Jason (00:06.22) Welcome to Linux for Everyone for the first time. What's really interesting about this is there is a bit of a tradition where I ask a guest who's on here for the first time what their Linux origin story is. And normally that's just kind of a precursor to what we're going to talk about, but this is kind of like your entire story right now. And that's why I wanted to get on here and talk to you about it. Tell us who you are and what you do, both professionally and for fun. Ed Crisler (00:35.854) Okay. Well, my name's Edward Chrysler. I'm the North American PR representative and gaming evangelist for Sapphire technology. Though in this particular case I'm on here as Ed, the gamer. I've been a computer gamer for almost 48 years now. It's been 48 years. I've worked professionally in the industry for over 30. I've been everything from a small repair technician to a networking specialist. I've done programming. I ran my own shop. I did a radio show as a professional reviewer for almost 20 years. And then I got hired by Sapphire and in Sapphire, do a little bit of everything. So it's, it's been a crazy ride. It's been a fun ride. I get, get to live my dream. I love computers. love PC gaming. Jason (01:15.148) huh. Jason (01:26.338) What you've been, I mean you've been into PC gaming since you were what? your teens? 14? Okay. Ed Crisler (01:31.534) Yeah, there weren't PCs back then. Jason (01:34.296) I was gonna say, Ed Crisler (01:37.387) My first PC gaming was on a mainframe system called Playto. Jason (01:42.272) a mainframe system. Ed Crisler (01:43.83) Yeah. If you look at play dough, everybody talks about this. say the basis of the internet play dough was really the basis of the internet. was out of the university of Illinois and it had terminals in like 30 locations at the time I was using it. It all over the country in South Africa, in England, it had all these terminals connected in. And we were gaming together, talking to gamer, learning how to program. Jason (02:10.975) What were you playing? Ed Crisler (02:12.876) The first game I ever played, I remember this, the first game I ever played was a game called bugs and drugs and bugs and drugs was, well, it wasn't, it wasn't ever a commercial game. It was developed by a medical department at Harvard. And I think it was Harvard. could be wrong on that. And the idea behind it was to help using D and D as a way to do it, help patients understand drug interactions with various viruses and bacteria. Jason (02:24.812) Jason (02:43.243) Wow, interesting application. Ed Crisler (02:44.332) So the drugs were your weapon? It was fun. It was just fun. Jason (02:50.926) That's really cool. What year was that? You don't have to say. 77. Okay. Because I, my first brush with PC gaming was 1984. Oh, man. You're a youngster. Oh, I'm a, yeah, I'm a youngster. Uh, young at heart anyway, but yeah, it was, was, it was playing a, fi I found a five and a quarter floppy, actually a bunch of drawers of five and a quarter floppies in my stepdad's garage. He was a computer tech and, uh, it was a bunch of shareware games, like with silly names, like Ed Crisler (02:54.318) 77 Jason (03:20.482) You know, Doug Doug or, or, heck command or, or like just, you know, fake names for the real, the real thing. I think they were clones at the time. weren't actual licensed games, they Doug Doug was dig, Doug. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and so, I mean, I, I've absolutely fell in love after that and I've kind of been into gaming ever since. So, wow. What an interesting, what an interesting origin story for you. Ed Crisler (03:23.342) was awesome, Ed Crisler (03:34.542) It's a clone of a- Jason (03:48.448) I just wanted to ask you kind of what your day to day looks like with Sapphire and your PR job. Ed Crisler (03:56.384) Well, my day to day is actually pretty calm. PR is not as intense as it used to be a few years ago, because there's not new product launches just constantly rolling off. So I spend a lot of time in community building in Reddit and discord, going through the few forums I still use. Most people don't use forums anymore. Talking to people with emails. I help with our customer service. Jason (03:58.807) Yeah. Ed Crisler (04:26.01) So if somebody has a tech issue, I try to help resolve it if I can. Or sometimes even our tech support team will contact me and say, Hey, can you help with this? We haven't seen this error before because I have a a broader selection of gaming to be able to test for errors and be able to find errors. So it's a lot of community work. And, and then the other cool aspect of it is obviously when I get to travel. When I get to go to like QuakeCon or I go to, land war, which we just did land war, in January. And those events are a blast because I, I don't like trade