is a 3rd party launcher that enables you to use the stores and play games from Epic, GoG, Amazon Prime and others)

[@edwardecl]

@@DubsCheckum Yeah I didn't really understand his point there either, if you want to use other launcher, use the other launchers. As far as I know they are on the KDE Discover app thingy as flatpaks. Probably easier to install than the crapware launchers on windows.

[@ericmackrodt9441]

Yeah, I installed it on Fedora and was impressed, it works pretty well and all games I tried worked. To be fair I didn't try a lot of games, but still.

[@StraussBR]

i am a heavy windows user, i just dont run it on metal and these days VMs are very easy to open and close like we open and close an app i can see the possibility of linux users running some windows games in virtualized environments, so compatibility wont be an issue, and a few fps of overhead wont be that bad an issue, right now the hardware passthrough and the lack of vgpus is something that the linux community needs to figure out but this is a problem that can be fixed and right now it seems MUCH closer from being dealt with than ever before

[@gruntaxeman3740]

Probably not needed. As far as I know, both Stalker 2 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle were working when they are released even while not even promised to work. Those WinAPI and DirectX to Vulkan wrappers seems to be in good shape.

[@timothygibney159]

Why,?? It makes no sense if Windows is your OS

[@gruntaxeman3740]

I buy my next gaming PC to run for Debian as soon as new AMD GPU is out. And I got very good reason. I'm PC gamer, I love Steam, and I don't care online multiplayer anti-cheat malware. I also have huge amount of games already collected that I play time to time, and they are likely more easy to run on wrappers than current Windows where Microsoft is dropping legacy. Microsoft is closing their ecosystem so eventually I need to pay some game pass subscription that I can install Steam there, because it is locked on S-mode without MS Office or game pass subscription. I don't want that. I'm want traditional PC hardware and PC operating system that I own, without subscription and I play PC games that are mostly first person, shooter, strategy games, puzzle games and RPGs. I don't care shitty console platformer game ports from third person view where player is jumping and swinging sword.

[@YannMetalhead]

I believe Valve won't release a version they support, but will release a unsupported version for people who want to try for they own risk.

[@mckengineer5727]

Your business reasons are good, the technical story a little flaky…you don’t mention OpenGL, Vulkan the graphics drivers that actually do the work. Vulkan is standard on Android BTW, take it from someone who works with them on it.

[@christopherdave4397]

You work for 42yrs to have $2m in your retirement, Meanwhile some people are putting just $20k in a meme coin for just few months and now they are multi-millionaires I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life...

[@secondgentleman-h8j]

How ..? Am a newbie in crypto investment, please can you guide me through on how you made profit?

[@SempijjaMbodo]

I'm glad to write her tay I do hope she will help handle my paycheck properly.

[@SempijjaMbodo]

Can I start with as low as $3000

[@CMARaph]

YES!!! That's exactly her name (Mrs Katie) so many people have recommended highly about her😊 and am just starting with her from Northern Ireland

[@MulaAlvin]

The very first time we tried, we invested $2500, and after a week, we received $19,750. That really helped us a lot to pay up our bills.

[@spartaninvirginia]

Gaming on Kubuntu seems to be just fine. 🤷

[@HontasFarmer80]

I don't understand why more people won't just try Ubuntu or even better Kubuntu. Step one install one of those variants Step 2 install Steam step 3 game

[@hamm8934]

Yeah i agree. Ive been gaming on pop os for 2ish years now. I think the real barrier is people learning how to flash a usb with linux lol

[@ralph4370]

Same here, love Kubuntu KDE

[@alexcerzea]

​@@HontasFarmer80the snap package is not officially supported and very slow the last time I tried, which was 22.04 didnt tried the actual

[@hamm8934]

@@alexcerzea snap package of what? steam?

[@mornwind318]

I don't see the issue about hardware and choice and drivers as long as they stick to recommended machines or specific configurations sold with SteamOS. SteamOS is also making the choice of DE and WM as well, there's no real arguing there as well. We're talking about "console-like" experiences. They expect to ship images to RO systems, users will not deal with DEs or drivers or anything like that. Windows is here to stay, but more options are welcome any day. (Mac gaming is a blip, by the way.)

