Swapped to Linux 3 or so months ago, and have loved it. Doing Arch Linux, wanted to see every component go into the OS and just get a slightly better understanding of my computer - even though I think most educated people could use it with little complaint.
Games mostly just work, most software I use is there, I’ve found some fun new programs like an ASCII art and dithering image converter which has just been fun.
Last night I broke my system by trying to use my yubikey as the sudo requirement following some instructions that weren’t explicit about the caution I should have had. Loaded a backup via the Konsole and was back to before my fuck up in 5 minutes - mess up to fix (through freakout). That’s given me a lot of confidence in the stability of the system.
I also got to play the Arc Raiders Alpha test. I’ve written about this story before but it didn’t work the first day but it was clear to me it was a server issue or proton issue. Second day a patch came out and I was able to play it no problem. That gave me a lot of confidence that good games, even good online PVP games, will come to Linux without much issue.
Between those two events I’m pretty confident I’ll be on Linux for the rest of my life and if Arch continues to get support that’s where I’ll be for the foreseeable future (which it seems like it’s only speeding up and not at all in question of their funding).
Speaking entirely personally, I thought at least Half Life Alyx’s story worked on two levels. It was about freeing the gman as Alyx but gman sorta represented… Oh man, now I’m worried I can’t remember the game well enough to communicate my original thoughts. I remember playing it and feeling like the gman represented the writers or creativity, a bigger picture concept or something that went meta. And if that was the case it felt like Valve creating a piece of art that said Alyx and VR have revitalized our desire to tell stories and GMAN is free again.
The moment they drop their new headset I’ll buy it and play again just to relive the experience but I’d say I’m excited about Half Life because Valve makes A) good games B) they make solid diegetic games which I find to be kinda rare C) their games often feel like they came from a team of artists than just a team of coders. Maybe that’s the polish or maybe that’s the massive amount of testing I’m led to believe they do but when valve makes a new game it often feels like the guy who made Stanley Parable just made a new game - easy to recognize art because it’s so good.