I came across this pretty interesting Tumblr post and I had this need to just dump my thoughts out on it. In case the post is deleted, the post shows a screenshot of a Reddit comment in a post regarding how the “steam deck is perfect for even the non tech-savvy users”:
The original post
I know we don’t like Steam Deck appreciation posts because we get it already, but as a Mac user who had to rely on Wine to run stuff that only works on Windows (.exe files), only to not be able to run them well, the Steam Deck has been so easy to figure out how to run these files with such little effort
I had this game that I wanted to play years ago on my laptop that didn’t run AT ALL. So I tried downloading to my Deck, extracted the zip (Deck comes with an unzipping tool), added the game to Steam, and changed the settings to allow for Proton Experimental, and that was literally it.
The game seems to run perfectly. I didn’t need Wine or any other download, just the .exe file
Not sure if this is the right flair, but yeah, very excited to finally play this.
Edit: so this got a lot of attention and based on the replies I’d like to just address a couple of things:
1. When I said non tech savvy, I didn’t mean the tech illiterate (like myself a few years back that didn’t even know what Wine was or what exactly it was doing for me). 2. Apparently I’m more tech savvy than I gave myself credit for. As I mentioned, the process took just a few clicks, which seems very easy to me. Somehow that was taken as me saying that tech savvy people only know the basics such as knowing what a .exe file is. I followed a video that taught me how to launch a .exe program and then I took that knowledge a few weeks later to get this game to work
The notes under the Tumblr post were a mix of incredulity, ridicule, and “that’s not true in my life so therefore you’re dead wrong OP”… you know, as Tumblr does.
And the comment in question:
*This might come as a surprise but the vast majority of people in general nowadays don’t have ‘casual pc use’. They just use phones. Most people under 15 have never touched a desktop in their lives and every laptop they’ve used has been a Chromebook, which doesn’t even have local folders you can access
The mere concept of ‘folders’ is advanced knowledge nowadays. If you know what a folder is, what a command prompt is, and what a BIOS is, by today’s standards you’re an advanced power user*
And then here comes my gargantuan essay in my tags, rewritten for better readability:
products that come as ‘user friendly’ often end up preventing their actual end users from doing only up to the limits the manufacturers set. i’ve only used chromebooks a handful of times during high school and college and every single time i absolutely HATED how much they limited what the user can and can’t do and how everything was google-only.
granted. thats bc theyre literally chromebooks. but cbooks are like the scum of the tech earth for me and just other things that force you in their ecosystem in general and conform to the products that that company makes only, although i am guilty of this with samsung.
but at the very least. android still provides freedom even though samsung has more restrictions compared to other android phones. there’s a massive irony in wanting to buy a google pixel just to load a custom rom in it and blasting away any bits of google in it.
anyway. WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY IS (even tho its probably poorly coming across bc god forbid i try writing an essay in the tags) it’s probably a combination of 1) companies resorting to gated tech ecosystems 2) prices of tech 3) the willingness of the user to actually go beyond the limits the tech presented to them has set and 4) their level of knowledge in such things.
whenever i introduce people to the world of android and windows customization i feel like the snake in the adam and eve story showing them the possibilities beyond the garden of apple/google/what have you. if you have a piece of tech i encourage you to learn its ins and outs! you’ll get more out of it and probably more bang for ur buck that way
addendum: i looked for the og reddit post and i was RIGHT LMAO bc it was about the accessibility of steam decks for non-tech savvy people. the steam deck is a pretty good example of what you CAN do while also being easy to use. this is also really fucking funny bc steamos is built in arch which is like the actual opposite of accessibility in terms of casual use and installation
So that’s the background and context for all of that.
In general, this is insanely interesting to me, especially as someone that’s basically neck-deep, if not more, into tech and how it’s always been so prevalent in my life; never mind if this is an actual thing that the Reddit user claims to be or not. Obviously, I can’t speak for the younger ones in the same generation as me, since I haven’t been to public school for several years now, but I can speak on what I’ve gone through… to the best of my ability that is.
Computers and tech have always been consistently prevalent in my life. From playing old ass games when I was younger (Scooby Doo, Zoo Tycoon, that one chess game that introduced my dislike of chess, Chaos Legion, Unreal Tournament, etc.), to constantly breaking the family-safe lock my dad placed on the PC when we were older to get us to not play games or use the web outside of school just so I can have a few more minutes of time on whatever the hell I was doing, to getting my own PC and phone and just downright messing with them in terms of ricing and making my PC my own with its own personality and flair… I’ve done a lot, to say the least. All of that and then some comes with knowing how to work a PC, both hardware and software wise. I’m literally that one family member my relatives go to whenever something has gone wrong when it comes to any tech whatsoever, just because I knew how to use a PC more than the average user does. This is also because, even as a child, customization and just messing with the shit I have has been a prevalent interest of mine.