shows. Most PR reps live and die in trade shows. hate trade shows. Jason (05:12.514) They're exhausting. I know they're they were exhausting for me and I know they're exhausting for you. Ed Crisler (05:16.448) It's not the exhausting part. I can do that stuff all day long. It's that, so we went and we did a C &E, Canadian national exhibition. And we had, they were estimating on one Saturday, 20,000 people walked past our booth. Of 20,000 people, we had maybe 20 that stopped and engaged. Because when you go to a big trade show like that, most of the people there aren't your target audience. But when I go to a LAN party. When I go to when I go to land war I go to quake con that's 100 my people People that we talk the same language, we love the same things. And that to me is so much of a better experience. And we've been able to translate that into good things at Sapphire. For example, um, you gotta go back. want to say it's the four 80. Nobody in AMD had done a proper small form factor, ITX card yet. It hadn't been done. We did. We were the first ones to do it. That came from a land party called Lano C. And I had gone to the land party and talked to them and I hadn't been introduced really to small form factor yet. At that point, I just built big computers. didn't, it didn't dawn on me. And these guys built a ton of small form factor stuff. I'm like, this is amazing. We need to do this more. And so I went yelled and screamed and we ended up producing a card to do it. So we have taken. A lot of feedback we get from the community that I can get from shows and we can get through social media. We apply it. Now we don't always get to use it, but we always look at it. We always explore it. Jason (06:59.352) Do remember what that card was? Ed Crisler (07:02.094) Well, like I said, think was a mini ITX 480. was black and silver. Jason (07:04.588) was just a mini ITX 480, right? So this was about the time that Ed Crisler (07:11.436) two slot and about half a length. Jason (07:14.156) So this was maybe about the time that the 7, the Nvidia 750 Ti was out or was that? sounds like roughly the same time, right? Ed Crisler (07:23.243) I've been doing this long enough that that all gets lost. The timing gets lost. Jason (07:27.022) I mean, I remember one of the highlights when I was working at Forbes before I got into Linux and I was just doing like, you know, GPU reviews and PC gaming stuff on the Windows side, obviously, was building mini ITX systems, benchmarking them and like talking about them. That was so much fun. You're still DIYing your computers, I would assume. Ed Crisler (07:50.434) Well, I still, I still build my own computers, but I'm not worried about RGB anymore. I'm not worried about there's a screen on an AIO. I don't even use AIOs anymore. I I'm not worried about those things. I want my computer to be quiet and out of the way. It should, it should like your operating system disappear. You should be focused on what you're doing with the computer, not the computer. Jason (07:52.504) Yeah. Jason (08:13.132) this tagline for a while on Linux for everyone and it was, was, use Linux and make your PC personal again. Yeah. Because that's what PC stands for. Believe it or not, personal computer. And it used to be, by the way, on Microsoft windows until like, until probably windows 10, it was my computer, not this PC. My computer. Ed Crisler (08:38.498) You know, it's funny, we're seeing history repeat itself up until windows 98. It was a great operating system, then windows EME, they tried to throw everything in the kitchen sink into that operating system. They wanted to become more than an OS. wanted to become a platform. The enthusiasts all said, no, we don't want this. wasn't, it wasn't, you couldn't use EME. Okay. People like to joke about that. You could use EME. Fine. Emmy work, but it was bloated and it was over, overdone. Enthusiasts moved to windows 2000, which was based off the server platform from windows NT. Jason (09:16.149) Yes. Jason (09:21.442) because it was boring and it was stable and it worked. Ed Crisler (09:24.468) Microsoft realized the mistake they had made. And when they made windows XP, it was based on the windows 2000 kernel. They took a step backwards. went to windows 2000 and then we had windows 2000 basically, like you said, until windows 10. We kept that clean, simple system, but it gradually bloated again. This is where I think Microsoft's making its mistake. I get packaging stuff together. Okay. That's the thing I've learned about Linux. Everybody talks about distros. There's a lot of confusion in distros. Okay. Most Linux distros function exactly the same. It's what's packaged with them. It's how they're packaged that makes them different. Bazite isn't all that different from a standard Fedora KDE packaging. It's just, it's