Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
And if we take this as an actual attempt at a better handheld experience, then this is just further proof that competition breeds better products for consumers.
Yeah and honestly, whatever optimization they promise — or deliver, for that matter — won’t sway me because it’s the company itself and the country where it is based that I’m against at this point. So, there’s no way I’m ever going to buy any MS handheld.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
AMD’s own Windows drivers also perform much worse in low power situations than the open source Linux drivers, whereas Windows game mode (or whatever it’ll be called) is about reducing background tasks that consume RAM. Obviously reducing RAM consumption is beneficial but it’s not the whole story.
Given the popularity of the Steam Deck, the Xbox handheld would have to come free with the purchase of any Xbox exclusive game to stand a chance in that sphere, I think. The fact that it’s Win11 immediately turns me off and I say this as someone who still uses Windows.
Microsoft has plenty of console exclusives, so they are on PlayStation and Switch but not Windows for whatever reason. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled is one I’m confused why they don’t trust their own platform with.
That said, they don’t trust their own Windows on ARM devices either and those should definitely be capable enough to run games that come to Switch.
The thing that confuses me is that Microsoft is no stranger to Linux. They use it in their data centers. It’s plainly obvious if you know what other offerings are doing.
Their entire front end stack for azure virtual machines is OpenStack. Some years back they integrated with OpenStack to allow it to manage hyper-v, but OpenStack can also natively manage KVM hypervisors, as it was originally designed to do, and also VMware.
Hell, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Microsoft distro of Linux floating around (not available to the public… Not yet at least).
The people who seem to be pushing Microsoft, more than anyone, are game studios. Their garbage Anti cheat rootkits work best on Windows. So use Windows so they can low jack your PC.
Microsoft is moving away from allowing anything to run with those low level permissions after that CrowdStrike incident where rogue security software bricked millions of Windows PCs, so that might take out kernel anticheat as collateral damage.
Can I post a potentially controversial opinion? I think that the ‘Game Bar’ feature that Win11 has now is actually kinda good. It has really come a long, long way since Windows Gaming for PC. I think that whenever I switch to Linux, I would probably seek out something similarly as elegant.
Serious now: if I got it right, this game bar is an overlay showing FPS, CPU/GPU usage, screenshots/recording, stuff like this. It doesn’t look too hard to implement in Linux, and apparently there’s a GNOME extension in the makes for that. (If it’s compatible with Cinnamon I’ll be a happy camper. I’d rather not touch GNOME directly with a 3m pole, but the tools for GNOME are sometimes OK.)
Correct! And I appreciate the recommendation. I’m an XFCE4 man (sorry. It is just what I’ve been using for decades) and I think I could probably get that GNOME library running on that environment.
Given how much Microsoft wants to enshitify its services. Windows 11 is proven to be no exception. They have no reason to stop at the Xbox brand. Even Microsoft games like their new flight sim has not escaped enshitification race to the bottom.
Switched rest of the house to Linux due to win10 bullshit. Not going pretend like this is something that everyone can do but if you can do it for yourself, it takes only on Linux zealot per household ;)
Same here, except for my mom’s computer, because she needs a program for embroidery design that doesn’t work well on Linux despite being in the AUR. It’s called “Embrilliance”, and for some reason the cursor disappears whenever you try to draw freeform, so if anyone has any guidance on that, hit up my DMs, I’d love to solve it for her!
I could try it in another DE on my machine to see if that helps first. Maybe Cinnamon or XFCE would be good enough for her needs, I’d set her up with Plasma previously, which she liked but it’s a no-go without Embrilliance. If nothing else, it’s just one air-gapped Windows PC in the house, ultimately it doesn’t matter too much.
This is a great use-case for a live Linux environment. Throw one onto a drive and see if it works well, and if not, just restart and go back to what you have.
