Posted by throwaway270925 11/19/2025
I suspect the combination of modern Linux + + Steam + LLM to troubleshoot and learn may see more conversions like myself
Started with Linux Mint then Debian/Ubuntu, tried some others too but ultimately just stuck with Ubuntu
Knowing nothing about how to configure it, I installed it with the graphical installer, booted into a tty, installed claude-code, checked the config files into git, and proceeded to vibe-code a basic sway (now niri) environment to see what it would feel like.
A month later, my NixOS environment is so much better than my heavily optimized macOS environment that I sheepishly use it inside a VM on macOS (UTM) or VNC to my desktop machine so I can use it from my bed.
LLMs really open the doors of desktop Linux since you can git clone all of your deps locally (your window manager, keepassxc, waybar, your apps, nixpkgs, home-manager, even the linux kernel, etc., etc.) and the LLM can dig into source code and web search to do things for you or debug issues. And NixOS adds a level of observability into what's going on since any changes show up in git-diffed config files.
If anyone is like me and used macOS because you used to use Linux but couldn't be bothered anymore when you'd run into a rough edge, you might find it fun to use NixOS + claude-code (or equivalent) running in ~/nix-config.
I finished my desktop setup last night. The only thing I did was enable SSH on a clean NixOS install and setup sudo settings for CC. After that I used my NAS CC instance to SSH to the desktop and bootstrap an "idiomatic NixOS install of Claude Code". From there, every change on my NixOS desktop has been via LLM.
I keep lazygit open at my nix config root and periodically press "e" to open modified files with neovim to scope them out.
But other than that I barely open the nix config files since, unless I happen to remember a string to grep for in vim to get me where I would want to be, it's faster to type a prompt to claude and then go back to whatever I'd prefer to be doing.
It's also sobering to have claude build a whole TUI or GTK4 GUI, things I used to look forward to doing myself from scratch up until this year. I have some polished TUIs/GUIs for random things like managing sway/niri monitors or managing blocky logs, and it almost feels pointless to share them online like I used to because you can just vibe-code them yourself. And any of the iterative polish I've had to do now is just going to be next year's vibe-coded one-shot.
But I try not to think about that last paragraph too much...
Now don't get me wrong. It's a stupid simple app and would have been quick to build personally as well. It just takes a post with clipboard contents and guesses the file type based on data provided. Saves the content into the service /uploads directory with a randomized 6 character name and provides a link. When accessing a link, the service finds all pastes older than pasteTimeoutSetting and deletes them before trying to serve the content. But all I had to do was describe the use case and make a couple small suggestions before the entire thing Just Worked.
But: you will have issues.
1. Linux decades ago was not "new user friendly"
2. Wine and PLayOnLinux was all we had with endless problem, and heavy dependency on Windows files like DirectX and libraries
3. Windows dominated the gaming market
4. 3D GPU driver was non-existent
The single reason why gaming on Linux now is better than Windows, has one name: Valve
SteamDeck/SteamOS changed everything, the whole Wine process is managed by the OS and no longer by the user. You may need to change the Proton version, that is all. That also pushed GPU drivers to be better supported on Linux.
Valve single handled what gaming on Linux has become. I run Mint Cinnamon Linux, and even tho it is not "SteamOS", I can play Steam games just fine.
Microsoft terrible takes and AI, is also pushing gamers over to Linux, better FPS on Linux than Windows. The only restriction is kernel anti-cheat software that only runs on Windows, but many games do not use that and the ones that do use it like COD(dead game), BF, etc, isn't everybody cup of tea.
If it wasn't for Valve, Linux gaming would still be as dead as it has always been.
To make it more perfect, users that use their computer for browsing, writing docs (LibreOffice), etc, can be done on Linux for free.
You as a computer user in 2025, you have little to no excuse to try Linux, but try something good like Mint Cinnamon Linux that is extremely new user friendly, good for browsing, good for development work, solid for gaming, video editing is chef kiss, etc, etc. Avoid Ubuntu (they are going proprietary).
Doesn't COD have like over 100 million monthly active users?
I've been utterly astounded by Proton in the last year. Nearly every game I have run has run just about perfectly, often better than on Windows, and I'm able to play them with an Xbox One pad no less.
Valve absolutely deserves a lot of credit, but I do think that the constant effort from the Wine people should get a lot of credit as well. Wine has had constant progress for three decades, with every release getting a little better. I haven't worked on it, but I suspect 90+% of the work with Wine is figuring out all the weird edge cases that have popped up on Windows throughout the years, which is often slow, tedious, thankless work. Valve did a lot of work but there's a reason they opted to improve Wine instead of writing Proton from scratch.
Steam Proton makes the whole process painless, you only select which Proton version to run, and that info can be obtained from ProtonDB if you encountered any issue, it is beautiful.
As for Linux, even emulators works like never before. I could never get PS4 emulator to work on Windows, I got PS4, X360, GameCube, and a bunch of other emulators running on Linux like I couldn't believe it.
You can do the same from within SteamOS itself, you just install an app, select the emulator and you ready which is far easier than me doing this from from Linux.
I just want to give credit where credit is due, because a lot of this wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of the Wine people. “Shoulders of giants” and whatnot.
Honestly I don't have to think too much about it, and that's the way I like it, for a gaming system. It works, it gets updates, it lets me install games, they run ok.
Windows 94.84% -0.56%
Windows 11 64 bit 63.57% +0.53%
Windows 10 64 bit 31.14% -1.04%
OSX 2.11% +0.20%
Linux 3.05% +0.37%
In other words, for Steam users who waited to switch to Windows 11, half left Windows and most people who left went to Linux.