I'm all-in, baby. I'm committed. If upgrading any distinct component of my PC didn't require me taking out a loan right now, I'd be seriously considering switching my GPU over to some kind of AMD thing just to make my life slightly, slightly easier.
I've had it with Windows and ascended to the sunlit uplands of Linux, where the trees heave with open-source fruits and men with large beards grep things with their minds.
It's really hard to find interesting screenshots that represent Linux, okay? (Image credit: Bazzite)
I'm not alone. In last month's Steam hardware survey, the number of Linux users hit a new all-time high for the second month running, reaching the heady summit of a whopping, ah, 3.2% of overall Steam users. Hey, we're beating Mac players.
I think that number will only grow as the new year goes by. More and more of us are getting sick of Windows, sure—the AI guff, the constant upselling on Office subs, the middle taskbar*—but also, all my experience goofing about with Linux this year has dispelled a lot of the, frankly, erroneous ideas I had about it. It's really not hard! Really! I know Linux guys have been saying this for three decades, but it's true now!
Goated with the open source (sorry)
As I've already written about, the bulk of my Linux-futzing time this year has been spent in Bazzite, a distro tailor-made for gaming and also tailor-made to stop idiots (me) from doing something likely to detonate their boot drive.
Hunt: Showdown running on Bazzite. (Image credit: Crytek)
I grew up thinking of Linux as 'the command-line OS that lets you delete your bootloader' and, well, I suppose that's not untrue, but I've been consistently impressed at how simple Bazzite has been to run on my PC, even with my persnickety Nvidia GPU.
Everything I've played this year has been as easy—if not easier—to run on a free OS put together by a gaggle of passionate nerds as it is on Windows, the OS made by one of the most valuable corporations on planet Earth. I've never had to dip into the command line (which is, to be frank, a shame, as the command line is objectively cool).
But to be honest, it's not as if the Bazzite team has miraculously made Linux pleasant to use after decades of it seeming difficult and esoteric to normie computer users. I think mainstream Linux distros are just, well, sort of good now. Apart from my gaming PC, I also have an old laptop converted into a media server that lives underneath my television. It runs Debian 13 (which I updated to from Debian 12 earlier in the year) and requires essentially zero input from me at all.
What's more, the only software I have on there is software I actually want on there. Oh for a version of Windows that let me do something as zany as, I don't know, uninstall Edge.
Hell yeah.
That's the true nub of it, I think. The stats can say what they like (and they do! We've all heard tales of Windows games actually running better on Linux via Valve's Proton compatibility layer), but the heart of my fatigue with Windows is that, for every new worthless AI gadget Microsoft crams into it and for every time the OS inexplicably boots to a white screen and implores me to "finish setting up" my PC with an Office 365 subscription, the real problem is a feeling that my computer isn't mine, that I am somehow renting this thing I put together with my own two hands from an AI corporation in Redmond.
That's fine for consoles. Indeed, part of the whole pitch of an Xbox or PlayStation is the notion that you are handing off a lot of responsibility for your device to Sony and Microsoft's teams of techs, but my PC? That I built? Get your grubby mitts off it.
BG3 running in Bazzite. (Image credit: Larian)
Are there issues? Sure. HDR's still a crapshoot (plus ça change) and, as you've no doubt heard, a lot of live-service games have anticheat software that won't play with Linux. But I think both of these issues are gradually ticking toward their solutions, particularly with Valve making its own push into the living room.
So I say make 2026 the year you give Linux a try, if you haven't already. At the very least, you can stick it on a separate boot drive and have a noodle about with it. I suspect you'll find the open (source) water is a lot more hospitable than you might think.
*I'm actually fine with the middle taskbar. I'm sorry.
A simple idea, handsomely done: Epilogue's SN Operator, a USB dock that accepts Super Nintendo carts. It comes with an emulator app (though you can use all the popular ones) and is compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux. From the website:
Play iconic SNES® titles with authentic cartridge interaction and modern conveniences.
2025 has probably been the best year for Linux that I can remember, at least from the perspective of general PC users. It's had tons of publicity as a viable alternative to Windows, even, and perhaps especially for gaming. I switched to it myself earlier this year, but I'm back on Windows and I don't think I'll be switching back to Linux properly any time soon.
The Linux hype this time was precipitated by Valve's Linux-based operating system, SteamOS, opening up for use on other handhelds than just the Steam Deck. That had been long on the cards, but it finally started seeming close at hand early on this year.
SteamOS has shown what Linux can be capable of for gaming in large part because of Proton, the compatibility layer Valve employs to translate Windows commands into ones that Linux can understand. It's a fork of WINE tailored towards gaming, created and maintained by Valve specifically for that purpose.