Ventoy even supports persistence! It’s a bit poorly documented but you download the 1-2GB persistence volume, configure ventoy to include that feature and which ISOs to associate with which persistent volumes and you’re off to the races
Valve put together a good product this time compared to the first steam machines push. Most games work without fuss and it’s priced well. They didn’t start the handheld PC market but they sort of Apple’ed it by taking something other companies had been doing and streamlined it enough to get mainstream copycats, Lenovo/Asus/etc. Plus SteamOS/bug picture looks a lot better today than 10 years ago. So proven market/platform that can again try to undercut Windows machines in price because Linux is free and leverages the work of open source developers
It would be so hilarious to see historians refer to the market shift as “The Great Microsoft Recall” as like a literal recall in addition to the name of the feature.
Honestly, I kinda suspect the tariffs are speeding this up. I recently upgraded my desktop due to the suspicion that prices are gonna go bonkers shortly and since I was basically rebuilding it anyway, I went ahead and switched my last windows PC to Linux. Been a lot smoother than I had suspected, highly recommended.
I actually watched the prices increase by about 10-20% while ordering computers from work. This was through Dell so clear as mud normally for any given computer but the value of my invoices jumped by a clear 10-20% after the tarrifs started biting back in April
Seems like an increase a bit in preparation. Who knows what they’ll be/what shortages will occur over the next couple of years. After all, the current bluff is a 100% tariff on chips. Which is why if you’re planning to upgrade in the next year or two and have the money, it might be a decent idea to pre-emptively update your parts before they jack up further.
Yep. If I didn’t think it was stupider, I would almost think it was a plan to increase consumption of bs computer upgrades given how they’ve basically gotten to the point that people don’t really need to upgrade for the most part, outside of operating system changes.
Windows bloat does a pretty good job of making fairly recent computers feel sluggish though. I just updated my work laptop with a 12th gen CPU to Windows 11 and things are noticeably more sluggish immediately following applying the update. Which is sad since its about 8 years newer than my Linux laptop with similar (but older of course) specs and the Linux laptop is significantly snappier-feeling when in use.
Pretty much. I have to use windows 11 for work, so I get the sluggish feeling. My 8th gen Intel laptop is much faster, despite being considerably older than my work laptop.
Anyone have good experiences with the NVIDIA 50 series on Linux? I’ve tried a bunch different flavors over the years and I’m fairly distro agnostic as long as it doesn’t get too esoteric.
Also weird question does anyone know if Single Player Tarkov with Project Fika works on Linux? I think it should
As people already stated in the comments, this may not be a permanent change for some (they find out something like destiny 2 refuses to work on Linux without bans, some other tools needed for certain use cases are not there yet or windows only), but I think is super important people understand there are alternatives, and not only windows or Mac. Hopefully gives more people awareness that something else is out there. And would be really cool if we had more of the user base that is on the verge to throwing away the machine because of windows 11 restrictions and instead, gives machines a second chance.
All we can do is guide them. Personally, I guide them to treasure I cannot have, since I’m damn near obligated to run and deeply understand Microsoft Windows because I work for IT support.
I do use windows for work as well, but if people want adoption, it starts at home. I do see a need for Linux distros in general will have to make even a bigger shift for the user needs instead of whatever agenda people like to imply (I think open source is a good goal, but if I introduce Linux to someone, I will not for certain preach endlessly about this).
We need more adoption, but I also see some camps will decide to further distance themselves from these groups of users.
Won’t miss those years tweaking Windows to uninstall or disable bloatware and malware. I don’t mind if more or less people migrate to Linux, I’m just grateful to those who are making and improving such amazingly good distros. 💪💛
We have made more than we put in to the reaction, but that’s a far cry from making more energy than we put into the reactor, or extracting any of that energy at all.
I’ve been running Linux on my desktop for more than 30 years, so I’ve switched for a while. And while I’d certainly like to see it become more commonplace, I’m not sure a few decimal points are really going to change anything. It’s nice that it’s making progress, of course, but all in all, it’s rather insignificant.
While it’s under 10, or more likely 15%, nobody will care about it.
Developers already care about it. Not all of them, not all the way, but many are aiming for steam deck compatibility via proton. It’s not perfect, and some devs are vehemently holding out, but it’s progress!
People care a lot about macOS because you can charge users $15 for a GUI wrapper around a terminal command and they will pay and even recommend your app. I’m not even joking, there are a thousand examples of apps like this. If your app actually does anything, you can charge $30 and they will pay.
