Why do you use Linux?

I think a better title for your post would be, "Why do you use Steam?"

Many steam games don't even have DRM and most games only require Steam to be present and not necessarily online.

The company as a whole is very stable and doesn't perform any overly wild anti user behaviour. And they're big supporters and developers of Linux.

If you want to install games that are spyware that's totally up to you. And I suppose that's really the point.

Instead of turning into hyper capitalist assholes like every other company, steam just leaves us the fuck alone while providing great great games at great prices. Also no sexual harrassment coverups or buyouts.

Steam just leaves us the fuck alone and let's you focus purely on the game.

Steam is made by Valve, and Valve, dispite their many failings, have shown a very strong commitment to FOSS.

Their contributions to Proton have played a massive part in making Linux a viable platform for gaming. Without them, Linux gaming would be stuck back 10 years at least. Back to the dark days of naked Wine and fighting with configs for hours just to hope to launch a single non-native game.

Valve has also locked themselves in with the Steam Deck. By creating a fresh hardware platform based almost completely on a FOSS software stack and by making it open, moddable, repairable, and upgradeable, they have made it very tough for themselves to break away to a proprietary solution further down the line.

All these things cause me to trust them quite a bit. Make no mistake, I'm committed to FOSS first. If and when Valve goes down the enshitification path, (once Gabe dies, sells out, or otherwise passes the torch), I will move off of the platform and only use FOSS games/software and resources like Lutris, Bottles, GoG, etc.

But until that dark day, I will support Valve at least passively. because by committing to so much development towards FOSS platforms, they are locking themselves into it and proving to us that they aren't just giving lip service to the FOSS community.

I wish Steam was FOSS, I wish Steam wasnt DRM itself, but in a world where things are mostly grey, I personally feel comfortable currently supporting them with my money.

Because I want my devices to do what I want, not what Microsoft wants.

I didn't really have a problem booting windows to play games occasionally until Microsoft decided that my machine must shut down without me telling it to. You can only lose so much in-progress work before it gets tiresome.

Beyond that I'd rather support community driven open source projects, especially my operating system, than keep giving Microsoft my attention to sell.

So, why use Linux

Because I prefer it in functionally every way to Windows. I prefer (when feasible) to use open source and/or FLOSS software. I am vastly more familiar with Linux than I am Windows on a technical level. I generally dislike most things about Windows.

and use Steam

It works, it's convenient, they have a generally good track record of not screwing over users.

I prefer many of the features of Linux distros, but using a client like Steam defeats the purpose of them.

That is a pretty serious leap in logic. You're welcome to not like Steam on a technical, moral, and/or philosophical level but at the end of the day it is a single application and saying that using Linux while also using Steam "defeats the purpose of Linux" is ridiculous. Linux is an Operating System, it is meant to assist the user in computing. If the user is using Linux to compute they are fulfilling the exact purpose of Linux, that being an open and free operating system to be used by any who desire it.

I swapped because I did not like the direction that Microsoft is taking Windows. It felt like just more tracking, more ads, and less control with each iteration. I always felt like Linux was better, but did not meet my need for gaming. The steam deck came out just a few months before I switched, giving me the confidence that I would still be able to play the games that I enjoy.

I was using Linux before there was a Steam, and I’m still here. You speak as if the “default state of being” is being on Windows.

Disregarding that, why would a single launcher/client/whatever dictate what OS I use? What I enjoy while using steam is not the openness of steam, what I enjoy is the freedom of choice on my home turf. I enjoy living in an age where I can boot up my trusty Linux rig, finish my work, and contemplate three or four launchers before picking one and facing choice paralysis while picking from hundreds of games (yes I’m very excessive and haven’t even finished 0.01% of them) that actually run like a charm.

This is a reality I love and celebrate. This is the year of the Linux desktop for me.

I don’t love the Steam store, but I love Valve, because they made all of this possible. Even if all of the above is incidental in their pursuit to build their steamdeck. At least they did it the right way by contributing back upstream to the FOSS community at large.

Steam/Valve investing in Linux has thankfully made non-steam gaming on Linux better than ever! Proton and WINE have made it easy for the average Linux user to set up games from GoG, Humble Bundle, etc. without needing to beg a developer to release a shoddy port.

Short answer: Sure, Steam is far from perfect, but Valve also maintains and develops Proton which is completely open source.

