I’m a little surprised that they are planning on testing downstream distros like bazzite. It would make more sense to just stick to the biggest upstream distros like Arch/Debian/Fedora for benchmark purposes in my opinion.
They’re aiming for “something the viewer can achieve themselves”.
99% of ex-Windows users won’t be going for Arch, Debian or Fedora. It’s supposed to be easy to get in, difficult to screw up.
I disagree. Keep in mind that most people seeing the benchmarks will be windows users, and seeing Bazzite’s gaming performance along with it’s reputation for simplicity to set up and may help convince them to switch. Plus, anyone that had experience with Linux will know the link between it and Fedora, and can adjust expectations for theur particular distro
As someone using bazzite, it just works out of the box and I think that’s exactly what a lot of the windows uses are looking for.
Second!
I disagree sort of. I find it hard to believe a new distro is easier to set up than mint or Ubuntu and when it comes time to troubleshoot, youll get less support than the upstreams. Both searching existing posts and making new posts there will be less answers. Unless you make a search fo the upstream, and then there’s a chance your distro tweaked something and it’s different.
What also makes me sus is that if influencers are promoting lesser-known distros, it might be paid. Which is fine but could mean plans to monetize that distro in the future.
You may find it hard to believe but that doesnt mean you are right. Most ditros are quite easy to set up. Ubuntu and Mint are both already modified Debian. Why not some other modified one? A distro modified to game is already set up for gaming.
Bazzite would make it very easy to reproduce the same result. Just pull the exact version they used, set Proton and you’re done
cough cough
cachyos
I’m a little confused by some of the discussion. Surely the problems they’re talking about with variations in the test system also apply to windows. You result can be affected by:
- Which windows updates have been applied
- Which version of the drivers have been installed
- What other software is on the system
Linux is the same, but they seem to be more concerned about it. Can someone explain?
I think a big part of why they talked about it in the video is to explain their base assumptions for the test. They’ve discussed it with Windows enough that they don’t need to say those anymore, but the Linux tests are new.
In addition, they do need to change theur workflow simply because they can’t use the same software and scripts for Linux.
They’re also addressing the reputation that Linux has among Windows users, even if that reputation is outdated
Yes, if anything it seems easier to handle on linux. Just bake golden images that already have a static list of required packages.
Thid is great, from English speaking channels I only know AncientGameplays doing linux benchmark comparisons to Windows on gaming. *Spoilers: If you use AMD you’re not leaving performance on the table, if you’re team green… it’s a work in progress.
RT is currently still shit on Linux, but I don’t use it anyway.
This is definitely something that has been coming for some time. Yes, I am a little surprised it has taken this long for a major channel know for hardware reviews for gamers to take this step… I would have thought that the popularity of the Steam Deck, and all of the handhelds that are now running Linux would have been a motivator.
But it seems that Steve is really seeing that there is more of a progression of people not wanting to go to Windows 11, and the issues surrounding Microsoft’s insistence on adding creepy features that no one asked for (like Recall) as the push they needed.
And I agree, Bazzite is probably one of the best choices that they could make. The immutability of the system will allow them to have consistent images that won’t change on them randomly. That is a definite requirement when dealing with this type of benchmarking.
This is great. Honest people like Steve and Wendell are great for Linux. Let’s make sure, as a community, we don’t give them a hard time about their distro of choice. I think bazzite is an excellent choice to start until they get comfortable digging deeper into the system.
Not everyone wants or needs to dig deeper though. If Bazzite meets all of someone’s needs, good. The vast majority of people want an OS that just works out of the box.
I agree and I want someone to tell them about dx12 bug from nvidia and ray tracing perf on amd gpus(not sure about this one).
Wendell uses cachyOs on his channel.
Steve shouted his channel out too, so hopefully this ends up being a “separate sides of the coin” for the audience to enjoy (if one is curious about what the other distro is like)
Can we count the mainstream tech tubers in recent months that have done these Linux/Bazzite videos?
- As much as I hate ETA Prime, I think he was one of the first
- PewDiePie
- Toasty Bros
- J2C
- Dawid Does Tech
- Ctrl Alt Rees
- Digital Foundry
- Lon.TV
- Chris Titus
- LTT soon
What’s wrong with ETA Prime?
I assume it’s just that his channel mostly seems like advertisement for products. I like him enough, but I know what I’m getting if I watch one of his videos.
LTT soon? They made a few Linux videos and still love windows too much to recommend it.
Yes they’re supposed to be doing a video with Linus Torvalds soon.
Please don’t make me sub to LTT 😅
No need. If that happens, you’ll surely have no chance to miss that video on Lemmy. :)
They really seem to be intent on glazing Apple at this point.
Chris Titus
Having his name on one of the most popular windows debloater was just as based.
This is interesting because theres not a ton of direct Windows vs. linux game benchmarking, and now there’s about to be. GN churns though a lot of hardware and testing.
And excellent, because being linux, drawing attention to issues increases the chances of them getting fixed, whereas that is hardly the case for Windows.
Arch (with KDE I presume?) + Bazzite is not bad either. There’s a lot of handwaving over they should have chosen this or that distro, but they’re both very popular in the gaming space, so I feel that’s fairly representative of many distros.
And excellent, because being linux, drawing attention to issues increases the chances of them getting fixed, whereas that is hardly the case for Windows.
