this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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I use Arch btw
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I don’t know the anime either, but the steam logo is walking away from the debian logo and then staring into the eyes of the arch logo. OP is saying that valve made the right choice by ditching debian (I thought they were using ubuntu, but that’s just a debian derivative with a bad UI on top) for arch as the basis for steamOS. For a gaming platform, I agree. You want the latest updates and software versions for gaming purposes (and proton/wine purposes), and they can hire employees to ensure they have tackled arch’s bleeding-edge instabilities before rolling the updates out to the general population.
You know every time I think I understand enough about Linux to consider moving over an innocent post like this sets me back to square one.
Nah you're overthinking it. Grab a beginner friendly distro like Mint and just start using it. All this is fanboy talk that can be interesting but doesn't affect 99% of users.
Yeah, it's not like most Windows users understand a lot about Windows, including how to install Windows, or what an operating system is.
A concerning amount of Windows users say they're PC users.
They're technically right, the best kind of right. That said, I too hate Microsoft leaning into this Apple marketing bullshit and trying to monopolize the term personal computer for Windows.
Although, you could argue that some of the modern computers that only support UEFI booting and no longer have BIOS booting support aren't actually PCs since the PC bios is a pretty big part of what traditionally defined a PC compatible system
Valve’s use-case for choosing a gnu+linux distro is likely to be different from yours. Therefore, commentary about Valve’s needs and choices may or may not be relevant to your use-case.
If you’re new, I recommend mint. Because of ubuntu’s questionable choices at times vs debian’s steady hand, I recommend the debian edition of mint, LMDE. It’s a rolling distribution that requires fewer total reinstalls. Debian’s low-effort stability and security works for nearly all use-cases. Mint adds user-friendly settings, updates, and package management.
Cinnamon is mint’s desktop environment, what they add on top of ubuntu or debian. Like xfce, it’s lighter-weight and more responsive than plasma or gnome on lower-end or aging hardware, but it’s prettier than xfce without rice. Although if you wanna rice and make it pretty, check out a tiling window manager.
Let Valve handle the complex stuff and hire employees to stress-test the latest packages in Arch and just use what they package for you in proton. Start with a debian derivative. If you start wanting to tinker around because you’re getting comfortable, or for some reason desperately need a newer version of a package, you can try software from other package management schemes like guix or flatpak that run on top of your stable debian system.
When you’re comfortable with using the command line tools and managing the gnu operating system, you can try a more command-line centered and manually assisted distros like arch and gentoo
This is, uh, pretty far into deep lore. Just use mint, you'll be fine.
It's really not so bad. You would likely be fine with a beginner-friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint. Personally I use Ubuntu because it tends to be the most supported by application developers and things generally just work, it's kind of boring stable IMO to the point where I almost want to start distro hopping and trying out something other than Ubuntu.
Though I'd recommend trying it out in a VM first to get a feel for it, and then also trying to live boot it from a USB and see how you like it.
Nothing about what he said would prevent you from using a casual user focused variant like Ubuntu. The biggest challenge you'll potentially run into is drivers and/or having hardward that just doesn't play nice with linux. I'd suggest just giving an install a try and see how it goes. The experience has come a long long way in the past decade.
What is, Ubuntu, or the pre-Arch based SteamOS? I ask because Ubuntu has so many different variants that you can pick a UI that works for you.
True, but the desktop environment that they develop in-house is what I grade them on. Not the color themes and backgrounds that they put on desktop environments produced by other projects. You can install other desktop environments on any linux distro. Ubuntu only produces Unity.
Ubuntu doesn’t use unity anymore, their default UI is a GNOME shell with some extensions. It works pretty well imo. Not that different from gnome itself
That's true, but you could always just install Kubuntu or Xubuntu and still get a great experience, it's literally just Ubuntu with a different DE so you would still get the full Ubuntu "experience" imo, although yeah I do see your point. Though, I do think Ubuntu has actually moved back to GNOME and killed off Unity.
They even link to the alternate desktop environments on their site
I don't understand the purpose of this comment, aside from downvote farming.
I was joking!!!
Why?
Historically the in-group for several niche topics is hostile to outsiders, and the poster was very friendly and inclusive, so the sarcasm of "no don't do that" should be a little funny.
Also, the idea of "for the crime of being X they will be sentenced to the punishment of remaining X" is also funny to me.