I, a Linux user, agree that there is work to be done, but I disagree with the “this needs to change first” on proprietary software availability. Specifically the “first” bit.

Let me explain why: The problem of software availability is a chicken and egg problem. No users on an OS = no developers make stuff for it = no users because there is no software.

With Wine/Proton, Valve “fixed” this issue for gamers. This “opened the floodgates”, and at least in one group of computer users, made Linux viable as a daily driver. People who play video games are diverse, and have different needs for software outside gaming, so this change grew the userbase of every category of software in Linux, not just games.

With an actual userbase comes both a community of people, who are all potential contributors for FOSS, whether that’s programming, docs, or reporting issues. And a marketshare for businesses to target (and profit off of).

The ball has clearly started rolling, Linux is gaining marketshare at a pace it hasn’t seen before. The bigger the userbase gets, the more software will work overall. The more software, the more people who can switch.

There isn’t a single definable point where software availability suddenly makes a userbase appear, these two grow together.

So yes, there is work to be done, but no, it doesn’t “need to change first”.

A lot of people find out after using Linux that it’s perfect for their daily tasks. A lot of other people never bother, and thus never find out. With Windows 10 EOL coming up, and MS pushing more and more onto users (like recall and copilot), a portion of people forced to switch will look for alternatives, or will try out Linux because they’ve heard of it as an alternative.

As for your other arguments:

too much different distros not always compatible one with another

Which used to be true, but is significantly better than even a couple years ago. “Standardized” packaging like Flatpak makes a ton of software available on all distros, ensuring compatibility. Valve took a shot at this too with Steam Linux Runtime, but this hasn’t seen any use outside Steam.

depending on the distro also often an deficient support and maintance,

For the vast majority of distros, no. Though I agree that we (the community as a whole) should stop accepting terrible resources for finding Linux distros (like “top 10 distros” lists that make no sense to a new user) and push for better ones.

certain driver problems, among others.

Which is being solved too. “driver problems” is exclusively Nvidia, but the issues are (very slowly) being fixed (by nvidia), and distros are offering easy options for getting the Nvidia drivers. Nouveau/NVK is also on the slow cooker, but I trust it’ll come out great. “Among others” is not a valid reason.

Not good if an still minority OS is above to diversified, which cause a lot of problems for the devs of software.

Which fits into the point of Flatpaks for proprietary software, and highlights where FOSS truly shines. Flatpaks standardize the runtime, proprietary software only needs to support this one standard to support all distros. FOSS devs can target whatever they want for their project. If “works on my machine” is good enough for them, so be it. (People will always complain about stuff like this though). If a distro wants to officially provide some open source software to its users, it has to be packaged. With the packaging process for a distro, modifications might need to be made, which can often be contributed back to upstream.

To dethrone Windows as leader of the market does it still need a lot of work in many environments.

It’s a lot closer than you think. It’s already a viable daily driver for many. The biggest blocker is the fact that MS is a global megacorp, with advertising, OEM “support”, and a lot of money to “persuade” people and companies to use Windows.

OEM support also ties into the whole “choosing a distro”. I trust that even the worst OEMs choose at least a supported distro, which takes all pressure away from the user. When Linux marketshare grows enough for OEMs to provide the option, the least technical users going to a brick and mortar store will be presented with “100$ cheaper, but looks different than your current computer”. If Windows UI keeps being as inconsistent as it currently is, it would have similar impact for non-technical users going between Windows N and N+1 as it does going to Linux.

SteamOS is immutable, and has its own updater because of it. While SteamOS is related to Arch Linux, it is far from the same distro.

Regular Arch Linux can install local packages, the process is described on the Arch wiki. SteamOS has no built in mechanism to update without an internet connection, and installing packages manually is not recommended (due to the immutable nature of the system).

In order to update SteamOS from a local file, you would need to figure out how SteamOS updates work, and somehow trick the Steam Deck into accepting your local images. This is far outside the scope of anything related to Arch Linux, and not very well documented. The better option is to update your Steam Deck by connecting it to the internet.

Also of note, the latest version of SteamOS (as far as I’m aware) does not have any significant changes when it comes to controlling the fan speed.

It’s still an LLM, not a “truth machine”. Replying with “did you make that up” will just cause it to respond with the next most likely tokens.

