Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS - Ars Technica

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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨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.

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