this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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To anyone reading this thinking "once SteamOS comes out, I'll switch", you should know:
Gaming on Linux is already here. Pick a distro and game. You can take advantage of Proton right now. You don't need to wait for one specific distro.
I've personally been gaming on Linux exclusively for about 3 years. Windows games, not Linux games.
Edit: based on other commenters' suggestions, I'll give you some.
I have gamed for those three years on PopOS. It is a distro based on Debian, ultimately, which means it's also related to Ubuntu and Mint. Realistically, you can pick any of those 4 and you should have a nice experience.
Arch is popular with the übergeeks, and I do use it on my laptop, BTW, but you shouldn't use it as a first distro.
The concept of "distro" doesn't really exist for Windows, because you pretty much get one monolithic product. But basically, it is a specific mix of software that works together and relies on the Linux kernel. Imagine it as a "version" of Windows with specific goals, some of which are overlapping (e.g. Mint and Ubuntu tend to cater to the same audience).
If you get far enough into it, the freedom that Linux allows means that you can turn any distro into any other distro.
"Pick a distro" is why they're waiting for steamos, presumably.
I think that is perfectly valid and I’ll happily recommend steamos to newcomers. I’m only a little worried about it being locked to flatpaks by default though. Hopefully that will change, but for most users it will be a good start.
locked to flatpaks by default makes sense long-term, I think.
Might be a little difficult in the beginning though.
Locked to flatpaks? aren't they worried about the disk space?
The marginal extra disk spaces used by flatpak really isn’t a concern for most users, much less valve. If you do everything in flatpak and your apps only use current runtime versions, the additional space used by flatpak is in the megabytes, since libraries like libc are going to be on your host no matter what.
One flatpak uses a lot of extra disk space, but for each additional flatpak you add to a system the disk space difference is much smaller because they share dependencies. When it's system-wide for all user-installed packages, the difference is quite small.
I was under the impression the didn't shared dependencies thus eating space.
They don't share dependencies with the base system, but they do share dependencies with each other, so long as those dependencies are at the same version, which most of them are because flatpaks generally stay quite up to date.
I wouldn't say SteamOS for new folks, tbh. Flatpaks are very different from the typical Linux flow.
The typical linux flow is not important to learn for most and flatpak is easier for the vast majority of people to understand and deal with
furthermore flatpak is rapidly becoming the typical linux flow