To be honest, I suspect that Apple is purposefully doing this to make alternatives a logistical and legal nightmare vs their own App store.

By having different rules for different countries, different fee structures, etc, Apple is basically making alternatives as inconvenient and painful as legally possible

The US not getting these features is on purpose, it makes the entire idea of "alternatives on iOS" extremely inconvenient vs just using the App store.

Open source Mesa Turnip drivers fixes a lot of problems with Snapdragon GPUs, but the drivers don't cover every available chipset from Qualcomm.

The GPU driver issues leads to situations like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (released in 2022) + Mesa drivers often getting better gaming compatibility/performance than the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite (released in 2025)

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but Bazzite, Bluefin, etc, are basically just Dockerfiles that use Atomic Fedora as the base image.

So you are basically getting a pre-built docker container that is "Fedora + various configs added on top", and then you are booting that docker image.

Since it's just a container file, anyone could theoretically just fork the Bazzite repo, make some changes to the Dockerfile, then push it to github + let github actions build a custom docker image.

So is that custom docker image a distro? Some would say yes, others would say no.

Rather than full desktops, I suspect that Desktop Android will be popular for 2-in-1 style devices like the Surface Pro.

I've always thought that the Surface Pro was a good idea, just with the wrong operating system. Newer iPad Pros kind of accomplish the same, but are still too locked down by Apple to be a true computer replacement.

Android has the potential to be the perfect middle ground: touch-centric UI paradigm, can work well with keyboard/mice, and open/flexible enough to be an actual computer replacement.

Google has been working on adding extensions to Chrome on Android, already has apk sideloading, and has work-in-progress Linux VM support. That's likely "good enough" to replace computers for the vast majority of people.

Microsoft was early to making tablets, smartphones, living room PCs, etc. They just royally screw up the execution of each product category every time.

Maybe it'd be a fun idea for to take some of Microsoft's failed consumer ideas, and revisit them 10-15 years later to see if some other company successfully executes on it.

I personally use Linux for all my devices, but I'm also very intentional on making sure ALL my hardware is compatible with Linux.

If you have all hardware compatible with the mainline Linux kernel, generally you can achieve a ChromeOS-level of system stability and reliability.

But as soon as you introduce incompatible hardware, all of that goes out the window. It's why I only recommend Linux to users that have compatible hardware.

You can look up gamescope-session for more info.

Its something that I generally wouldn't expect on traditional mainstream distros.

Valve moves slowly to add support for more devices, etc, whereas the Bazzite devs can move faster.

e.g.

Bazzite does a weekly release of a stable OS candidate, whereas Valve often takes months, if not up to a year, for to release a stable-channel OS update.

Edit:

Also, Valve tends to wait for proper kernel interfaces for functionality like controlling TDP, RGB, fans, etc. Whereas Bazzite devs are fine with using tools in userspace to directly talk to hardware, etc.

While I do think Valve's approach is better for long-term maintainability, Bazzite will always have the speed advantage because it can hack together a solution via userspace applications.

The vast majority of games on Steam are Windows games, yet the Linux Steam client runs them fine via Proton.

I don't think people are asking for GOG to make Linux-native games. People are asking for an official GOG client that can handle installing games via Proton/Wine, handles cloud saves, account management, etc.

If a bunch of open source hobbyists can create a viable multi-platform client (see Heroic Games Launcher), then so can GOG.

I already sync notes, e-books, etc, via syncthing on Android and Linux. RSS is one place where I have yet to find an option.

In my opinion, Gnome's UI feels more visually polished than KDE, but that polish doesn't matter when functionality takes a back seat to it.

One extremely minor complaint I have about KDE is that I wish they'd rename "Dolphin" to something like "KFiles".

The desktop paradigm is decades old, and deviating from it would probably elicit negative feedback (as seen in previous attempts by Apple in iPadOS).

> desktop-style floating windows, but without workspaces or window snapping.

In the new Desktop mode on Android, it supports snapping windows as well as multiple desktops/workspaces.

In iPadOS you can snap windows to halves or quadrants.

In my opinion, I think that looking for "the best" is perfectly fine for things you care about or use frequently.

It's when people try to find "the best" for everything that it becomes unhealthy.

Web browser + maybe some printing? Throw on Linux Mint + Firefox + uBlock origin, hook up a compatible printer via usb cable, and call it a day.

That's what I did for my 65 year old relatives, and it's been maintenance free.

The problem is that the Play store and Linux environments on ChromeOS are both run in VMs.

On a machine with good specs, this is perfectly fine. But when cheaper ChromeOS devices ship with 4GB of RAM, older mediatek APUs, and emmc instead of SSDs, it's just an outright bad experience.

If Google starts pushing Android Desktop as a replacement for ChromeOS, I think that could be interesting. Being able to run the Play store without the overhead of a VM will make Android potentially a much better experience than ChromeOS.

As for smartphones, ironically the best option for to break dependency on Google services is to get a Google Pixel + install GrapheneOS + F-Droid. Google Pixels are some of the very few devices with a fully unlocked bootloader, so it's viable to install alternative operating systems.

They also have flatpaks available on flathub, which makes it easy to install + keep updated.