pewdiepie on linux

[apoyusiken]

i think it is a nobrainer but some folks seem to be surprised that pewdiepie switched to linux. what do yall think?

[WereCat]

Why would it be a nobrainer?

[Hinjima]

Should we care?

[Doobeedoo]

Things I care for still don't work there. Be it games or programs. Even some customization.

[Thomas53]

Why? Even Microsoft uses Linux on their backend.

[WereCat]

3 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Things I care for still don't work there. Be it games or programs. Even some customization.

What kind of customization do you have in mind?

[whispous]

11 minutes ago, Thomas53 said:

Why? Even Microsoft uses Linux on their backend.

100% irrelevant to the point which is Linux as a daily driver for regular use.

[EffeectFTW]

I wish people start talking about Operating Systems as tools rather than the "it can do everything" solution.

 

I'm only saying this as I use all three and I have issues with all three. Even despite my issues with Windows, there are still things about it that make it great. So goes for MacOS and my Rocky Linux/Ubuntu instances.

 

[Millios]

1 minute ago, EffeectFTW said:

I wish people start talking about Operating Systems as tools rather than the "it can do everything" solution.

 

I'm only saying this as I use all three and I have issues with all three. Even despite my issues with Windows, there are still things about it that make it great. So goes for MacOS and my Rocky Linux/Ubuntu instances.

 

Imo windows itself isnt bad

Far from it I would call it the easiest and by extension one of the best OS to ever exist

 

The problem is Microsoft and how windows gets a bad rep from what they do like total recall, co-pilot, updates that actively make your PC worse etc etc which isnt the fault of the OS but the ppl that bundle it or make adjustments to if for the worse

[spacepickle]

6 minutes ago, Millios said:

Imo windows itself isnt bad

Far from it I would call it the easiest and by extension one of the best OS to ever exist

This. Microsoft is only a major update or two away from blowing any Linux distribution out of the water in terms of typical daily use. Whether or not they make that update is up to them, but chances are they’re not gonna do it and they’re going to focus on adding bloat and using expensive polluting AI features. 

[Stahlmann]

It's always the same. Until Linux can fully function without using any command prompts whatsoever, normies won't even give it a second thought. If someone has to use a command one of two things will happen:

 

1. The user will enter the command, potentially breaking the system (or deleting their GUI )

 

2. The user will stop whatever they're trying to do and give up

 

(3. the user will boot back to Windows)

[Thunderkhoac4213]

2 hours ago, EffeectFTW said:

I wish people start talking about Operating Systems as tools rather than the "it can do everything" solution.

 

I'm only saying this as I use all three and I have issues with all three. Even despite my issues with Windows, there are still things about it that make it great. So goes for MacOS and my Rocky Linux/Ubuntu instances.

 

I don't disagree with you about treating OSes as tools rather than a fits-all solution, but once we start thinking about it that way, then the computer is a tool-bag that very few people know how to operate. How many people do you know, know how to multiboot on a PC? I can take a stab based on what I know, but I can guarantee you it'd be clunky, inefficient, and annoying to use when you have to swap one OS to another.

 

Another big reason why Windows just wins. It's an easy interface with known workarounds and one of the most universally adopted OSes in existence. Meanwhile, I couldn't tell you the difference among Mint, Ubuntu, or Arch, and why they're important. Unless I'm deeply invested (beyond just wanting to play my favorite games), I'm not going to bother to want to troubleshoot, I don't want to learn how to program or use command line. I just want to sit down and do my thing.

 

Most folks just want their stuff to work, and Microsoft, for all its faults and failings, does "just work". Mostly. Windows is a Swiss Army Knife, while Linux as a category is the whole workshop. The tools are there, you just have to know how to use them. 

[smcoakley]

54 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

It's always the same. Until Linux can fully function without using any command prompts whatsoever, normies won't even give it a second thought. If someone has to use a command one of two things will happen:

 

1. The user will enter the command, potentially breaking the system (or deleting their GUI )

 

2. The user will stop whatever they're trying to do and give up

 

(3. the user will boot back to Windows)

It can definitely happen, it just requires someone to build a distro with that objective, and then have the time and resources to achieve that goal. I mean, in a way, Android is sort of an example of Linux where no command line is ever required.

 

Part of the issue is cross pollination between projects; distros often share common projects, libraries, and systems with each other. This is arguably a good thing, but it also means that those same projects are being used by multiple distros that perhaps have very different goals on the sort of user they are building for.