Now on Linux you could release the cure for cancer for $0.99 and you’d get screamed at. And I say that as a Linux user. Which means you need significantly higher numbers than macOS to achieve the same revenue, which also means the companies developing the commercial software that holds back adoption of Linux will take a long while before starting to care.
In all seriousness fuck charging for cures, especially for cancer. Life is about more than getting paid. I just lost someone yesterday to cancer so I’m sure this is an outsized response, but seriously, cancer fucking sucks.
The knowledgeable users on MacOS install Homebrew (or nix if being a hipster) and get most of their cool tools for that.
With Windows, the default assumption is that the user has less money than a MacOS user so all the useless shit on Microsoft Store is cheaper than MacOS, but it’s still money for software that shouldn’t be paid.
I put KDE plasma on my elderly Mom’s surface laptop. She uses it mostly for organising photos, and she’s loving it. She complained that windows always “messes with her settings”. If she gets it, you can too.
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Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
And if we take this as an actual attempt at a better handheld experience, then this is just further proof that competition breeds better products for consumers.
Yeah and honestly, whatever optimization they promise — or deliver, for that matter — won’t sway me because it’s the company itself and the country where it is based that I’m against at this point. So, there’s no way I’m ever going to buy any MS handheld.
AMD’s own Windows drivers also perform much worse in low power situations than the open source Linux drivers, whereas Windows game mode (or whatever it’ll be called) is about reducing background tasks that consume RAM. Obviously reducing RAM consumption is beneficial but it’s not the whole story.
MS optimization = maximize revenue streams = more ads = more spyware
I don’t believe a thing MS says is ever meant to improve the customer experience.
Exactly… People love talking optimization and efficiency without realizing that they are being fucked over lol
They are optimizing at your expense
Given the popularity of the Steam Deck, the Xbox handheld would have to come free with the purchase of any Xbox exclusive game to stand a chance in that sphere, I think. The fact that it’s Win11 immediately turns me off and I say this as someone who still uses Windows.
lol, what is this ‘Xbox Exclusive Game’ you speak of, in 2025?
A hypothetical one, of course
heheheh
Microsoft has plenty of console exclusives, so they are on PlayStation and Switch but not Windows for whatever reason. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled is one I’m confused why they don’t trust their own platform with.
That said, they don’t trust their own Windows on ARM devices either and those should definitely be capable enough to run games that come to Switch.
The thing that confuses me is that Microsoft is no stranger to Linux. They use it in their data centers. It’s plainly obvious if you know what other offerings are doing.
Their entire front end stack for azure virtual machines is OpenStack. Some years back they integrated with OpenStack to allow it to manage hyper-v, but OpenStack can also natively manage KVM hypervisors, as it was originally designed to do, and also VMware.
Hell, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Microsoft distro of Linux floating around (not available to the public… Not yet at least).
The people who seem to be pushing Microsoft, more than anyone, are game studios. Their garbage Anti cheat rootkits work best on Windows. So use Windows so they can low jack your PC.
https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux is a thing, yes. Public and fully open source.
Well, would you look at that…
Microsoft is moving away from allowing anything to run with those low level permissions after that CrowdStrike incident where rogue security software bricked millions of Windows PCs, so that might take out kernel anticheat as collateral damage.
GOOD
While I’d love to see this, they also walked that back following lobbying by Antivirus vendors. So shit will continue to roll
Can I post a potentially controversial opinion? I think that the ‘Game Bar’ feature that Win11 has now is actually kinda good. It has really come a long, long way since Windows Gaming for PC. I think that whenever I switch to Linux, I would probably seek out something similarly as elegant.
NO, YOU CAN’T. (just kidding.)
Serious now: if I got it right, this game bar is an overlay showing FPS, CPU/GPU usage, screenshots/recording, stuff like this. It doesn’t look too hard to implement in Linux, and apparently there’s a GNOME extension in the makes for that. (If it’s compatible with Cinnamon I’ll be a happy camper. I’d rather not touch GNOME directly with a 3m pole, but the tools for GNOME are sometimes OK.)