got a few extra things they added out of the gate to make the gaming experience easier without you having to go find it. Jason (10:21.1) Yeah, and to make it less prone to user created problems. Ed Crisler (10:25.42) That's what an operating system should be. And the funny thing is Microsoft could actually fix this tomorrow because they already have the right solution. Windows LTSC or IOT. Both of these are nothing but the operating system. Everything else is gone. Okay. If I want one drive, let me add one drive. If I don't want one drive, let me take it out. Jason (10:38.54) Yes. Ed Crisler (10:51.298) But if I want, if I want AI, let me use AI, otherwise take it out. Give me the options and the choice. Jason (10:58.606) But, and see, okay, so we talked about that on the first episode of Games for Everyone last month. were like, would a Windows, a Windows, a gaming-specific version of Windows look like? And it was basically what you just said, like strip out all of that stuff. Just make it a Windows 2000 experience, right? Just with modern drivers. Just update it. Ed Crisler (11:21.198) I don't think you even, I don't even think you need to talk about being gaming specific. Forget the gaming specific for a minute. An OS should be agnostic. Okay. It what's packaged with the OS is where it points to the OS itself should be completely without regard for the usage. It's a general computer control and that's it. Look at your OS. You should look at the app you're using. Jason (11:45.56) You shouldn't Ed Crisler (11:49.794) That should be what's important. And that's where Microsoft's lost the, they they've lost their way. Jason (11:55.296) It's like you said, like it was, was gradually becoming a platform and not an OS. And it is a platform now for subscription deliveries. And that's where they're making their money. You know, gaming, their gaming revenue is 1 % less than Windows itself. And cloud is like, is a huge, huge piece of the pie. Right. So of course they want to just sell services. Well, they're not going to make that, you know, stripped down Windows 2000 style version of Windows 11. Ed Crisler (12:22.22) know that they won't. are people in Microsoft that I've talked to that would like to, they would really like to move back to that type of an approach. Let's actually make an OS. Perhaps you can add to it. Jason (12:33.166) Like you said though, they already have that solution, but I don't think it's ever going to cross over from enterprise to consumer. Ed Crisler (12:42.52) There are so much misunderstanding in the industry about the consumer base. think all gamers have to have RGB and yet every poll I've ever seen, most gamers don't like RGB. It's not just RGB. It's all these little screens for monitoring data. You've got to know what your temperatures are on your GPU. Why? Why do you need to know that? Jason (13:05.518) well reviewers reviewers might need to know that but that's really it right right other I don't care aside from that you know if you Ed Crisler (13:09.55) You know that during the review Ed Crisler (13:15.756) your system, right? The temperatures are going to be doing what they should do. If they get too high, you're going to notice performance issues and then you're going to go back and check. when I'm playing a game, I'm focused on the game play. I'm not spending time looking at my screen going, what's my GPU temperature right now? I'm not going to panic about, my God, it's two C higher than it was an hour ago. Jason (13:42.03) I've always wondered how many people who use like a Steam Deck, for example, how many people turn that performance overlay on beyond just the FPS in the top left corner? 2 % of people. Yeah, exactly. Ed Crisler (13:53.376) I think most even watch the FPS. it smooth? Is it stable? Those are the only things that matter. Jason (13:59.468) not to talk about your competitors, but Tom Peterson as an individual is brilliant. I've always respected his work. He's a good guy. Tom Peterson, for anyone who doesn't know, used to work at Nvidia, very esteemed engineer, created G-Sync, is pretty much the reason we have things like variable refresh rate, things like that. He works at Intel now, and he's been really talking up the fact that FPS is not a metric we should be using to measure game performance anymore. It should be like latency and microstutter and, you know, and smoothness and... Ed Crisler (14:31.576) This is because we've gotten to the point now. My wife said it best. We've become a caveman culture. Big number good. Jason (14:40.59) Yes, no, but that's actually that's so true right 4.6 gigahertz is better than 4.5 gigahertz. You have 16 gigs of RAM instead of 8 gigs. Yeah, Ed Crisler (14:49.558) talk about nuance, we don't talk about the way things work and why something is the way you want it to be