I don't want a "PC future" where you can't just install software without OS vendor blessing.
This is why Valve invested so much in Linux. They saw the writing on the wall of Microsoft becoming Apple (but shittier). Now they have an alternative. If Microsoft charges a 30% tax on all Steam transactions and won't let Steam run unless they do that, Valve can heavily push Linux and Steam Machine sales.
> Microsoft becoming Apple (but shittier)
At least Microsoft haven't fallen so low as to fail basic design principles like having transparent on top of transparent buttons, having disappearing controls depending on window size (scrollbars), or having corners so rounded that the click to drag mostly being outside the actual window.
The Windows 11 UI is annoying, but at least it doesn't look like a kid's toy.
> At least Microsoft haven't fallen so low as to fail basic design principles like having transparent on top of transparent buttons
That's just because Microsoft has been there done that already 2 decades ago ;) (IIRC in Windows Vista).
Same with the fine-grained in-your-face permission popups. Introduced by Microsoft in Vista, copied by Apple in Mojave ;)
One more reason for Apple to actually have delivered it properly, given that they had Microsoft's failures to learn from.
Apple's bad ideas look ugly. Microsoft's bad ideas lock you out of your computer, delete your files and give the undeleted files to the FBI.
> At least Microsoft haven't fallen so low as to fail basic design principles like having transparent on top of transparent buttons,
They did that but made it work well all the way back with Windows 7, maybe even Vista.
And yet they failed to get game devs to natively target SteamOS.
As long as they depend on Proton, they haven't fully solved their problem.
What's the purpose of a native build if the windows build runs just as good, or even better?
They ensured that the devs need not worry about another build target that requires extensive QA. Maybe in the distant future we will get ubiquitous native builds, but honestly and again, who cares?
Proton and Wine means there is a single target now, instead of the fragmented mess that is Desktop Linux today.
I'm not sure how they could have failed that if that was never their goal in the first place. The entire point of Proton is that the Win32 API is infinitely more stable and worthwhile to target than anything Linux distros offer, and that the financial incentives aren't there for developers to 5x their platform distribution effort to reach 1% more users. An approach that relies on developers doing that would never work, and fortunately for Valve that isn't their approach.
You're thinking of now. Proton didn't exist yet the first time they tried Steam OS.
To be fair to Valve though, back then, there was a lot of movement in direct ports for Linux games. Humble Bundle (before they were bought) was spending real money on it and companies like Feral sprang up to help with titles like Mordor. It looked like there was going to be some real change.
But for various reasons the momentum waned. One of those reasons might be the existence of Proton itself. Some people were very against it because they thought it might lead to less native ports.
Oh, right. I completely forgot SteamOS 1 existed, haha.
Which is exactly my point, keeping game studios on Windows + Visual Studio acomplishes nothing in regards to cut the dependency on Windows gaming.
I wouldn't say that. Software support for Linux is a chicken and egg problem. No software because there's no users because there's no software.
Proton helps fix the users part. If a critical mass is accomplished, that can have real long-term impact.
Helps as much as it helped OS/2.
Tbh, why bother?
kernel32+user32+gdi32+d3d[11|12]+dxgi is a pretty great API abstraction for game development. And unlike Linux desktop APIs the Win32 APIs are actually stable, so those games will also work in 5 years, and most importantly, performance is the same or better than on Windows. It's unlikely that game devs directly targeting Vulkan would do any better, and when using a high level engine, any layering overhead in Proton is negligible anyway. And don't even get me started about the state of audio APIs on Linux ;)
Also don't underestimate the amount of workarounds and tweaks that (most likely) go into Proton for games that make poor system API use. Without Proton those game-specific hacks would need to go into MESA, Wayland, X11 or various system audio libraries. At least Proton is one central place to accumulate all the game-specific warts in some dusty corner of their code base.
