I use Linux Mint Cinnamon and the installation process was exceptionally easy and the desktop environment is very straightforward.

You might want to try to install Linux on like an old laptop or something first just to get the hang of it. I installed it on my main desktop first and it went well, but now all my computers run it.

I even recently purchased a new Linux tablet that I can’t wait to get.

I switched over about 2 months ago after I couldn’t get an older game to play after a windows update and kinda just rage quit Windows. It was building for a while, but in the end it was just a little thing that brought it tumbling down. Game worked perfectly fine with proton without any problems or tinkering. I’ve only had trouble getting a couple games working, and neither are big deal breakers.

There was also an issue with a dev wanting to use donation money to buy a gaming laptop. That rubbed some people the wrong way.

To add on to this, if you don’t have an old PC/laptop around, you can also try out practically any Linux distribution in a VM! Tools like virtual box are quite easy to setup.

You can also run most distributions on a live USB without it actually modifying your system, and can give you a better idea about hardware compatibility.

As a liberal in most ways (except on guns), and as a pro 2nd Amendment LGBT American, I’m sorry.

Many of us have “evil fatigue” and “ignorance fatigue” and are just exhausted from how many people in our country are total shitheads.

The list of people for me to apologize to: -dead people in Gaza -alive people in Gaza -all Latinos -all transgender people -Canada -all scientists -intellectuals at Harvard -Ukrainians -Women who were killed due to abortion policies -Anyone in a country killed due to a sudden lack of aid without much warning to even prepare

As a mostly liberal American, I just don’t know where to begin. I also think bad environmental policies are going to destroy the planet, and when I look at conservative middle America and how intolerant and racist their values are, I am sort of like “well, maybe total planetary extinction isn’t that bad”

I just don’t know if I could change it at this point, if there’s anything I could do.

The constant horror of the policies being enacted in this country is so terrible, that it’s hard to really continue to say “sorry, we don’t all believe this!” Some people protest, some don’t, but really many liberals are also just treading water psychologically. It’s quite possible that the fatigue being felt is being intentionally induced.

There may be a way to get past the fatigue, but it’s being combined with financial stress, and for me, apologizing to Canada, standing up for Canada, is just not on the top of the list.

I really do not see what is happening as a conservative revolution. I see this as the self-centered wealthy class realizing they can exploit white trash and technology to destroy the middle class and create a permanent underclass and them. I do not think JD Vance Trump Thiel etc are actually religious, I think it is this final push towards neofeudalism.

It feels like it will unfortunately lead to either communism/socialism or neofeudalism, that there isn’t a middle groud.

The neo-feudalists have made a bet: the white trash class is so numerous and so hateful towards transgenders and Latinos and “the other,” that they can simultaneously eliminate many jobs using tech, reduce social services for poverty, and create a new Chinese-style of quasi-authoritarianism in America based on technology ans biometric information… And they can do this as long as they distract the white trash class with tricks and diversions: oh! Look! Mexican criminals! Look over here! Oh no! Transgenders in bathrooms! Look over there!

And so far, the magicians seem to be right. The yokel white trash of middle America, well over 60 percent of the country, is too stupid to realize they are being tricked by a magician.

So, many middle class people, and lower middle class people, especially technological enthusiasts, see what is happening. But what now? I’m exhausted. I do not know how to reason with idiots. I am just trying to brace myself for impact.

I just built a new machine, for a time I’ll try some Steam on Linux. For the latest version of Ubuntu and an Intel 570. No idea what I’m doing, lol. (Normally just use Linux server).

Thanks for this, I’ll look into it. I don’t have easy access to an old laptop right now, so I’ll have to do one of the options you mentioned. I think I’ll look into the USB option first and see if it’s something I can figure out. If not then I’ll try the virtual machine. I appreciate the added info.

It’s simply reflective of how Steam publishes those numbers on its own platform. For some reason, Fedora isn’t explicitly accounted for while it’s very likely to possess a huge chunk of the “Other” category.

To illustrate this point, we’ll look at Boiling Steam’s latest report. It uses ProtonDB’s data to give us (possible) insight on what’s found within “Other” (that accounts for 23.27%). Before I delve further, it has to be said that ProtonDB’s data contrasts Steam’s in significant ways. It’s not a huge departure, but one definitely notices a slight discrepancy between the numbers.

FWIW, as per Boiling Steam’s report, we find the following numbers for Fedora (and related derivatives):

• Fedora - 8.7%
• Nobara - 5.2%
• Bazzite - 4.5%

Which (together) amounts to 18.4%.

If we would scale this down, as Boiling Steam’s report doesn’t include SteamOS Holo^[I’ll assume its share is 30.95% based on Steam’s own numbers.], we’d get:

• Fedora - 6%
• Nobara - 3.6%
• Bazzite - 3.1%

Totaling to 12.7% this time. And thus, it('s at least likely to) constitute the majority of the “Other” category.

Obligatory insert Manjarno.

Just don’t install Steam with snap. Many have had issues in the past with it. Either flatpak or grabbing the deb file from Steam

Steam deck isn’t just support for linux, it’s also a fully fledged portable PC. Perfect for those who don’t want to upgrade (#2) and those who want to play desktop games without messing with a desktop setup.

There’s the bias between users willing to share that data and those not willing. All sorts of correlations could be hiding there.

I can’t find out what the rate of refusals are, but I’d guess them to be rather low, maybe 10% at most. The survey is incredibly easy to perform and very transparent about colleted data.

