Software Spotlight: Full Steam ahead on Linux gaming support!

Hello and welcome to the Nottingham Nerds blog! Today we are discussing a couple of monumental updates in the Linux world. For those of you that read our post about the Steam Deck, some of this information will be familiar, and some of it will be a new and fantastic update!

Regardless of whether you play video games, this information is huge for the Linux operating system. Steam (which is a part of the Valve Corporation) is a video game platform and computing/gaming hardware and software company that has primarily made its money from its gaming platform. In the past couple of years, developers at Steam have been working closely with Wine (the software, not the alcohol) and Code Weavers to create what they call Proton. For those unaware, Wine and Code Weavers are two entities with development teams focused on making software compatibility layers so that software that was only programmed to run on a single platform (like Windows or Mac) will also run on Linux; in some cases they get the software to run on all three. The unfortunate reality is that most software written on Linux is usually cross platform (especially QT based applications), but software written for other operating systems is rarely made to work for Linux. Wine and Code Weavers exist to fix that problem and make software more available for people regardless of what OS they use, and they write fully open-source code. The other great thing is that Linux has shined so much for use in super computers, servers and cloud infrastructure, virtualization, networking, companion devices, smart phones, and even Google's Chromebook (which runs a Googlified version of Linux!).

With the PipeWire project tackling a modernized, low latency processing engine for audio and video under Linux; and with Steam making finishing touches on Proton as well as launching the Steam Deck, Linux will no longer be something that people can stay away from. The reason all of this is so important for Linux regardless of whether you play games is because the reality is that the gaming industry had a market value of nearly $200 billion in 2020. In simple terms this just means there are a lot of people playing video games and creating video and audio content. If mass adoption of an operating system depends at all on the ability to do those things, then Linux must have those options available in order for mainstream adoption on the desktop. Linux has dominated in nearly every other computing market, but because the Microsoft Windows operating system took control of the business desktop computing market and the majority of home desktop computing market early on; people use what they know, and if they started on Windows at work they likely use it at home for congruence. As gaming and audio/video have gotten better on the Linux desktop, people have nothing to lose and everything to gain by moving to Linux.

Developers all over the world are switching to Linux because most servers run Linux and this allows them to create software in the same environment that it runs. IT personnel of almost all flavors utilize Linux as a backbone to business IT infrastructure. The privacy and security minded, technologists, and those who just want to get their work done without being bothered use Linux as well because Linux gets out of your way; it doesn't reboot for an update in the middle of your work (which you probably hadn't saved since two hours ago) – it doesn't tell you what you can and can't do – it's fully configurable and customizable (so it can meet the needs and wants of anyone using it instead of forcing users to use their technology in ways they don't like) – it is not in control, you are.

Now gamers, audio/video content creators, and audio/video engineers can move over too. Some of you may be wondering – how can gamers move over? Games that utilize Easy Anti-Cheat and BattleEye stop them from playing some of their favorite games (which stops them from adopting the Linux operating system as a whole). Thanks to Steam's announcement of the SteamDeck – their latest gaming hardware which releases in Q1 of 2022 and uses Linux as its operating system, any company who wishes to sell their games on Steam will now need to target the SteamDeck to maximize their profits; and this means that they will need to target either native Linux or the Proton compatibility layer. Finally the big news we've all been waiting for; Easy Anti-Cheat and BattleEye both confirmed last week that they will be supporting native Linux/Proton in order to be compatible with the SteamDeck. This is monumental – the sheer number of articles generated since the announcement of SteamDeck has pushed many over to Linux already – and it's piqued the interest and curiosity of those who had never even considered it before!

This has the potential for swaths of people to move over to Linux – especially in light of all of the issues regarding the pre-launch of Windows 11. Windows 10 loses support in 2025 and it has been confirmed by Microsoft that anyone running hardware that doesn't have TPM 2.0 (basically any hardware built before 2017) won't be able to run Windows 11, including some of Microsofts own Surface laptop line! Windows 10 has been plagued with terrible use of telemetry and tracking, viruses, and even bloatware – Windows 11 is rumored to be more of the same and possibly worse. Even worse, with Windows 11 Home edition, you are required to use an online account instead of just creating a local account on your computer! These types of things have been slowly driving the Windows operating system into the ground; simultaneously Linux has been growing and getting better all the time – especially because it comes with a built-in office suite, the Firefox web browser (very privacy friendly), and a very low chance of any viruses. Nottingham Nerds has been using Linux for nearly a decade now – we do weekly scans of our systems and have never had a single virus. Plus Linux is home to the open source community which means most of the software you need is out there and available free of charge and comes with no strings attached and no data collection (though we definitely recommend donating to the software developers – many of them build this software for free and on their own time).

Linux is an operating system built for the betterment of its users and to make computing intuitive, easy, and customizable so it can fit the needs of everyone. You maintain control of your technology instead of it getting control of you and telling you what your work flow will be. If you haven't given Linux a try yet, reach out to us – we offer mini-desktops, laptops, Single Board Computers, and we'll even install Linux on your current hardware if it's supported. See you all next week!