[@RabbitTV95]

For me, it was a year of linux desktop and linux gaming. I touched windows only once to play the crew.

[@etsyshoppe]

a major shortcoming here seems to be people not realizing that valve is making a console competitor with steamos, not a gaming pc. yes it *is* a gaming pc, but in the same sense that the ps3 with linux booted was.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

Another shortcoming is that people don't realize that every game that runs on SteamOS, works also high end gaming PC without Windows.

[@playtimeplay4518]

7:01 "Built with macos in mind" is a stretch. its about as rare for me to see a native mac game on steam as a native linux game

[@Darkell64]

They said the same thing about Steam. Even the developer team of Half-Life was very skeptical about publishing the second game on this platform. The same words were said for countless things...

[@kevinmccrea1335]

Did valve bluntly say no to stand alone os for desktop?Did anyone ask them at this event?

[@playtimeplay4518]

when the deck came out, they said they would release standalone, and when asked by ltt repeatedly, they say they're working on it. I didn't see anyone ask about it as ces tho

[@LunarShift]

Nope. In fact, they've only ever said the opposite.

[@dormanthero]

All I use is wayland in Bazzite with my 3080ti. It is very much improved and worked really well on there. When xdefiant was a thing I you would need it for that. I don't have any issues with it anymore these days. I don't know if that is because they have some patches or why it works so well but I am happy :)

[@WebApp-Aseer]

"[ 0. 803445] hub 8-0: 1.0: config failed, have doesn't have any ports! (err -19)" when trying to install arch linux and tails os etc I am dying for this error but linux mint and pop os works fine help mw bro😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

[@fox091]

There are some edge cases that still have issues with Nvidia on Linux as a whole. Notably hybrid or multi gpu configs and some power/suspend issues. Regarding Nvidia+wayland, most of the remaining issues were resolved last year and only a few specific edge cases remain. For a typical single GPU system on a Turing+ card, nvidia-open is in a great spot. I've been running it on Arch using Wayland for months, and I really have no complaints left. It's at the point where I would personally recommend Nvidia users to use Wayland, and i don't find myself needing/wanting to switch to AMD or away from Wayland.

[@helidrones]

I have not had any kernel update issues with the proprietary Nvidia drivers in the last few years, perhaps due to me living in Gentoo-land and building my kernels myself.

[@DubsCheckum]

/g/entoo always wins. it's so ironic how many people think gentoo is the ultra autist distro when in fact it is one of the most sane and stable distros while also being cutting edge

[@manyrabidrats]

POP_OS! here, have had no issues with Nvidia at all. your experience isn't unique. probably unrelated, but i DID have to remap my audio channels with 5.1 surround (alta audio) front left and right channels were reversed.

[@tondenockay1296]

I'm a 100% Linux, I don't use Windows for my PC, now my kids do because they like to play FortNite. That said, I don't play the newest games and I don't play FortNite. I do play EverQuest, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Guild Wars 2 and so on with no problem using Linux. The point is that some of these games are over 20 years old and others are around 12 or so years old. Plus the graphic range from bad to really really good. I do use Wine and Lutris to help run these game and they run well. With Steam you can play even more games, but I don't use steam for most of the game I play

[@fragalot]

I thought Valve chose AMD APUs because they had superior graphics capabilities over anything intel had with their iGPUs, at a good price, while also having a small footprint. The motherboard PCB of the SteamDeck is just slightly larger than a deck of cards (ignoring the small PCBs for the controllers, haptic pads, etc.). I never thought it was due to drivers.

[@AllahuSnackbar270]

A deck of cards is like two fingers thick. Jeez. I have never seen such a motherboard.

[@fragalot]

@@AllahuSnackbar270 no i never mentioned it's thickness but the amount of parts on it are about that... but not two fingers.. you must have tiny racoon like fingers.

[@AllahuSnackbar270]

@@fragalot Okay so, the motherboard of the Steam deck has components that are like two fingers in height? Sounds more reasonable now that I think about. My Gigabyte X570 ruined my RAM and CPU cooling plans, it's a tall boy.

