Just thought I’d share something I thought was pretty interesting. I have a mother in law who is… well let’s just say she’s a stereotypical older mom who doesn’t own a computer, just an iPad. During the pandemic, she started getting into Nintendo games and bought herself a Switch. Fast forward a few years later and she’s interested in getting a Steam Deck, since one of her “mom groups” told her about some pandemic inspired games, similar to Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing that are only available on Steam.
When it comes down to it, she doesn’t care about her computer, she just wants to play computer games in a way that’s easy and accessible for her. We’ll be getting her a Steam Deck for her birthday, which in my opinion is just super neat. Even PC gaming is becoming extremely accessible, and it’s a fantastic time to be a gamer.
Normies don’t think about Linux. You don’t even need to see Linux if you use a Steam Deck.
Still, casual gamers did think Linux couldn’t game. It’s changing this opinion in the best way possible and that’s really important since Linux is the best OS. I personally think we still live in medieval PC times as long as Windows is the main OS used.
The parent comment is right. Most people don’t think about Linux. Ask a ‘casual’ Swtich owner what OS the Switch uses, and their answer is probably going to be pretty close to the answer that a similar Deck user would give.
I was going to say I slightly disagree, but then I thought about it some more and realized they probably just see it as SteamOS in the same way Android doesn’t make people think about Linux either.
Normies¹ don’t even really think about Windows or OS in general, most people just think it’s just what a computer is like regardless.
¹ : Normie as in person who is not experienced with computers and PC gaming
Even so it made it significantly harder for people to make the dated throwaway comment that you’ll lose access to a majority of your games by switching to Linux.
With that I feel like people will see it’s just as usable as MacOS and Windows in a majority of circumstances.
You can use crossover and it isn’t awful, but I think Mac is third for gaming at this point.
I’m not too sure. I used to browse /r/MacGaming despite not owning a Mac but I lost of track of things when they killed 32 bit support
There are some games that get official Mac ports, and that’s nice, but compatibility on the rest of your library doesn’t just work out of the box.
Like I said, crossover is OK but when Mac’s biggest strength is ease of use, fiddly manual configuration to make your library work isn’t awesome.
When some Microsoft simp makes unfounded claims about how you can’t game on Linux, we now only need to point at the Steam Deck.