Try this: if you know it’s saying something factual, try your technique. It will likely “correct” itself by slightly rephrasing. Enough rephrasing might change the meaning of the sentence, but there’s nothing checking whether that’s factual before or after.

I’ve had some LLMs become extremely stubborn, and deny that it’s wrong on basic facts like the release year of certain media.

None of that’s true. Free speech laws try to prevent the government from arresting you for opinions or criticism. Social media platforms, parents, etc are still able to take action against statements without reason. The government can also put the blame on something else. If someone is critical of the government, they’re likely to have broken laws they don’t agree with.

Article doesn’t even cite their sources correctly, typo-ing “Bringus Studios” as “Dingus Studios”

Current LLMs are just that, large language models. They’re incredible at predicting the next word, but literally cannot perform tasks outside of that, like fact checking, playing chess, etc. The theoretical AI that “could take over the world” like Skynet is called “Artificial Generalized Intelligence”. We’re nowhere close yet, do not believe OpenAI when they claim otherwise. This means the highest risk currently is a human person deciding to put an LLM “in charge” of an important task, that could cost lives if a mistake is made.

Probably, yes. Dual-booting may also be an option for the one or two games that don’t work.

• AMD Drivers: Good news! They work even better on Linux. Bad news, you’re probably referring to the AMD “control panel” type application instead of the drivers themselves, which doesn’t have a direct equivalent. The drivers should come pre-installed, though depening on distro you may need to select/install “radv” or “vulkan-radeon” manually. Most of the control panel functionality can be found in other applications, like OBS for recording or CoreCtrl for clock speeds.
• Chrome: Although Firefox is pre-installed in most cases, you have full freedom of choice here. Most people find that Firefox works basically the same after using it for a bit, but if it doesn’t fit you, there’s other options. Google Chrome is most likely available in your distros app store, but there’s also less “spying” options like ungoogled-chromium.
• Gmail: You can access this on the website, or through a mail client like thunderbird. You can switch if you want to, you’re not limited by any means here.
• Office 360: Though LibreOffice is a great alternative, some find themselves forced to use MS office for compatibility reasons. This is still possible, buy only in a webbrowser.
• ITunes: This is a hard one to find alternatives for, depending on what you use it for. For managing iPhones from a PC, you essentially need Windows or macOS. For playing music, there’s plenty of options.
• JBL: I’m unsure as I don’t use any of their products, but assuming you mean audio related “control panels”, there’s many options available. Though they may need a bit of tweaking and searching around to get things to sound the way you want.
• Musescore: I also don’t use this, but it’s available on Flathub, meaning you can (and probably should) use your distros “App Store” to install this.
• Norton AV: Not many AVs targeting Linux exist, and they’re not the greatest quality. Though it’s doable to go without one, as long as you don’t download and run random files off the internet. Stick to the app store, and you should be totally fine.
• PyCharm: This is available on Linux, also in the “app store”. There’s other IDEs available too, like vscode.
• Remote Desktop to iOS: I haven’t owned an iOS device since 2019, so I don’t know which protocol they use. It’s possible this isn’t supported at all.
• Star Citizen: It looks like this is playable through Proton. You can use Steam (add non-steam game), Lutris, or Bottles to launch non-steam Windows apps/games.
• Steam: Works great
• VPN: As you didn’t put a previous VPN provider here, I’m not able to tell you if it works on Linux. Personally I have a hard time recommending any VPN service, but Mullvad stands out as being the least untrustworthy. Almost all others like Nord, Express, etc. share some common traits that make them very untrustworthy to me.
• Windows Games: This is a bit more complicated. Games from the Microsoft Store are very unlikely to run, and require messing about to even try in the first place. Other games made for Windows likely work (even outside Steam), using management tools like Lutris or Bottles is often easier than manually using Wine.

If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it’s a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the “best” distro, but since it’s very subjective, there is no single “best” distro. There’s only 2 distros I recommend against, that’s Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you’re not forced to pick a specific one.

You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It’s a “stable” distro, as in, it doesn’t change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.

As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: https://lvra.gitlab.io/. If you’re on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you’re on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a “harder” rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.

Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to “dual boot” (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it’s absolutely required to do the task asap.

virt-manager only requires access to the libvirtd socket, as long as the flatpak.has that as default configuration (which I imagine would be the case), there’s zero difference beteween flatpak and native.