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This time I’m really going to do it. I am going to put Linux on my gaming PC. Calling it now. 2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop. Or at least on mine.
To be clear, my desktop works fine on Windows 11. But the general ratio of cool new features to egregious bullshit is low. I do not want to talk to my computer. I do not want to use OneDrive. I’m sure as hell not going to use Recall. I am tired of Windows trying to get me to use Edge, Edge trying to get me to use Bing, and everything trying to get me to use Copilot. I paid for an Office 365 subscription so I could edit Excel files. Then Office 365 turned into Copilot 365, and I tried to use it to open a Word document and it didn’t know how.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10, including security updates, forcing people to buy new hardware or live with the risks. It’s disabling workarounds that let you set up Windows 11 with a local account or with older hardware. It’s turning Xboxes into PCs and PCs into upsells for its other businesses. Just this week, the company announced that it’s putting AI agents in the taskbar to turn Windows into a “canvas for AI.” I do not think Windows is going to be a better operating system in a year, so it feels like a good time to try Linux again.
I’m not normally one to change frogs midstream, but the water sure is getting hot.
Coming soon to a taskbar near you! But not near me. Image: Microsoft
That’s not to say I know what I’m doing. I’ve used Macs for a decade for work, and I dabbled in Ubuntu 20-something years ago, but otherwise I’ve been a Windows guy since 3.1. At first, that’s because it’s what we had at home, later because that’s where the games were, and finally out of force of habit (and because that’s where the games were). I brought a desktop to college instead of a laptop (so I could play games), and I’ve been building my own PCs for 18 years. I started my journalism career at Maximum PC magazine, testing gaming PC components.
I try to stay familiar with all the major operating systems because of my job, so in addition to my work MacBook I also have a Chromebook, a ThinkPad, and a collection of older hardware I refuse to get rid of. I can work pretty well in Windows, in macOS, or in ChromeOS.
My experiences with Linux over the past decade, on the other hand, have largely been as a series of extremely optional Tasks:
Trying to set up Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi. It sort of worked but was stymied by my home network setup, and I eventually replaced it with Home Assistant.
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