Videos

Steam I think is probably the closest thing to "right" for the problem he was describing. You pick your app, it downloads and then it works. There's some behind-the-scenes nonsense involved, but it is in actuality hidden from the end-user, in a way that it is not in any of the "we fixed the Linux desktop!" solutions I have seen that are in actuality just another instance of XKCD 927. I was actually really pleased that he brought up Valve since that was the example that came to mind when he was laying out the problem.

I think it is okay if Linux is bad on "the desktop," honestly. The world needs tractors and consumer-grade cars. They both have use cases. If what you need is a tractor, and you're comfortable with the fact that it's not going to work like a car, then a tractor will do things that are totally impossible with a Hyundai Elantra. That doesn't mean we need to make tractors just as user-friendly as cars are, so that people can have one vehicle that does both. It is okay for some things to have a learning curve. But I think the example of the difficulties they had with subsurface are really significant things, it's not just a question of "oh yeah it works different," there are things that are just worse.

I think something like Arch or NixOS is probably the closest to "right" at this point. There is still a learning curve, so maybe not for everyone, but it's manageable and things aren't set up in gratuitously difficult ways. Maybe Bazzite, based on what I've heard, but I have not tried it so IDK.