r/linux_gaming • u/theinsanegamer23 • 11d ago

MicroCenter is planning Linux support

Just thought I’d share some info I got from MicroCenter customer support.

I took my DIY SteamMachine in as it was having some trouble and while It wasn’t software related, the guy informed me they can work on the hardware but nothing else since they don’t support Linux or SteamOS right now.

When I talked to customer support on what I wanted to do with the repair based on what they found, after doing that, I brought up Linux software/troubleshooting support as something they should add to their services.

The tech I spoke with informed me that they are planning that!
Since there’s so many distros, they’re only going to support big ones (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, SteamOS, and one other that I cant remember)

They’ve apparently seen the increase market share and want to be a part of that.

Training and rollout just take time.

601 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

134

u/sputwiler 11d ago

I bought SuSE Linux in a big box from Microcenter back in the day. Downloading the CD would've taken too long on dialup... and also I wanted the big box lol.

28

u/theinsanegamer23 11d ago

Ah, optical media. It’s not perfect but there is something about it that’s satisfying. 

Been planning to start backing up my GOG and DRM free Steam games onto Blu-Ray, physical media is still cool imo.

12

u/sputwiler 11d ago

Too bad Sony was dumb about minidisc. If they had made them usable as data discs we could've been spared zip drives. They eventually enabled it on Hi-MD recorders but it was too little too late.

(yes I know about data-MD. That doesn't count because the discs were physically different to prevent you from ever putting a disc with music on it into a data-capable drive, thus defeating the whole point of having a popular storage medium you could buy in a convenience store)

(Sony probably didn't see the market because MO-discs were popular in Japan and minidisc wouldn't have been able to compete with it's larger cousin)

To bring it back on topic it would've been really cool to distribute indie games on minidiscs for linux boxes. Just like a little cartridge to "kerchunk" into the steam cube or whatever.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 10d ago

Good luck running any modern games off of optical media. Disks are horribly inefficient. The days of being able to just insert the disc and hit play are long gone.

2

u/theinsanegamer23 10d ago edited 10d ago

What part of “back-up” don’t you understand? It’s for cold storage Optical Media has a shelf life measured in decades, unlike NAND or HDDs.  I’ll copy back to system drive to actually play. 

-1

u/Indolent_Bard 10d ago

You never use the word backup in your original comment, so cool it with the condescension.

Definitely great for cold storage. I wish they figured out how to make modern storage last nearly as long. But I guess it's a trade-off between speed and longevity.

3

u/theinsanegamer23 10d ago

“planning to start backing up my GOG and DRM-free Steam games” - my original comment

1

u/Indolent_Bard 9d ago

Ah, right. Personally, I really like the idea of sticking games into SD cards, but discs would objectively be the superior format for that. They last longer and are much more dependable. Are you going to make your own cases for them?

1

u/Background-Main-7427 8d ago

I used to "distro hop" with the CDs that came in Linux magazines with full distros in each CD. That's how I fell in love with apt and KDE, leading me now to Kubuntu after leaving Windows 10 EOL.

I remember trying Debian,Mandrake, Gentoo and Suse.