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Latest Comments by LoudTechie
Linaro reveal they're collaborating with Valve for the Steam Frame
9 Jan 2026 at 10:34 am UTC

Quoting: fabertawe
Quoting: dannielloAnd in the near future - Steam Pocket. The first true Linux phone with decent performance! (of course advertised as only for gaming, so Google should be OK with it... In the same sense like Steam Machine is just Linux PC so Sony and Microsoft also should be OK with it;)
That's already available, it's called the FuriPhone <https://furilabs.com/>. I've been daily driving the FLX1 for almost a year and it's fantastic. Don't really game on it though, apart from chess and the like.

It's incredibly liberating to be free of Google, using Linux 😀

As for the Frame, really looking forward to getting one.
Yeah, there're actually several.
The problem is just as always third party software compatibility(and this time also less expensive competition).

Mesa RADV driver on Linux looks set for a big ray tracing performance boost
8 Jan 2026 at 2:09 pm UTC Likes: 1

Succesfull driver development is always impressive.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
8 Jan 2026 at 12:45 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechieThis is, because the reason behind the whitelist is complicated and thus unsuited for marketing.
At the time of establishment this whitelist contained only CPU's without known side channel attacks.
They really, really wanted to get rid of old side channel attacks for some reason.
After what I gathered from the side channel attack history (which is not too much), I expect every current processor to have some side channel weakness too, though.
I'll be more clear and accurate.
I oversimplified some things.
The moment that whitelist was released.
For all of the processors that weren't on it, there was at that very moment a paper that explained how to extract or change the things even the OS and BIOS don't have access to or it was some obscure processor Win11 was truly incompatible with(non amd64 or ARM), with physical access.
Most of the time these were side channel attacks, because those are conceptional the simplest.

On your expectation. Oh, totally. Many of the processors on the list have been already broken.

Now on why Microsoft might still want to still rid themselves of old attacks.
In the processor secrets: things like somewhat functional DRM, anti-cheat, secure boot and other attempts at limiting software freedom tend to be based on these secrets(Also bitlocker keys, but those were just an excuse).
These things are in basically all their current implementation all backed by security through obscurity. That's also generally vulnerable, but they don't care, since it still slows attacks and is super profitable.
This could be an attempt to placate their government and media backers.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
8 Jan 2026 at 12:17 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: CajunMosesIt's a very nice trend. But there are too many variables to predict what will happen. It helps that Linux seems to be getting more positive press lately. And lot's of disenfranchised desktops/laptop should have been freed up by the TPM 2.0 debacle; so, hopefully some of that will continue to come back online with Linux. But it won't last forever.
This isn't your fault, but I'm going to complain about a mistake you make that's intentionally very common.
It's not the fault of the TPM2.0 basically every machine, since 2008 has one that can be manually activated.
Microsoft has a processor whitelist for Win11 and that one is at fault for this debacle.
I've done Win11 migrations for many customers and none of them had no TPM2.0.
Most of them had non-whitelisted CPUs.
Microsoft does say it in it's marketing though.

This is, because the reason behind the whitelist is complicated and thus unsuited for marketing.
At the time of establishment this whitelist contained only CPU's without known side channel attacks.
They really, really wanted to get rid of old side channel attacks for some reason.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
8 Jan 2026 at 12:05 pm UTC

Quoting: mattaraxia
Quoting: mr-victoryI feel that the GabeCube *ahem* Steam Machine will be DOA due to anti cheat, I hope to be proven wrong but Windows on ARM laptops being frequently returned item on Amazon doesn't give me confidence, those laptops' game compatibility issues are not that different from ours... the advantage Deck had was being a handheld so who cares if an fps doesn't work.
If the Deck wasn't DOA because of anti-cheat, why would the cube be?

That just makes no sense. Will it be a bit limited? Sure. Will there still be tons of people who don't care about games like Battlefield? Clearly the answer is yes.

It's not expected to sell 50 million units, even 5 is a . . . huge success.
The Gabe cube is a fully fledged pc with low RAM requirements in a RAM crisis.
I think its function will be very different from what we're expecting.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
8 Jan 2026 at 11:43 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: LoudTechieApple finally started nearly caring for gaming(Game porting toolkit). Also Valve has been sponsoring Apple gaming, since around the same moment they started sponsoring Linux gaming(MoltenVK), modifying open source is just easier.
Good points, I had forgotten about GPTK and MoltenVK. Both lackluster compared to what we get on Linux, but certainly positive steps. Seems like MoltenVK is on the way to being deprecated in favor of KosmicKrisp that is part of Mesa.
Apple isn't used to having to do an effort to achieve market share.
Their current market share was handed to them out of anti-trust concerns and thanks to their vendor lock in they can expand to whatever they like, usually.
Even their development they tend to leave to the bsd community. Valve wins by doing nothing, Apple thrives by doing nothing.

On the lacklusterness. Lets not forget that Mac is a very different platform than the Linux desktop.
It's not a path to freedom, it's a path to chains and protection.
Apple losing the EA lawsuits was also a boost for Apple gaming, since this slashed the prices.
For small companies that mostly make money through initial sales, Apple gaming is still too expensive, but AAA players now can make some pretty sweet money.
These AAA players also much more trust Mac for anti-cheat than Linux.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
7 Jan 2026 at 2:52 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: CatKillerIn case you'd like a graph
Thanks for making that, it illustrates two perhaps surprising points:

1) Steam Deck usage has stayed relatively flat - or more accurately, has scaled at the same rate as total Steam usage.

