It’s not the gotcha that they think it is. Increasing share of Linux, steam deck or not is progress. Any development or considerations made for the SteamDeck and its Arch based OS benefit the non SteamDeck Linux gaming scene too.
Mostly a stab at Reddit PCMR, Lemmy PCMR has a different vibe.
I think the argument being made is that it doesn’t mean more users are manually migrating to linux, because you don’t buy a steamdeck because of its OS. You use steamOS because it comes with the steam deck.
However, users choosing linux over windows is only one aspect of the good news: Widespread linux use, intentional or not, makes it less likely that a developer will skip it as a platform “not worth the extra effort”
Being a Steam Deck owner myself, it also exposes more people to the underlying OS. I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding that people who use a Steam Deck only ever use it in Game Mode, and that’s simply untrue.
I was convinced to buy one, because a user said they bought one for each of their kids as a stand-in for a laptop, and they would do their homework on it (in addition to playing games).
And now, because of my personal exposure, I have Bazzite running full time on a laptop, and I’m testing a few other Linux distros to eventually replace my Win 11 Pro install on my main desktop machine.
Those people should leave the purity tests and gatekeeping to the religious fundies.
I’ve never touched a steam deck nor its OS. How much of the underlying OS is exposed to the user? Is it easy to bring up a terminal emulator?
Isn’t that how most laptops are sold? People use Windows on them because they ship with Windows?
True, but there isn’t really much of a discussion of users moving TO windows, as using windows is, on a broader scale, the de facto default.
I’m curious how the linux share would be today if no PC ever was sold with a preinstalled OS.
So then you too agree that moving TO has nothing to do with market share :)
I was going to argue against this but you have a point.
I was originally going to call out the Linux laptops selling worse, assuming that people were more comfortable with Windows.
But Chromebooks sold a LOT. So maybe the average consumer doesn’t care as long as the laptop is easy to use.