I switched for a few reason:

• I didn't like Windows advertising to me on my desktop.
• Lemmy exposed me to a lot of options.
• I felt like if I had any issues, the community would assist, and they did.

Now that I have switched

• Pop!_os feels like home.
• Many of my games run BETTER on Linux.
• I know I will not be a product.
• I feel more secure
• It has been fun learning something new
• There are so many choices beyond iOS and Windows
• I wish I switched sooner.

I disagree with your implication that using Steam on Linux makes it pointless to use Linux; I think that it is always better if you are able to replace some proprietary software in your life with freedom-respecting software even if you may still be using other proprietary software.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the FSF does actually acknowledge that replacing all of the proprietary software that one uses can be an incredibly disruptive, difficult process, and they encourage users to embark on the journey of complete freedom one step at a time - check out their Freedom Ladder campaign.

Windows bad, apple bad, Google bad

Are you really curious or do you just want to hate on steam for paragraphs? Because I love FOSS too but I find your tone and post in general to be annoying and obtuse.

Even being on Linux isn't enough for Linux users, now. Gotta have every piece of software they approve of and none of the ones they don't. On top of it you have to use it for the same reasons, too.

Fucking Christ, you guys make me want to never mention that I use Linux.

So, why use Linux and support Steam, or use Linux and use Steam?

Because Steam offers a good service. Almost as good as "hackers".

The other problem is game developers that want DRM and blablabla.

Anyway honestly you sound a little bit way too pathethic. Maybe one day Steam just get's out of Linux enviroment and goes with the "Steam OS" and you will lose every game you purchesed, but i doubt it because is a gaming platform, as many platforms as possible as much money comes in.

If you don't like the way Steam works you can always game without steam. Heroic is a free and open source game store front end. It lets you buy games from DRM free online platforms like GOG.

It uses the same Proton compatibility software as Steam. It's a win win, you can support your favorite game publishers and have a free and open source platform.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

Made the switch way before any kind of support from steam, had several games from aspyr and feral, bought a codeweavers license and all that. For me at keast it's about the lack of interruptions and actually enjoying the workflow on gnome. I also love the idea of fetting in touch directly with the people making the programs I enjoy and not a random support rep on the other side of the world.

On the other hand, you should probably take a deeper look at steam. There are a ton of extra modifications you can do to the client, all of them unofficial and some straight up illegal, from changing the theme to injecting enhancements on the store (e.g. displaying protondb score on store pages) to aome shady shit like unlocking DLC. Steam is DRM but it's not denuvo or something like that. It's easily circumventable to the point I feel safe buying games on it, knowing if they ever go for a rug pull, I could keep most if not all my stuff regardless of the platform itself.

Have used linux almost exclusivly since 1999. Simply because it is the better system.
I use steam, since games just work without fiddeling, or a very easy refund.

I like Linux, so I use Linux. Before Steam came to Linux, I didn't play many games, and now that they're heavily investing in Linux, I'm playing a lot more games.

It's really that simple.

Here's my story:

1. Someone gave me an Ubuntu install disk at college, so I dual booted it on my rented computer; Windows died, so I switched to Ubuntu for the rest of the school year
2. I declared my major as CS, and the lab computers ran Fedora Linux, so I installed it on my new laptop; it worked better than Windows (Vista at the time) for class work, so I kept using it (I needed Windows for a class, so I ran it in a VM)
3. I switched to using ViM and fell in love with the terminal
4. I eventually tried Arch and decided Windows really wasn't for me since I liked the control
5. Steam started supporting Linux, so I all of a sudden had a bunch more Linux games to choose from (I had mostly been playing Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, and Minecraft, and StarCraft in WINE); this was before Proton, yet it was still a big deal for me

I'm now on openSUSE, but my experience during college showed me that I really want control over my system. Proton is also a thing, so I've picked up a ton more games from Steam.

If games stopped working on Linux, I'd just stop playing games. It's really that simple, I pick the OS first, and games are secondary.

Why not? It's a (free) tool, just like Windows and Steam.

Then again, I "use" Linux/GNU because of one thing:

User. Control.

Windows 10 shit the bed and needed a reinstall so I went through all the steps needed to get it just right again in my head. I realized it's gonna take me most of the day and I installed pop OS instead, that was like 2 years ago and I haven't looked back.