This is the most important part of this whole thing to me. Imagine Nvidia watching Steve shitting on them for having horrible drivers on Linux and millions of people seeing that.
My game randomly freezes like once an hour on linux. Thanks, Nvidia!
although i prefer the arch distros for bleeding edge and rolling updates. Bazzite makes sense for testing because of the immutable.
A lot of more experienced pc users might end up liking arch distros later in their life, but I would never recomnmend arch based distros to people who aren’t comfortable with linux yet.
Experienced here, did my time in Arch, learned a lot, perhaps even more than necessary, now retired to Fedora, then Bazzite and Aurora-dev. It just gets out of my way nicely. Something, something, Bell curve meme, plateau of enlightenment meme.
And I would absolutely recommend Arch to a technically competent gamer newcomer as the fastest way to get up to speed.
Horses, Courses.
Bazzite was my first attempt at really daily driving Linux. I ended up on Aurora dev and I don’t have any reasons to move to something different.
The U-Blue OSs really feel like the future to me.
Incredibly cool tech, but it just works.
Yup, you can just do your Arch (or other distro-hopping) stuff in a distrobox if you want. Break it, blow it away and start fresh, uBlue don’t care… Switch DEs, that’s a one liner (although Gnome and KDE still don’t play well together, so use a fresh user). What’s not to love?
I (want to) like Ublue distros but for some reason i can’t get drag and drop in flatpak firefox and Thunderbird to work, how do you deal with this, if you don’t mind the stupid question :D
As in between them ? Not something I do enough to care about, and I use Zen and Betterbird, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, but I just selected something from Zen and dropped it into a new message in Betterbird without issue…KDE FWIW. There are still some rough edges with flatpak and wayland, but they’re mostly smoothed now. It’s usually permissions (KeepassXC and firefox is a bitch for example, but doable).
No i meant like uploading files somewhere or attaching stuff to Mails, when i have the folder already open.
Couldn’t yet find a really satisfying solution to that
Attaching files from Dolphin to mail just works as Drag and Drop (gives you the choice of inline or attachment for images, cool, did not know that). Not sure for firefox, would need a target, but there’s always right click, copy location, paste into any file chooser.
Bluefin-dx user here. This is the way.
NixOS is bleeding edge immutable, but it’s like deep in the weeds
NixOS would be ideal for a purely testing, if I were setting a test bench I would definitely use Nix. BUT they also need to use something that people watching might be willing/able to use, and Nix has a very steep learning curve.
If I understand correctly, it’s a different kind of “immutable”, since distros like Bazzite provide premade immutable images you use and anything else you need you install using alternative means, whereas NixOS is an immutable image generator that requires you to set up your own definitions for the image, but also lets you install software by adding it to that image.
They’re both “immutable” in the sense that they’re setting up either read-only Filesystem Hierarchies (as in bazzite, which uses ostree) or Symlinking their entire filesystem hierarchy to a read-only “store” (as in nixos).
Bazzite uses something called ostree to “diff” the filesystem hierarchy much like git does, while Nix basically makes giant read-only store of files and hashes them, then weaves them all together into a “view” of a filesystem that gets symlinked into the context of a running program.
This is genuinely a new era in gaming, so exciting!
Honestly, it’s about damn time.
These technical people should be ashamed it took them so long to adopt Linux.
This literally doubles (if not more) the workload to run these benchmarks, not to mention having to write new automation procedures and Steve just not being familiar with Linux at all, all for 2-3% (tops) of his audience.
Be glad that he is doing them in the future and don’t be a demanding, entitled prick.
and Steve just not being familiar with Linux at all
Yeah, that’s the problem. Just like with LinusTechTips, these youtubers aren’t half as knowledgeable as they’d like their audiences to believe.
They should be ashamed, and you should stop being being a simp.
entitled prick.
Grow the fuck up.
Sometimes you gotta be realistic that the majority of the population wouldn’t have found Linux as friendly as many here are, even today, while Windows or is/was kinda the obvious mainstream choice for running any software… The balance seems to tip slowly, but honestly it took decades.
Even today you’re still all debating which distro that didn’t exist 10 years ago is the best, and which office suite can match Microsoft’s… How am I going to convince my non-nerd friends to use Linux over Windows in that context.
About gaming, it’s a matter of being able to run AAA games without issues, like, no bugs and anti-cheat problems. It’s only since SteamOS that it is getting enough programmers and mainstream attention.
This is the way, but once again it required the power of a dominant company to move the lines.
Let’s put that in a way that isn’t so off putting. It’s the duty of those in the know help those who are not when possible.
No it’s not. There is no duty to anyone. Go to a library or book store and read what you want to learn.
I do not want to live in such a world. Helping others, especially when it is at little to no cost to you should be common sense to everyone.
I will strive towards making the world such a place, and I implore everyone, including you, to make the world a better place for everyone - including you.
Ah, the RTFM argument. So you didn’t go to school, did you? You picked up a book and just started educating yourself?
If what you’ve chosen to learn could help someone right in front of you, and they’re asking for help, you do not feel compelled to help them? I doubt that.
Nice.
Very much so looking forward to seeing rigorous benchmarks of GPUs on linux.
That’s great! Love to see more GN and Lvl1 collabs!
