Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
I’m really curious to see what kind of performance gains the Xbox-mode or whatever they’re calling it is going to provide. I don’t know if it’ll reach SteamOS levels, but it does legitimately look like they’re taking the bloat’s hit on gaming seriously with the Xbox-branded ROG Ally.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
It may be made for games but it’s a more tolerable desktop experience than a fully fledged Windows PC.
Which features/functions are “missing”
Yeah, three is the limit on control panel flavors within an OS
Why does it need to be dumbed down for the average joe?
Why does guis need to be designed for the person not using it? Why not design them for the people using it now and improve them for the actual users of the software instead of the persons NOT using the software?
Thats a stupid idea and that very line of thought is the brainrot that has led to the enshittification of so much the last couple of decades.
I mean, DOS was a base OS that had several frontend GUIs. Windows 3.1 I think? Wasn’t even made by Microsoft. It got adopted by Microsoft and then of course they close sourced it like big companies do.
Most Linux versions come with the frontend preconfigured unless you get specifically the server version of the OS.
What’s going to happen is one of the Linux front ends is going to see widespread adoption/support, and it’s looking like it’s going to be KDE Plasma. Hopefully the others aren’t just abandoned and left to rot. The situation is a little different with how open source software is licensed though. So that give me hope that the open source nature of Linux won’t be compromised as much.
And Windows 10 was clearly faster.
Than Windows 11, that is.
I think this time actually does have the potential to be different. They’re co-launching an Xbox-branded handheld PC designed to go head-to-head with the Steam Deck while downplaying the future of dedicated consoles.
Microsoft’s gaming division is going all-in on PC, so it matters more than ever.
Yeah, but they were also still making new standalone gaming boxes with a dedicated OS, and they didn’t have the Xbox division take the lead on game mode.
Linux and Mac gaming also weren’t a threat, and the solution to a bloated Windows installation was more horsepower, which was relatively cheap.
Now the market is completely changed. The Xbox Series S and X have had their lunch eaten by Playstion and Switch. Linux gaming is exploding because of the Steam Deck, while more-powerful Windows handhelds are performing worse with worse batteries than the Deck because of Windows bloat.
Mid-range GPUs cost more than an entire high-end gaming rig from 5 years ago, so high-end gaming PCs are rarer than ever.
Microsoft has to do something. And what they’ve chosen, for now, is to partner with Asus to launch a true Xbox-branded competitor to the Deck. To do that, they have to actually be competitive. There’s 2 keys to that. One is Gamepass, and the other is moving Windows out of the way of the game experience.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
While I mostly agree with this, every time I see this mentioned it reminds me that MS-DOS was not very popular, until a Microsoft employee offered to port Doom to DOS, because he saw that if games ran on a platform people would use it and migrate naturally, that employee was called Gabe Newell. So I do have some hope that there’s some bigger migration, and in fact we’ve seen the numbers steadily rising, and these sort of things tend to be exponential, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up speed.
DOS was the most popular OS for gaming at the time and Doom was released first on DOS by id.
Gabe Newell and team ported it to Windows 95.
Windows was wildly popular prior to Doom. Doom for Windows 95 was a showcase for DirectX, not Windows.
Doom was on more systems than Windows 95, yes, but that’s a little misleading. First off, it was released several years before Window’s 95. Secondly, people upgraded computers less often back then, and Windows 95 wasn’t packaged with most systems and wasn’t distributed online. You had to actively decide to go to a store and buy it.
Third, the vast majority of Doom copies were the shareware version of the first campaign. It was tiny and free. People would bring their floppy to a friend’s house, or they’d post it on a bbs for download.
The port to Windows 95 was a technical showcase of the advantages of using DirectX. It showed that Windows had integrated features that could be used to enhance games with minimal development cost, and that games could be run without having to exit Windows to DOS, which was a huge hassle required for most games at the time.