Correct! And I appreciate the recommendation. I’m an XFCE4 man (sorry. It is just what I’ve been using for decades) and I think I could probably get that GNOME library running on that environment.
Fixed
Switched rest of the house to Linux due to win10 bullshit. Not going pretend like this is something that everyone can do but if you can do it for yourself, it takes only on Linux zealot per household ;)
Same here, except for my mom’s computer, because she needs a program for embroidery design that doesn’t work well on Linux despite being in the AUR. It’s called “Embrilliance”, and for some reason the cursor disappears whenever you try to draw freeform, so if anyone has any guidance on that, hit up my DMs, I’d love to solve it for her!
Sometimes switching DEs resolves these glitches for me.
But not sure if that’s a solution more like well around and that’s no good for non nerds
I could try it in another DE on my machine to see if that helps first. Maybe Cinnamon or XFCE would be good enough for her needs, I’d set her up with Plasma previously, which she liked but it’s a no-go without Embrilliance. If nothing else, it’s just one air-gapped Windows PC in the house, ultimately it doesn’t matter too much.
This is a great use-case for a live Linux environment. Throw one onto a drive and see if it works well, and if not, just restart and go back to what you have.
But, like you said, not a big deal either way.
Very true, if I find a DE that works with Embrilliance this weekend, I could use my Ventoy stick and see if she vibes with it. Good call!
Ventoy even supports persistence! It’s a bit poorly documented but you download the 1-2GB persistence volume, configure ventoy to include that feature and which ISOs to associate with which persistent volumes and you’re off to the races
Nice! That’s good to know for other things!
Valve put together a good product this time compared to the first steam machines push. Most games work without fuss and it’s priced well. They didn’t start the handheld PC market but they sort of Apple’ed it by taking something other companies had been doing and streamlined it enough to get mainstream copycats, Lenovo/Asus/etc. Plus SteamOS/bug picture looks a lot better today than 10 years ago. So proven market/platform that can again try to undercut Windows machines in price because Linux is free and leverages the work of open source developers
Microsoft Recall and Steam Deck and Proton are why.
It would be so hilarious to see historians refer to the market shift as “The Great Microsoft Recall” as like a literal recall in addition to the name of the feature.
Honestly, I kinda suspect the tariffs are speeding this up. I recently upgraded my desktop due to the suspicion that prices are gonna go bonkers shortly and since I was basically rebuilding it anyway, I went ahead and switched my last windows PC to Linux. Been a lot smoother than I had suspected, highly recommended.
I actually watched the prices increase by about 10-20% while ordering computers from work. This was through Dell so clear as mud normally for any given computer but the value of my invoices jumped by a clear 10-20% after the tarrifs started biting back in April
Seems like an increase a bit in preparation. Who knows what they’ll be/what shortages will occur over the next couple of years. After all, the current bluff is a 100% tariff on chips. Which is why if you’re planning to upgrade in the next year or two and have the money, it might be a decent idea to pre-emptively update your parts before they jack up further.
While I was working at an MSP that was one of the talking points regarding computer upgrades, that and Windows 10 EOL looming in October
Yep. If I didn’t think it was stupider, I would almost think it was a plan to increase consumption of bs computer upgrades given how they’ve basically gotten to the point that people don’t really need to upgrade for the most part, outside of operating system changes.
Windows bloat does a pretty good job of making fairly recent computers feel sluggish though. I just updated my work laptop with a 12th gen CPU to Windows 11 and things are noticeably more sluggish immediately following applying the update. Which is sad since its about 8 years newer than my Linux laptop with similar (but older of course) specs and the Linux laptop is significantly snappier-feeling when in use.
Pretty much. I have to use windows 11 for work, so I get the sluggish feeling. My 8th gen Intel laptop is much faster, despite being considerably older than my work laptop.
Anyone have good experiences with the NVIDIA 50 series on Linux? I’ve tried a bunch different flavors over the years and I’m fairly distro agnostic as long as it doesn’t get too esoteric.
