[wildredkraut]

It's just some of the so many reasons why the "Year of the Linux Desktop" will never see the light. Linux is doomed to run mainly headless on a dark chamber hardware. As always when the Linux Desktop is just starting to take off, somebody comes up with a new great self destructive idea(wayland), it always has been like that and probably will never change.

[scheeseman486]

Wayland is why Steam Deck is a product. Gamescope, the compositor it uses for all the features that makes it compelling to buy, uses it and it's features heavily.

Desktop Linux was never going to go anywhere stuck on X. Wayland is happening, it's currently going through it's trial by fire and in the end (and for a lot of people, right now) it'll be better for it.

It's easy to say Wayland has been around forever and barely progressed, but for me it's pretty easy to see, based on the massive amount of fixed issues and new features being added to Wayland, that we're no longer on the horizontal part of the curve. It seems a lot of people have become blind to it's exponential growth. Also the growth of desktop Linux adoption, which is real and happening, in spite of 'Wayland setting Linux Desktop back by 10 years'.

[fulafel]

Gamescope is custom sw built by Valve, and all the games run under X (via Xwayland). I'd suspect you could build similar functionality without Wayland (for example a custom X server talking to directly to the kernel DRM).

I'd wager in a alternate universe where Wayland didn't have all the mindshare, Steam Deck would still be a product (unless some butterfly effect nixed it).

[pjmlp]

Steam Deck is a product thanks to Windows developers, that feed Proton with content.

[scheeseman486]

Huh, didn't know that all the Windows developers at Microsoft made all the Windows games. Super cool.

[pjmlp]

Trying to be funny, I see.

[scheeseman486]

Better than trying to make a point and failing to make it. And if I didn't, at least I tried to be funny as that counts for something, your comment is just noise.

[pjmlp]

My comment is a fact, without the Windows games ecosystem, by developers living and breathing on Windows, with Windows development tools, Proton has nothing to play, even if many of Windows games are developed on top of cross-platform engines.

Unfortunely Valve failed to make native Linux gaming a reality, not even game studios targeting Android NDK bother, which has the same 3D and audio APIs as GNU/Linux.

[flexagoon]

I am skeptical of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" as well, but saying that it won't come because of problems like that is crazy. Windows has plenty of bugs of much higher severity, and they don't seem to stop people from using it. People just use what they're used to.

[flomo]

The goal is to produce a stable workstation OS, because that's who pays the bills. That means Linux 'enthusiasts' who want the latest and greatest stuff have signed themselves up to be eternal betatesters. That part will never change because its largely intentional.

[iknowstuff]

Nah that’s irrelevant. The year of the GNU/linux desktop won’t materialize because it’s not a platform for apps, it’s balkanized, has no backward compat save for win32, and flatpak/snap are awful clutches. ChromeOS and Android will eat its lunch.

[MBCook]

Have you USED macOS 26?

[wildredkraut]

Nope, I stopped using Apple devices in early 2019. I can't accept their attitude anymore, of deciding what I'm allowed to install on my hardware. macOS is a bit more open than iOS, but is every year shifting more and more into the same direction.

[fragmede]

Except for AI. I can have Claude go dick around with gconf and .rc files and .input or whatever and have it set things up the way I want to work.