Eh, I don't really care if they stop using Windows, I care that they start using Linux. Dual boot if you need, but more market share for Linux increases the likelihood that devs will support Linux directly.

It's funny because while some of it has to do with work to make Linux desktops better, a non-trivial amount of it is how worse Microsoft has made it to deal with Windows.

I had issues with drivers, like I would have to find them somewhere on the internet, trust a random stranger to download and install them. And even then some things required me to launch drivers manually every single time I wanted to use my hardware.

I had issues with games, constant crashes or some games flat out not working. Some even crashing the entire system occationally.

I had issues where my pc would randomly turn on. Going to sleep was funky and would break the system requiring restart. I had to find drivers for my audio systems to get them running.

I had to run around confusing settings and tweak them through different control panels made by random people that largely overlapped to fix basic issues.

Thankfully those issues were solved the moment I installed linux.

Which distro ? I've been rocking Bazzite for a year, and holy mother of christ, it requires less maintenance than my smartphone.

If a SteamOS desktop system gets established, it would be time to add productive software to the ecosystem. Like a web browser, email, libreoffice, maybe some other tools. There are good free versions of all kinds of productivity software, and having them nicely packaged for a system like that would add a lot of value to the SteamOS driven family PC.

Sure, but Valve is terrified of the Microsoft store for a subtly, but importantly, different reason than why Microsoft should be terrified of Steam OS.

Microsoft should be terrified that Steam OS will destroy their monopoly by making it so users no longer have to use their product.

Valve is terrified that Microsoft will destroy their monopoly by making it so users no longer can use their product.

thats exactly why Valve start Fighting Against Windows, UWP And Microsoft store.

Oh it will be the year of the Windows 11 refresh, there's no question of that. Untold millions of business PCs will be making the change as Windows 10 goes EoL.

It's a very different story in the home market. Frankly the only thing holding Windows Gaming in place is decades of increasing personal PC ownership but that ownership / use rate is now declining as normal people transition to using smartphones and tablets.

In just a few short years, ten at most, gaming on Windows will be about as relevant as gaming on Mac. It may still be called "PC Gaming", you can already see media trying to redefine gaming on SteamDeck and other handhelds as "PC Gaming", but those games won't be built around the Windows OS.

There is nothing to be terrified of for MS, windows can implement mandatory rectal scans to log in and linux wouldn't break 20% market share.

They do. We're already there.

The only titles that don't work are the ones with kernel level anti-cheat, and that needs to die anyway.

It's the year of the Linux Desktop!!

Well, there are a lot of newb-friendly distros these days. Some options:

• Linux Mint (any spin) - one of the easiest to get help with online, with minimal compromises
• Fedora - also pretty easy to get help w/ online
• Bazzite - great if you just want to play games; it's about as close to SteamOS as you get w/o an official release

Any of those should be pretty friendly to users new to Linux, and they go roughly in order from fitness as a regular desktop (top down) to fitness for gaming (bottom up), but any of them can handle gaming and desktop stuff pretty equivalently.

I feared making the plunge as well but it was so seamless tbh. Got Linux Mint and it just feels like a newer version of old Windows. Not sure how it's with other distros, but I find it to be precicely Linux for dummies.

I'd say the difficulty to getting used to new environment was on a similar level to getting from Windows XP to Windows 7. If you can dual boot I recommend just trying it - the water is fine.

No need to imagine!

He specifically didn't say that. Instead of criticizing that they aren't nuanced enough you should read the nuance they actually wrote:

Let me be clear: The odds of a massive, immediate shift away from Windows PCs aren’t great. This isn’t a “year of the Linux desktop” rallying cry. But if there is a Linux desktop that exists today, it’s the Steam Deck. And that makes SteamOS a bellwether for greater proliferation of non-Windows devices (if not necessarily “Linux” specifically) in a huge range of form factors.

Yes, it's only a fraction, but most of the rest is going to SaaS through web browsers or mobile apps, because companies get to control and force subscriptions that way, but has a side effect of targeting a browser as a platform rather than an OS. Gaming in browser is more in the pain point of browsers, so it's a use case that demands OS.

They would have a hell of a time trying to say they want to control API usage after letting everyone and their mother use it free and unrestricted for decades. But I wouldn't put it past them to try.