• 1) I'm disillusioned with and sick of Windows. I've been in there since the days of XP and 7, back then those systems could take a crapload of abuse from my young clueless arse prone to downloading hundreds of malware, yet still be functioning largely flawlessy. Hell, even Vista and 8 were still quite resilient, and I say this as someone who used Vista for 2 years. Meanwhile, Windows 10 completely falls apart if I so much as look at it wrong, and I never had a W10 installation last longer than 6 months without falling apart with bizarre bug after bizarre bug (such as leaving me completely unable to open any image files) - and this is without my past proneness to getting malware. I don't have the patience for that anymore, and then 11 comes in adding ads to the start menu and I just can't anymore.

• 2) I've come to appreciate how Linux handles some things better - mostly with regards to Flatpaks and their self-containment making it less risky to run some things and easier to keep track of what I have installed. I find it's also easier to deal with backups on Linux than Windows, especially with Kinoite (and I heard Tumbleweed also does a good job at it with snapper, too). In general I feel safer when using Linux, but on Windows I'm always paranoid about downloading a virus again - and with how brittle 10 is...

• 3) I don't really like monopolies and don't like the idea of Microsoft becoming basically synonymous with computers (and Apple isn't any better).

It's not perfect, mind you, and I do still feel many frustrations with Linux (I had to deal with Steam stopping working for no reason lately, but at least I could rollback to an earlier version), but I've genuinely not had much better luck with 10 at this point.

I use Linux because I got frustrated with Windows and decided that in my opinion, something as fundamental as an operating system should never be closed source.

I don't mind some software, (e.g., a game store), being closed source.

I support Valve in particular because A) they have the games I want and B) because they've done more than any other company to improve the drivers on Linux (which is the operating system I bailed to following my distaste for Windows).

It's worth noting, I do use Windows to play some games, but I actually use two computers to do it. I use Moonlight and Sunshine. My Linux computer continues to be "my computer" and the Windows machine is effectively a LAN console/gaming computer that I interact with via my computer.

Basically you don't have to be an absolutionist to support free software ... and free software desktops are worth using not just because they're free, but because they're genuinely better at getting the job done.

It’s incremental. Steam on Linux is better than Steam on Windows.

A very simple reason, I use Linux because when I use Linux I feel like my computer is mine and mine alone, when I use Windows I feel like I'm leasing my PC from Microsoft and I have no control over the OS. I'd rather own my PC from hardware all the way up to the software.

It's easy to use. I'm a software developer. *nix is really well supported by software developers, and most programming languages support Linux first. So it's easy to develop for.

I use Linux because all the games I want to play run just fine through proton, wine, or native builds. I used to have a dedicated windows partition, but maintaining windows got tedious. After testing that my games worked, I fully defenestrated and never went back.

Sure, steam is proprietary and has flaws, but I'd rather run a proprietary and flawed userland application than a proprietary and flawed OS.

I use it because I'm more comfortable with working with it under the hood than Windows (day job experience). It's also less of a PITA when it comes to bloat, updates (not just OS, general software too) and telemetry.

I did use Windows on my desktop until about a year ago to be fair, as I didn't feel gaming was quite good enough - but after trying again it's brilliant now. No reason to ever go back.

Windows 11 is a bridge too far. I'm done with having my operating system being sold to me as a service, or monetizing my usage. Windows 10 was already unusable in any format other than LTSC.

The strides we've seen in gaming on Linux are possible largely with Valve's support, and I might have made the jump earlier if we had those abilities sooner. Dual booting has never been a realistic use case for a computer given the way I use one.

I try to protect my privacy as best I can. I prefer the use of open source software where I can get it. Libre is even better. My reasons are both practical and ideological. But I don't live in a world where I can reasonably cut out all proprietary software, and I honestly wouldn't consider trying. There are far more important fights in my world.

I'd use something else if it were better, but there isn't.

Because I do other things with my computer and use Linux because I like how I have it set up not because of ideological purism. I do not like how Windows and Mac work. I dread booting into Windows to play games.

The reality is that the vast vast majority of games are not FOSS. You have no idea what makes most games tick. So if you are that concerned about FOSS purity I question why you play games on any platform. Windows or otherwise.