TL;DR: just think of Proton as an extremely low level and slim cross-platform API for games (not all that different than SDL), and suddenly it makes a lot of sense. And I bet that in 5..10 years Windows will have regressed so much that it might actually be better to run games through a Proton-like shim even on Windows (assuming Windows hasn't become 'yet another Linux distro' by then anyway) ;)
> run games through a Proton-like shim even on Windows
Already happening, to an extent. Specifically, modern Intel GPUs do not support DirectX 9 in hardware, yet legacy apps run fine. The readme.txt they ship with the drivers contains a paragraph which starts with the following text: “SOFTWARE: dxvk The zlib/libpng License” DXVK is a library which implements Direct3D on top of Vulkan, and an important component of SteamOS.
With game studios using Windows + Visual Studio, what a win!
VS2026 is actually quite decent again (surprising tbh), but the good thing today is that a lot more UI apps support Linux than 20 years ago. E.g. I would just give my artists a Linux desktop running Blender, and generally test on a connected min-spec PC (also for the devs even if they are working on a high-end Windows PC in VStudio). E.g. similar to console-development, the low-end PC is essentially the devkit. Also has the advantage that there will be no performance surprises on release when most gamers try to run the game on their laptop or RTX2060 ;)
One thing I would definitely do is to replace MSVC with Clang, MSVC is just too far behind and it almost looks like MS abandondend it.
Are we boycotting shit software, or the entire company that produced it?
Try running a directx 5 game and let me know how it goes.
29 years is a lot more than the 5.. years time window I'm talking about. 3 decades is basically "I will need an emulator for that" ;)
But I think even a lot of D3D9 games should still work, and that's 2002 stuff. Also try running a 1997 Linux game binary on a modern Linux distro without recompiling, I doubt that's works all that well...
> As long as they depend on Proton, they haven't fully solved their problem.
Maybe not, but they fully solved my problem with games, which was that I could not play on Linux. I started playing again just because of the SteamDeck, I think it's a pretty big achievement :-).
Hardly any different than running MAME.
Never heard of MAME before :-)
Same, but my PC runs on Linux so I don't feel threatened.
I feel like at some point normies may end up just using iPadOS or Android as a "convergent" device: a tablet/phone that they can plug into a docking station and use as a computer.
I am sort of hoping that it will work with something like GrapheneOS, so that I will be able to benefit from it on my phone.
> my PC runs on Linux so I don't feel threatened.
Well, you should feel threatened. Where do you think the push towards TPM and secure boot is heading? Microsoft is insanely envious of how Apple and Google locked down their platforms and have total control over app stores, and that’s what Microsoft wants too. It’s a huge revenue stream they’re leaving on the table. Now that there’s precedent on mobile, they’ll have no problem pushing it through on desktop.
And once all the normies have moved to iPads, there won’t be a big enough market for anyone to manufacture PC hardware for hobbyists anymore.
Neither do I. But with Windows slipping badly, Google could start encroaching on their core tech.
So just don't use windows? The only reason I use android to begin with is because the mobile centric distros I looked into didn't appear to be to the point I would want to daily drive them yet. If and when that changes I'll switch.
The only real issue is sourcing good mobile hardware that isn't locked down. At least for the time being the pixel line satisfies that.
Linux seems to be gaining a lot of traction, both with the fall of windows and gaming being more than feasible.
It makes sense for the tech savvy option to succeed, now that personal computing is disappearing. Average folks won’t use a windows/macbook, they’ll use phones and tablets.
My only concern is ending in a macOS+asahi situation where supporting a single device requires mountains of effort.
The cycling speech since Window XP Toy's R US L&F days, unfortunely.
Less fragmentation, more focus, OEM support on devices selling on regular stores is needed, otherwise we won't get away from the yearly meme.
> otherwise we won't get away from the yearly meme
What's different in the last decade is that Windows is on an undeniable quality downward spiral, it's simply not important anymore for Microsoft.
