Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS - Ars Technica
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 months agoYeah I am baffled at this point anyone at all would consider a MSFT portable PC.
Gamepass is still amazing if you are primarily in the MS/Xbox ecosystem. And not all games work in Linux. And, increasingly, modding (for what few games “support” it) is dependent on third party applications that are rather annoying to set up under linux.
Oh right did anyone mention you can emulate basically anything other than current gen consoles on a Steam Deck, and the operating system is not going to fight you on that?
Does Windows “fight you on that” either? Also, it has been a minute, but I want to say that some of the better emulators are still “windows only” and best run through proton?
vexikron@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
You’re right, its not perfect, but the ball is now rolling down the mountain, picking up more and more snow.
The technical foundations are now clearly evidenced to be viable, all problems that remain more or less revolve around whether or not a developer decides to intentionally not support linux via a Windows Only AntiCheat that is actually a RootKit or not.
And thats up to momentum of overall users on linux, which is up to other kinds of games making the platform more relatively popular, which we already see happening but of course cannot predict everything about.
Maybe some kind of game developer who is a bit jaded with MSFT for various reasons will make a significantly popular Linux Exclusive game. Who knows?
But yes uh Windows does often fight you in ways when you try to emulate. Most of these ways can be overcome by reasonably competent Windows users, but its far more straightforward on say, a SteamDeck.
In this case it comes down to the experience of the noob user, who will be scared and confused by the experience of maybe i went to a bad website and downloaded a virus, windows is asking me to make sure i know what i am doing and i dont, wow this sure seems risky!
On SteamDeck and SteamOS its less confusing and scary.
Also, theres the whole Pluton thing which I am still baffled people do not know about. The latest gen of AMD and i believe now also Intel CPUs are designed with a basically below ring 0 bit of always active, network enabled microcode than runs below Windows, even below the BIOS/UEFI.
The whole point of this is advertised as being necessary for security, but it actually isnt. It interfaces with Windows in a way it /almost/ certainly cannot on Linux, and its capable of accessing literally everything on your computer.
It is highly likely that what it will actually be used for is DRM at a below the OS level.
Oh you wanna install known binary with know signature of latest release of an emulator? Nope, not allowed, no matter what you do.
It hasnt happened yet, but the security minded section of the linux community have basically already worked out that its entirely capable of doing this and its absolutely within MSFTs uh, philosophy or market strategy or whatever to do this.
Its also literally documented to have been developed as a result of MSFT not being able to figure out how stop XBoxes from being hard modded and softmodded to allow it to run emulators, amongst other things.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Do you have any examples of that?
As opposed to the newbie who was told everything works perfectly with no issues and then can’t play Valorant or whatever? That has ALWAYS been the problem with linux gaming. The evangelists overhype everything and people very rapidly find the frustration points. If you go in knowing what those are, you can make an assessment. If stuff that “should work” doesn’t? You assume even more problems will occur and reinstall windows.
As for the giant wall of speculation on hardware level DRM: Uhm… if anything, that would be an argument to stick to windows if you are “a gamer”. Since most people, as has been demonstrated time and time again, don’t actually care about that kind of stuff.
vexikron@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Well I was talking specifically about the ease of setting up emulation on in particular SteamOS vs Windows.
Its complex on both compared to say installing a game from Steam on either Windows or SteamOS, but installing Emus is more user friendly on SteamOS than on Windows.
Also its fairly easy to see if a game will work on SteamOS. You look for the little SteamDeck verified icon.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
How is it any harder to install an emulator on windows versus linux?
For the latter, most people will just use emudeck and/or retroarch (which is run by a transphobic piece of shit). For Windows it is retroarch and, funny enough, emudeck.
You could make the argument that the various package managers might give linux an edge. But windows has chocolatey (that probably has emulators) and the sort of official windows package manager (that probably does not). But also? You probably don’t want to use the version of duckstation or whatever that is in an apt repository because it is going to be out of date. Which gets back to either learning how a flatpak/appimage works or downloading standalones on both sides that will periodically tell you to go back to the site and get an updated version.