2) macOS usage declined for years, but in recent times it has scaled at nearly the same rate as desktop Linux. I wonder what factors are involved with that; I don't think Valve has done anything major on that front, and to my knowledge Apple hasn't done anything to improve things for gaming (they are actively hostile to it in some ways).
1) yeah, Valve went into it pretty cautiously the Steam Deck is a pretty niche product as you expressed before.
2) That's part Microsoft, part Valve and part Apple. Most consumers consider the choice Apple(expensive, but less espionage) and Windows(espionage, but cheap and capable). Microsoft has been behaving pretty shitty lately including becoming more expensive(Win10 EOL). Apple finally started nearly caring for gaming(Game porting toolkit). Also Valve has been sponsoring Apple gaming, since around the same moment they started sponsoring Linux gaming(MoltenVK), modifying open source is just easier.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
7 Jan 2026 at 7:44 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: ertuqueque
Quoting: EssojeI'd love to appreciate these small victories for Linux, but together with the RAM crisis and the news lately, all I can see here is the gruesome death of consumer PC hardware. It's like partying on top of a sinking ship.
This will likely force people who want to play games to be part of a closed garden like game consoles, or to pay for remote applications/machines. It really feels like we are going back to the remote terminal days, as ironic as that is.
I'm most likely wrong, but if I dare to speculate (and dream), maybe the RAM crisis will persuade people to stick with their current, aging PCs and what better for an aging PC than Linux?... Some people won't be able to afford a new PC to install Windows 11 so they'll try Linux.
Especially in combination with Win10 EOL. You can't hold to on it, but you can't replace it, maybe ditch it.

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
6 Jan 2026 at 11:20 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Saracen26I've been using Linux on and off for 19 years. Primarily for curiosity and the last decade for the Emulation side of things. My 2020 Gaming PC still recently ran on Windows 10 for convenience. I then the purchased a Legion GO S (SteamOS) and it proved incredible. So I was looking for a brand new rig to install CachyOS on. Now the RAM crisis has hit, I can't afford a new build so I stripped Windows on my current rig and went to CachyOS anyway. I wish I'd done this sooner, especially since I don't do multiplayer gaming. I don't think I realised how good Linux Gaming has gotten.
As you, so nicely display. It's easy to know Linux without knowing the quality of Linux gaming.
They're two very, very different worlds.
Linux is mostly driven by chip strength and price in the sense that every new use case for computers uses Linux by default and places new strains on vendors to support it and that computational potential is directly related to chip power.
Linux gaming is not driven by new potential, discoveries and/or research, but market politics. The fear of others drives one to free software, since if everybody is super(user) nobody is.

Valve sacrifices games for API and market access certainty.
Microsoft sacrifices customers to get stronger IP(Intellectual Property) guarantees in the wider sense.
Apple knows that anti-trust concerns only stop Microsoft from retracting killer app access as long Linux stays insignificant, so they backed the Wine project. Even fear for Linux can drive one to contribute to it, since open source lifts all boats.
Microsoft multiple times tried to sacrifice the game market to rid themselves of Intel's hold on their business.

Yet NVIDIA improves Linux not out of fear, but reward through the AI bubble.
Google throws considerable weight behind it, because of Android.
Printer vendors introduced wireless printing for mobile.
Most virus scanner support comes from the cloud.

The best example are though containerized packages(such as snap, Flatpak, etc.).
The Cloud drove demand for binary formats(packages) and saw the value of a standard(appimage), mobile drove containerization, but mostly after a direct compile and fear for sketchy games and production software drove Canonical to Snap, but nobody trusted it, which drove the community to Flatpak, which does the same, but federalized.
This's where we're now.
The next step would probably be government pressure on repos, which would drive it to decentralization(think torrenting, but with peerage based trust metrics).

Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
6 Jan 2026 at 10:17 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: EssojeI'd love to appreciate these small victories for Linux, but together with the RAM crisis and the news lately, all I can see here is the gruesome death of consumer PC hardware.
I wouldn't worry too much about that. The AI bubble is getting rickety . . . and when it pops, it will probably take a whole lot else with it, including crypto. At that point all the computer stuff will get cheap again. With the massive recession nobody will have any money so we still won't be able to afford it, but it will be cheap.
Crypto already popped this's its stable state: infinite rug pulls.
Yes, individual coins sometimes go up and sometimes down. If it was stable it would be unsuited for rug pool scams and illegal trade.
Nobody is buying large amounts of mining hardware anymore, because scamming poor smugs out of their money is more profitable.
Crypto won't die. It fulfills some pretty important functions for those in power. Criminals and intelligence agencies profit at the cost of law enforcement. Members of volatile state managed economies have a relative "safe haven" for their assets(remember after the rug pull many crypto assets have an acceptably stable price development).

AI replaced it and instead of attracting wealth from the powerful who have to hide their faces in fear, it spoke to a higher class, which knows it's above the law and thus doesn't have to hide anymore. They buy the same things in the same order.
CPUS->GPUS->ASICS->RAM->Customers.
There is one difference this time the start wasn't open source, so they managed to get themselves trapped in a vendor lock in.
Tip if you have an ancient computer science problem you think you can make less hard with unending amounts of computational resources, just follow the playbook and get rich.

Edit:
Might I suggest software proving(by exhaustion).