[@AllahuSnackbar270]

@@fragalot I must say there has been a long time since I saw a deck of cards. They seemed that size last time I looked. You're saying one finger is thick enough?

[@angelizquierdo3265]

I've game on manjaro with my rtx 20 series card and it's been quite a good experience. Most games are a download and play experience.

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Agree. Am on Nobara 41. I used to raid WoW in Manjaro in 2020. Between Steam, Bottles, Lutris etc most games are easy to get running except anticheat heavy or borked ones.

[@daycred]

Steam OS will obviously come out. But it will equally obviously stay as a console os for quite a while with hardware support that requires you to choose the correct hardware. But if you want your own console for your steam library and you don't mind adding cross platform titles manually it's should be great

[@Akahigep]

Two months ago I moved to Linux Mint after a life in Windows. Zero regrets. If you stay just in steam, almost just work for me. With other things (scene, other stores, jack sparrow games) sometimes doesn't work properly. But I have a W10 LTSC partition for software I can't load in Linux Mint. And GamePass. That's it. I've been a month without loading W10 partition.

[@CodebreakerCove]

I'm looking at moving from Windows to Linux - Bazzite just results in a black screen when i boot into it. I am using an Nvidia GPU and presume it's related to that...

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Hmm, First install boot can take a good 2-3 minutes of black screen at least that's what it said for latest version of Nobara. I'm still gaming on Nobara 40 but I have 41 on my Nvidia HTPC second machine. That machine was on Bazzite previously. On Nvidia if an update breaks I roll back to the last stable build. I've used AMD GPUs also. I did like Fedora, Manjaro, and ArcoLinux also in the past. AMD GPUs can work well also. I usually will test the configs in browser videos. htpc, and in game to make sure the drivers aren't locking up for whatever reason whenever I switch installs.

[@CodebreakerCove]

@dianaalyssa8726 yeah, I left it a good 15 minutes just in case my USB drive was slow or in case Ventoy was causing issues. I'm trying various different OSs at the moment to check them out. PopOS is the current leader for me. Quite a few distros have the same issue so it's likely some comparability issue, just not figured out why yet

[@andrea68707]

A News from months ago says that valve invested something like 700M$ on arch so my thought was they were going to use that to develop a generally available steamos, so i won't really lose hopes on it

[@KingKrouch]

Valve is apparently working on a beta for SteamOS in March. Bazzite recently got a beta for Game Mode on NVIDIA 16-40 series cards, but there's some known issues. Explicit Sync is now supported on NVIDIA's drivers, so the flickering issue on Wayland (the biggest issue) is gone. At this point of time, I think that more work needs to be done on mod support on Linux/Proton, finding a way to appease anti-cheat developers without causing issues for the ecosystem, and interoperability between DX11 (on DXVK) and DX12 (with VKD3D) like with some of the existing frame generation mods. RGB peripherals and fan control on some gaming laptops (Alienware/Dell comes straight to mind) need some work as well. Personally as a mod developer, I'm fine with Proton existing, as it makes it easier for developers to support one game release version. Game developers can simply avoid specific proprietary media codecs and try not to do anything jank. Unity and Unreal's Linux and Vulkan support is comically bad, and you're better off playing those games through Proton in most cases, so I don't entirely think that not having native ports of games is a big issue. I doubt Valve is gonna be able to support 10 series NVIDIA cards and under thanks to some internal decisions done on their kernel modules. I guess it's similar to Windows Vista in a way where you can only run it optimally with hardware made recently (like in the past five or so years).

[@B3TR0Z]

Getting a game to work on Linux is not the only issue. If gamers get more fps running the game on Windows, especially those competitive online shooters, then people are gonna game on Windows. Then there are hardware monitoring apps like HWInfo64 and MSI Afterburner/Rivatuner that people love to use aswell (while gaming).

[@DubsCheckum]

your last statement is just ignorant. tools like that exist on linux as well and you can do many things even better than on windows in that regard. Also I haven't found a "competitive shooter" or any other game that runs better on windows than it does on linux fps wise for my RX 7900 XT

[@B3TR0Z]

@@DubsCheckum A GUI for lm_sensors is NOT as good as HWInfo64. Secondly you have an AMD card, and I have nVidia.