Over the years, Proton has gotten so good that compatible games tend to run flawlessly. Valve has an incentive to ensure this is the case, as a great gaming experience on SteamOS via Proton makes for more Steam Deck and Steam Store sales.
The development and improvement of Proton has been a massive part of what's made Linux distros genuinely viable for gaming. And yes, I said "distros", plural, because any distro can use Proton, as it's built into Steam for Linux. It's not just a SteamOS thing.
(Image credit: Future)
The recent popularity of SteamOS in particular, though, was spurred by the Lenovo Legion Go S, which Valve and Lenovo had been collaborating on to make the first third-party SteamOS handheld. But even before the SteamOS version of the Legion Go S launched, some handheld gamers started manually downloading and installing the Steam Deck's recovery image of SteamOS on their own handhelds.
I tried this out myself with the initial Windows version of the Legion Go S and was very impressed. Performance is better, as is sleep/resume functionality, and of course the overall full screen UI is much nicer. There are downsides, such as lack of support for some games, but any game I've wanted to play on handheld has worked just fine, so I'm happy sticking with SteamOS for gaming on handheld.
Then the official SteamOS version of the Legion Go S actually launched, and that's been one of the most popular choices for a handheld gaming PC ever since. Of course, that's not all down to SteamOS, as the device itself is stylish, comfy, and pretty powerful, but the Arch-based OS does play a part.
Other handheld users haven't been content leaving Legion Go S and Steam Deck gamers have all the fun, either. Even our own hardware commander-in-chief Dave has tried SteamOS on a bunch of devices—Ayaneo Kun, OneXPlayer OneXFly, OneXPlayer X1, OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro.
However, every time he tried it, it was a buggy experience, if not completely unworkable. Apart from the Framework 13 laptop, that is, which he found runs the OS just fine—better on a laptop than multiple handhelds, go figure. Using Bazzite, a third-party Fedora-based SteamOS-alike, is also an option, and that seems to be a less buggy experience than SteamOS for most people, but it's still not perfect in all cases. The Steam Deck and Legion Go S running SteamOS still seem to be the only handhelds that can run a SteamOS or SteamOS-like experience pretty flawlessly.
Despite this very limited expansion of the operating system, Linux still ended up getting a lot of attention as more and more people realised that it's a viable alternative to Windows, even for use cases such as gaming. We had YouTube influencers talking about it, sister publications, and even—quietly, very quietly—yours truly.
My own recent foray into Linux was very short-lived, however. I've dipped into Linux many times over the course of my life, but I've never stuck with it, and this time I was punted back over to Windows with undue force. You can read the full story explaining why here, but the long-story-short is it just completely broke—trackpad, Wi-Fi card, the lot—while I was working away at Gamescom, and I didn't have the time or patience to troubleshoot and fix it.
Unless kernel-level anti-cheats stop being used, there'll likely always be a reason for some gamers to stay on Windows
A frantic Windows install was my solution, and the experience has traumatised me enough that I'm reluctant to give Linux another go, at least not on a machine that I depend on for work. I'd experienced troubles that made me consider abandoning Linux prior to this—Nobara Linux didn't seem to gel with my laptop's hybrid graphics and external monitor—but my complete disaster at Gamescom solidified things.
Still, that was just my own experience, and the hype was still there for Linux as the year went on. Whether that was from influencers and publications capitalising on the hype by generating even more hype, or whether it was real enthusiasm, it doesn't matter: it was there.
That was finally compounded by two things: Windows 10 coming to its end-of-life (EOL), and Valve's announcement of the Steam Machine. In the former case, the kind-of-but-not-really EOL date for the previous Microsoft operating system brought to the forefront all the disappointing things about Windows 11. And in the latter case, well, the hype speaks for itself: people want a SteamOS desktop, assuming the price is right.
A screenshot of the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS desktop. (Image credit: Canonical, Ubuntu)
It's not all about SteamOS, of course. Linux in general has seemed mighty appealing; it's just that SteamOS has shown that gaming is genuinely possible and can in fact be better than Windows gaming in most cases.
The freight train that is random AI features, with a target market of questionable existence, has ploughed on through 2025's Windows 11 updates. All the while giving us a million and one things that, I don't know about you but I certainly never asked for. Linux, on the other hand, delivers the same message it always has: your system, exactly as you want it, to do with as you will. And with Proton delivering a good gaming experience, what's not to love?
Thus, 2025 has most certainly been quite a year for Linux. But I'm still not switching.
The looming scythe of unpredictable hurdles is one reason I'm not switching over
The looming scythe of unpredictable hurdles is one reason I'm not switching over. There's another reason, though: anti-cheat software.
