Why the downvotes? Apple silicon ARM is not the same ISA as any existing ARM. There’s extra undocumented instructions and features. Unless you want to reverse engineer all that, and make your own ARM CPU, you cannot run (all of) macOS on an off the shelf ARM chip. Making it effectively “impossible”.

The main issue is UX imo. On Windows 11, it’s “5 clicks”, but you have to open the settings app and find the setting two submenus deep. On KDE, it’s right click > configure application launcher > toggle setting > apply.

I was very annoyed when I got this, but remembered that it’s KDE, and turning it off is 4 clicks. Proprietary software often doesn’t allow you to turn this off (easily). Windows has this “feature”, where is the setting?

I don’t think it’s a productive “feature”, but considering it can be turned off so easily I don’t consider it a complete showstopper.

You don’t get control of the incoming port that way. For LetsEncrypt to issue a certificate primarily intended for HTTPS, they will check that the HTTP server on that IP is owned by the requesting party. That has to live on port 80, which you can’t forward on CGNAT.

Great, the touchpads are amazing for mouse-related stuff while handheld. I can comfortably use mouse heavy menus with them. Obviously, a lot closer to a laptop touchpad than an actual mouse, but still a lot better than a joystick as mouse.

A Steam Deck is a PC. If you dock it, you can hook up a mouse+KB and a monitor, and use “desktop mode” (KDE plasma) to use it exactly like any other Linux desktop. Docked “gaming mode” makes it feel more like a home console for PC games (and emulators). It is even possible (though not recommended) to install Windows.

Probably because they’re incapable of maintaining a distribution: https://manjarno.pages.dev/

Manjaro is not Arch based. They use pacman, but they use their own repositories. They create a ton of issues that way.

Can still pull off the “no computer” look with just a steam deck in a backpack. It’s kind of cool(?), but definitely a lot of effort going into “un-gaming” a steam deck. A framework mainboard may be a better option for this tbh.

Reminder that the license was changed to a “custom” non-free license.

I own a OnePlus 6 with postmarketOS. My daily driver is a Pixel 7 with CalyxOS and microg turned off.

Despite having effectively only FOSS apps on my Android daily driver, I can’t daily drive postmarketOS. It’s making great progress, but isn’t nearly stable enough as a modern smartphone, and several other issues hold it back;

• Sleep states. Currently you get to choose between your phone going to sleep (~ a day battery life) but without notifications, incoming calls, alarms, etc. Or your phone “staying awake”, where you’ll have those features but only ~4 hours battery.
• Hardware video decoding, which “can work” but only in select apps, and they’re not great for mobile.
• Audio issues, such as no audio from the earpiece, microphone not working, or no audio at all.

If you rely on non-foss Android apps, there is Waydroid, but it’s not a perfect solution and might have issues.

It’s not a “waste of money” if you want a device to experiment or tinker with, or if you want to follow progress of Linux mobile, but it is extremely unlikely to replace your daily driver.

I, a Linux user, agree that there is work to be done, but I disagree with the “this needs to change first” on proprietary software availability. Specifically the “first” bit.

Let me explain why: The problem of software availability is a chicken and egg problem. No users on an OS = no developers make stuff for it = no users because there is no software.

With Wine/Proton, Valve “fixed” this issue for gamers. This “opened the floodgates”, and at least in one group of computer users, made Linux viable as a daily driver. People who play video games are diverse, and have different needs for software outside gaming, so this change grew the userbase of every category of software in Linux, not just games.

With an actual userbase comes both a community of people, who are all potential contributors for FOSS, whether that’s programming, docs, or reporting issues. And a marketshare for businesses to target (and profit off of).

The ball has clearly started rolling, Linux is gaining marketshare at a pace it hasn’t seen before. The bigger the userbase gets, the more software will work overall. The more software, the more people who can switch.

There isn’t a single definable point where software availability suddenly makes a userbase appear, these two grow together.

So yes, there is work to be done, but no, it doesn’t “need to change first”.