E.g. desktop Linux doesn't even need to improve, it just needs to wait for Windows to become worse ;)
Unless it becomes available for normies to buy laptops with it pre-installed at Saturn, Media Market, FNAC, Cool Blue, and co, it won't matter.
They aren't going to buy them from Tuxedo.
"Normies" buy smartphones and maybe a tablet, neither of those has Windows preinstalled either.
Available at Saturn, Media Market, FNAC, Cool Blue show floor.
...and a market share of 0.02% ;)
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/tablet/worldwide
(I guess those 'Windows tablets' are running under convertible laptops or something...)
Where do you think normies that don't live in cities with Apple stores, or with salaries unable to afford Apple tax, get their smartphones and tablets?
I have made zero mentions of Windows tablets, that market died with Windows 8, replaced by 2-1 laptops.
The fall of windows and Linux gaining traction.
I've seen that written on here, Reddit, /., digg, hell even on usenet back in the day. . . .
Yes, but have you seen you real life non tech friends move to Linux?
I’m seeing it now, and this is new.
Yes, and I also have seen they come back to Windows, when they got into issues sharing software or files with friends, or local goverment requirements, and didn't had a relative to do their IT support for free.
And yet it's undeniable that 2025 had some of the biggest Linux hype in recent times:
- Windows 10 went EOL and triggered a wave of people moving to Linux to escape Windows 11 - DHH's adventures in Linux inspired a lot of people (including some popular coding streamers/YouTubers) to try Linux - Pewdiepie made multiple videos about switching to Linux and selfhosting - Bazzite reported serving 1 PB of downloads in one month - Zorin reported 1M downloads of ZorinOS 18 in one month and crossed the 2M threshold in under 3 months - I personally recall seeing a number of articles from various media outlets of writers trying Linux and being pretty impressed with how good it was - And don't forget Valve announced the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, which will both run Linux and have a ton of hype around them
In fact, I think that we will look back in 5 or 10 years and point at 2025 as the turning point for Linux on the desktop.
Google’s entire business is predicated on collecting as much data on users as possible. This OS will be the worst spyware imaginable.
No, only the 85% or so of it that's accreted since about 2008. Prior to that it actually made money by offering useful search results without infringing on user privacy. That core business model could still work to power a company about 1/8th the size of current Google. Current Google cannot survive on that model. Something went really wrong when it put growthism above all else.
> Something went really wrong
What went wrong was Google (the old 'do no evil' Google) bought the ad network DoubleClick. The acquired DoubleClick side then took over old Google from the inside out such that what we have today is Doubleclick calling itself "google", no more 'do no evil' old Google anywhere, and all the evil that exists on the advertising side infesting everything they do.
Chrome and Android look like yin and yang: one never knows which one is planned to run inside the other.
Many years ago I used to play around with CyanogenMod and Linux.
Life with work and a family became too busy to fuss with that stuff, but I'm rapidly approaching the point where abuse from android and Microsoft make using a less polished OS worth the bother.
You'll be happy to hear then that the experience has improved significantly over the past decade.
Some "first look"
It's just a slightly different showcase of the same UI shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDO-GS-Bm8
That UI is available to test on any Pixel 10 (maybe even any Android 16 device?)
I do have it in Pixel 8 after enabling in developer options. It's a bit buggy and low resolution, but does the job when e.g. I want to connect some video I'm already watching on mobile to the external display via USB-C. (You can connect a mouse via Bluetooth to the phone, or via a USB dongle plugged into your monitor, to control it.)
An interesting thing is that you can run apps X and Y on desktop screen while also run app X on mobile screen independently.
I have absolutely no interest in expanding the use of Android in my life. I am, in fact, far more interested in going the other way and trying to reduce my reliance on any locked down platforms.
Is it going to be the same future as Fuchsia OS? There were some good ideas in that one, but then one day it sort of disappeared. Not that that was surprising - Google is good at that.
Unless Google reorganizes and gets more focused, I'd say they are highly likely to repeat their mistakes.
