Despite how this may feel, this post really is about Linux.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to daily drive … something else. OpenBSD. RedoxOS. 9front, Plan9. Heck, MINIX3. Some of it is that I’ve always wanted to try living on a micro-kernel, as I strongly agree with the design principles; but more recently a lot of it is because of what’s going on in both user space and the Linux kernel. I can escape from systemd by running Artix or Void or a dozen other anti-systemd distributions; Wayland is getting harder to avoid and some people no longer have a choice despite Wayland still trailing X in accessibility. But that’s still fine for me since my preferred window manager doesn’t run on Wayland at all, and there are no efforts to port it. Most alarming is what feels like a slippery slope around AI in the Linux kernel. No amount of distribution dodging is going to avoid that.
So I spend more and more time looking at alternatives and evaluating if I really can daily drive something other than Linux. Today I realized that I’ve trapped myself, and that trap is because of games.
I’m not a huge gamer, but I like to occasionally play; and recently, Linux has been really really great for games, even beating Windows on its home turf. I played entirely through Borderlands 4 on Linux – a game which is demanding of hardware, by any measure – on what’s basically a mobile AMD CPU/GPU and it crashed all of twice the entire game. I waste a few hours every month on Factorio. I’ve got stuff bookmarked in my Steam library that I know run well on Linux; we have resources like the ProtonDB. Lately, this has been my big blocker, and that realization I mentioned was in the form of realizing that I’m using the exact same excuse Windows users used to use to avoid switching to Linux. Because they didn’t want to lose access to games.
Something that’s informing my hesitation is that I have a Linux phone, too. It’s got an arm64 CPU, and is running some mobil-ized fork of Debian, and so much software isn’t available for it. So. Much. Either there aren’t packages for the OS and they’re not in Flathub; or they are in Flathub but they’re not adaptive and so are effectively useless on a mobile device; or they’re in Flathub but aren’t available to arm64; or they’re in Flathub but just don’t run because 30% of Flatpaks in Flathub are broken and don’t run – at least, they don’t run on my phone, because they don’t like whatever’s providing GL via Wayland. What this experience has done is made me pessemistic about jumping platforms: if I lose access to half the software I use just by switching CPU architectures, how bad will it be if I up and out change kernels? Pretty bad, I’m expecting; I’m not going to be playing any AAA games, that’s for sure. Which is why – even though Linus himself is slop-coding patches into the kernel – I feel trapped.
It’s incredible that Linux has come so far on the desktop that the availability of games is a blocking factor to migrating off of it – isn’t it? C’mon old timers: we’ve come so very far, baby, and for most of it I never imagined we’d be here. We’ve already taken over the world, via phones, via servers, via infrastructure, via all that FOSS that corporations are furtively using illegally by not following the LICENSEs of the libraries upon which their platforms are built. We’ve won, although desktop users only dimly, if at all, comprehend it; we give ourselves handicaps to ensure we remain the outsider underdog, by using increasingly more constrained sub-markets as our penetration measure.
Maybe it’s inevitable: popularity increases capability which begets stickiness. I like being able to just fire up Factorio, not having to dual boot, or faff around with virtual machines or with maintaining two ecosystems. Heck, I don’t even have to run Steam – there’s a Factorio: Space Age package in AUR. I just launch it from the command line. I’m going to lose all that by going to RedoxOS. Sure, I’ll gain the confidence that the kernel isn’t being written by an RNG, but what am I willing to give up? Games?
In a way, Linux has achieved Windows-ness. It’s sticky. People have to stay, unless they’re willing to accept the austerity measures of a younger (or at least far less popular) OS. The excuses Windows users made, now Linux users are making. I want to move to a better OS… bUt WhAt AbOuT mUh GaMeS!!!
If replying very briefly, I think we all need to bury Windows, to make Linux the default, whatever that default is. And then, some of us may migrate to, say, FreeBSD or others. As someone mentioned already, I think the most viable way is FreeBSD, if you want to run games. I’ve read OpenBSD being too slow, since they prioritise security over performance. So, for games, that’s a no-go.
Me, I have no issues with most things Linux. Systemd is convenient, whatever that is. I have never relied on complex X setups. I came to very shallow understanding of it somewhat recently, and I am long with Wayland already (Sway). I don’t like the bloat, but my current Arch Linux setup is close to what I want. I may prefer Gentoo, but I have no knowledge for it, and resources to acquire the knowledge.
If I am to migrate one day, I think FreeBSD is close to what I want. But I don’t know it first hand, and I’m not sure my hardware well supported. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. So far, all rings considered, I’m very happy with Linux. As someone who came from a decade of macOS. I haven’t even seen Windows properly since 7. The 10 was a joke, and now 11… I have no name for it, worse than that.
I suspect all of my alternatives are going to be this in one way or another. Microkernels may have improved as people figure out ways to optimize message passing, but it’s not going to compete with sharing memory.
I don’t think I’ve touched an X config in over a decade – what’s a “complex X setup”?
The *BSDs are good, established kit, but my concerns about hardware are the same. I think another limiting factor is muscle memory. If I switched whole-hog to BSD, it’d be one thing, but trying to run Linux on some machines and *BSD on others is going to trip me up on the daily because I rely so much on muscle memory. I lost my ability to touch-type with any speed on QWERTY pretty quickly after I switched to Dvorak. My brain isn’t contextually modal like that.
Personally, I like diversity. Monopolies are bad. I think Windows existing is fine, because some people genuinely like it and they should have the option of using it if they want to. Same with OSX, Android, iOS, whatever; choice is good. I don’t like being forced to use something, whether it’s systemd, Wayland, Windows, or LLMs. Some things in life you just have to accept, but there’s no excuse for it to be that way in software.
I hate Microsoft so much that I’d prefer them to bankrupt and have some other duopoly. I’m ok with it being Linux and macOS. But not Linux and Windows.
Ideally, though … Linux vs FreeBSD. Since you cannot install macOS on anything but an Apple computer. So, that’s a niche thing already. A Linux / FreeBSD duopoly feels very nice to have!
By complex X setup I meant something that isn’t available in Wayland. I haven’t noticed anything being changed when I migrated from X to Wayland. On some machines I don’t even have XWayland installed. Hence, I don’t understand the ‘Wayland bad, I continue using X’ drama. I imagine these people have some complex setups that Wayland doesn’t support.
Yeah, don’t read me wrong: I love that we have more choice now. Maybe it’s still uncommon outside of engineering teams, but it’s not an automatically crazy request to ask for a Linux laptop at any given company if you’re IT-adjacent. It’s a great thing.
Oh, right. I think Wayland works better for a lot of people. I guess NVidia cards work better with it? I just immediately run into random stuff it can’t do, or is for some reason hard, every time I try it. I do think those gaps are getting slowly closed and eventually it’ll make sense, but since X does everything I want and hasn’t had issues in many years, I’m not motivated to spend time fighting with Wayland.