Steam Deck honestly convinced me to move my desktop over to Linux.
I’m still dual-booting, but I only go into Windows if something struggles too much over Proton (looking at you Satisfactory). I’ve been daily driving KDE Neon for about 2 months without issues.
Plasma is a great desktop environment, too. Usually the desktop environments were what chased me away - GNOME was slow sometimes and always felt… off, Cinnamon doesn’t like multiple desktops despite claiming to, with the maintainers refusing to even acknowledge the problems, XFE is… XFE, and historically Plasma was always super crashy and bloated.
Valve’s been funding the KDE guys to make Plasma better and it really shows. Plasma feels like a modern desktop that can compete with Windows directly - and honestly beats Windows with how bad Windows 11 has become. (Last time I was in Windows it took the Windows 11 Start Menu a full 20 seconds to open - but don’t worry, it had time to serve me an ad for Xbox Game Pass.)
I’ve seen at least one article of Valve funding some work on kwin for a short time, but nothing of them funding the actual desktop. Do you know of any sources for that?
Yeah, I can’t find the source I originally read it from (I think it was on the KDE subreddit from a KDE dev there), but they gave a talk about it recently. I’ve only skimmed the talk but they do speak pretty heavily about KDE collaborating with Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0
Cool, gave it a look. Didn’t know the firewall settings page came about because of collaboration with them. Didn’t see anything about funding, but I hope they are.
Just wait until you hit your head on a cabinet door and wake up with a sudden craving for tiling window managers. Before you know it you’ll have a customized WM config written in Haskell that you’ll forget how to edit after a few months
You basically described me exactly when I switched. Switched to Endeavour OS Nov2021 and I’ve been so happy with the change. Steam Deck was definitely my inspiration and reason I chose an arch based distro with KDE(I’d also always preferred kde from my previous Linux forays). I game everyday, and at this point I consider myself Linux proficient. I rarely need to look up commands. Other than games I rarely need to use any non native software, but when I do running it through Bottles usually works. Next step is to finally upgrade my aging 1070ti to an AMD card.
Everything adds a little. Another thing happening are the newer Windows versions requiring stupidly high minimum requirements, pushing people with older machines into alternatives.
I wouldn’t be able to live in gnu/linux full time without wine and proton. It just wouldn’t happen since gaming is a huge part of what I do on my computer.
I think it’s a combination of the steam deck, people learning that Linux isn’t really that hard, and Microsoft breaking there reputation by spitting out windows 11 when they promised that windows 10 would be the last, and windows 11 having higher requirements so people with older computers is now looking at alternatives and the people who haven’t switched to 11 being stressed about windows 12 comming, and then therefore searching for alternatives
Does this have anything to do with the prevalence of the Steam Deck?
l’m honestly not sure but probably. l’m guessing proton played a part too.
Steam Deck honestly convinced me to move my desktop over to Linux.
I’m still dual-booting, but I only go into Windows if something struggles too much over Proton (looking at you Satisfactory). I’ve been daily driving KDE Neon for about 2 months without issues.
Plasma is a great desktop environment, too. Usually the desktop environments were what chased me away - GNOME was slow sometimes and always felt… off, Cinnamon doesn’t like multiple desktops despite claiming to, with the maintainers refusing to even acknowledge the problems, XFE is… XFE, and historically Plasma was always super crashy and bloated.
Valve’s been funding the KDE guys to make Plasma better and it really shows. Plasma feels like a modern desktop that can compete with Windows directly - and honestly beats Windows with how bad Windows 11 has become. (Last time I was in Windows it took the Windows 11 Start Menu a full 20 seconds to open - but don’t worry, it had time to serve me an ad for Xbox Game Pass.)
Same! Just switched over to this nifty distro called EndeavourOS… Yeah, I use arch btw 😎
Haha! I use Void btw.
Right now I use XFCE and i3wm, but KDE is great and helped make the switch easier.
I’ve seen at least one article of Valve funding some work on kwin for a short time, but nothing of them funding the actual desktop. Do you know of any sources for that?
Yeah, I can’t find the source I originally read it from (I think it was on the KDE subreddit from a KDE dev there), but they gave a talk about it recently. I’ve only skimmed the talk but they do speak pretty heavily about KDE collaborating with Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0
Cool, gave it a look. Didn’t know the firewall settings page came about because of collaboration with them. Didn’t see anything about funding, but I hope they are.
Just wait until you hit your head on a cabinet door and wake up with a sudden craving for tiling window managers. Before you know it you’ll have a customized WM config written in Haskell that you’ll forget how to edit after a few months
Boot to tty and use tmux
You basically described me exactly when I switched. Switched to Endeavour OS Nov2021 and I’ve been so happy with the change. Steam Deck was definitely my inspiration and reason I chose an arch based distro with KDE(I’d also always preferred kde from my previous Linux forays). I game everyday, and at this point I consider myself Linux proficient. I rarely need to look up commands. Other than games I rarely need to use any non native software, but when I do running it through Bottles usually works. Next step is to finally upgrade my aging 1070ti to an AMD card.
Everything adds a little. Another thing happening are the newer Windows versions requiring stupidly high minimum requirements, pushing people with older machines into alternatives.
Proton is wine+dxvk packaged by Valve (pkus a few other libs). The work the wine teams did in thr last decades has been heroic.
I wouldn’t be able to live in gnu/linux full time without wine and proton. It just wouldn’t happen since gaming is a huge part of what I do on my computer.
I think it’s a combination of the steam deck, people learning that Linux isn’t really that hard, and Microsoft breaking there reputation by spitting out windows 11 when they promised that windows 10 would be the last, and windows 11 having higher requirements so people with older computers is now looking at alternatives and the people who haven’t switched to 11 being stressed about windows 12 comming, and then therefore searching for alternatives