Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS - Ars Technica
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 8 months agoBut 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.
Do you have any examples of that?
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!
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 8 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 8 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don’t want to use the version of duckstation or whatever that is in an apt repository because it is going to be out of date.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.
vexikron@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Yes I would make the argument that using package managers is vastly more simple than hunting down exes on the internet, yes.
And I do not think that asking someone to learn how package managers work, while using a Linux system, is unreasonable.
Its not very complicated and once the basics are learned. And its a fundamental step to understanding how basically any Linux OS works. And once youve got the basics down, its generally far simpler and more convenient to use than the Windows alternative, in many cases.
Unless you go hog wild with it and a bunch of experimental garbage that some random guy told you is really cool and way better for blah blah reasons that blows up and then that same gug goes oh thats because -insanely specific procedure or insanely specific dependency or insanely specific compatibility problem because /actually/ that guy is a maniac who has no idea how to develop qualitt software-…
…Unless you do that.
And this is a trap that many Windows power users fall into that many non Windows power users /do not/ fall into, myself included as originally falling into that trap.
The Windows Power User /will almost always/ overestimate both the need to, and their ability to customize and trick out a Linux install, precisely because they are so very used to needing to try every little weird thing to get Windows to do what they want, but they do not usually realize until it is too late that the ways they learned to do this more or less do not really apply to Linux.
Its the whole thing I mentioned earlier.
MSFT PC Gamers, who often by necessity are also Windows Power Users, get frustrated that their expertise of customizing Windows is nearly useless and often counter productive on Linux.
Then they have a bad experience, get mad about it, meanwhile people who come from different backgrounds rarely have this problem.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Kind of sidestepped why you generally don’t want to use package managers for a lot of emulators but… okay.
Aside from that: it sounds like I have been speaking to linux as a whole whereas you are very specifically targeting SteamOS as on the Steam Deck. And… I fundamentally disagree with that approach. I love my Steam Deck.
But I very much do not like that we are potentially seeing exactly the same path that is Android on Google Phones. A fixed SKU and a fairly locked down “immutable” OS is user friendly, but it also gives the vendor immense levels of control over your device. And while it might start out nice with “Just install whatever you want on top of the official stuff”, we can just look at Google/Android and how there has been an ever increasing push to “strongly discourage” people from using anything but the play store. And, as more and more security concerns arise, there will be an excuse to lock down even more of that.
Or, for that matter, remember when everyone and their mother touted Chrome as the solution to all the problems of Internet Explorer and Netscape (hmm) and so forth? And… yeah.
Because everything else in your post: All of those apply tenfold with Linux. Hell, I am likely going to set aside some time this weekend to fully purge and reinstall everything nvidia related on my desktop because I have had strange behaviors regarding wayland and gaming.
If your answer is that SteamOS specifically is more user friendly than Windows then sure, I’ll give you that. But there are a LOT of implications of that. And, as we can see with the handheld that kicked this all off, we are actually looking at a fork of SteamOS that suddenly adds back in all of the “single hardware SKU” related issues. And… looks a lot like the start of the mess that is Android.