JPI don't think a SteamOS landslide is inevitable or even likely but I definitely think MS doesn't realize how much they're playing with fire making Win11, their flagship and historic unbreakable monopoly, the "turning a big dial taht says 'user hostility' on it and constantly looking back at shareholders for approval like a contestant on the price is right" OS.
mcc@jplebreton I'm really curious if any orgs are moving away from Office 365 now that there's mandatory-ish AI
⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️@mcc @jplebreton several EU government departments
Martin Marconcini@falken @mcc @jplebreton a lot are considering this. Banks, and government institutions are learning the hard lessons.
Justin M
Connor Cadellin@mcc @jplebreton Danish government was anyway
Don Marti@mcc @jplebreton The risky part is when the company assigns some freelancer to do some writing or art and the contract requires original work.
If the freelancer is using tools with built in slop features, then they run into copyright and contract issues.
There will be demand for content creation tools to offer hard-to-fake revision history (signed changes with timestamps?) too
@dmarti @jplebreton i think the AI industry's strategy is to make it so so many companies of so many scales are infringing that every company assumes they're bulletproof because no one would go after everyone infringing
Glenn Seto@mcc @dmarti @jplebreton It's a good thing then that nobody ever tried to, say, troll anyone, legally speaking, with something like patents.
@mcc @jplebreton All these big companies have no problem making the consequences flow downhill—they would totally put an AI easy button on a word processor and then hold the author responsible if they clicked it by mistake.
@cstross is switching to the lower-risk alternative https://wandering.shop/@cstross/114541747269406389
Charlie Stross (@[email protected])
Welp, I have just cancelled my Microsoft Office 365 recurring subscription. Two reasons. 1. I only ever use it to check tracked changes to the copy edits on novels—once a year—which my publishers process in Word. As of this month, LibreOffice is good enough for the job (just tested at book length). 2. CoPilot in Office would open me up to accusations of breach of contract—my book contracts warrant that they're all my own work: CoPilot brings that into question. So good riddance to Office365!
Charlie Stross@dmarti @mcc @jplebreton Ahem: I switched away from MS Word *decades* ago, except for one hyper-specific requirement imposed by somebody else's brittle workflow, which is now supported by LibreOffice. ("Requirement" = "need to do this in order to get paid". So non-optional.)
schrotthaufen@mcc @jplebreton The ICC did migrate to openDesk, the German RKI (think CDC) wants to use it, and the German army works on ditching M365 in favor of openDesk as well.
clarity flowers@jplebreton I'm definitely planning on attempting to install steamOS on my desktop if Microsoft forces my hand
Les Orchard@clarity FWIW, I eased into this by plonking a second drive into my PC and installed Bazzite Linux on that. Didn't touch the original drive at all, for safer retreat back to Windows.
IIRC, Bazzite shares/borrows a lot of components and intent from Steam OS. It's worked out really well. It's been almost 2 years and now I'm looking at wiping that windows drive for more storage @jplebreton
@lmorchard neat, I'll have to look into this. My PC literally sits next to my television and the only thing it does anymore is run my plex server and play games. it doesn't really even make sense to have a desktop-centric OS like Windows on it anymore.
Lord Kelvin@lmorchard @clarity
Reading this thread with interest. Have a SteamDeck & it’s been grand. Have a 2018 Mac Mini that was just retired from day job service, & considering making it a replacement Xubuntu ham radio unit. But an older Mini is doing that now, & has been solid. So maybe try SteamOS on the extra one & experiment a while.
Reading this thread with interest. Have a SteamDeck & it’s been grand. Have a 2018 Mac Mini that was just retired from day job service, & considering making it a replacement Xubuntu ham radio unit. But an older Mini is doing that now, & has been solid. So maybe try SteamOS on the extra one & experiment a while.
@kelvin0mql Weirdly apropos, I just saw this from Action Retro where he installed Ubuntu on a few older Macs and got Steam + Proton running on one of them? Steam OS might be doable too, though I haven't tried
Modern Ubuntu is KILLER on old Intel Macs!
@lmorchard
Oh, fantastic! Thanks!
Oh, fantastic! Thanks!
@lmorchard @clarity
My OLD old mac mini has #AndysHamRadioLinux on it, & it's been great. Absolutely love it.
Recently learned that Andy's is now a script that runs on many flavors of Linux, so I decided to get an ISO image of Ubuntu 24 for this next go.
Oh man, do I HATE this.
The menu in Xubuntu is organized, makes sense, has descriptions.
The menu in (late/current) Ubuntu is trying too hard to be WINDOWSy, as it expects I know the name of the app I'm gonna run. No category/description.
recursive 🏳️🌈@lmorchard @clarity @jplebreton Bazzite is really satisfying on a gaming PC. And the Proton stuff in Steam makes it possible to play everything recently released on Windows in Steam (if you turn it on for everything instead of just where the publisher chose it)
EVHaste@jplebreton I’m looking forward to toying with the steam machine since windows has decided to leap directly into a tank full of sharks.
@jplebreton The fact that "how does it run on SteamDeck?" is now part of the discourse around any new game is definitely encouraging.
(I'm not in the market for a SteamOS device, but certainly don't mind all the effort going into Proton and I assume the Linux graphics stack in general.)
@jplebreton I feel like there's a critical mass / tipping point possible here. Like, a lot of folks go "ew, linux" as a knee jerk reaction. But, many Linux distros are unexpectedly solid and good these days. Especially the gaming-oriented distros. I'd think if enough folks give them a try and find they're not gross - i.e. versus windows - something weird could happen.