I was already a full time Linux user when steam came to Linux. Most games are closed source anyways, so I don't see a problem in using a closed source game launcher. In fact as a general point I'm not against closed source, I use NVIDIA proprietary drivers since the performance is simply better, but I prefer open source software which is why my next GPU will be AMD. However the games are still closed source, so getting them from GoG, itch or Steam is very similar, but buying them on Steam gives money to Devs working on open source projects that improve game performance on Linux, so I'll keep buying from them.

I don't really get why some people cultivate FOSS so much that they refuse to install anything that even remotely contains proprietary parts. Of course I understand the advantages of FOSS, but I won't go against proprietary software. I use whatever offers the best functionality, stability, usability for my tasks.

And that's actually the exact reason why I use Linux.

MacOS is quite good too, but I cannot afford the hardware necessary for it, plus I hate Mac keyboard layout so freaking much. Yes, it's possible to get used to it, but only if I exclusively use Mac. Since I'm switching between computers all the time, this is a deal breaker for me. Plus I enjoy the better customisability of Linux. And last but not least, although macOS UI is packed with clever solutions, I still find a KDE or a Gnome UI a little bit more usable.

As for Windows... where do I even begin lol... Let's just say, it's way too buggy, way too unreliable, way too much hassle for me. Back in the days, when I started using Linux (about 15 years ago), this wasn't the case. Around that time Windows was a stable, reliable OS, which worked very well and it was convenient to use. I'm talking about XP and later 7. (Vista and 8 were the poor ones in the infamous good-bad-good-bad-... pattern.) Meanwhile on Linux it was sometimes quite hard to make some hardware work, and the applications weren't very robust, sometimes they crashed, sometimes the whole OS crashed, and generally the whole thing felt like a hobby-OS.

But things changed over time. In the past decade I haven't experienced any serious anomaly on Linux, all my hardware work out-of-the-box, and in maybe the past 5 years or even more, I absolutely haven't experienced any issue at all, not even minor ones. Nothing. This thing is just super stable. You install it once, keep updating it, and it just runs perfectly forever. Windows went the opposite way: my graphics card, for example, stopped working, because Windows deleted the driver during an update, it's a hassle to set up everything, it doesn't just work out-of-the-box, it crashes sometimes, it's pumped full of bloatware and ads.

And I generally find a UNIX-like system much more comfortable to use than Windows, especially for programming. Yes, there's WSL on Windows - but that didn't always work out well for me. I could go on and on and on all day, but long story short, the structure of Linux is more convenient and more comfortable to use for me.

So why I switched to Linux back then, you might ask. That time was different: I was experimenting with everything, and at first I used both Windows and Linux, former one being my main system. And as time went by, I slowly got more and more familiar with Linux, and I realized how convenient it was for my tasks. And at some point I stuck with it despite the occasional issues, which - as I mentioned - have gotten resolved long ago already.

I still use proprietary software. I use Steam, because that's probably the biggest game library and it supports Linux. I use JetBrains developer tools.

There's this Affinity suite that I would love to use, or even Corel software, but unfortunately both of them failed to provide a Linux version, and I refuse to purchase software that doesn't run on Linux. Thus I'm stuck with Inkscape (awesome, but always crashes with bigger files), Gimp (I hate its UI so much), Darktable (kinda slow, plus some modules broke in the latest update, but otherwise awesome).

Luckily photo/graphics editing is less than 5% of the tasks I have, so the inconvenience of this area is negligible. For what I mostly use my computer, Linux is the best platform for me.

I started using Linux at tge end of last year when I built myself a new gaming PC. Had enough of Windows telemetry and wanted to start taking small steps to improve my digital privacy. Ditching Windows for Linux is the easy part.

Valve has fone wonders in making gaming on linux relatively frictionless all things considered and for that, I (and i believe a lot of people) am grateful. It gives us a choice in OS. Yes, Steam can be considered "DRM" but at least it's better than Denuvo or EAC. Steam works on Linux without having to jump through hoops.

Also, Steam family sharing is awesome. I can let my partner / family play my games when I am working and they are not.

Because the alternatives are windows, apple, and Google.

I get you, OP. Sometimes it seems like people treat Steam as the pinnacle of Linux. It's even more baffling when people say that they like Linux but wish they could run MS Office, Photoshop etc. Do you really like Linux or do you just hate Windows? Because for me almost the entire point of Linux is that it's FOSS. If all I wanted was to run proprietary software, I would use an OS that the proprietary software officially supports and was designed to run on, saving myself a ton of trouble.