 

Another problem is that people have not learned to treat Linux like macOS yet. That is, if it cannot be done without the command line, then don't do it, period. It doesn't matter what some random forum post says. Now macOS does expose a terminal, and interestingly you can break macOS with it, but most macOS users totally ignore the terminal and would never paste in random commands they don't understand into the terminal.

 

That said, at the core of most Linux distributions is a package manager that manages both critical system files and user applications. This is very flawed (when having the goal of hard-to-break stable OS for normies) as it is equally easy and difficult to add and remove apps as well as core system files. Things like Flatpak are a huge step in the right direction -- have you noticed how easy it is to add and remove Flatpak apps? It's as easy as the App Store, and is equally unlikely to ever break anything. However, we still need to take away system package manager access from users.

 

I think immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue are the future of user-friendly Linux distributions. The OS is essentially a read-only file system (like macOS) that the user can't mess with, either intentionally or accidentally. Additionally, system updates are delivered atomically, meaning if somehow something does go wrong, it is easy to undo the update. (What is lacking right now is a simple GUI that gives you that action.) If all you do is customize your desktop, install and uninstall apps, and install updates, it is impossible to ever break Silverblue, and you should almost never have any need to use the terminal.

 

Now as a natural consequence, the answer to "How do I do X?" might sometimes be, "You can't." You just need to be prepared to accept that answer, just like users accept it all the time on macOS. That answer is so antithetical to the classic Linux user which is probably why most distros don't have hard boundaries anywhere, but personally I think that's exactly what the average user needs.

[Stahlmann]

23 minutes ago, smcoakley said:

It can definitely happen, it just requires someone to build a distro with that objective, and then have the time and resources to achieve that goal. I mean, in a way, Android is sort of an example of Linux where no command line is ever required.

And that's what we need for a widespread Linux takeover. It has to be the PC equivalent of Android. Lightweight, user-friendly, but it should still include some guardrails and come with an intuitive GUI from the start.

[ewitte]

3 hours ago, Thomas53 said:

Why? Even Microsoft uses Linux on their backend.

Technically not WSL basically just runs virtualized Linux.  

[ewitte]

2 hours ago, spacepickle said:

This. Microsoft is only a major update or two away from blowing any Linux distribution out of the water in terms of typical daily use. Whether or not they make that update is up to them, but chances are they’re not gonna do it and they’re going to focus on adding bloat and using expensive polluting AI features. 

TBH they already do.  Unless you're exclusively running webapps or are ok with something like LibreOffice, gimp, a very limited subset of games, etc.

[spacepickle]

24 minutes ago, ewitte said:

TBH they already do.  Unless you're exclusively running webapps or are ok with something like LibreOffice, gimp, a very limited subset of games, etc.

Yeah you need a certain mindset to use Linux for sure

[Zando_]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

It's always the same. Until Linux can fully function without using any command prompts whatsoever, normies won't even give it a second thought. If someone has to use a command one of two things will happen:

 

1. The user will enter the command, potentially breaking the system (or deleting their GUI )

 

2. The user will stop whatever they're trying to do and give up

 

(3. the user will boot back to Windows)

When did you last use Linux? It's had pretty usable GUI for over a decade. At this point you don't have to touch the terminal for anything but some types of RAID configuration, which the average user is not doing. I use the terminal because I want to, not because I need to.

 

The only reason I'm not on Linux as my main OS at home (windows is starting to piss me off more and more, just today it started giving me the "activate windows" watermark when I've had Windows activated for years) is because I have an Intel ARC card, and the Linux GPU drivers for them seem to suck. Things like that are more of a killer for Linux than the UX these days.

[Doobeedoo]

2 hours ago, WereCat said:

What kind of customization do you have in mind?

As I can't do the full switch mainly due to certain programs, games I didn't really dig for certain things if possible as it's not priority. But lately there was a post where one guy mentioned certain things that caught my attention where he mentioned he can customize minute things like address bar color or something, but can't do certain file/folder structuring or filtering, something along those lines. I can't find the post, was lately, last week or few days.

[spacepickle]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

It's always the same. Until Linux can fully function without using any command prompts whatsoever, normies won't even give it a second thought. 

I use Lubuntu, the only thing I haven’t figured out how to easily do in the GUI is add a Wi-Fi network without knowing the name. Everything else works just as intuitively as a typical Windows system, or even a little more smoothly. 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

7 hours ago, apoyusiken said:

i think it is a nobrainer but some folks seem to be surprised that pewdiepie switched to linux. what do yall think?

