Like it or hate it, SteamOS is what the people want. I mentioned in another comment about it. You can argue over what is a better distro all day, but in the end, what’s going to cause people to jump ship isn’t Bazzite - it’s SteamOS. Bazzite makes sense only to the people who already know what each distro is, and attempting to blame Linus (and, by proxy, the portion of his audience wanting to jump ship) for choosing SteamOS over Bazzite is exactly the sort of unwelcoming behavior that I’m concerned will drive away people. There are better and more productive ways of pushing for more established distros, but more importantly than that, we need to accept that SteamOS is a fundamental criterion for this set of audience to make a leap towards Linux, and we should be encouraging them to try out SteamOS instead of bikeshedding over which distro is best for people who have already made up their mind about SteamOS

Whether or not I like him is irrelevant to the point at hand, but since the topic is now brought up, I should point out that I don’t watch LTT.

The bigger point here is that a major tech channel with a huge audience seems to be pushing for Linux adoption to a novel audience (having Linux content geared towards Linux enthusiasts does not bring in new users), and a direct consequence of that is that we should 1. expect to welcome an influx of new users to the Linux ecosystem, along with all of the consequences that that entails and 2. acknowledge this video as a symbol of increasing Linux acceptance among mainstream users. The particular channel is itself irrelevant, compared to the bigger fact that such a video was even made at all.

To use your example, it would be like if we were a community of used bathwater enthusiasts and we decided to bury any news about that influencer selling her bathwater.

On the contrary, if someone is able to shoot themselves in the foot and there is a sizeable portion of people who don’t immediately think that that person is a bumbling idiot, then things can and should improve from a technological standpoint.

The kind-of-techy gaming crowd is exactly the audience that needs to be targetted for continued improvement of the Linux ecosystem, both because they are the most adjacent to the current target audience and because a not-insignificant portion of them actively dislike Windows and wants an alternative. And if they see that Linus runs into an error and thinks that they might come across a similar error, then that is, in fact, a disservice to the Linux ecosystem that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t matter if Linus did it intentionally or not - the fact that many of his viewers think it to be genuine is proof enough that there needs to be more polish.

On a more personal level, I can tell you that that your sort of outlook directly hindered my adoption of Linux. I was part of that exact kind-of-techy gaming crowd at one point, and it took me multiple attempts across almost a decade to really take a substantial leap towards Linux. And throughout all of my previous attempts, the one reason that kept me from adopting Linux earlier was the unshakeable feeling that Linux was made for people who already knew what they were doing, and everyone else gets tossed to the wayside.

That’s what Valve understood when they made their Steam deck, and as a direct consequence of that understanding, many of the kind-of-techy gaming crowd want a public release of SteamOS over a much more established Linux distro. And for what it’s worth, Linus seems generally positive towards Linux in this particular video, and my interpretation is that his channel will begin to convince more of his audience to try out Linux in the coming months. If nothing else, then it seems worth celebrating that Linux is being talked about in a positive way on a more mainstream channel.

Sure, but LTT is still the mainstream tech outlet. Whatever they say, whether for good or bad, is worth discussing, especially as they are the ones who will overwhelmingly shape the average person’s opinions on Linux.

To my eyes, the downvotes here seem like a form of burying our heads in the sand, which IMO should be discouraged as much as possible, as Linux users already have a reputation for being out of touch with the needs and wants of the average user

This seems like a relevant post for this community. Are all these downvotes because people don’t agree with the views stated in the video?

I don’t understand. The complaint here is that you got a single downvote on one comment but not another? That seems pretty normal. Unless you’re asking us to help keep equivalent the number of downvotes on the 2 comments?

Dual boot! Lets you keep one foot in the Windows door in case you need anything in Windows. I also run a Windows VM (Winapps) for small programs that don’t run well on Linux and also don’t require much processing power

When I’m in that situation, my go-to is “I don’t think I can do that today, but I think we should definitely look into that sometime”

This is the one. Polite and professional, and also acknowledges the importance of the other person’s viewpoint.

Unfortunately we’re starting to see that Trump is being influenced by Musk. So you’ll also need to factor in whether a particular issue affects Musk’s bank account/pride