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Dave2D - Windows Was The Problem All Along (Lenovo Legion Go Windows 11 vs. SteamOS)
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YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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I think this screenshot is pretty telling.
Who would have predicted, a decade ago, that the path to the actual year of the linux desktop would be taken first through the linux handheld gaming PC?
... Also LoL at SpiderMan 2, the only one that does a single frame worse, which basically at this point is just a solid indicator that game is still unoptimized as all hell.
Old man Gabe has been playing the long game, for all these years.
Ex-MSFT employee on a mission to apparently save us all from MSFT this whole time hahaha
It's not like all the alternatives to Linux aren't that good. Mac is a walled garden and Windows keeps introducing AI slop feature after AI slop feature that actually publishes your personal information
I mean, Macs are certainly a viable alternative for many people...
But if you wanna use your PC to play games?
About 25% of Steam's library runs on Mac.
Whereas if you look at ProtonDB, 81% of games are either gold or platinum on Linux in general, 86% if you throw silver in.
That's gonna be a major hangup for a lot of people who want a PC that isn't Windows.
Oh right, that and Macs are all overpriced as fuck for the average consumer, when we are about to enter into the Second Great Depression.
Every time I look at Macs I just can't get over how ridiculous they are in terms of pricing. Combined with the inability to upgrade after the fact. Buying one would just doom me to buying another a few years down the line, much better to just never get stuck in the ecosystem in the first place.
Even the steam deck is more upgradeable!
Find a better, or equally good computer than the Mac Mini M4 at the same price.
Already have, there are loads of mini PCS on the market that were comparable to the Mac mini. Just do a Google search.
Better or equally good, not comparable. I know there’s a bunch of them, but none offer better or equally performance for the price, only “comparable”.
The battery life test is even more damning. SteamOS in some cases had more than 2x better battery life.
Yeah you're right, I had mostly been looking at the difference between the steam deck and legion Go S on that chart and barely even noticed the difference between windows on the legion Go S there.
wtf happened at dead cells? I mean I almost don't believe the results
It just indicates that Dead Cells itself isn't very demanding, so the power draw in that game converges against idle draw where the issues are most apparent
Windows uses a lot of power just existing, so you can't get any of the windows handhelds down to a low power consumption. I remember when the Rig Ally first came out, the verge tested it using 5-8w of power on the steam deck, and using 16-22w of power on the Ally. Some of that is the hardware (the Deck has a really power efficient chip for low power games), but a lot of it is windows.
This explains why Windows laptops just randomly start spinning their fans. Random energy consumption -> heat production increased -> fan spins
It takes a lot of power to send half your life to the other side of the world, to MS datawarehouse.
Do we know if it's entirely coming from SteamOS? Iirc the advantages it had over Windows on the Steam Deck were not even anywhere remotely this pronounced.
What else would it be coming from on the exact same hardware?
Drivers possibly? I don't mean it as a dig at SteamOS, I'm just curious where the discrepancy is from.
This screenshot is also slightly misleading since the color scheme suggests that 5 out of 5 games run better on SteamOS then on Windows. But if you check the numbers it is only 4 out of 5 games.
By 1 fps. Could be the within the margin of error.
Interesting, I wonder if the games with a bigger improvement is more CPU bound than GPU bound
My understanding is it's mostly just the advantage of not having windows running hogging resources, so it should be a bigger gain for CPU bound games.
**Edit ** There can be performance gains from using vulkan over DirectX too, so there probably are GPU gains as well. It will depend on the game though
Every laptop I've bought has come with Windows including gaming ones. Up to really powerful computers. Like having a 4080 in it or down to just integrated. I could be doing nothing and you'll hear the fan spin up hard on Windows.
On hardware with just integrated graphics, Windows just sucks compared to Linux. Fan spins up but you'll still get animation hitches as Windows background services are doing something. Switch to Linux and resource usage just matches up really well with what you know you've installed and set to run. Just whatever is popular: Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Pop_OS, etc compared to consumer Windows editions.
Plus it's nice installing an OS and not having to go through pages of telemetry opt-outs, encouragement to buy O365, OneDrive, Copilot+, Gamepass, create online MS account, etc. Windows went from a relatively neutral marketplace, besides the bundled software, to a platform for marketing MS and other companies subscription services
Neutral base of fairly standardized open source Linux operating systems is going to show itself overtime as preferable as these controlled platforms get monetized harder. Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android are all in varying stages of being subscription and marketing data farms
BuT cAn iT rUn CoD/DeStiNy 2?
Kernel-level anti-cheat can go fuck itself.
You joke, but half of my Steam library is incompatible with Steam Deck. Like, I fucking hate Windows, but I'm stuck there for gaming, and I don't even play these multiplayer games. I'm talking Catherine, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Under Night In-Birth II… etc. Niche games all of them.
