I'm courageous sufficient to say it: Linux is sweet now, and if you wish to really feel such as you truly personal your PC, make 2026 the yr of Linux on (your) desktop
I am all-in, child. I am dedicated. If upgrading any distinct element of my PC did not require me taking out a mortgage proper now, I would be severely contemplating switching my GPU over to some form of AMD factor simply to make my life barely, barely simpler.
I’ve had it with Home windows and ascended to the sunlit uplands of Linux, the place the bushes heave with open-source fruits and males with massive beards grep issues with their minds.
I am not alone. In final month’s Steam {hardware} survey, the variety of Linux customers hit a brand new all-time excessive for the second month operating, reaching the heady summit of a whopping, ah, 3.2% of general Steam customers. Hey, we’re beating Mac gamers.
I believe that quantity will solely develop as the brand new yr goes by. Increasingly of us are getting sick of Home windows, certain—the AI guff, the fixed upselling on Workplace subs, the center taskbar*—but in addition, all my expertise goofing about with Linux this yr has dispelled a number of the, frankly, faulty concepts I had about it. It is actually not laborious! Actually! I do know Linux guys have been saying this for 3 many years, however it’s true now!
Goated with the open supply (sorry)
As I’ve already written about, the majority of my Linux-futzing time this yr has been spent in Bazzite, a distro tailored for gaming and likewise tailored to cease idiots (me) from doing one thing more likely to detonate their boot drive.
I grew up considering of Linux as ‘the command-line OS that permits you to delete your bootloader’ and, properly, I suppose that is not unfaithful, however I have been constantly impressed at how easy Bazzite has been to run on my PC, even with my persnickety Nvidia GPU.
The whole lot I’ve performed this yr has been as simple—if not simpler—to run on a free OS put collectively by a gaggle of passionate nerds as it’s on Home windows, the OS made by probably the most invaluable companies on planet Earth. I’ve by no means needed to dip into the command line (which is, to be frank, a disgrace, because the command line is objectively cool).
However to be sincere, it isn’t as if the Bazzite workforce has miraculously made Linux nice to make use of after many years of it seeming tough and esoteric to normie laptop customers. I believe mainstream Linux distros are simply, properly, form of good now. Aside from my gaming PC, I even have an previous laptop computer transformed right into a media server that lives beneath my tv. It runs Debian 13 (which I up to date to from Debian 12 earlier within the yr) and requires primarily zero enter from me in any respect.
What’s extra, the one software program I’ve on there’s software program I truly need on there. Oh for a model of Home windows that permit me do one thing as zany as, I do not know, uninstall Edge.
That is the true nub of it, I believe. The stats can say what they like (they usually do! We have all heard tales of Home windows video games truly operating higher on Linux through Valve’s Proton compatibility layer), however the coronary heart of my fatigue with Home windows is that, for each new nugatory AI gadget Microsoft crams into it and for each time the OS inexplicably boots to a white display and implores me to “end establishing” my PC with an Workplace 365 subscription, the true drawback is a sense that my laptop is not mine, that I’m someway renting this factor I put along with my very own two palms from an AI company in Redmond.
That is wonderful for consoles. Certainly, a part of the entire pitch of an Xbox or PlayStation is the notion that you’re handing off a number of accountability to your gadget to Sony and Microsoft’s groups of techs, however my PC? That I constructed? Get your grubby mitts off it.
Are there points? Positive. HDR’s nonetheless a crapshoot (plus ça change) and, as you’ve got little doubt heard, a number of live-service video games have anticheat software program that will not play with Linux. However I believe each of those points are step by step ticking towards their options, significantly with Valve making its personal push into the lounge.
So I say make 2026 the yr you give Linux a attempt, if you have not already. On the very least, you possibly can stick it on a separate boot drive and have a noodle about with it. I believe you may discover the open (supply) water is much more hospitable than you would possibly assume.
*I am truly wonderful with the center taskbar. I am sorry.