Hi everyone, long time no see.

Today I want to tell you a story about Linux, and its acceptance on the desktop.

Long ago I found myself a girlfriend, a wonderful woman who is an engineer too but who couldn't be further from CS. For those in the know, she absolutely despises architects. She doesn't know the size units of computers, i.e. the multiples of the byte. Breaks cables on the regular, and so on. For all intents and purposes, she's a user. She has written some code for a college project before, but she is by no means a developer.

She has seen me using Linux quite passionately for the last year or so, and a few weeks ago she got so fed up with how Windows refused to work on both her computers (on one of them literally failing to run exe's, go figure), that she allowed me to reinstall both systems, with one of them being dualbooted Windows 10 + Linux.

The computer that runs Linux is not one she uses very often, but for gaming (The Sims) it's her platform to go. On it I installed Debian KDE, for the following reasons:
- It had to be stable as I didn't want another box to maintain.
- It had to be pretty OOTB, as first impressions are crucial.
- It had to be easy to use, given her skill level.
- It had to have a GUI abstraction to apt, the KDE team built Discover which looks gorgeous.

She had the following things to say about Linux, when she went to download The Sims from a torrent (I installed qBittorrent for her iirc).

"Linux is better, there's no need to download anything"
"Still figuring things out, but I'm liking it"
"I'm scared of using Windows again, it's so laggy"
"Linux works fine, I'm becoming a Linux user"

Which you can imagine, it filled me with pride. We've done it boys. We've built a superior system that even regular users can use, if the system is set up to be user-friendly.

There are a few gripes I still have, and pitfalls I want to address. There's still too many options, users can drown in the sheer amount of distro's to choose from. For us that's extremely important but they need to have a guide there. However, don't do remote administration for them! That's even worse than Microsoft's tracking! Whenever you install Linux on someone else's computer, don't be all about efficiency, they are coming from Windows and just want it to be easy to use. I use Mate myself, but it is not the thing I would recommend to others. In other words, put your own preferences aside in favor of objective usability. You're trying to sell people on a product, not to impose your own point of view. Dualboot with Windows is fine, gaming still sucks on Linux for the most part. Lots of people don't have their games on Steam. CAD software and such is still nonexistent (OpenSCAD is very interesting but don't tell me it's user-friendly). People are familiar with Windows. If you were to be swimming for the first time in the deep water, would you go without aids? I don't think so.

So, Linux can be shown and be actually usable by regular people. Just pitch it in the right way.

If someone who wants Linux to be the future of gaming was able to control the thoughts and actions of the decision makers at Microsoft, Windows 11 is exactly what they would make them release. I can think of no better way to prompt game developers to move their focus away from Windows.

In a continuation of my previous rant:
Alright KVM is running.

First devrant post from my Windows inside my Linux with dedicated pass-through graphics card. So far, looks like it's working.

Installing Horizon Zero Dawn to gage gaming performance. But it looks promising. With a stylish button on desk that switches between Windows and Linux.

My fellow Linux Gamers, how do you DO IT?? I mean, my laptop is not some beast (it was 5 years ago, but now is old and tired) but it was able to run (not the smoothies way possible) games like Dishonored 2 on windows, but now that i am full-time Ubuntu user and i am stuck to minimal games i ask myself:

HOW DO YOU RUN SOMETHING POST-MARIO ON THIS SHIT?? i even tried wine with play on linux and even Gothic 1 runs like a slug..

Please, help a fellow gamer and linux enthusiast to understand where to look for a more performant experience 😔

Anybody have their Steam Deck yet? If so, what do you think of it? The page says mine will come in the July-September tranche. I reserved about three hours into the initial period, last July.