It's no secret that I'm a big multiplayer gamer. The first games I played were Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source, and Call of Duty 4. Then there was Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft, Quake Live, Overwatch, and on it went up to today, where my mainstays are still online games.
Go back a decade and Linux might not have had such a problem with online games, specifically. Sure, general game compatibility was much more of an issue back then given there was no Proton, but anti-cheats probably wouldn't have posed such a problem. However, over the last few years, more and more games have started using kernel-level anti-cheats, and these are a complete no-go for Linux.
Kernel-level anti-cheats run at the deepest layer of your operating system, meaning they can prevent cheats running at a deeper layer than most cheats operate at, making them more effective. The problem with this is that it's giving the anti-cheat access to a layer of your system that risks opening it to some pretty bad vulnerabilities if it's not done properly, and it just doesn't sit right with some people to give software such deep control over your system.
The Convergence wallpaper as used in the Linux-based gaming OS, Bazzite (Image credit: Bazzite)
Regardless of that debate, though, we've been told for a long while that such anti-cheats are here to stay. And it looks like that's true, at least for the foreseeable future, because more and more games have started to use them, from Apex Legends, to Fortnite and Valorant.
Linux distros, however, don't support kernel-level anti-cheats. Linux allows users to fiddle around with pretty much anything they want, including the kernel, so there'd be little point in adding anti-cheat to the Linux kernel because, unlike with the Windows kernel, the user might be able to patch in code that makes the anti-cheat ineffective anyway.
A proper kernel-level anti-cheat on Linux isn't in principle impossible, but there's little incentive for Linux devs to make it work. Plus there are other problems, such as that anti-cheat makers don't want to make their code open-source, and the core Linux kernel is open-source.
It's unlikely that many game devs will abandon kernel-level anti-cheat, either. We've seen, for instance, Facepunch (of Rust fame) COO Alistair McFarlane say that "if a game supports Proton or Linux, they're not serious about anti-cheat" because "it's a vector for cheat developers."
So, unless kernel-level anti-cheats stop being used, there'll likely always be a reason for some gamers to stay on Windows. I don't think this problem is confined to people just like me who primarily want to play competitive multiplayer games, either. That's because even people who only play singleplayer games might want the option to branch out in future. Battlefield 6, for instance, has a kernel-level anti-cheat, and that game's been massively popular even with people who might not have normally considered playing such a competitive multiplayer game. It's probably been popular with some who don't play many other multiplayer games at all.
(Image credit: Are We Anti-Cheat Yet - areweanticheatyet.com)
The list of incompatible games—which you can find on AreWeAntiCheatYet.com—isn't massive, but it's hardly restricted to a few niche games. There are some big hitters there, and there's always the risk that big future games you might want to play will employ a kernel-level anti-cheat, too.
This problem, in some ways, is similar to the bugginess problem I spoke about earlier. Both issues are ones that can interfere with your peace of mind, leaving you wondering whether all the games you might want to play will just work. There's much less peace of mind with Linux in that regard than with Windows, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
So, for as good of a year as 2025 has been for Linux, I don't think it will lure a great many more gamers in than before. At least, not as a full platform switch. I can see some gamers trying out dual-booting, myself included, and I can certainly see some trying out the upcoming Steam Machine, but not as a replacement for a Windows desktop or laptop.
This could all improve over time, of course, and I hope it does because the level of user control you get with Linux is very appealing. For that to happen, though, I think there would have to be some alternative to kernel-level anti-cheats come to fruition, and the level of out-of-the-box reliability of Linux distros, drivers, and software, would have to continue improving. I just don't think we're anywhere near that tipping point, yet.
I've been watching for star notes and unusual serial numbers for a while.
Potential value discussed in the currency subreddit thread. I've never paid much attention to the serial numbers of bills that pass through my hands. Perhaps I should start.
Addendum: Suggestions from an anonymous reader -
"Don't forget about the duplicate printing of the 2013 B $1 star note. There are millions of them out there, it's just a matter of finding them. Depending on the condition of the bill, the serial number sequence (collectors will pay more for unique sequences as mentioned in the subreddit or ones like 10101010 or 12345678), and who may have the other matching bill, they can be valued at $20,000 to $150,000. New site: https://project2013b2.com/ Older separate site: https://www.2013b.com/ . Also, any bill that has a star at the end of the serial number is a reprint and can be worth more than the face value."
BTW, I've been rather delinquent in adding posts for the past couple weeks because of holiday/family/health/weather factors. Expect this to continue for a couple more weeks.
Tempting, but when I've used tools like this, they rarely stay up to date enough to deliver on all their promises over a period of more than a year or so. I suggest you try Ubuntu before anything like this.