[@DubsCheckum]

:D skill issue

[@zherka_pill]

Why Bloom?

[@robertweeb-nc1wf]

I'm still hopeful that Steam Machines will make a comeback. They'd be far closer to a regular computer than the Steam Deck, while still providing a known hardware the OS can be optimized for.

[@DubsCheckum]

any pc is a steam machine

[@necuz]

Slap SteamOS (or Bazzite, or CachyOS Handheld) on any of those Minisforum, Zotac, etc. Ryzen mini PCs and there you go.

[@The_Frustrated_Optimist]

I've got my fingers crossed SteamOS gets a generic ISO similar to bazzite or nobara HTPC. A console version intended for that rather than as a desktop workstation.

[@ps-ri2qk]

Great video Chris, set some realistic expectations with linux. Another hurdle for windows to Linux users is sound management. Between ALSA, pipewire, wireplumber and others you run into walls of complexity that don't exist in windows. There are some tools in between that help; but leave a lot to be desired. The amount of research to get something as simple as the front headphone jack on your case working (when the mobo and DP connected display sound outputs work already) is interesting. Tried alsamixer, some of the pw-cli tools etc. and still running into challenges. Then watched a video where you have to write all your own options for it to be recognized correctly. Stuff like that will keep most people away from Linux gaming or creativity work.

[@AChungusAmongUs]

I started with a Mint laptop and then added a Nobara laptop for my kids to play with. Had trouble getting Return to Moria to work initially, but for the most part Nobara has been pretty painless. Much easier than Mint.

[@hardeep1singh]

So basically, what you're saying is Linux needs a better system that lets you tack on drivers as needed. I thought it already worked like that for GPU drivers.

[@DubsCheckum]

it does. he either doesn't understand it or did a poor job bringing it across

[@zephyr_kev]

Yes that’s exactly how it works. CTT Linux videos are always so out of date.

[@69fox]

Not even relevant. The points discussed are outdated or don't have anything to do with SteamOS in general. NVidia drivers, both proprietary and open, are is a much better state they were even a year ago, also NVK development is going very well. Same thing with Wayland, it is rapidly becoming the default option when it comes to graphics on linux. A default desktop environment is generally a good idea and not a problem at all, i don't even understand what's an issue there. Other launchers are out of scope here, it doesn't matter if some of them are unsupported on linux, especially since this is a STEAM OS. Also, drivers don't necessarily need to be in the kernel, nvidia drivers can be installed with DKMS, for instance, it's just that companies don't usually make a driver for linux if they don't have to. Also, nobody thinks of MacOS when it comes to game development, very weird thing to even mention when mac probably has less games supported than linux does. I don't know if it's just clickbait or what was the actual argument. The only fact here is it's not certain whether Valve will release this as a general OS, but it's not due to choices they made on their software stack but general issues with supporting a wide variety of hardware.

[@Immortan_Bob]

"Nvidia kinda sucks" Colossal understatement here.

[@caspearious-ghost]

With the ever looming end of life for Windows 10, this could be the year of the Linux for me (at least my non-work PC and laptops). I'm going to stick Bazzite on a USB drive this week and give it a go on my main PC, since that seems to be the favorite go to right now and I love the Steam OS (including Desktop mode).

[@esra_erimez]

I think you're incorrect. I think that SteamOS is going to be more of a console (appliance) like operating system and it will be fairly smooth if you use the recommended hardware. Edit: 10:46 you said it, so we agree.

[@michaelgleason4791]

I use bazzite kde nvidia on my desktop (rtx 3080) and laptop (rtx 3070) without issues related to having Nvidia GPUs. It was wonky when kde 6 first released, but I haven't had those problems in a long time. I'd be surprised if steam machines 2.0 aren't seen soon.

[@dianaalyssa8726]

On Nobara 40 4090 (have 41 on the other boot) & running Nobara 41 on the HTPC (3060). Steam has been a better QoL than what I'm used to from years ago. Bazzite was working well on the second pc. Steam has made it faster for me to setup.