I just checked the games on ProtonDB. Two games are Platinum are one is silver/gold. Essentially very less tinkering.
Steam Deck compatibility is usually very conservative so even though it says incompatible, it will probably work. Nowadays, I just check if the game has some weird DRM or anticheat, otherwise it just works.
Shows one platinum, one gold, and one silver on my end? Catherine is notorious for being difficult to run on Linux, even the comments on ProtonDB say so… IDK if I can consider that very little tinkering.
Plus, that doesn't include docked performance… I need stable 60FPS docked for fighting games.
Like, I see your point that it's almost there, but going full tilt into gaming on Linux RN still feels like a risky investment for both my time and money when my $400 Windows laptop runs everything OOTB.
One day though.
I made the jump two years ago. I started with a 512GB SATA SSD with Windows and then my main drive on Linux.
There aren't any games I play regularly that don't "just work" on Linux, but I also get that can depend on the person. I hope you can get there one day.
Until then....maybe dual boot?
I am dual booting Artix and Win 11, and solely gamed on Linux for 2 years before getting into a bunch of games that don't run there, which eventually pushed me to dual boot Win 11.
I'd rather not touch Windows at all though and just hate it any time I have to use it for any reason other than gaming. The flip side is I hated gaming on Linux when I had to use it to play incompatible games.
I'll most likely just wait until my favorite games run on there and move for good. Maybe go for a Steam Deck then too. But RN attempting to go back to gaming on Linux feels like a potential time/money sink for non optimal results, which doesn't make sense when I already have a working setup.
It's always interesting seeing the different experiences people have. I have way less problems on Linux with games than I do on Windows. Mostly because every time I would boot into Windows, I'd have to spend 15-20 minutes on a good day installing patches for games and Windows Updates.
Why isn’t this the case with the ROG Ally? Users are reporting negligible to no change on Reddit.
That's still good isn't it? At worst you're getting on par performance, at best it's better
Not worth going through the trouble of installing this unless you only have games on Steam. The best thing about the Ally is the compatibility thanks to windows. If it offered better performance, then it would be worth dual booting it just to play steam games.
Are you aware that steamOS supports more than just steam games?
Yes but that defeats the point since you still have to go into desktop mode to install the other games. And more importantly It doesn’t support Gamepass.
For the Ally there’s just not enough benefits to go through the effort, I’ll reiterate.
Hyped about the devices we're going to see over the next year or so. Should be just in time to replace my first release Steam Deck as a noticeable upgrade.
I know, right?!
I just hope that there’s enough movement in the market to not just push more developers to support Linux as a platform, but to disincentivise them from punishing players through lack of anti-cheat / incompatible DRM.
Also, low-key hyped for the (hopefully) eventual Steam Deck 2 once the market has re-aligned to a ‘new normal’ and Valve can once again push the envelope further!
I hope so too, but I don't think a shift that big is coming any time soon.
Linux users are still a tiny proportion of the online player base. Steam Deck sales are negligible compared to Switch or console sales.
I hope it happens eventually,but I think it's going to take much longer for AAA gaming corps to take Linux seriously.
I know the whole “Year of Linux” is a worn-out meme by now; but things are a joke, until their not - best case in point would be AMD CPUs pre-Ryzen compared to now.
Steam Deck sales may not compare favourably to Switch / Console sales - it’s hard to say as Valve are privately owned and under no obligation to publish numbers. But all of a sudden, we can add a not insignificant portion of Windows handheld users to the mix (not 100%, but not 0% either).
Microsoft clearly sees this as an emerging risk, which is why they’re partnering to create an Xbox-branded handheld.
In terms of online representation - it’s also a case of chicken and egg. Online games don’t support Linux due to anti-cheat implementations, so online gamers don’t use Linux. Plenty of single-player offline experiences exist for us!
Agree with all that. "The year of Linux" will be built up to incrementally; and the fact that gaming is so good on Linux pushes that a long way.
The Steam Deck is what pushed me to change to full-time PC Linux myself. Having hardware with pre-installed Linux that works flawlessly has been great.
I only got my deck last year, so it think I can hold off until the Deckard. Kind of okay paying 3 times as much for VR to not have it tied to Meta/Zuck.
Had my deck preordered and am still using it regularly. I'm really happy with it and just recommended the oled to a friend. Just out of curiosity: why would you want to upgrade it already?
Mine was a pre-release preorder as well.
I wouldn't upgrade it now. Knowing me, I'll probably end up waiting till 2027 and buy a secondhand device from 2026.
I mostly play indie 2D games, so games I want still work fine. The revised Deck has a bunch of improvements I would have liked (OLED, WiFi 6, etc). If there are enough improvements in usability (screen, WiFi, size, battery, hardware power), then I'll upgrade and give the old device to my kids (who currently use it for more than 75% of the time anyway).