 When the Linus Tech Tips gaming challenge started there was a lot of talk about it in the Linux community and for good reason The guy has like 12 million or 13 million subscribers So whenever he talks about Linux Linux gets a lot of attention because of that many people watching his videos and there were mixed reactions but on the announcement of This challenge because a lot of people thought that it was either going to be a good thing for the Linux community Or some people thought it was going to be a bad thing for the Linux community and it's over now Like the last video was just posted and I have to say this I am so glad that this challenge is over I want to talk a little bit about its impact on the Linux community itself because now we know Or at least have an idea I guess of what the impact has been and that has been it hasn't had an impact at all Not really. It's provided a lot of Linux content for Linux youtubers myself included and It's kind of reinforced the idea that Linux gaming isn't there yet We already knew that the only people who are spouting that Linux gaming was a hundred percent You know great were the people who had never used Linux before in their life I mean those people had other motives They were trying to get views on their videos or visits to their website or whatever with Kegi headlines, but the vast majority of people in the Linux community would have been able to tell you that Linux gaming Has some issues. It's 10 million times better than it used to be He used to didn't have any games at all used to didn't we didn't have any can't you it used to be that very few games Support Linux at all now that I can speak actual English in you know proper order So the fact that we now have so many triple-a games so many Opportunities to play the same games that you would play on windows is an awesome thing and we're there at that point Like if that's your measuring stick for success We have a lot of games that work on Linux whether it's through proton or natively or whatever But the vast majority of people in the Linux community would also been able to tell you that For the average new user Linux gaming is still a very it's still very much a chore There's even on games that you can get working they also oftentimes require tweaks like running flags in steam or Require you to use Lutris, which is more of a nerdy way of getting stuff to work or they require you to Install certain dependencies through the terminal and stuff. They require work in the terminal There's a lot of games that require tweaks if they can be run at all And we all would have been able to say this right at the beginning of this challenge We would have been able to tell Luke and Linus that the situation on Linux in terms of gaming is Murky because it's just the nature of the beast. I don't think we're ever going to get a hundred percent there in terms of Hey, you know what you want to play this game. It's only on proton It's you know, it's gonna work right out of the box every game like a hundred percent Steam says they're gonna get a hundred percent of their library working Even if that's true, you're still gonna have games that aren't in steam There aren't gonna be able to have that claim it was always going to be that way and I think it's always going to be that way Linux is always going to require some Extra tinkering in order to get games working and there always be some games It just will never work on Linux at all. So now that the challenge is over. What has changed? What has been accomplished by this challenge and I think that for one I think that probably Linus himself has garnered a more In-depth appreciation of what Linux is. I don't think he actually ever used Linux on the desktop before probably just on servers I also think that more people are interested in Linux than ever before even despite the negative experience Linus and Luke seem to have had and I think that that's a good thing I think more people interested in it even if they don't use Linux, you know If they just have started to think about Linux a little bit more That's a win for the Linux community as a whole Because the more people who think about it and some of those people are going to be curious enough to Install it and tinker around and that's also a very good thing so I think that in the grand scheme of things the challenge itself was a good thing for Linux and I think that that's a change from what I thought when the challenge was first announced because When it was first announced, I was one of those people who said it was not going to be great because the That Linus and Luke were going to poo poo Linux and they were going to find so many things that were wrong and They were going to have such a poor experience and that turned out to be true They did have a poor experience and I said that they were going to portray this in their videos And then everybody who watched those videos would then have a negative experience of Linux or a negative opinion of Linux And I think that's probably the case for a lot of people like every a lot of people in their in their audience Probably had a negative idea about Linux in their head in terms of at least in terms of gaming To begin with going in and I doubt that those people had their mind changed at all by this They probably were Validated in some way because they're they were looking for Linux to be a negative experience and because it was a negative experience They are feeling triumphant, but I do think and this is a change for me I think there's probably a small number of people in their audience who well Yes, they saw Linus and Luke have a negative experience are actually more interested in Linux now than they were before the challenge began It's simply because they've seen that there is a lot more stuff that is possible on Linux Then maybe they thought there was you know before they watched the challenge So I think that that is an overall good thing So would I say that the the Linus tech tips? Linux gaming challenge was an overall positive I don't know and I don't think we can say that yet one way or the other what we can say is that this is possibly a good thing for getting more games working on Linux because One of the things that they pointed out in this last video is that despite the fact that anti-cheat now works on Linux very few developers have gone through and Enabled support for Linux and they went through and talked about how one small developer had to support so many Linux users and had so many More bug reports from Linux users. I Maintain that that's because Linux users are more likely to submit bugs than Windows users are most Windows users when something goes wrong They just stopped playing the game and goes to play something else where a Linux user is