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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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As 12 comes out I think we will see a lot of gamers moving to Linux thanks to the much anticipated SteamOS release. Windows 12 will still be "successful" among the general public but Linux usage will skyrocket as Microsoft break that straw on the camels back for the more experienced users.
Personally I will move to Linux, likely start with dual boot in the transitional phase and as SteamOS improves and game publishers realise they need to support Linux and take it more seriously.
Not a Linux fan at all but with my steamdeck usage and setting up Mint on a NUC for a server I've been very impressed with Linux progression. It's still not perfect, needs to be more user friendly but it is getting there.
They said that with Windows 8 and Steam OS
Every year is the year of Linux
If they had dropped support for win7 and earlier to force users to win 8, it might have happened more. Though at that time, Linux gaming wasn't in the state it is today, too.
Linux is just the base OS. There's not much to like or dislike about "Linux" as a whole from an end-user perspective, unless you happen to have hardware that's not well supported, or software you use that isn't available. Single distros or desktop environments, you can definitely dislike, but "Linux" itself is just a kernel and a bunch of hardware drivers. You've seen it yourself with the Steam Deck. Its what the distribution maintainer makes it, and what software you run on top (including the UI/desktop environment/window manager you interact with).
I'm curious what you find less user friendly about Mint (guessing you went with the default Cinnamon environment?) vs the Windows UX. IMHO, the modern Windows experience is a convoluted mess of options hidden in different places, inconsistent UI, and confusing options that like to disappear between releases? Hell, my tray icons refuse to stay all visible on my Win 11 partition, I can't move my taskbar to the top anymore (really useful with a large monitor), etc.
IMHO, the only reason people still find Windows user friendly is familiarity. I think the largest problems with Linux these days are:
It's interesting that you find the taskbar to be better in Mint, that's the thing I've had by far the most trouble with. Specifically the fact there doesn't seem to be any way to mirror the taskbar to all screens. You can't copy it from one screen to another either, you have to meticulously recreate the taskbar on each screen. Even then some elements can only appear on one panel so if you need to adjust sound level but you happen to have something full screen over it you're shit out of luck, either close the full screen application or go into the full sound manager instead. Then the taskbar only shows windows that are open on that screen too, which I suppose some users would like but is absolutely not what I want. I believe there was a "show all workspaces" checkbox but that either didn't work or doesn't include second screens. The best part is if you open a window on one screen then move it with keyboard controls in some cases it doesn't update the taskbar, so now your window doesn't appear in the taskbar on the correct screen at all but might show up on another.
Overall, not impressed. I need one taskbar that appears identically on all screens.
Needing to remount my Steam library from other drives every time I reboot is a tad inconvenient too.
See, this is exactly two of the points I just made.
One, the criticism you just made, and the one I keep hearing, is that you don't like that it doesn't work like Windows. We jump in it with some preconceptions of what a computer should act like because of familiarity.
Second, Mint/Cinnamon is merely one desktop environment on one distribution. It's not Linux, it's that one program (Cinnamon's taskbar) you happen not to like. Same for the disk auto mounting, many desktop environments support doing that. Seems like Cinnamon doesn't?
Are you really trying to dismiss criticism that the taskbar's Grouped Window List doesn't always display windows visible on that screen is just an issue of the user expecting Windows? Dismissing every user issue as "just stop expecting Windows" is exactly toxic fanboy the attitude that drives people away from Linux. You might notice that I didn't even mention Windows once, I was talking exclusively about taskbar issues affecting my workflow in Mint.
I'm still using Mint+Cinnamon but I'm not going to pretend it's perfect.
Oh, there are indeed issues and bugs. For what it's worth, I get a similar bug on Windows where sometimes a window doesn't change taskbars when I drag it to the next monitor, and my app windows get all moved around after waking from sleep ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Again, my point was your arguments are illustrating my initial take really well. You're - rightfully so - criticizing Cinnamon, but describing it as a "Linux" thing. You didn't mention Windows once, but you also did describe Windows' multiple taskbar's behavior as the thing you need. Can we not dismiss everything I say like I'm being a fanboy just for telling you software issues and bugs on one desktop environment are not a "Linux" thing, but a "software on top of Linux " thing? Yes, on Windows, your window manager is part of Windows. On Linux, it isn't. Hell, some don't even have panels by default.
FWIW, I'm far from a fanboy. I love macOS, still use and like Windows for other reasons, and am also extremely critical of Linux where it fails to perform. OSes are just tools, means to an end, IMHO. Please, let's not devolve the conversation to this kind of tribalism. The Linux world can be confusing enough as it is, coming back to my first comment again... Sometimes the "fanboys" are just people who have been bitten by these things for longer than you (I've been using some form of Linux for ~16+ years) and wanted to help or explain some common misconception.
If this can help, I think all of KDE Plasma (both the default ones, and Latte), MATE and XFCE lets you duplicate panels.
Where? Please point to the part where me responding to you commenting on Mint+Cinnamon's taskbar is criticising all of Linux.
You said "not a Linux fan [...] needs to be more user friendly", I straight up asked you what was more user friendly about Windows, and this was your answer, which sparked this very exchange.
Edit: OK, I see where my confusion came from. I thought you were the person I was answering to initially, and you are not. My bad, you indeed didn't say that.
Really help things out if all the anti cheat software would be Linux compatible. I'm stuck using windows (and not getting to use my steamdeck) on some of those damned games because of it.
It's one of the biggest problems, yeah. The thing is, the way these work, they range from rather intrusive process/memory watching to literal rootkits that can access and do anything on your computer. Unless the anti-cheat software's developers make it explicitly compatible with Proton or natively to Linux, the chance they'd work on anything not Windows is close to nil. So it's up to game developers.