[@hendrikdeetlefs6266]

@ChrisTitusTech, when will you be updating your ultimite linux gaming guide?

[@CyberDruga]

and now there was a recent interview on PC World with a lead valve developer where he specifically said they're indeed focusing on handheld devices, but set top boxes are part of their goal, tho they don't have a time frame for that

[@ulroxvladtepes4023]

I want to say Chris. I actually ran the blizzard launcher through steam. Just installed it in wine, then pointed steam to it using the "add none steam game". So it is possible to get all of your game launchers through steam, you might even get all your windows programs through steam if you really wanted to.

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Same, I've played WoW, OW2, and Diablo 4 this way

[@ulroxvladtepes4023]

@dianaalyssa8726 part of the reason why Chris isn't aware I think, is because he plays games on a Windows machine, he just remotes to it and then works on a Linux machine, and has an apple laptop. The man is crazy I tell you.

[@abunk8691]

Haven't tried SteamOS or Bazzite but using Proton Experimental through Steam on Mint there's some games where performance between Windows and Linux is not quite on par yet. Since my experience Linux gaming is limited I'm not gonna make conclusion, but for me its not quite there yet but is continually improving. The worst one I've seen recently is Doronko Wanko by Bandai Namco built on the Unity engine. Between my Mint install and my Windows 10 install, its about 15~20fps less on the Mint side which kinda changes things between playable and unplayable. I thought it was Proton Experimental so I tried different versions, but no dice. Then I tried both an RX 5600XT and RX 580 2048SP, but the same issue still persists. So I ended up playing the game on Windows. For a heavier game I tried Tekken 8. Loading times were surprisingly quick under Linux, but there's a slight performance hit compared to Windows. It's about 3~5 fps in my experience. Maybe things will be different if I tried under a Wayland session instead of Xorg or something, but I don't have time to test that yet.

[@DubsCheckum]

on mint you probably have very outdated drivers and other libraries. if you want high gaming performance for modern titles you need modern versions of these. Linux Mint or Ubuntu LTS won't cut it. Also these distros are built to be "safe" and stable for your average pc user not gaming enthusiasts.

[@abunk8691]

@DubsCheckum Yep I know that and never expected peak performance or the latest drivers on the kernel versions available on Mint/Ubuntu LTS. The latest kernel version I saw on Mint a few days ago was 6.8 which I know is quite outdated compared to the latest 6.13 or 6.12 mainline. And I doubt getting newer mesa packages from the kisak-mesa repo helps much in my case. I'm no gaming enthusiast though and rarely play games. I like the stability of the Debian lineage of distros so I use those rather than going bleeding edge using Arch or Fedora. I made my comment to share my experience as I know there's newbies who'll end up at Mint or more likely Ubuntu LTS from all those "Top x Linux Distros" lists.

[@DubsCheckum]

@@abunk8691 yeah I know but there's also people who think those "slower" release distros are peak linux gaming performance which just never is the case and they are disappointed and use it as a scale to compare to windows with the latest stuff, while using a distro that is over half a year or more outdated

[@steveskipper6473]

Imagine Valve managing to produce a viable desktop OS that as well of games can run key apps like Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office 365, it would be a dream come true. The 14th October 2025 presents a golden opportunity!

[@gruntaxeman3740]

If people are ok to using subscriptions, spying and anti-cheat malware, they can just use Windows. Decrapification is reason to choose Linux based OS. It is for people who want traditional OS without cloud-marketing account, recall, subscriptions, data collecting, ads etc.

[@bluetrepidation]

Lots of popping and glitches in your audio in this video. I assumed it was my PC but listening on my phone the same audio distortion occurs. You might want to look into your recording setup.

[@Szwagi]

I was searching for a comment about this to ensure it's not my PC... Brodie also has a ton of popping in his videos recently, someone should look into fixing audio recording in Linux

[@bluetrepidation]

@@Szwagi Audio and Linux still don't play well together in 2025... Although Asmon's videos have audio glitches now too.