so used to submitting bugs They'll actually go through and submit bugs much more than Windows users will so I think that's more of a problem They're not that there are so many more problems on Linux But the point the point I was trying to make was that maybe the this coverage of Linux gaming Will spawn more interest from game developers in making their games work on Linux If they think that Linux is going to get more coverage in these mainstream like youtuber You know sphere or whatever Maybe they will see that and start to think well You know, maybe we will go ahead and enable our games to work on proton With our anti-cheat and all that stuff available and then maybe we can get more online games and Linux will continue to be Better and better in terms of gaming that would be awesome And that would be and a complete win for the Linux community from this challenge if that if that can bring more games to Linux That right now won't work because of anti-cheat because of DRM that will be a win So as I said at the beginning of the video though, I'm quite happy that the challenge is over Because the one thing we can say is that the Linux community can be very defensive I know I have a problem with this. I Oftentimes when people say well Linux is kind of bad. I will get my hackles up and defend Linux to the death I I find myself doing that I know a lot of Linux youtubers and a lot of people in the Linux community are the same way they're very very protect protective of our beloved tucks and I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing we all have our Things that we like, you know and Linux happens to be one of them And we don't like it when people say negative things about Linux But now that the thing is over I'm hoping that some of the animosity that this challenge has dredged up in the Linux community can kind of go away Including from the some of the animosity that was created in myself, you know I was I found many times during their videos that I was like, huh, I can't you're kind of stupid You know, I got I found myself like how are these two people technology users when they don't know how to do this thing? And it's that's not them, right? That wasn't a problem with them They were new users It was a problem with me being able to empathize with them being new users and I have a video Recorded about empathizing with new users, which will eventually be posted but the point is is that this whole challenge has kind of dredged up that Mentality not only with me but within the entire community where we feel defensive and we also feel in some way superior Over new users because they don't know how to do simple things that we find full simple So I'm hoping now that that challenge is gone that this that Mentality it will at least go away But I will say that it has gotten me thinking more and more about that mentality about that are not only our superiority complex if you will but also the mentality that we sometimes have of Linux is the best and if you say something wrong about it we're gonna Get our torches and pitchforks out, you know and because I've been thinking of this more I've I think I've become better at Empathizing with new users or at least I hope I have like I hope that I've been I'm able to see people who are switching to Linux But for the first time and having problems to thinking about hey How can not only I but the rest of the next community take these people in into our Embrace and try to help them in a way that doesn't feel condescending that doesn't feel like we're saying that they're Dumb because a lot of the experiences that I see I often times Think well, why are you having such a poor experience? This is very simple, but you can't think like that You can't think just because it's simple for you. It's automatically simple for someone who's never done it before So I think that that's one of the things that I've taken away from this Challenge is that we need to empathize a little bit more with people who aren't diehard arch Linux users You know, we just need to pull back a little bit on the superiority of what we think of Linux and try to Acknowledge the flaws that it has Fixed not only fix those flaws, but also help people who are discovering those flaws Get through them and we do this Like we have a lot of one of the best things about the Linux community is the support We like we have a ton of support whether no matter what distro you've chosen what desktop environment you've chosen there is support out there, but we have a Problem in those support circles where oftentimes if somebody comes to us with a stupid question Or what we consider a stupid question We give them a solution But we do so in such a condescending manner that they feel like they Probably shouldn't have asked for help in the first place and that's not a great experience I've talked about this before in several videos where we should embrace noobs But we need to do it in a in a way that doesn't scare them away from asking for help later on You know, if we don't give that not only do we not give them help But if we give them help in such a way that makes them feel inferior It's not going to spur them into continuing to use Linux and continuing to interact with the community because a lot of people The people who stick around in the Linux community from switching from Windows or Mac or whatever They are the people who not only interact with the community and get help and ask questions and all that stuff There are there the people who will eventually once they've gotten Experience with Linux also transition into answering other people's questions and if they've gained the same superiority that the rest of the community seems to have and Treat other new users the same way that they were treated. It just kind of continues the cycle of The way we've been doing things forever and that's not always the greatest thing. So that is it for this video I know it was a little bit rambly I just wanted to make a small video about the things that I've learned through this whole process and I hope that everyone else has Managed to get something else out of this challenge as well, although then Linus is dumb Because I know a lot of Linux community members have taken that view and you that's Okay, I guess, but I don't think that it's necessarily the best way of looking at it So that is it for this video if you want to get in contact with me You can do so via Twitter at the Linux cache You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash Linux cast if you have comments on any of this stuff You can leave it in the comment section below. Make sure you hit the like and subscribe button I really do appreciate everybody who has done that before I go. 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