Despite how this may feel, this post really is about Linux.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to daily drive … something else. OpenBSD. RedoxOS. 9front, Plan9. Heck, MINIX3. Some of it is that I’ve always wanted to try living on a micro-kernel, as I strongly agree with the design principles; but more recently a lot of it is because of what’s going on in both user space and the Linux kernel. I can escape from systemd by running Artix or Void or a dozen other anti-systemd distributions; Wayland is getting harder to avoid and some people no longer have a choice despite Wayland still trailing X in accessibility. But that’s still fine for me since my preferred window manager doesn’t run on Wayland at all, and there are no efforts to port it. Most alarming is what feels like a slippery slope around AI in the Linux kernel. No amount of distribution dodging is going to avoid that.
So I spend more and more time looking at alternatives and evaluating if I really can daily drive something other than Linux. Today I realized that I’ve trapped myself, and that trap is because of games.
I’m not a huge gamer, but I like to occasionally play; and recently, Linux has been really really great for games, even beating Windows on its home turf. I played entirely through Borderlands 4 on Linux – a game which is demanding of hardware, by any measure – on what’s basically a mobile AMD CPU/GPU and it crashed all of twice the entire game. I waste a few hours every month on Factorio. I’ve got stuff bookmarked in my Steam library that I know run well on Linux; we have resources like the ProtonDB. Lately, this has been my big blocker, and that realization I mentioned was in the form of realizing that I’m using the exact same excuse Windows users used to use to avoid switching to Linux. Because they didn’t want to lose access to games.
Something that’s informing my hesitation is that I have a Linux phone, too. It’s got an arm64 CPU, and is running some mobil-ized fork of Debian, and so much software isn’t available for it. So. Much. Either there aren’t packages for the OS and they’re not in Flathub; or they are in Flathub but they’re not adaptive and so are effectively useless on a mobile device; or they’re in Flathub but aren’t available to arm64; or they’re in Flathub but just don’t run because 30% of Flatpaks in Flathub are broken and don’t run – at least, they don’t run on my phone, because they don’t like whatever’s providing GL via Wayland. What this experience has done is made me pessemistic about jumping platforms: if I lose access to half the software I use just by switching CPU architectures, how bad will it be if I up and out change kernels? Pretty bad, I’m expecting; I’m not going to be playing any AAA games, that’s for sure. Which is why – even though Linus himself is slop-coding patches into the kernel – I feel trapped.
It’s incredible that Linux has come so far on the desktop that the availability of games is a blocking factor to migrating off of it – isn’t it? C’mon old timers: we’ve come so very far, baby, and for most of it I never imagined we’d be here. We’ve already taken over the world, via phones, via servers, via infrastructure, via all that FOSS that corporations are furtively using illegally by not following the LICENSEs of the libraries upon which their platforms are built. We’ve won, although desktop users only dimly, if at all, comprehend it; we give ourselves handicaps to ensure we remain the outsider underdog, by using increasingly more constrained sub-markets as our penetration measure.
Maybe it’s inevitable: popularity increases capability which begets stickiness. I like being able to just fire up Factorio, not having to dual boot, or faff around with virtual machines or with maintaining two ecosystems. Heck, I don’t even have to run Steam – there’s a Factorio: Space Age package in AUR. I just launch it from the command line. I’m going to lose all that by going to RedoxOS. Sure, I’ll gain the confidence that the kernel isn’t being written by an RNG, but what am I willing to give up? Games?
In a way, Linux has achieved Windows-ness. It’s sticky. People have to stay, unless they’re willing to accept the austerity measures of a younger (or at least far less popular) OS. The excuses Windows users made, now Linux users are making. I want to move to a better OS… bUt WhAt AbOuT mUh GaMeS!!!
Computers are literally garbage; there’s so many of them. Get another and use it for 9front. Get another and use if for OpenBSD. These other software projects aren’t immune to AI or whatever this thread is about… video-games are garbage too. Go outside.
comparing Linux to Windows is hilarious.
let me introduce you to Richard Stallman, the OG Linux hater. the author and advocate for GPLv3 thought Linux was too corporate, too compromising to corporate interests.
this world of technology is about compromise. life itself is about compromise. if you want to create your own OS, your own programming language, your own set of standards, go ahead. no one is stopping you.
except, you don’t actually want that. you want text editors, browsers, email, and video games. those things depend on standards, and those standards are shared by other interests, whether you like them or agree with them or are morally aligned with them or not. that’s the sacrifice we make to fly on an airplane or drive a car on public roads or use publicly created software.
look into Free Open Source Software. not OSS, FOSS. there’s a difference. you should be cognizant of the tradeoffs.
heck maybe read some Marx/Engels.
let me introduce you to Richard Stallman, the OG Linux hater.
How is he a hater of Linux? Maybe before Linux adopted the GPL, as it wasn’t Open Source in the beginning. Otherwise he doesn’t hate Linux.
I’ve been daily using Linux for more than 13 years at this point but I too am concerned at the direction some things are going in. I’m on Artix and happy there for the time being. But I definitely have started keeping an eye on BSD so its always in my back pocket if the need arises. We now have a laptop with GhostBSD on it so we can get and stay familiarised with it. But our biggest issue at the moment is gaming and Steam (yes, I could not use Steam but I’m happy with it and like using it).
It feels like it sucks so much that finally after years of encouraging others to switch to Linux that its finally starting to become more mainstream but its right at a time when mega corps are also sinking their claws in so deeply that its finally having a really negative effect on the ecosystem (their claws have been in for years but the community has mostly kept them at bay, apart from freaking systemd, for the most part up until now).
Also depressing that people are uneducated on the long controversial history of corporations sticking their greedy noses into the FOSS space to the detriment of all, and not understanding why this stuff is so very important for the future of Linux and FOSS generally.
Genuine question, what negative effects are corps having on the Linux ecosystem? I’ve also been daily driving Linux for over a decade and it honestly feels pretty similar now to how it did 10 years ago.
I dunno, probably funding the majority of engineers that work on key components of the system.
In my experience having maintainers who are paid means they have time to do the long term work on improving the projects.
FreeBSD has the Linux emulation layer and some people seem to have good luck running steam through that. I have not tried, but I think it’s the most realistic for an OS that isn’t windows or Linux that can play gams.
You might be more comfortable in Gentoo as you have more choice.
It’s interesting how things are coalescing compared to the controlled chaos of the past. I get your feeling, and I feel it too.
I just saw this post about wine on OpenBsd so maybe you aren’t as stuck as you think.
9front has doom and a bunch of game emulators built in. You can also run Linux and BSD via vmx but it’s probably going to be a bad experience because I don’t think it has hardware acceleration. I know someone did a talk about a native 9p Wayland compositor that lets you run remote Linux apps over 9p. Not sure if it would be fast enough for games but it is cool.