[@PengWingAtomic]

Thank you for this video, Chris. I have been waiting for Linux techtubers to address this. 65k views, should have 65mill. I have been answering YT comments and telling people who "can't wait to quit Windows and install SteamOS" that there is better alternatives. I have written this sentence so many times; "If you hate Windows so much, why aren't you on Linux?"

[@KimSkid2k]

Wow, so this is really not aged very well, huh?

[@StarbladeIce]

it's funny that these someordinarygamer watchers think the video "didn't age well" because his latest video claims that steamos is releasing. his video is a lie. do some reasearch.

[@PengWingAtomic]

This is the most accurate video about SteamOS. Valve is not in the Linux distro business. They make an OS for handhelds that mimics the console experiance. Yes, it has a desktop but most people will not use it.

[@JBP4500]

Great video. People are expecting a Windows killer from Valve but I dont see it happening. Linus Tech Tips showed that the Steam Deck's SteamOS doesnt have Printer support, so valve went out of their way to remove it. Any other Linux distro supports printers. I think Valve is more concerned with console-like hardware and experience. Today, we have really good distributions that are ready to be used.

[@RedFire998]

Printers suck and we will be better off when most people stop using them.

[@elBartoDR]

Why do you need a printer on a steamdeck?

[@reezlaw]

Linus really wanted actual SteamOS so he had to use an image specifically made for the Deck, which of course didn't have printer support

[@lalfam3051]

I'm not trying to be combative, but isn't this still just one corporation over another? I'm not a Linux expert, but even I know that the philosophy behind Linux isn't about that, right? I mean, Gabe Newell is a legend, I get it, but the guy isn’t going to last forever. He’ll eventually retire, or, you know... What’s going to stop Steam from gaining a great market share and then pulling the same shady moves as other corporations? And take AMD, another favorite in Linux forums. Sure, they're great now, but what happens if they gain a larger market share and start acting like Nvidia? At least Windows will still work reasonably well-well enough, anyway-but will Linux, which depends on these supposedly benevolent corporations, hold up in that scenario? What if they paywall things, release crappy or unpolished drivers, or do whatever else benefits them? Again, this feels like creating a dependency, and I thought Linux was about avoiding that. Am I wrong?

[@contramuffin5814]

Linux isn't against corporations. It's about rights. Plenty of Linux distributions are ran by corporations. As long as Valve continues to support the right to view, modify, and distribute their OS, then that fits with the Linux philosophy. In other words, it's about openness and respecting the user. The openness allows the community to use Valve's work for their own purposes, so even if Valve had a sudden change of mind and destroyed their OS, the community still benefited. And besides, I don't support SteamOS for its ability to permanently replace Windows. I support it because it's a stepping stone convincing more people to consider Linux as a serious OS. One of the biggest problems with Linux is that its historical user-unfriendliness haunts its reputation. It takes a large, publicized, corporation-backed OS to shift that reputation. People who choose to switch to SteamOS can always choose later on to switch to another, better Linux distribution. But these people need to take that initial leap of faith, and the people have spoken: SteamOS is a prerequisite for them to take that leap of faith

[@lalfam3051]

​@@contramuffin5814 Again, I’m not trying to argue, but I know they’re not strictly against corporations or anything like that. Still, I’ve heard about how Ubuntu has changed over the years and the drama with Fedora and Red Hat. I mean, these projects start to gain traction, and then they seem to turn into something… else. Isn’t the difficulty curve part of what makes Linux, well, Linux? Either you get high usability but also bloatware and spyware, or you get control-but with that control comes responsibility, right? What I’m trying to say is, does relying on one corporation over another really help? What happens if these companies lose interest? All this “progress” could turn sour. If Linux builds a strong base and then corporations lock features behind paywalls, won’t the user base, especially casual users, get stuck? They’ll be so used to the “coddling” and “usability” that they won’t know how to adapt. I’m genuinely not against any of this, but I can’t help wondering where this is all heading-especially with how the fans are going nuts just because they can finally "own" some Windows users who used to lord their gaming superiority over them.