In my mightily humble opinion, probably the worst thing to happen to Windows over the years has been AI. Maybe I'm just not the target market for it, but having Copilot buttons clog up my taskbar and apps wasn't what I thought I'd be getting with Windows 11. And I know at least some of you feel the same, because someone's gone out of their way to make a tool dedicated to removing all Windows 11's AI features.
The creator, zoicware on GitHub, says: "The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include increasingly more AI features and components. This script aims to remove ALL of these features to improve user experience, privacy and security."
Full disclosure: I am not a software or security expert, and in fact I have been known to be a massive idiot on occasion, so do not take any of this as direct advice to install and use said software. Research it and make that decision at your own risk.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's get nuking our PCs of all this AI garbage. Apparently, this tool disables a bunch of registry keys to do with all things AI, prevents AI packages from being reinstalled, removes tons of AI-related files, and much more. It looks like it essentially takes a shredder to anything AI related in Windows.
There's an obvious concern here, this being that Windows 11 is pretty AI-centric these days, so there's a risk that messing with all of this could affect other parts of the system. Who knows how Windows is coded on the back-end?
(Image credit: Microsoft)
But part of the utility is a custom Windows Update package that is aimed at stopping those AI features being patched back in with subsequent updates or patches down the line.
The specific registry keys it disables are:
Disable Copilot
Disable Recall
Disable Input Insights and typing data harvesting
Copilot in Edge
Image Creator in Paint
Remove AI Fabric Service
Disable AI Actions
Disable AI in Paint
Disable Voice Access
Disable AI Voice Effects
Disable AI in Settings Search
But there are AI components that can't be disabled via this script, such as Gaming Copilot or OneDrive AI, though the github repository does provide methods of disabling those in Windows settings.
There are other tools that can be used to debloat Windows in various ways, too—Windows Utility is a popular one—but I'm not sure whether these take as big of a sledgehammer to AI features as this new tool does.
I shouldn't go too ham on Windows 11, though. It does look like it might have a nice new Run dialog box coming up in future updates. Silver linings, I suppose.
I do want to note again, that you ought to be careful just randomly downloading or entering scripts into Windows, especially if it's messing with the registry. This isn't Linux after all. But if you want to go through the script it's all up on github, so you can go looking through exactly what it's doing yourself just to be safe.
Germany's Third Reich also tried to hide the existence of its concentration camps.
Bari Weiss apparently yanked a 60 Minutes piece on Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador's CECOT prison because it was not friendly enough to the Trump Administration. Somehow, the piece aired in Canada anyway.
There are links to downloaded versions of the show for folks who want to watch it that way. — Read the rest
The DOJ released a de-Trumped batch of Epstein files, missed the deadline, and redacted extensively.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act requiring the Justice Department to release all its files on Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days. Friday was the deadline. — Read the rest
"Our users hate this new feature. How can we make it look good so it justifies the cost we've sunk?" "I know, let's put it where they can't avoid it or get rid of it. TVs!"
Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this world! And be the first on your block to get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic! JOIN THE INNER HIVE! — Read the rest
Ok so I have a story. I worked Fantasyland (Dumbo) at Magic Kingdom. We had a girl transfer from Pirates of the Caribbean. And she told me the most amazing story.
So Pirates is down (shocking) And this particular boat is stopped at the first big scene, Where Barbosa is on the ship yelling for Jack Sparrow.
Anyway the boat has been stopped for about 15 minutes at this point, and there’s a couple sitting alone in the back. So the guy decides that nothing gets him in a better mood than the smell of water that hasn’t been changed in roughly 50 years, and convinces his girlfriend to blow him.
Now this girl is in the booth, along with the coordinator, watching this go down. Literally. There’s not much they can do to stop it at this point, other than notify security. Then another problem arises. The guy finishes, and the girl makes the motion to spit.
In. The. Fucking. Water.
Now if that load is released into the water, thats an automatic biohazard, and the ride is shut down for weeks. The water is removed, the ride path is scrubbed, along with the ride vehicles, and then new water is brought in. Costing the company thousands of dollara and pissed off tourists. The worst combination on this earth.
Panicking at this predicament, the coordinator grabs the mic in the control booth and says:
“Spitting is for quitters.”
This echoes over the bitching of guests and 50 year old audio of pirates commiting various crimes.
The look on this woman’s face was priceless. She gazes up, as if Walt himself commanded her from the grave, and swallows.
I’m told the ride started 5 minutes later and the couple ran out from the exit queue as fast as they could.
And this is why you dont fuck at Disney. Because cast members will call you out and it will be the highlight of our day.
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