Quoting: pleasereadthemanualYour entire comment is 100% right. And after thinking about it some more, I think presenting the middle group with the option of Linux, while being essentially the only group any of us have the chance to affect, is mostly a waste of time on both sides. They want Windows, and Linux is never going to be Windows. But there's something to be said for the middle group pushing their way through to being part of the second group—which I was definitely a part of. I knew very little about computers before I installed Linux, but I was pretty familiar with Windows. Now I feel like I know a few things about computers.

I would certainly never have tried Linux had I not been presented with the option. But I was never desperate to leave Windows, so I wasn't as concerned with feature parity. I was just curious. And very familiar with feeling stupid, anyway

We can try to make things more familiar and easier to transition to (and we should!), but in the end I feel like the only thing we can give the middle group is a reason. A reason to give Linux a try. Nothing more than that; the rest is up to them. And no hard feelings either way...it's your computer, after all. And for everyone else, it's up to the corporates, schools, and governments as you say. Completely out of our hands.

The Deck does a number of things to help the casual user and the Windows Power User. It gives the reason that you've highlighted by being a desirable gaming handheld (which, notably, the Steam Machines lacked).

The casual users are already sorted at this point: they've bought a machine with Linux on, and it's great.

The Windows Power Users can't really break it by Windowsisms because the filesystem is read-only. Windowsisms just fail, but don't break anything. Going back to Windows is removed as an option: it's explicitly going to Windows because the machine comes with Linux, and by all accounts the Windows experience after you've put in the effort is a lot worse than the Linux experience was. It forces them to slow down and do things the Linux way. Then, should they have enjoyed the experience of using Linux & want to try it on a different machine, they'll have already started the process of having not-Windows knowledge - they'll have already got over the "everything that's different from Windows is incorrect" mindset.

It also does a lot to correct perception issues. This is clearly not a "Linux is for contrary weirdos" situation: it's a mainstream device from a company that they've likely already heard of, and likely already have an extensive relationship with. Linux is the normal, standard, default option, and the people that either install Windows on the Deck or get one of the Windows handhelds from the smaller players are the contrary weirdos.

And, as far as we can tell, it's continuing to be very successful: the Linux Steam number is still going up and the Deck is still the number 1 top seller on Steam.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusYeah – I was thinking about what I wrote later in the day after posting, that I didn't mean to imply "we should only introduce people to Linux with a less-familiar DE". I think what I said was mostly about a certain class of Windows power users who would have to learn/unlearn/relearn the most when switching because their prior Windows knowledge no longer applies (like, I dunno, editing the registry). For lots of people who don't need or want to go deeper, the surface familiarity of various Linux DEs is a great asset.

That middle group has, by far, the hardest time switching to Linux.

The biggest chunk of computer users aren't interested at all in computers. It doesn't matter at all to them whether they're using Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android, iOS, a BSD, ChromeOS, or anything else. That simply doesn't register. They have a computer as an appliance, to run applications as tools, to do the bits that they are actually interested in. Apple has a lot to offer these kinds of customers. And these kinds of people would also have zero issue with Linux provided their computer came with it already - either from the shop directly or because their tech support (whether that's their employer's IT department or the "tech support" of a friend or family member) had set it up for them.

People that are interested in computers also have no real trouble with Linux. You can control everything yourself, you can learn everything yourself, you can change everything yourself - right down to the kernel of the OS. This is catnip. These people are also adaptable enough that they can make do with any OS.

But then there's the middle group. The Windows Power Users. Microsoft have had decades of stranglehold on the computers these people have any experience of. All of their knowledge, all of their skills, all of their intuitions are Windows-only. But they don't know that. They think that they're "good with computers." And Linux will make them pay for their vanity and arrogance over and over as they break their computer by doing ridiculous Windows things.

Some of these are going to push through into the second, more technical, group, and they'll be fine. But the ones that don't are the ones that will be incredibly vocal about how "if I, a Windows Power User, kept breaking my computer, Linux must be rubbish." Linux revealed the gaps in their knowledge, and they didn't like that.

We don't need to court the second group. They'll find Linux on their own. We can't court the first group - they're never going to install any OS in a million years. They need the computers they buy to come with Linux, and the computers provided by their schools and workplaces to come with Linux, and to do the things they need a computer to do. We have only limited ability to affect things for the middle bunch. Reacting negatively to things that make one feel stupid is human nature. We can try to give them realistic expectations of their actual skill levels before they start. We can try to make things not break when people mistakenly do Windows-only things on not-Windows. We can try to be patient, as it comes up, to help people continue their journey rather than loudly bounce off.

But that first group is where the growth is, which needs computers to come with the OS it will have for its lifetime. As Microsoft have done. As Apple have done. As Google have done. And, to a much smaller degree (for now?), as Valve have done.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI really like the look of this but I'm not sure I could play it. Seeing all the stuff bouncing around, maybe falling off, maybe getting damaged, just makes me wince. Especially the piano! I kept going AAAGGHH that poor piano noooo!

Whereas I'm wondering if you have a baby in a bottle strapped to your chest.

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Quoting: PenglingTo be fair, robvv is absolutely spot-on - their community-manager confirmed that it's Unity in this Reddit post, haha! I wouldn't've figured that out myself - there are tons of games made in Unity and they all look very different to each other to me.

The "Unity look" is a function of the asset styles and lighting shaders that are available to small, often inexperienced, teams. While you can do high-poly in Unity - Tarkov and Remnant are both Unity, for example - and low-poly in UE, generally by the point you've built up a large team of experienced artists and devs they've already got a UE workflow. The "Godot look" is going to be functionally identical to the "Unity look" because it will come from exactly the same factors.

FWIW, I much prefer default-Unity fuzzy pastels to default-UE sweaty plastic.

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Quoting: wintermuteAren't EA in the process of blocking their catalogue from Linux users? Is this title guaranteed to not get the same treatment before or after launch?

There are no guarantees with any game. Even with games that advertise explicit Linux support, a small number will remove it later down the line; EA haven't even done that here - they support Windows and it happens to work, for now, in Proton. Feel free to price your purchases according to the amount of support you receive in exchange.

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Modest requirements, Linux-native, controller support... Hopefully they've not forgotten something like text size that would stop them getting the green tick. Deck & cozy is a great combo.

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Quoting: benstor214What is 4CPT?

Four Contact-Patch Traction modelling.

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QuoteAll from the comfort of your couch (or toilet)!

They're going to need to get the green tick if they're recycling mobile game blurb.

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QuoteThe release has been a bit on the quiet side, with no Steam announcement even posted yet to announce the finished game has been released. Trying to play online just results in endless matchmaking too, since the player-count is currently low, which will hopefully tick up when more people realise ExoCross is actually out.

Oof. Apparently the text is too small for the green tick, too, so no marketing help there.

Not telling anyone about it, so only having 45 concurrent users of your multiplayer game on launch day doesn't seem like a super successful strategy.

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Quoting: VasilisI was thinking for a Linux exclusive first, we are testing it on:

1. Fedora (it's my machine)
2. Ubuntu
3. Steam deck

It should work for all Linux distros, we just put that as a minimum.

Definitely test on those - really, test wherever you can - but ideally building against the Steam Linux Runtime means that the user's distro doesn't matter because the game's using libraries from Steam's container.

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