This is my first post of 2022...

There's a lot that has happened in the new year. The first thing is we got the steam deck. For those who don't know The Steam Deck is a handheld console like gaming computer developed by Valve. Why does this make a difference?  Steam Deck runs a modified Arch Linux operating system called SteamOS v3.0. The show stopper is, this sharp looking device is able to run "some native" Windows games. It is able to run non Linux native games with the help of Proton. Proton is a compatibility layer that allows some but not all games, developed for Microsoft Windows to be played on steam deck Gun+Linux-based SteamOS.

With the surge of Linux gaming..Recently Nvidia did the unthinkable. Nvidia is releasing some of its Linux GPU drivers as open-source. However, It's going to be years before they catch up with AMD and Intel. Intel and AMD both have been maintaining open-source graphics drivers for their products for years which is included in the standard Linux kernel. Since the code is available for anyone to look at and modify, Intel and AMD graphics work better with newer changes in the Linux ecosystem, like the emerging Wayland display server. So what Nvidia doing is a good start. But their years from catching up with their competitors in the open source world.

The other big news The PC component supply chain issues seem to be getting better. Even for discrete graphics cards. In fact The street price for graphics cards has  dropped by 40% since January 2022 and they are becoming much easier to find in stock at local stores like Best buy.

We all know how hard it is to install Arch Linux. However this year. The Arch Linux developers released, archinstall menu-based installer for their Linux distro. What does that mean exactly? After you get the latest ISO from the official site, you have to proceed installing it in a system by making a bootable medium. Then you simply type in “archinstall" and then you will be asked several other prompts to select the disk drive, network interface, desktop environment , and graphics driver. You can even specify additional packages to install.  I still wouldn't recommend Arch to new Gnu-linux users.

 

More post to come...