for the majority of gamers. For example, anything past about 120 frames per second, it's next to impossible for you to notice it in gameplay. Yet we constantly are telling people you need to get 165 hurt monitors. And then they believe that they need to run 165 frames per second to use the monitor. No, that's the peak. You, you're going to run lower than that in most cases. And it also depends on the game in civilization. Do you really think you can tell the difference between 75 frames per second and 120? I saw this chart this morning. In fact, that was looking at video cards and it was comparing best to worst. And you look at the chart, the worst has an average frame rate of 160. Who cares about the best? Why were you paid extra for the extra? Is Jason (15:49.08) So then it just comes down to like cost and availability beyond that, right? It does. Ed Crisler (15:54.818) You see, we've even got this problem in Linux right now. The amazing thing to me about Linux gaming is not the performance numbers. It's the fact I can't tell the difference. I can game in windows. can game in Linux. They both do exactly the same thing. fine. Considering that Linux is having to do that with an overlay. Incredible. Jason (16:16.814) Yeah, or with the performance overhead of Proton is not negligible, right? I think it's anywhere from 5 to 20 % depending on the game. Ed Crisler (16:28.258) compare windows and Linux, you need to focus on workflow. You need to focus on how you use the operating system aspects, not the performance number. The performance numbers are pretty much irrelevant now. Jason (16:40.654) I did a video recently evaluating a mini PC. So I think it's what an 890 M in that one. Radion 890 M pretty good, like pretty good integrated GPU. by the way, finally, I was on the hunt for so long when I was at Forbes. Like, okay, does this APU give us 1080p 30 at least 1080p 30. Like that's the dream. 1080p with an IGPU, right? We're finally there. So I benchmarked six games. across Windows 11 and Bazite. But the benchmark results were so similar, but the visual, like visually, it was, was worlds apart, right? So I just did split screen and over here, Bazite typically got about the same FPS or maybe one or two FPS better, right? Negligible. It's a W, but negligible. Windows. Got higher 1 % lows than Bazite did by about 5 to 10, 5 to 15 % in every game. But Bazite looked like worlds apart, right? There was no micro stutter. It was nice and smooth. The frame pacing, the frame pacing was more consistent. Yeah. Yeah. Ed Crisler (17:56.078) That's back to the game play experience. only thing that matters at the end of the day is the game play experience. I don't care how fast my game runs. If it's smooth and it looks good and it's stable. That's the other thing. It's got to be stable. Jason (18:08.59) As someone who is responsible for selling Radeon graphics cards, you ever get caught up in that FPS war? Because that's what all the marketing has always been about, Now it's more about like, well, we have better frame gen or we have better upscaling. Ed Crisler (18:20.322) Have. Ed Crisler (18:25.196) I have always tried to distance myself from the FPS war. When you compare, we use the 90 70 as an example, the slowest 90 70 on the market versus the fastest 90 70 on the market. The performance difference is a Delta of about 3%. If it's that. Okay. What's more important. How well is the card made? How good is the cooling? Is it quiet? Support like these are factors that are way more important now. Because when you start looking at performance class, you're going to find that even across competition, the performance classes are pretty much in the same ballpark. So you've got to look at the quality of the product you're getting. That's a more important purchasing decision. Jason (19:12.12) people who are buying GPUs are not on the same upgrade cycle as phones. Like they don't want to buy a new GPU every couple years. They want it for the life of their computer probably. Ed Crisler (19:22.282) I actually had this discussion on discord with somebody the other day. They were talking about, this guy was looking to make a computer purchase. He was buying a used computer and the used computer he was buying was one of those that had no upgrade path. It was done. It was where it was going to be. That was it. He's trying to him. it's a terrible purchase. A terrible purchase. said, you don't understand most gamers. We make this mistake. Most gamers are not tech enthusiasts. They don't care. They want to play their games. That's all they want to do. Why do you think console sell so well? Most gamers when they buy a PC will ride that horse till it's dead. And then they'll just buy a new one. They don't upgrade. The GPU cycle has hit the same point. You don't look at upgrading. If