[@middle_pickup]

Steam OS public release for general users on custom gaming PC builds seems likely once wayland settles in, and the Nvidia drivers develop more. It's not that hard to imagine.

[@boyscout399]

Youre info is out of date... bleeding edge hardware gets support very quickly now and has for quite a while. I got 30 series nvidia card like 1 month after release and it worked fine

[@Nightwulf1269]

Archlinux user here (which is also having a cooperation with Valve and is the basic beneath SteamOS). For me, Linux Desktop is here for years now and since around 2 years even for gaming completely. Admittedly, I use AMD cards and on Linux, especially for gaming, that's a big plus. Regarding SteamOS: the announced general release is *not* only for handhelds while that is the main target. *But*...you should have comparable hardware in your PC, formost and AMD GPU. I think, it depends on how worse the "Windows 10 is dead" situation really gets. If Microsoft messes up really badly, that could lead to a more broad adoption of Linux for the end user.

[@ashm3697]

What’s it like gaming on Linux with a 1080ti rig

[@playtimeplay4518]

13:42 they probably do. if they do, thats another person in the steam ecosystem buying steam games. i get many points of the vid, but the point you keep coming back to of either valve never releasing or not caring about steamos is frankly bizzare to me. firstly, they've straight up said they want to make a general pc installer, and weve seen patch notes of them adding general hardware support for stuff like nvidia. then theres the philosophy part. valve wants to both create their own ecosystem of people using steam and protect themselves from Microsoft cutting off their store from windows. they want as many people as they can possibly get to run this OS. why would they not release it, let alone try to get the best experience on it for as many people as possible?

[@zerotactix5739]

I stick to gaming on Windows because of minor latency issues which isn't immediately noticable to everyone. It's bad on Mint, and bearable on Bazzite, but still noticable if you're sensitive to it. Also, I use AFMF2 in games that are 60fps locked, and it's so unnoticable using it on the latest 24.12.1 drivers, that it's better to have it ON on Windows than the default latency of Linux WITHOUT framegen.

[@ukaszs5021]

Hi. Can you tell us how you keep your online accounts in sync on Linux? Especially Google and Microsoft accounts?

[@Eggroley]

I'm not quite sure exactly what you mean but at the very least, I know GNOME has an accounts tab in it's settings that features both Microsoft and Google accounts. For further context, I'm on OpenSUSE tumbleweed.

[@ubbemiren]

Honestly I don’t understand what he meant with windows drivers being ”tacked on” (.sys files) and why that would not be possible for linux. What are linux kernel modules in that case?

[@MrinalSaurabh]

Think of Steam as a specialisation to Hand Held gaming. The Steam developers agree that it is not ready for "any" system yet. Maybe 4-5 years in future. Not now.

[@aTTaX420]

Almost any Distro out there has a package for the proprietary NVIDIA drivers (often called nvidia-driver), that handles everything for you, so there is not a big hastle updating the kernel or the drivers anymore.

[@LeviticusTwentyThirteen]

I absolutely agree, it’s not there yet and probably never will be. Another thing to consider is the push to “ownership as a service “ or the whole “you will own nothing and be happy” policy. This could be the catalyst that pushes some gaming developers to make some SteamOS exclusives. Or, maybe that fight has already been lost.

[@tombyrer1808]

What's the best that is NOT based on Fedora/RedHat?

[@coldsun1187]

People should also remember that the announcement by Valve specifically mentioned SteamOS was coming out for "other handhelds." Those of us using Legion Go or ROGUE Ally will be able to load Steam OS on our machines this year. I think that is really the extent of it and any youtubers who got excited about Linux gaming on PC might have jumped the gun.

[@playtimeplay4518]

valve has in the past literally straight up said they want to provide a standalone pc installer, and when asked about it, they didn't say anything like "oh you misunderstood, we're not doing that." they respond "we're working on it."

[@JamieStuff]

I'm with you; we won't see a general SteamOS release. However, I CAN see Valve releasing an official version of SteamOS for AMD tiny PCs; likely with RDNA3 APUs or better. This would allow those of us who prefer a console over a handheld to build our own "Steam Machine".

