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the only one that can kill windows is microsoft
Big "if" these days
What about Microsoft isn't a hollowed shell at this point? Maybe letting go of the gamers will let them find out a new way to make money.
its honest a boon for gamers as microsoft now actually has to spend more effort making windows betters for gamers then spending all of its effort on windows for arm and AI. one of the things windows as an OS lacks is that the handheld experience is actually trash, and the OS is a resource hog for a handheld device
They tried to make the handheld experience better in windows 8... 🤣
imo the metro take of windows 8 wasn't the wrong approach for its intended market(tablets) it's just forcing it on desktop/laptop users as well as a boneheaded decision.
They need to stop forcing windows changes for ALL users, including to the users that can't use said features properly (as it was designed with touch screens in mind, and not everyone had touchscreens). Same idea with the more recent stuff involving Recall. not everyone has AI capable pcs, so its dumb to include the change to all users that will exist on the main branch of the OS, and would apply down the line to windows handhelds as well, who will likely not need recall as a feature as its using up resources. And im not like a person whose like fully Anti AI either, it just has its specific userbase that may need it, and there are others (like with a windows handheld case) that should not have it at all, as it is likely a detriment to battery if enabled by default.
Microsoft keeps doing it, and I don't expect they'll do anything different this time. They'll shove handheld UI into work laptops and piss off a ton of people, and then 5 years down the line they'll tear out a lot of work that they did and leave behind some remnant bloat
Honestly the metro design language didn't look particularly attractive for touch screens either. I knew someone with a Nokia Windows Phone, the interface seemed... clunky. Quirky but not in the right ways.
It has to cater to mice and fingers, and so ends up with the lowest common denominator. Can't have information density because of the butter fingers, can't have neat swiping gestures because of the mice and especially trackpads. So, big squares and huge buttons, repeat ad nauseum. Like a DUPLO set.
Surely the UI/UX designers and Microsoft knew this, but I guess Ballmer had his way. Meanwhile Valve didn't have to contend with cranky executives, so they just slapped Big Picture on top of KDE and let use decide when to switch between console mode and desktop mode.
That's what I was implying with the elipses, I just couldn't be bothered writing all that 😅
Competition is always great. To be fair, Windows wasn't really designed with a handheld game console in mind as its target distribution platform. SteamOS, at least its current version, was designed for that exact purpose. Would definitely welcome a more lightweight Windows to come from this though, not just for handhelds but just regular desktops too.
That "If" is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Really interested to see where SteamOS goes in the future.
It's easy to understate what an unusual project SteamOS is. It represents over a dozen years of work from some of the industry's finest, is funded by a private company, yet is open source and free for everyone to use. "I'm pretty happy that we've managed to find a balance that's beneficial to everyone, while still being able to help this PC ecosystem in this way," says Griffais. "I'm really happy about that."
I can't wait to try it
Microsoft wants all future apps to go through their store. Basically like Apple does in Mac [ appears you can ]. I do believe this is the future for Windows apps. Once that happens, Valve running on Windows will be second fiddle. Valve's only choice is to migrate to another OS or end up like Mozilla.
Thought Mac store was required. Guess not.
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Windows: So you're saying there's a chance
That's cheeky.
It's about making more steam users. Windows is great, they can use steam. They're going after people who can't afford a pc. If people get a deck or steamos who already do own one, that's just gravy
The weird thing with this is i became a pc gamer precisely because it was the cheapest platform.
Most homes had/have a desktop pc. The hardware was mostly irrelevant because Low graphics settings where default and actually looked more readable then the dlss blurs of today.
Agree, depending on what you prefer it can be the cheapest or most expensive option. I remember playing left 4 dead windowed at 480p when it first came out
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It's not about killing Windows.
It's about slowing making G*mers comfortable with the idea of Valve's own closed off ecosystem.
They have already made G*mers comfortable with not owning their games, loot boxes, micro transactions.
This is just another example of Valve being the money grubbing, monopolistic, anti-consumer company that they've somehow got away with for years now.