I started using Linux Mint about 5 years ago because I'm interested in tech and wanted to mess around with it a bit. Now I'm staying on Linux Mint because I don't wanna deal with Microsoft's bullshit ever again. No more ads, forced updates, surveillance and crashes. Just a damn solid OS that does its job.

I've been using it for various reasons for about 15 years. So "familiarity" is one of my main reasons now, but a big part of it is to avoid being advertised to in my OS.

It started with me being creeped out with all the privacy settings everytime i reinstalled windows 10, wanting my fricking handwriting data and all that, then i saw a LTT video from anthony where he talked about trying linux instead of windows 11, and seeing previous LTT videos about gaming becoming doable on linux. I had tried linux before as a kid on my laptop, ubuntu and linux mint, but i didn't really get it at the time. I decided to follow anthony's recommendation and tried pop os. I was impressed with how far linux had come with playing games, but i also didn't realize how usable linux was in general for a desktop user. I quickly went down the rabbithole after that because i really liked how customizable linux was, so i went to arch linux, i ended becoming a tiling window manager user, making some simple scripts, running windows virtualized with single gpu passthrough, and now i've been using void linux for a few months. I'm really happy LTT made those videos cause otherwise i wouldn't be here now.

What is it you want to know? "why do you use Linux" seems like it assumes something about what you might want to know.

Like, why Linux and not MacOS/Windows? Or, what are the Linux specific stuff you use it for? And when you say "Linux", I'm sure you don't mean the kernel, but likely Linux kernel + some package manager + some window manager?

The answer to a lot of these things are true statements for me, but will come across as incredulous. They are:

• Gnome is a more consistent user experience over both MacOS and Windows. Gnome 9/10, MacOS 4/10, W11 3/10.
• It is the actual "just works". (the list is looong)
• It's much more usable for power users.

Are the main ones. I cannot think of a single thing either MacOS or W11 does better, that isn't "well, you can run X software on it", which is a fair argument and likely a valid deal breaker for many use cases/professions. But also not really the fault of the OS. And there are many, many reasons why MacOS and W11 are a pain to use.

I'm an OS enthusiast apparently. I somehow enjoy blowing my OS up, getting irrationally irritated at how something behaves and trying something different. I would rather walk through a pile of Arch documentation than rely on Microsoft's word that they won't dick over the whole damn market. My efforts yield one more count towards a market share relevant enough for developers to care about. Gaming on windows feels like I am betraying all the sass I have given MS and if I truly believe this stuff I gotta at least try to use it for what reasonably works.

Because it's easier to use/troubleshoot and fix problems. "Oh something broke on an update" revert to the last update. "I have an issue and it outputs an error code in the terminal" copy paste into Google/chatGPT and find the solution.

I couldn't give a squirty shit about games. The GPL made me a convert 25 years ago.

Because it's an honest system

Because it's my system and not Microsoft's system. Also I find Apple products extremely expensive for what you get, and that's coupled with how anticonsumer they are.

Adverts, telemetry, bloatware, and I don't look good in a turtleneck.

I initially switched because I heard about Windows planning to drop support for Windows 10 and I knew that Windows 11 was slow as hell so I jumped ship. I stayed because I really like the customizability and all the options Linux affords me as well as being able to just... switch distros if one company does something I don't like. Being able to update when I want to is also amazing.

I bought a new laptop, and it was lagging more than my old PC. I was enraged by this fact. My old pc had 4gb RAM, my laptop would freeze playing games like osu. Yeah, 8gb was the limit in 2016, but not like to get random freezes. I installed Ubuntu and then never went back, now using Arch. Performance. No random things going under my nose, making spikes happen. Now, it's not about performance alone. It's about control and privacy. I study psychology and I wish my peers realized what it means using Meta services everyday, Microsoft, etc, and how these are connected with our everyday life, decisions and lack of control, thus worth to get the psychology field to debate and put the everyday services under discussion.

Linux systems are usually laid bare for people to tinker with, which for me is specially good if I see something I don't like, be it software, UI or UX.

Plus, most PC's I've seen from at least the past 20 years can run Linux, so if I get my hands on a working PC, Linux becomes an easy choice.

Plus², Linux can be made very privacy friendly.