IMHO both Apple and Google are missing a big opportunity here. Both are doing work to blur the lines between desktop and mobile. Both are targeting laptops, ar, phones, and tablets.
These are multiple modalities. Or they should be. But because the way both are structured, these are isolated islands with some interoperability but the whole experience is very device centric.
What's nicer is when you have multiple devices and a clean handover between them. You basically sign in and all your apps and data are there. All the open apps have the same state. They just adapt to the formfactor.
Apple has been taking babysteps here but it's still hopelessly compartmentalizing the market. So switching between devices is a lot of setup and install friction.
And for Google, they've been banging the drum that everything is cloud based since forever. Yet they can't figure out a cross device UX that makes sense. It should be as simple as sign in and all your stuff is there. That was the vision with ChromeOS at some point but then they lost interest, got distracted by Fuchsia, went off and created Flutter and also forgot that Android was the thing that actually has an enormous amount of users and OEMs shipping it.
The trillion dollar opportunity here: if devices become like shoes, many people probably have more than one. Some people have many pairs of shoes for different occasions. But they have only one phone. Because switching between devices is painful. Adding another OS to the mix just kicks that can down the road. Multi device, multi modal access to your stuff is the key thing that they should be nailing. If e.g. Apple were to nail that, some people might have many different devices in different sizes and form factors. The main decision as to which one to use would be based on which is most appropriate for the context.
If you take something like that as the starting point, the logical conclusion is that Google should evolve Android to run on any type of device and make sure that everything plays nice together. Switching between your Android phone(s), tablet, TVs, car, AR/VR goggles, or laptops should not be hard. Devices running a version of Android exist in all those categories. But there's very little/no integration across these.
What is Apple doing to blur the line between desktop and mobile? Is it the abomination they call iPadOS? It's a joke, it's nothing more than iOS+.
They've made it perfectly clear that they want to keep desktop and mobile separate in order to convince their customers to buy all their devices.
This effort is the abandonment. This is ChromeOS bring shut down, this is the one taking over the many.
It was an experiment to keep bright engineers busy with cool ideas to show off.Even back then they could have known that it is not a viable idea to make a tectonic platform switch with not much business arguments for it.
I believe the Google Nest devices ship with Fuchsia
I'm sure they will be discontinued in a few days.
See Android Things, does anyone still remember it, or Brillo that was originally supposed to be it?
Does it still require wiping your drive and enabling developer mode to install software outside the Play Store like ChromeOS does? DOA if so.
I believe you can run Linux in a container and use apt-get.
Oh, I see Google's angle now. They want to make android a viable desktop OS in order to have more users using android Chrome rather than Windows Chrome, because the former lacks extension support, and thus ad blockers. Of course, you can still install brave or kiwi browser or Firefox to your heart's content, but most people won't. It's brilliantly simple. It's not too bad for power users, they'll probably use a different browser, or for developers, given the work they're putting into the Linux containers, but for most users...we'll see the expected result.
This shows a version of Chrome with extensions.
The Android system is such a pain to work with. I’m curious to see whether they actually fixed the fundamentals making it unappealing for general purpose computing or they just stuck Android onto Chromebooks (guessing the latter).
No thanks.
I don't want any kind of store on my PC.
If this allows one to still have (linux terminals?), then its (fine?) but Klaster_1 suggests that installing software would become hard without OS vendor blessing.
I mean, is this OS literally just android with a more desktop like UI?
Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Samsung+DeX&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=i...
What I would prefer is a linux device phone being more widespread than Android PC. Linux in PC is mostly pretty good.
We probably need some good linux phones. One of the biggest issues I find is that they are really price-y so even though I don't want much specs, I find it troubling to justify a 2x price increase in such sense.
> Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?
Samsung Dex still exists and still sucks. It's probably the best desktop experience available on Android but it's nowhere near usable as a daily driver. It feels a like a lightweight window manager from the 2008 era.
It is good enough that a Samsung tablet has replaced my now dead netbook.