 

Seriously, why would we care what that dude uses as his OS?

 

Anyway, on the topic of experiences with Linux, I have successfully used Linux in the past, I still use it in the form of WSL from time to time, and I will use it again when I have a need for it. At work I would love to use it more, but unfortunately big corpo IT blessed us all with Windows on almost everything.

 

Personally, I sold my soul data ages ago to OneDrive (which works really well for me), which apart from some games is really the only thing holding me to Windows. But for better or worse, W10 and W11 now just work for me. Could I make Linux work for me as well? Most likely, but why bother switching without a good reason.

 

From my last attempt to switch over a couple of years ago, my main issue was that things either worked out of the box really well, or any guide/tutorial would immediately send you down the terminal path. Plus you have what feels like a million different distributions, making it harder to find any concrete help in most cases when you are new and have no clue what to look for. Maybe that is better now, but anytime someone mentions XYZ new distro being the new chosen one, this comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/927/

[apoyusiken]

he says initially he didnt understand either why people were excited but then he got it. because he is a gamer and this will probably popularize linux. 

48 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

 

Seriously, why would we care what that dude uses as his OS?

 

Anyway, on the topic of experiences with Linux, I have successfully used Linux in the past, I still use it in the form of WSL from time to time, and I will use it again when I have a need for it. At work I would love to use it more, but unfortunately big corpo IT blessed us all with Windows on almost everything.

 

Personally, I sold my soul data ages ago to OneDrive (which works really well for me), which apart from some games is really the only thing holding me to Windows. But for better or worse, W10 and W11 now just work for me. Could I make Linux work for me as well? Most likely, but why bother switching without a good reason.

 

From my last attempt to switch over a couple of years ago, my main issue was that things either worked out of the box really well, or any guide/tutorial would immediately send you down the terminal path. Plus you have what feels like a million different distributions, making it harder to find any concrete help in most cases when you are new and have no clue what to look for. Maybe that is better now, but anytime someone mentions XYZ new distro being the new chosen one, this comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/927/

 

[Stahlmann]

4 hours ago, Zando_ said:

When did you last use Linux? It's had pretty usable GUI for over a decade. At this point you don't have to touch the terminal for anything but some types of RAID configuration, which the average user is not doing. I use the terminal because I want to, not because I need to.

 

The only reason I'm not on Linux as my main OS at home (windows is starting to piss me off more and more, just today it started giving me the "activate windows" watermark when I've had Windows activated for years) is because I have an Intel ARC card, and the Linux GPU drivers for them seem to suck. Things like that are more of a killer for Linux than the UX these days.

Personally, I never used Linux. But every video I ever watched about fully switching to Linux came with massive asterisks. I'm not interested in dual booting. I want one OS that can do it all. Windows 11 does come with some downsides compared to Linux, namely bloatware, but overall I still feel like it's the closest OS to "just working" for gaming, which is my main use case.

 

I often think about trying out SteamOS, which seems to fit my use case best among the Linux distros. But I don't have the time atm. I'll have more time in a few weeks, and I guess I will finally try it out for myself.

 

Problem is, I play a lot of older games, not quite retro games, but some of my favourite games are from around 2000 when I grew up. If Linux can't support these games, I'll have trouble making it my primary OS no matter how good the rest is compared to Windows.

[SansVarnic]

4 hours ago, apoyusiken said:

this will probably popularize linux

Not much more than every other time that people have said this.

Linux hasn't reached a point yet where it would become widely adopted, people (en masse) want working out of the box , Linux [any version] is not that.

 

Spoiler

tbh pewdiepie could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't bat an eye.

 

Edited April 29 by SansVarnic

[apoyusiken]

10 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Personally, I never used Linux. But every video I ever watched about fully switching to Linux came with massive asterisks. I'm not interested in dual booting. I want one OS that can do it all. Windows 11 does come with some downsides compared to Linux, namely bloatware, but overall I still feel like it's the closest OS to "just working" for gaming, which is my main use case.

 

I often think about trying out SteamOS, which seems to fit my use case best among the Linux distros. But I don't have the time atm. I'll have more time in a few weeks, and I guess I will finally try it out for myself.

 

Problem is, I play a lot of older games, not quite retro games, but some of my favourite games are from around 2000 when I grew up. If Linux can't support these games, I'll have trouble making it my primary OS no matter how good the rest is compared to Windows.

linux can run steam games fine and with a lot better performance than windows  but if you are into older games mostly i dont think it will bring you lots of advantages, but its fun to try it.