[@MartinWoad]

Can anyone explain to me one thing - how is Linux gaming "not there yet" if I am rocking a default Arch setup from the archinstall script with an Nvidia GPU and every single game from my Steam library works out of the box without any manual use of pacman or any tweaking at all anywhere. Every, single, game. What else do we need? Part of the older games from my library don't even run on Windows 10 which they do on my Arch.

[@sophieedel6324]

You realise there is more to gaming than "steam" right. The most popular PC games right now are Fortnite, Infinity Nikki, LoL, CoD, FIFA, and Overwatch. None of them support Linux. Epic, GOG, Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft. None of these stores support Linux and they certainly won't now that Steam basically monopolized Linux gaming. There is more to PC gaming than your Steam bubble.

[@MartinWoad]

@@sophieedel6324 But the same can be said about... gaming consoles? How many of the consoles on the market support all of the vendor you listed, how many of them support game modding, how many of them support interplay? Can you play CoD on Nintendo Switch? Yet we don't hear people talking about "not yet there" for consoles. Additionally, none of the constraints are coming from the platform's technical limitations. I am able to boot up World of Warcraft on my Arch without issues through Lutris, it's just the developers putting insecure and malicious "anti-cheat" software on the kernel level that bricks it.

[@sophieedel6324]

@@MartinWoad This isn't about consoles, they can't install Linux. This is about the question if Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for gaming, and the truth is that - for most people - it is not. Games are designed for Windows, not for Steam, nor Linux. The more popular a game gets, the less likely it will even be on Steam since most big developers don't want to give Steam a 30% revenue cut. But it's not even just about the games, Proton itself is not viable, it is literally just a layer translating DirectX API commands. If Microsoft releases a new DirectX version or changes DirectX in any significant way, it will break compatibility with Proton overnight.

[@Gamejone_123]

Why stress out on Linux gaming? I don't get it...

[@michalsvihla1403]

I'm surprised you didn't mention CachyOS in regards to gaming distros. Why is that?

[@zephyr_kev]

Cause his Linux knowledge is out of date and didn’t care to do any research

[@LunarShift]

I don't really agree with the notion. It's always been a core promise that SteamOS would be released for desktop use, and Valve hasn't rescinded that promise to this day.

[@ChrisTitusTech]

Half Life 3 is coming soon as well...

[@LunarShift]

​@@ChrisTitusTechDid Valve say that? There's the key difference.

[@LunarShift]

I have no dog in this race either way, I use Arch Linux happily and will continue to do so. I'm just hopeful that this could be the thing that sees more people dipping their toes into trying Linux for the first time, in the same way the Steam Deck itself has done for a lot of people already.

[@warrenoleson9382]

Hey Chris if you read this I would really like fo you to do a video on the Opera GX browser, just because I know so many people who use it and I've heard rumors that it's some kind of Chinese spyware I just wanted to know your take on it

[@Lachsmen]

Dear ChrisTitusTech. I have a problm that when i use your tweaks it makes my PC crash while playing games. is there any way to fix that without reundo it? because your tweaks gives me lowest delay from all the tweaking programs

[@TheRetroRaven]

The biggest challenge, by far, is kernel-level anti-cheat (malware) software. It's simply a no-go for 90% of Linux users. Who wants to risk the security of their installation by allowing that? All the AAA multiplayer games use some sort of anti-cheat software and 99% of the time it's kernel-level. 95% of those games doesn't work on Linux, and in few instances where it does work, there's been recurring stories about Linux users being banned because the Anti-cheat software thinks these users are cheating.

[@saberspecter]

I've been using Fedora for a few months and enjoy using GNOME more than Windows but I have to return to Windows to play certain games. Hopefully when things mature and anti-cheat isn't a huge issue on Linux.

[@edwardecl]

Err they are releasing SteamOS beta soonish at least for handheld devices that you can install yourself, so why wouldn't they release it for more devices? Also Linux has Kernel modules, that how the Nvidia driver works.

[@JoshBagwell]

Neckbeard here. I agree with you on all of this. I've been daily driving Fedora for 3 years, and there are a bunch of papercuts that Windows users don't have to deal with.