DarkRat@jplebreton not just microsoft.
I have a theory that valve is aiming even higher:
DarkRat (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image I have a tinfoil prediction/theory what #valve is planning in the mid-term future: - #steamOS is the response of windows locking users out by starting to push an app store - #android is planning to lock users out of installing custom APKs - Valve is currently stating that android APKs can be run with SteamOS 3 My theory: They are working on a SteamOS phone. And are using APK compatibility in SteamOS 3 as a compatibility dev platform to launch a phone with a good app landscape
@darkrat they're moving to support APKs so they can have an inroad to the Quest's ecosystem and eventually do a Proton-like compat coverage effort that greatly expands the Frame's library and breaks FB's hold on the market.
phones in 2025 are an unglamorous and miserably low-margin business for everyone but Apple, i think Valve is too smart to go anywhere near that.
phones in 2025 are an unglamorous and miserably low-margin business for everyone but Apple, i think Valve is too smart to go anywhere near that.
hmm. the low margin thing is indeed true.
But they can subsidize a big part of the costs due to steam itself.
GenZ and Alpha is gaming a LOT on mobile phones. If they partner with a phone manufacturer as a test run and put decent hardware in it, I can see people getting a steam phone.
"Gaming phones" already exist. And they sell reasonably well, despite the manufacturers not being able to subsidize with a game store
Juho MäntysaloI understand nothing of this, but would think that at some point you could just add a sim-card. There's some advantage to be wlan-free (limited data plans are mostly an USA-speciality), and once you have that you can as well do the extra step to allow calling numbers.
So what if it's not a full ecosystem like Android or iOS? It wouldn't cost a lot to do so, and there might be a demographic that's just interested in being reachable by a gaming device.
sauc3I think you might be underestimating how much some people hate "AI", as well as how burned people are with the way Microsoft has been behaving (I mean really forever, but in particular) over the last few months.
But I could be wrong, and often am.
@sauc3 oh as a day 1 hater i 100% understand how much people hate it, and Linux has been my primary home OS since 2006, but there's a gulf of particular (fairly addressable) concerns between "hates what Win11 is doing" and "ready to switch away from Windows with no regrets or sacrifices", that's why I hedged with "not inevitable or even likely". a mass migration would be absolutely seismic, it'd break into non-tech news and everyday (non-tech) conversation. i'm long-term-optimistic. we'll see!
This is the first time I've been optimistic about something in computing for a long time, which makes me sad.
ǝʌɐp@jplebreton it will be difficult to recover from a reputation of "games run slow on windows"
syn@jplebreton widows feels a lot more janky than a lot of Linux distros I've used in the last five years, let alone the user hostility shit
I installed Ubuntu for the first time since 2009 and noticed how empty it felt.
During Windows 10 there had been more and more things that you had to (try to) turn off, or otherwise figure how to get successfully past. And I don't even mean AI or ads (thought those helped), but all sort of "drivers" that were half a gb in size, and installed some sort of program that wanted your attention at least once a week.
The problem with Windows isn't just Microsoft.
vriska, thief of light 
@jplebreton now they just need SteamOS 3.11 for Workgroups
pixx@jplebreton I do think a slide _away_ from Windows _is_ covering, though...
Michael Cook@jplebreton Great point.
I personally rarely use my computer these days (I’m on Mac) because my iPhone and iPad just get me _so_ far.
10-15 years ago computers were far more necessary. I don’t think the big risk is Linux or Mac. It’s a phone, possibly tablet, and maybe console if you’re a gamer.
I think most people just don’t need PCs anymore. And MS risks accidentally making people discover that.
I say that as a former PC nerd. What do you think most would give up first? Phone? No.
Mad Engineering@jplebreton Honestly, I think at the first sign of enshittification, we should take that as a signal that the company is six months from going belly up and sell off.
LibbyDocker@jplebreton The operative word here, in software terms, should be 'community'
Cassidy James 
@jplebreton a neat effect I’ve seen first hand so far is that it truly does make the entire Linux desktop that much more compelling.
Even if OEMs largely stick with Windows, the fact that gaming is not only “fine” on Linux but in many cases *actually better* and actively supported by the biggest PC gaming store means there are more reasons than ever for individuals to explore Linux.
Just look at the top apps on Flathub; there’s a *ton* of games and game-related apps. That’s no coincidence.
@jplebreton i know friends that want to switch to steamos due to windows 11 being so shit. Just need to wait for steam OS desktop to be again supported but it can be a start
ChrisTime to recognize that monopolies need to be nationalized and or broken up into regional public utilities. This is the prize we need to award capitalist with when they have won the game.
@jplebreton well at least I hope it creates some competition in the PC Gaming space.
I might get a GabeCube for myself if the price is affordable for my budget.
Scott Gamester@jplebreton I just bought a Dell 5285 2-1 for a little over a hundred bucks with an i7 16gb 512gb ssd. Ubuntu took no effort to install and everything works. Owned goal by MSFT
Aequitas@jplebreton I hope, once the stream machine is out, that we start to see hardware vendors selling 'ready for steam OS' builds. I feel like that would be the start of a *real* shift.
At the same time, I've seen more openness to switching to Linux from friends/colleagues, because I've been sharing about my journey away from Windows (very recently)
Someone has to be the scout/recon :P
LordMortis@jplebreton I just… don’t understand how you turn (to put it a more Aussie way: piss away) XBox into what it is now? Valve shouldn’t have had room to release this thing, but I’m talking to non-hardcore people who are interested in the steam machine for their living room..l
Michael@lordmortis @jplebreton I think one of those people lives in my house 😛