I know people like to make fun of niche operating systems, but for the five years I was at Microsoft I used Windows (10 then 11) as my daily driver. It’s much less stable than a professional OS, but it does kind-of work. I wouldn’t say it’s ready for the desktop. The UI is inconsistent and changes randomly between releases, a load of common software is basically useable only in a VM, it lags and freezes periodically (unlike an OS designed for interactive use, random drivers run a load of things directly in interrupt handlers, so you get latency spikes that you wouldn’t see in a more mainstream desktop OS) and the update process can hose the system, so it’s mostly of interest to people who like tinkering with their machines than people who actually want to get work done. Oh and a load of random bits of the OS have ads, but that’s what you get from a free ad-supported system instead of one developed by an active open-source community.

I don’t think I’d recommend anyone use it as their daily driver or in a work setting, but it’s not totally unusable. It’s not at the level of maturity than you’d expect from, say, Linux or FreeBSD, especially not for client workloads. If you do have to use it, I recommend that you install FreeBSD in a Hyper-V VM for real work. That’s what I did and it works quite well.

@david_chisnall I just wish that larger game developers would take Linux more seriously. I like daily driving Zorin OS (and previously Kubuntu) on my previous main machine.
@littlebit670 @david_chisnall there is still too much fragmentation in the Linux gaming space for binaries. Proton and DXVK are like the Rosetta stones of translation layer goodness that will continue keeping everything together for all the *nix flavors out there.
Anticheat is its own hell, and yes that needs more serious consideration.

@vandorb12 @littlebit670 @david_chisnall Anticheat are simply kernel-level rootkits. No one with a sane mind would sacrifice kernel integrity and stability just to run a game.

There are some native games, but the majority requires Proton. https://www.protondb.com/explore

ProtonDB | Explore | Most Steam Followers

A list of games related to Most Steam Followers. Discover games for sale or in your library and view their compatibility with Proton and the Steam Deck. You can also filter by user tags, sort by ProtonDB rating, popularity, or user score.

@nakal @vandorb12 @david_chisnall After hearing about some of the technicalities of kernel anticheat, I wonder why game developers use it instead of detecting cheaters using gameplay data. Won’t stop a cheater before they actually cheat, but they would still get detected and banned.

@littlebit670 @nakal @vandorb12 @david_chisnall

They do that too, ask people who have been too enthusiastic about magnetic keyboards and been banned for rappy-snap-tap-whatever.

@resuna @nakal @vandorb12 @david_chisnall yeah I wonder why companies keep making snap tap keyboards when many games consider them to be cheating. Corsair just made a keyboard with a built in Stream Deck that also has snap tap functionality.

@littlebit670 @nakal @vandorb12 @david_chisnall

Same reason they make keyboards with south-facing sockets, or QMK boards with VIA instead of VIAL. Or if they don't like QMK's license and PalmOS-style design they should be using ZMK instead of maintaining their own firmware.

Customers are generally meme-driven and kind of naive and trusting of a pretty short list of annoying Youtube "influencers" who have Strong Opinions that are just weird and bad.