highball

Naa, I was a Windows kernel dev for Intel a decade ago. We had guys that knew different parts of the kernel. Microsoft engineers know the kernel well. They have to, they have engineers from different companies fixing bugs and making changes. I had my contact for the parts of the kernel I was responsible for and other engineers had their contacts. You have to think, some of these engineers at Intel have been working on the same subsystem for twenty+ years.

So windows kernel will exist until everyone else leaves.

Yeah, that’s what he is eluding to. Microsoft keeps adding to Azure Linux. One day, there will be a Windows user land for Linux, i.e. Win/Linux instead of GNU/Linux. It will be much cheaper to run a Win/Linux distro in the cloud than full Windows. Most users just use the browser anyways. Anybody that actually needs a program not supported by the Win/Linux distro can fall back to the full Windows. Eventually everything will be supported on Win/Linux. Plus, WoW64 is already a translation layer for 32bit Windows applications and there are others and have been others over the years. A translation layer to run legacy Windows software would be nothing new for Microsoft.

Been using Linux for several decades now. I’ve always been able to throw in a floppy or a CD, or now a thumbdrive and just boot up and easily fix what’s wrong. Plus it’s rare to even have to do that. The times I’ve used Windows, when things go wrong, if it’s not a simple fix, best you can do is format and reinstall. I have friends who are so numb to that. But they figure, they might as well since they’ll just have have to format Windows and reinstall anyways because, Windows gets slower over time. I have one friend who had it on his calendar to just monthly reinstall Windows. I’ve never once thought, wow Linux is getting slow, let me format and reinstall. I mean, how can that even be an acceptable solution to anybody. Sure, if things just went sideways so badly and everything is corrupted, but that would be one hell of an extreme exception.

Everything I selfhost was easily setup with a simple compose file and various env files for each resource. What the heck was he trying to setup? I haven’t used Windows in a long time, but I doubt they have anything as easy as a declarative file like compose.

Definitely lost my co-op Elden Ring save. My normal game play was saved of course.

Agreed. Long time Linux user here. The distro is just supposed to get you near what you want or need. There are science distros for different science labs. Because there is a certain set of tools and software that all the researchers would be using. And likely, the distro is not useful for anybody else. I think there is only the big gaming distro issue because, gaming hasn’t really been a huge thing on Linux. Now it is, and new people to Linux have no clue what all is needed or what all is possible. Most don’t even realize they could install and switch DE’s without having to “distro hop”. But, 100% agree with you.

Well, Steam doesn’t install leading edge versions of Proton. For instance, if you install Battle.net through Steam. Sometimes Battle.net breaks. like here https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/01/ge-proton-9-23-released-with-a-battlenet-fix-for-linux-steam-deck/ , so you need the latest changes which wont be available to the Steam Deck, proton-experimental wont get the changes right away. If you just pop open protonup-qt, you can just download ge-proton-9-23. Of course once you have ge-proton-9-23 installed, then the Steam UI can switch between the various versions installed, or you can do it from protonup-qt while you have it open after downloading the latest leading edge proton that you need. I think it’s a good tool, especially for beginners.

Should do for all - after all, it’s just a matter of prefixes

naa, they do two different things. Sure you can go to the Lutris wine manager under runners and install Lutris versions of wine or select an already installed version of wine. That’s not the same as what ProtonPlus and ProtonUp-qt are doing. They are like Lutris wine manager on steroids, for Lutris and Steam and Bottles and whatever else. Always the possibility I completely overlooked a feature of Lutris.

No problem. I use Gnome as well for my desktop and yes that is KDE on your Steam Deck. If you’ve got a Steam Deck then protonup-qt is definitely a must have. Maybe it was more important when the Steam Deck first released, but it’s still handy to manage Proton versions for games that are already rock solid on older versions.

Does Lutris manage Proton for just Lutris or will Lutris manage proton for all your other launchers?

Nice. ProTip, checkout ProtonPlus or ProtonUp-qt. They manage different versions of Proton for you. They both do the same things in about the same ways. ProtonPlus will match better with Gnome based Desktop Environments and ProtonUp-qt will match the Kde like environments.