The important thing to realise is that the survey is very consistent, so while the baseline may have some bias, the trends are very representative.

it’s easier to get games working on Linux then it is to get them working on Mac thanks to the new and amazing Apple Silicon

Yeah I agree, snap sucks big time. It’s so sad that Ubuntu decided to go all in on that shit

Of course, no worries! For the USB route, I can provide some instructions just in case you don’t already have them (it looks like a lot, but I promise it only looks like a lot! I’m known for being quite verbose). If you end up with questions on any of this, I’m happy to answer 'em:

• Download the ISO for the distribution that you want to use, for Linux Mint Cinnamon as was mentioned earlier, that can be found by selecting the mirror closest to you over at https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=319

[This next second step is skipped by a lot of people, however, it’s best to get into the habit of actually following through with this one]

• Typically, once the ISO is downloaded, most distributions will give you something called a “SHA256” hash, this is a unique long string of characters that is unique to a file and it allows you to verify that the file you’ve downloaded is exactly as they intend to provide (both as a “someone hasn’t tampered with it from the download source” and “to ensure the file downloaded correctly”) - if even a single byte of the file changes, then it causes the entire SHA256 hash to change. Since I don’t have a specific tool I use on Windows that I can vouch for, I’d point towards the PowerShell Get-FileHash command to do verification with, I’ll expand more at the end just in case you do want to do this [1].

• Then it needs to get “burned” onto a USB drive, which is a bit different from just dragging the ISO file onto the drive. There’s a lot of utilities that can do this for you, my favorite is balena etcher because it is compatible with the three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS) and its incredibly simple to use. Plug in your flash drive, open balena etcher, it will ask you for the ISO file, then the flash drive, and finally a “Start” button. Keep in mind, all data on the USB drive will be wiped after starting this - back up anything important you have on the USB drive!

• With the drive plugged into the computer, reboot/start the computer and usually there will be an onscreen help text at the very start indicating a few keys that have different operations, generally one will be called “Boot Menu” (or along those lines - unfortunately its different for each mobo manufacturer, so I cannot be more specific than that - its usually either F2, F12, or DELETE/DEL), press that button a few times quickly and you should get to a screen that gives you some options, and one of them will have your USB drive in there (so long as you had it plugged in when the PC was booting - if you just plugged it in at this point, it usually won’t appear, so in that case just do this again)

From here on, it should just boot up [2], and most distributions, including Linux Mint will just have an install option on the desktop - so long as you don’t enter that and walk through it, it won’t actually make any changes to your PC’s drive, allowing you to test drive the distro. Just be aware that some things might be a bit slower, since it is not a full install.

[1]: I just installed PowerShell on Linux to test the Get-FileHash command so that I can make sure I explain it correctly here, definitely not something I expected to do today ha! You’ll need to open PowerShell, Windows 11 I believe uses this by default in Windows Terminal - Windows 10 you might need to search “PowerShell” in the start menu. Then at the prompt, type Get-FileHash (there is a space at the end of that), and drag the ISO file onto the Terminal window so that it automatically types out the full path to the file, then hit enter. You should get some output that looks like this:

The Hash bit is the important part, and you’d compare that against the SHA256 hash text file that Linux Mint (or your chosen distro, most of them do have it somewhere next to the downloads) and make sure that it matches up. You can copy the hash from the windows terminal to your clipboard (highlight then right click does a copy, IIRC), then in the notepad that opens from the sha256sum.txt use Ctrl+F and paste the terminal’s hash into the find dialog, it should come up with an exact match and that saves you from having to look at each character individually (now in theory you really only have to compare the first 4 or so characters and the last 4 as its extremely rare to have those line-up while the other characters don’t, buuut just for the sake of being proper - this is how you’d do it proper). An exact match means you’re all good to go, but if it doesn’t match then that generally means that the file didn’t correctly download (or isn’t the file that you’re intended to have by the developers).

[2]: If it doesn’t boot, its possible “Secure Boot” is getting you. You can disable (Note: warning up ahead) this in your PC’s “Setup” utility, which is another key at boot-up, though again due to each motherboard’s BIOS being different, it’s hard to provide you the exact instructions as to where its at. Linux Mint supports Secure Boot from what I’m aware of, but if you’re trying a different distribution that doesn’t support it (and are on a relatively newish computer that has it enabled) then this can stop it from booting. As a warning: Verify whether your PC is using BitLocker first before disabling Secure Boot, if it is, make sure you have the recovery key - as BitLocker might be tripped by toggling Secure Boot, and not having the recovery key if this occurs could result in having to do a complete reinstall of Windows, and losing the data within it.

It was really cool of Microsoft to decide 202X is the year of Linux on the desktop.

As a mostly liberal American, I just don’t know where to begin.

As an Irishman, I would say Ranked Choice Voting. It’s not a silver bullet, but it does solve the main problem that prevents the other problems from being solved.

I installed bazzite recently and installation, setups, updating etc is easier than windows. Everything is easier. It’s not perfect but yeah, I am never looking back to windows even if I keep it installed as a dual boot… For now.

Ok, so re-install Steam! Pretty sure what I got was Snap. I was presented an App installer thing that kinda reminded me of the Microsoft Store (except, way less laggy). I think I remember seeing the word Snap.

Is there a way to verify that I have the right drivers for the video card? When it comes to GUI, I have a very Windows mindset, where I need to install the proper drivers, else I get the basic “well it works” drivers which aren’t good for gaming.

Yeah, just remove and grab the deb file instead.

I was under the impression that intel dgpu drivers were in the kernel and part of the mesa library. Not sure what kernel Ubuntu is using but you may want to grab a more recent kernel.

Quick search shows people are using kernel 6.12 and mesa 25 with decent success but not in all games. Could also swap to distro with more recent kernel.