2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago
I don't think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore
People don't care about security until they get hit. Source: working in IT for 10 years.
And then suddenly they care a lot and do all the wrong things for wrong reasons because they know shit
"I don't worry about missing security patches. I just have 5 anti-virus tools running simultaneously, they keep me safe."
Or those people who actively avoid patches in general, because "they make my device slow"
I mean, they do make your device slow. That why tools like InSpectre exists. For some old cpu's like my notebooks one it can be up to 20% performance impact, so if you not planning to use it with internet (or at least as main access point via browser) ever again, why not get yourself free performance?
sure, if you actually plan to take the device off the network, it should be fine. but that's definitely not what most people who complain about that will do.
And all of the anti-virus tools are 50 updates behind so they're essentially non-functional bloatware even moreso
Effective immediately employees must update passwords every week, and cannot match any past password.
Managers will receive hardware security dongles to make their logins easier. Employees may feel free to register their personal hardware security dongles on site but off the clock.
I see it more in: people won't switch for security reasons if it means giving up usability
I would support a law that requires software companies to open source software that they discontinue support on.
That way, companies that disappear don't have their customers at risk.
And software companies will support software for longer.
I think the problem with this is that the corpos will just keep pushing out updates that barely change anything and call the device "supported"
There is sure to be some of that, but they will at least get the blame for when it goes poorly.
They are obligated by many of their corporate and government clients to patch any security flaws and fix bugs.
I would prefer that they don't touch what is working and just focus on fixing bugs and security issues.
This moving feature set and release of half finished software approach is why people have hated windows so much since the windows 8 days.
This would also help a lot on a sustainability level as well
In this case they could have switched to Windows 10 years ago and even 11 is perfectly fine, especially if you install it in English UK so a lot of the cleanup work is done for you.
This only is true if you have a pc that supports it. In my case windows 10 was the end station for my workstation
And it's still getting updates until 2025 (more if you want to pay) and Windows 11 can be installed on hardware without TPM 2.0 (witch will be more than 10 years old when Windows 10 stops getting updates)...
At some point people have to accept that the world is moving forward and technology is continuously improving... At what point do you consider that your machine is old enough that it's acceptable to retire it? Should I be able to install Windows 11 on my Pentium 150mhz?
Kek. I mainly use it for a little gaming. It has an i7 2600 and an rx6700xt. Works stellar for my usage, so if I can keep using it for the next 10 years I will.
We should stop retiring hardware that still meets demands
Even IT people don't give a shit about security until it's way too late. Source: getting out of a job where the median age of a server is around 3-4 years old with no updates and runtimes hard installed outside repositories.
I think this is just kind of a side effect of capitalism.
If it's costing them in the short term, and the results aren't evident or won't be seen until the long term, they almost always won't do it.
No, it's education.
Definitely. You see it across all aspects of life: basic misunderstanding of risk everywhere.
And I bet they blamed you when it went to shit
Nvidia gpu drivers wont even install on win 7 anymore. That by itself causes huge performance issues on new games that have driver optimizations.
Probably the same story for amd drivers
Why would you need new Nvidia drivers in Windows 7 if every new game released requires Windows 10 or above?
Isn't SteamOS based on Arch? Did I miss something?
the way SteamOS works is extremely different to how a regular Arch Linux runs so I wouldn't really conclude anything from that
it just shows how little the underlying distro matters
It's based on Debian.
2.0 is debian based. 3.0 (the version on steamdeck) is arch based
(https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech)
You learn something new every day. Thanks.
Nice. So Steam Deck users can start telling everyone that they use Arch (btw)
You know, I’m something of an Arch user myself.
There's this certain subsection of Win7/8 diehards that absolutely confuse me. It's one thing to keep using them on old systems, but I've seen a few people posting about their brand-new PC, equipped with RTX 4090s and 13th gen I9 processors, who are adamant on running those outdated operating systems as their only OS. Such a waste of money.
Nah I think it's just that windows 7 and 8 was and still is quite literally one of those ones where it hit the sweet spot between good UI and UX and actually having huge range and compatibility straight off the bat. Plus everything was pretty smooth back then, but hell, nobody ever says how many viruses and dumb apps were floating around for Windows 7x32 and x64
I mean that's true, but what what I was specifically referring to was those using top-of-the-line hardware, which you can't properly utilize on those systems because the CPU scheduler isn't optimized for modern CPUs and you can't really make good use of the GPU either due to the lack of DX12. With that hardware you need Win10+ or a somewhat recent version of Linux.
It's almost certainly a very small percentage of the already small percentage of people still running Win7/8, but I'm just stunned everytime someone brags about such a crappy setup.
I think they do by proxy since they only distribute it via .deb (and with Steam of course) and all games in the store that have a native Linux version mention some kind of Ubuntu version in their requirements as well. Which is funny since the Steam Deck doesn't even run Ubuntu.
.deb are the Debian package format. Ubuntu is actually a Debian derivative, among others, which is why they use the same format. Debian lists a few of those derivatives in their docs: https://www.debian.org/derivatives/
Here's my Debian setup for gaming: https://lemmy.world/post/9543661
https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/pool/steam/s/steam/
They have a tarball also, which is what the Arch PKGBUILD uses and probably other distros.
Valve releases Steam as Flatpak too
I think there have been some small groups making their own security patches for windows 7
The way steam works for package maintainers is basically "ok we need at least kernel xyz+, graphics drivers, valve already packaged the rest". Supporting it is trivial unless you insist on replacing libraries steam includes as runtime with your own versions, which you shouldn't. It's kind of its own user-level distribution in a sense.
Yeah, Windows 7 is very old. It's definitely a concern. I keep him highly firewalled on the network so that hopefully he won't get hacked.
I usually play on Debian, but when I contacted Steam for support regarding Proton, they said they only supported Ubuntu or Steam OS. Since Steam OS isn't currently available for PC, that means Ubuntu.
To be fair they've got enough market share to start a distro they got enough market share to be platform agnostic
They already have their SteamOS, which has 43% of the Linux market share on Steam (I guess almost all Steam Deck)
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linux
SteamOS isn't included in the combined numbers, but comparing it to Arch which is only 0.15% of steam, the deck is <1% of the total.
I actually quite like the read only incremental update model of SteamOS combined with flatpak. It makes the OS a lot simpler and I rarely ever change the OS much outside of apps that I can install in home or with flatpak. And if you have special hardware, you are probably already looking at other distros anyway. There is enough choice.
Linus himself has been long advocating for something flatpak-like in general: One of his projects, subsurface, is not exactly of interest to most people for the simple reason that most people don't dive, why should half a gazillion distros maintain their own packages? Distros should focus on the actual OS part and a full-featured DE, from document viewer to browser -- stuff everyone needs, also the little stuff practically noone wants to choose, like, say, a desktop calculator.
And yet the Deck uses Arch...