Spitballing a wild hypothetical that is probably wrong, but was inspired by what you said so I thought I'd share:
I wonder if the arrival of the 3D revolution was just a little too early for computer nerds to embrace an open source ecosystem from the get-go and how different it would've been if "If you want to run DOOM/Quake/Unreal Tournament then install OpenSUSE/Slackware so you don't have to bother Fiddling with drivers on DOS" would've been more commonplace.
From the 80s to the 2000s, video games became a multi-billion dollar industry that inspired two half-generations of kids to pursue careers in technology, but the world of FOSS was so focused on different use cases that the middle ground of "computer curious" kids probably wasn't as big of a revolution as it could've been.
Hopefully, the work Valve is putting into Proton/WINE + Steam Deck will give us a piece of that alternate history.
Proton is already pretty good. I expect it to get better. I've been daily-driving Arch on both a custom-built PC and a ThinkPad for 3 years and I haven't looked back, not even for games.
I wonder if the arrival of the 3D revolution was just a little too early for computer nerds to embrace an open source ecosystem from the get-go and how different it would've been if "If you want to run DOOM/Quake/Unreal Tournament then install OpenSUSE/Slackware so you don't have to bother Fiddling with drivers on DOS" would've been more commonplace.
From the 80s to the 2000s, video games became a multi-billion dollar industry that inspired two half-generations of kids to pursue careers in technology, but the world of FOSS was so focused on different use cases that the middle ground of "computer curious" kids probably wasn't as big of a revolution as it could've been.
Hopefully, the work Valve is putting into Proton/WINE + Steam Deck will give us a piece of that alternate history.