Same outcome as with their search engine, same thing with Chrome, Youtube and many other Google products. They built up their user base with a solid product (or bought it), and then started shitting all over their users by making horrible decisions and inserting all sorts of dark patterns in the name of “security” or whatever else pretense. I’m still hoping another entity steps up and fills the vacuum that Android leaves behind.

My favourite talk of all time. It never gets old!

Unfortunately the Android experience is getting more and more bloated and users’ freedom to tinker with their phones or sideload apps is getting more and more difficult. The Play Store is riddled with more ads than useful content. Just try searching for something, and oftentimes more than half of your screen is ads.

I’ve been with Android since the start and I hate what Google is reducing it to. It pains me that the only viable alternative is Apple and I feel trapped.

Same experience as Steam Deck. It boots to a sort of Big Picture mode, and in the Power Menu you have an option to “switch to desktop”. They are separate modes and I believe you get logget out from either in order to switch to the other. It’s fast though.

Note that there are a couple of iso download options depending on what experience you want with Bazzite, I chose the one that most closely resembles the Deck’s.

Before this I had tried Ubuntu and I had lots of issues out of the box, with VRR, crackling sound and other stuff. Bazzite worked out of the box, and required nrarly zero setup. There are minor issues, but nothing even close to a dealbreaker - for instance the default audio device on boot was always the PS5 controller’s speaker, so I disabled it (I’m sure there are better solutions), or Steam always shows there’s an update (even though you might be on the latest version).

I only used windows on my desktop for gaming. Having a Steam Deck, I was really eagerly waiting for an official SteamOS distro for my desktop. And then I tried Bazzite. I have been playing games on Bazzite for a couple of months now and I’m super happy. So glad to get rid of Windows’ constant nagging and Microsoft’s worsening practices. Every time I booted my desktop there was a new shitty surprise either to make my local login profile into a cloud one, forcefully update to win11 or some other unwanted bad UX. Bye bye Microsoft, at long last!