The Year of Linux on My Desktop

For the first time in about 25 years I’m running a Linux desktop. It’s great! I used to use Linux all the time. But even back in the early ’00s all I was running for work was ssh terminals and a web browser and Windows did that just fine. And for gaming you had to have Windows. I had a few years of using a Mac, then switched back to Windows once WSL got good enough to have a local Unix. But I liked to try Linux out every couple of years. Last month I installed Bazzite on an external drive to test it out. I liked it so much I’m now converting entirely. I even bought a new computer and monitor for it. A key factor in switching is that Bazzite is a particularly well-engineered consumer product. It installs simply with a bunch of codecs and drivers so that my fancy HDR monitor simply worked. Bazzite is a gaming-oriented OS and it only exists because Valve put a lot of effort into making Linux gaming work with the Proton compatibility layer. These days Linux plays most games better than…