SteamOS vs. Windows on dedicated GPUs: It’s complicated, but Windows has an edge
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To be quite frank, no one here appears to want any facts or opinions unless they make Linux look fantastic, like e.g. my post detailing plenty of issues that I came across got downvoted rapidly.
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Results like this don't surprise me in the slightest.
Linux benefits the most from it's efficiency and lightweight nature. If you have components strong enough to brute force through Window's inefficiencies, then FPS won't make much of a difference.
The reason Linux and SteamOS has a greater effect on Steam Deck and handhelds like it is simply because Windows is that heavy, and takes up a lot of resources for background tasks. While SteamOS, especially in Game Mode, is very light on background tasks. While most games need to go through Proton, it ends up a net benefit due to how insanely efficient Arch Linux is as an OS.
Linux benefits the most from it's efficiency and lightweight nature. If you have components strong enough to brute force through Window's inefficiencies, then FPS won't make much of a difference.
The reason Linux and SteamOS has a greater effect on Steam Deck and handhelds like it is simply because Windows is that heavy, and takes up a lot of resources for background tasks. While SteamOS, especially in Game Mode, is very light on background tasks. While most games need to go through Proton, it ends up a net benefit due to how insanely efficient Arch Linux is as an OS.
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I feel similar. I went from Amiga to PC in about 1993 - when I was working on a CS degree, using HP-UX machines for a lot of classes.
I disliked windows from the beginning. It seemed obviously inferior to both AmigaOS and HP-UX. So almost immediately I was looking for alternatives, like OS/2 and Linux (Slackware).
For the next 25+ years Windows and occasional various Linux distributions were dual booted on my PC. But for the entire time, Linux installs were always more work for less stability, and short term before I just got fed up with it, or broke it, while my Windows install just survived until there was a big reason to upgrade HW/SW. My XP install survived past Vista (ignoring it) until Windows 7. Windows 8 was skipped for Windows 10.
Through that time, I kept hearing: "Linux is way better now, and just works"... which was always oversold.
To say I'm more skeptical at this point would be an understatement.
But SteamOS sounds interesting if Valve put more weight behind it, so it's not volunteer supported Distro Flavor of the month. For the average user, I also think Immutable and Flatpak makes the most sense of anything I've seen so far for Linux. I think this is why a lot of people are interested in SteamOS. One stable Distro with long term support of one stable company.
Most people (myself included) don't want to tinker with the OS itself. They just want a stable platform to run their applications.
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What do you mean put more weight behind steam os? Do you live under a rock? They are. There is a new console coming. It says more about gaming than you think too. They are literally planning probably 6 year lifespans for these things. Microsoft's market is F'd and valve knows it. One standard gaming PC a year before MS can even think of releasing theirs too is crazy. They have the catalog and resources to do this and I'd actually bet money valve will be the one that wipes traditional consoles away for good. Finally. (as well as windows because w/e microsoft is doing is stupid)
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I would be surprised if Valve can afford to price these low enough to undercut Sony. And that's the only way they'll take over the market like that. Otherwise, why would somebody pay more, for a machine with lower specs, that can't play all their existing games?
(Not the only feature Steam Machine is lacking in comparison, but the others I can think of are decidedly more niche, e.g. owning and lending of games via physical copies.)
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You just described why apple people prefer that platform. They have a perception that Windows and Linux are hard and fragile, while the apple platform is problem free and just works. The reality is that every platform has its ups and downs, and we all have our own comfort-zone based on personal experience.
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When you want stuff to just work, it may be best in general to just have a quiet little cry and then do your best with the one that works best for you. For me that's Windows too, but nothing really works always...
I bought a new laptop lately and Visual Studio Community Edition crashes all the time. I eventually decided to get used to VS Code. Maybe I'll try VSCE again in a while, but I lost heart at threads hinting that it's notoriously unstable; just locks up in the editor like I was getting. I tried a few reported fixes (and two versions) but they didn't help. On my last laptop it was fine, though.
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Yeah, I was complaining about other software just now, but in terms of gaming in the last twenty years it's hard to claim that Windows hasn't nailed it.
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I hate this bazzite hype when ChimeraOS was first and still better for proper steamOS experience on a tv.
Sadly because everyone memory in the media has a lifespan of a moth, ChimeraOS has been forgotten and the creator stated in their Discord server that he will be stopping development.
Doubt that even Ars will care in covering them and their demise.
Sadly because everyone memory in the media has a lifespan of a moth, ChimeraOS has been forgotten and the creator stated in their Discord server that he will be stopping development.
Doubt that even Ars will care in covering them and their demise.
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Same experience for me.
Always something fails and countless hours wasted trying to find the solution.
And as you saw with the downvotes, i get the same plus the usual hostility of the elite linux users when you dare talking about your experience.
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I'm happy for every linux desktop user that exists. I'm merely expressing my opinions why I prefer to stick to ubuntu.
First Bazzite is not a regular Fedora Workstation Distro as outlined in their FAQ :
Importantly Ubuntu also comes with ZFS on which I have built all my backup strategy around. The great part of the Linux Desktop is that it features something for every taste and need.
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DistroWatch stopped carrying ChimeraOS a while back because it was considered "discontinued or dormant."
The Github for the project hasn't been active much at all in the last year, pretty much a ghost town in the last six months.
It won't be alone in the graveyard. A thousand one-person Linux distros come and go every year. Innumerable projects have been spun up by a person who wanted to realize their own vision for a Linux-based OS for a specific purpose, but which barely gets off the ground before being abandoned and petering out within a few years.
Ars has included the OS in their coverage of Linux gaming before:
https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/202...y-and-other-handhelds-into-steam-deck-clones/
https://meincmagazine.com/gaming/2024...than-steam-with-a-gaming-os-for-core-casuals/
It got the same chance with the same set of circumstances as its competition. If the existence of popular competitors for attention is enough to shut down development, that seems to indicate a kind of maintenance fragility which users were right to avoid. It's hardly "the media's" fault.
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Did you bothered in going to their Discord server?
The creator himself stated that everyone left because the influencers at youtube and everywhere else only hyped Bazzite hence their push ended.
Also, the chimeraos team helped the Bazzite team create and polish their distro.
But hey, lets just blame them, its easier especially when they are already down.
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I know this comment comes a bit late in the game, but here we are: the D7VK team just announced the experimental support of DirectX 6 baked into D7VK (https://github.com/WinterSnowfall/d7vk/releases/tag/v1.1) so it's very likely that we'll be able to play some quite old games in the future (yeah, that sounds a bit strange to say). We're talking about something that was release in 1998 here
(it also claims full support for DX4, and I bet that you cannot prove them wrong).
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