A lot of people find out after using Linux that it’s perfect for their daily tasks. A lot of other people never bother, and thus never find out. With Windows 10 EOL coming up, and MS pushing more and more onto users (like recall and copilot), a portion of people forced to switch will look for alternatives, or will try out Linux because they’ve heard of it as an alternative.

As for your other arguments:

too much different distros not always compatible one with another

Which used to be true, but is significantly better than even a couple years ago. “Standardized” packaging like Flatpak makes a ton of software available on all distros, ensuring compatibility. Valve took a shot at this too with Steam Linux Runtime, but this hasn’t seen any use outside Steam.

depending on the distro also often an deficient support and maintance,

For the vast majority of distros, no. Though I agree that we (the community as a whole) should stop accepting terrible resources for finding Linux distros (like “top 10 distros” lists that make no sense to a new user) and push for better ones.

certain driver problems, among others.

Which is being solved too. “driver problems” is exclusively Nvidia, but the issues are (very slowly) being fixed (by nvidia), and distros are offering easy options for getting the Nvidia drivers. Nouveau/NVK is also on the slow cooker, but I trust it’ll come out great. “Among others” is not a valid reason.

Not good if an still minority OS is above to diversified, which cause a lot of problems for the devs of software.

Which fits into the point of Flatpaks for proprietary software, and highlights where FOSS truly shines. Flatpaks standardize the runtime, proprietary software only needs to support this one standard to support all distros. FOSS devs can target whatever they want for their project. If “works on my machine” is good enough for them, so be it. (People will always complain about stuff like this though). If a distro wants to officially provide some open source software to its users, it has to be packaged. With the packaging process for a distro, modifications might need to be made, which can often be contributed back to upstream.

To dethrone Windows as leader of the market does it still need a lot of work in many environments.

It’s a lot closer than you think. It’s already a viable daily driver for many. The biggest blocker is the fact that MS is a global megacorp, with advertising, OEM “support”, and a lot of money to “persuade” people and companies to use Windows.

OEM support also ties into the whole “choosing a distro”. I trust that even the worst OEMs choose at least a supported distro, which takes all pressure away from the user. When Linux marketshare grows enough for OEMs to provide the option, the least technical users going to a brick and mortar store will be presented with “100$ cheaper, but looks different than your current computer”. If Windows UI keeps being as inconsistent as it currently is, it would have similar impact for non-technical users going between Windows N and N+1 as it does going to Linux.

Keyguard, which works on Bitwarden-compatible servers like Vaultwarden

SteamOS is immutable, and has its own updater because of it. While SteamOS is related to Arch Linux, it is far from the same distro.

Regular Arch Linux can install local packages, the process is described on the Arch wiki. SteamOS has no built in mechanism to update without an internet connection, and installing packages manually is not recommended (due to the immutable nature of the system).

In order to update SteamOS from a local file, you would need to figure out how SteamOS updates work, and somehow trick the Steam Deck into accepting your local images. This is far outside the scope of anything related to Arch Linux, and not very well documented. The better option is to update your Steam Deck by connecting it to the internet.

Also of note, the latest version of SteamOS (as far as I’m aware) does not have any significant changes when it comes to controlling the fan speed.

Mint under the hood is still Linux, but for basic tasks like webbrowsing, it’s very similar to or easier than Windows.

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Article doesn’t even cite their sources correctly, typo-ing “Bringus Studios” as “Dingus Studios”

Fully agreed. There’s some stuff in the list that could leak server info or metadata about available content to the public, but the rest seems to require some knowledge before being able to exploit it, such as user IDs.

That doesn’t mean these aren’t issues, but they’re not “take your jellyfin down now” type issues either.

Probably, yes. Dual-booting may also be an option for the one or two games that don’t work.

Not every game works, but as another user pointed out, ProtonDB is a good resource. If you buy a new game on Steam, and it doesn’t work, you can refund it within the first 2 weeks (and below 2 hours playtime) for any reason. That includes “Ths game does not work on my operating system”.