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It is hilarious to me that Lemmy users, who seem to mostly be obsessed with Linux (borderline Arch users except slightly less annoying about it), talk like Windows is such a massively hated OS when it is literally still the most widely distributed and used OS in the world. Like yes, so many people globally hate Windows which is why everyone keeps using Windows and not switching to something they hate less. Of course.
I don't think it follows that a product having many users means it is not hated. Just look at health insurance in the US. I'm not saying everyone is secretly itching to ditch Windows and move to Linux as soon as possible but I do think the vast majority of people simply don't care and just use whatever the default option is provided that things work well enough. If it becomes just as easy to use Linux as Windows (including PC vendors offering Linux preinstalled and working with all appropriate drivers) I think we'd see more people switching because of the slightly cheaper cost alone.
Switching to Linux is literally free. It costs way more to get a license key for Windows than it does to just download Linux. People stick with what they know, and what they know is Windows is for PC, OSX is for Apple, and they may or may not even know anything about Linux at all. I would even go so far as to say most people would run Android for an OS instead of a traditional Linux distro.
Spending time on it, stops making it free. I've used Linux on off for more than 25 years now, but always switched back to Windows because in all those previous instances something weren't working well enough on Linux. I'm not blaming Linux for this and will at some point try again as I dislike what Windows does in the background.
But my time is not 'free'.
And practically I mostly find using Windows extremely easy. Being in IT specifically for my knowledge about Windows obviously helps there. I follow the notices they send out for my job, so know how to turn off or prevent many of the user annoyances quickly.
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Switching costs. It's the same reason people keep using Facebook and X despite the fact both are widely hated.
If Linux was the dominant OS preinstalled on the majority of computers almost nobody would make the effort to install Windows.
There are a tremendous number of people out there who do dislike Windows, but have no idea what to do about it. They see their computer's operating system as an intrinsic part of it kind of how iOS is kind of immutably baked into an iPhone. They don't really have a grasp on what an operating system is or how to install one, and even if told they'd be paralyzed with fear over the risk of breaking something.
You described me pretty well.
And you're not alone, in fact I would guess you're part of the majority. But we tend to live in bubbles surrounded by tech savvy people so we forget about it sometimes. And the problem with not knowing something is possible is not realizing its limitations, someone who's eaten hot dogs every day of their life has no idea what a burguer is, is one intrinsically better than the other? Nope, but they're different, and different people might like different things.
In any case, just like the other comment, if you have any questions feel free to ask, there's a thriving community of people who use Linux and some of us were like you so we know where you're coming from.
Know what, I just might get a few questions together and ask them in one of the Linux subs.
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The kind of people who came to Lemmy when Reddit enshittified are also the kind of people who went to Linux when Windows enshittified. Tech savvy enough to figure it out and zealous enough to stick with it, even if the FOSS solution objectively isn’t as great. (I’m that kind of people, it’s me.)
people can, and often do, use things that they hate.
I mean... right now I'm using windows on my desktop computer because when I installed mint I encountered a bunch of problems (no Ethernet, no wifi, no HDMI out, crashes on steam games...)
I really wanted to use Linux, but the out of the box support just isn't always there. I'm not using windows because I like or prefer it.
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This thread is fun too. Like valve is giving a wink and a nod when saying Windows is fine. Valve sells games. They don’t care if you play on steamOS, Windows, or a steam powered adding machine.
They don’t care if you play on steamOS, Windows, or a steam powered adding machine.
i think yes and no: they make their money from selling games, so they want more people to buy more games from them
… but, SteamOS achieves that in a multi-faceted way:
- it provides a fit-for-purpose platform for handhelds and consoles which previously steam didn’t have any market share over, and if that’s in SteamOS they have a massive advantage
- it gives valve some leverage over microsoft (if MS controls the platform that you depend on, they can do some pretty wild things and you have no recourse). in this case, they definitely care about bumping their numbers - more on SteamOS means less power microsoft has over them
- it creates competition, which forces microsoft to invest in making their own experience better, and better experience anywhere means probably more people game more often
i think that last point in particular is critical: every $ valve spends on steamos is multiplied, because microsoft has to spend their own money to keep up, and it propels the whole ecosystem forward
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Kill windows we must.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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