Also weird question does anyone know if Single Player Tarkov with Project Fika works on Linux? I think it should
Yeah, my gaming rig, running bazzite. Works how it should, no fuss, games well. Give it a run I say
My gaming distro of choice is Garuda. As long as I keep everything up to date, everything just works.
But it’s also an Arch based distro so everything is bleeding edge, which poses risks of it’s own. I’ve not had it bite me yet, but the risk is there.
Steamdeck
As people already stated in the comments, this may not be a permanent change for some (they find out something like destiny 2 refuses to work on Linux without bans, some other tools needed for certain use cases are not there yet or windows only), but I think is super important people understand there are alternatives, and not only windows or Mac. Hopefully gives more people awareness that something else is out there. And would be really cool if we had more of the user base that is on the verge to throwing away the machine because of windows 11 restrictions and instead, gives machines a second chance.
All we can do is guide them. Personally, I guide them to treasure I cannot have, since I’m damn near obligated to run and deeply understand Microsoft Windows because I work for IT support.
All of my work tools are Windows centric.
I do use windows for work as well, but if people want adoption, it starts at home. I do see a need for Linux distros in general will have to make even a bigger shift for the user needs instead of whatever agenda people like to imply (I think open source is a good goal, but if I introduce Linux to someone, I will not for certain preach endlessly about this).
We need more adoption, but I also see some camps will decide to further distance themselves from these groups of users.
Won’t miss those years tweaking Windows to uninstall or disable bloatware and malware. I don’t mind if more or less people migrate to Linux, I’m just grateful to those who are making and improving such amazingly good distros. 💪💛
Instead you’ll spend your time littering your own computer with bloatware!
Lemmy Linux copium is one of the strongest in the world.
How else are we going to achieve nuclear fission?
Don’t you mean fusion? Fission is separate and we’ve already achieved it a long time ago.
We’ve achieved fusion too. We just can’t extract more energy than we put into it yet.
Technically they can extract more now, it’s just a really really small amount.
We have made more than we put in to the reaction, but that’s a far cry from making more energy than we put into the reactor, or extracting any of that energy at all.
Oh, that makes sense.
Haha, yup! Brain bork moment. :)
It’s not so much about users switching, it’s more about the ones that will stick with it. And that we can’t know for a few years yet.
Glad to be part of a trend, for a change!
I’ve been running Linux on my desktop for more than 30 years, so I’ve switched for a while. And while I’d certainly like to see it become more commonplace, I’m not sure a few decimal points are really going to change anything. It’s nice that it’s making progress, of course, but all in all, it’s rather insignificant.
While it’s under 10, or more likely 15%, nobody will care about it.
Developers already care about it. Not all of them, not all the way, but many are aiming for steam deck compatibility via proton. It’s not perfect, and some devs are vehemently holding out, but it’s progress!
That doesn’t seem to take a lot of effort. It’s still a windows binary. And it’s unfortunately simpler than figuring out if the user runs X or not.
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People care a lot about macOS because you can charge users $15 for a GUI wrapper around a terminal command and they will pay and even recommend your app. I’m not even joking, there are a thousand examples of apps like this. If your app actually does anything, you can charge $30 and they will pay.
Now on Linux you could release the cure for cancer for $0.99 and you’d get screamed at. And I say that as a Linux user. Which means you need significantly higher numbers than macOS to achieve the same revenue, which also means the companies developing the commercial software that holds back adoption of Linux will take a long while before starting to care.
In all seriousness fuck charging for cures, especially for cancer. Life is about more than getting paid. I just lost someone yesterday to cancer so I’m sure this is an outsized response, but seriously, cancer fucking sucks.
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Isn’t it the same on Windows tbh?
The knowledgeable users on MacOS install Homebrew (or nix if being a hipster) and get most of their cool tools for that.
With Windows, the default assumption is that the user has less money than a MacOS user so all the useless shit on Microsoft Store is cheaper than MacOS, but it’s still money for software that shouldn’t be paid.
I put KDE plasma on my elderly Mom’s surface laptop. She uses it mostly for organising photos, and she’s loving it. She complained that windows always “messes with her settings”. If she gets it, you can too.
Common Windows L