you've got a 7,900 XT, you're probably not going to buy a 90 70. And it's not that the 90 70 doesn't give you benefits by buying it. It's not worth the cost to you to make the move. Even if you've got a 6,900, there's a good chance you're not looking to do that upgrade. You're usually skipping one or two generations when you make the upgrade. Yeah. And that's a significant number, but we don't look at that number. We look at the simple, bigger, better number. Most users don't even understand how benchmarking works. Benchmarking is a. clinical clean room of a PC and a snapshot of time. Yeah. And that's all it is. It's not a gaming experience. It's not actual usage. It's potential performance. Jason (21:05.998) It's marketing data in my eyes. is. That's all it is. It's marketing data. Yeah. And I know, man, when I was at AMD, we were like cherry picking, like that game only, that game has 3 % versus 5 % performance advantage. Let's promote that one instead of this one. Ed Crisler (21:21.39) This is why I said, I've, I've, I try to stay away from the benchmark traps. I want you to have an amazing gaming experience. If my advice helps you have an amazing gaming experience, then you're going to buy a Sapphire product. And it's not going to be the one-time purchase because at that moment, my numbers were better. It's going to be a lifelong commitment as a, as a partner with us, because you know, I'm trying to look out for what's best for you. And that's my approach to how you deal with this. Jason (21:50.902) And honestly, when I was in the game, know, when I was in the review game, I genuinely thought that Sapphire was the best around in terms of the overall package, right? The build quality, community, because I always looked at like, how are they engaging with the community and things like that? you know, they're always just consistently good cards. What prompted you after all of this time, and especially given your professional background? Ed Crisler (22:01.806) Report. Jason (22:18.166) What prompted you to switch to Linux? it like a single thing that triggered you or was it kind of a slow burn? Ed Crisler (22:24.684) a little bit of a slow burn. Wendell from level one tech had, had talked to me a few times about doing this. Okay. And I, his advice has been amazing when I started. I'm usually considered pretty smart when it comes to computers and I feel like a moron when I talk to Wendell. Jason (22:34.954) It's- it- it normally is. Yeah, the- Guy's brilliant. Jason (22:45.536) If I'm not mistaken, he was, he was responsible for getting a certain, I think it was the Zen 2 chip set up and running on Linux before AMD did. Ed Crisler (22:57.236) I could imagine he's done that more than once. the guy is incredible. Hi, window. I love you brother. and he's a great guy. That's the other thing I love. He's, he's a genuinely nice guy. anyway, Wendell kind of got me started down the road. I was experimenting at first. was just dipping my toes in the water a little bit. You know what I mean? Jason (23:19.04) Yeah, we're kind of like just Distro Hopping and checking out. Ed Crisler (23:22.126) Well, I was, but I was running it on a test bench and I'd go play with it for an hour or two a day. And then I'd go back to my windows PC and do whatever. Okay. Um, until one day I got hit with the dreaded windows is overwritten my driver bug. The first time this happened, I was like, okay, it happens. It's okay. Then after I took all the steps to stop windows from Downloading driver updates? It did it again. Jason (23:54.894) And people say you have to tweak Linux to get it working. Ed Crisler (23:59.328) And yeah, and people are telling me, that doesn't happen. Yes, it does. Okay. You can't tell me I don't know how to configure a computer. Jason (24:08.035) Yeah, like I've literally been doing it since Windows was a thing. Ed Crisler (24:10.798) I've been doing it before personal computers existed. So, and I run a very clean system. I don't run a lot of background apps. don't, I'm not always out of date on my, on my drivers for my video card because this is what I do and I'm going to be able to test. So it was, it was just really frustrating. Then I got hit with, it was one of the update bugs. I can't remember what the update bug was that, HDR. And I said enough. Jason (24:26.52) Yeah. Ed Crisler (24:39.822) Okay. Let me go over and play with Linux. Seriously, let me get serious now. So I spent about three or four months still doing with the test bench, but I was spending a lot more time with it. And I explored a couple of different distros. Uh, I looked at Casio S I looked at bad site. looked at, um, Maduro. Am I saying that right? Jason (24:59.918) Manjaro? Manjaro? Manjaro. Manjaro. Yeah. Jason (25:08.362) glorious egg roll. does, he does no bara. Dora based gaming distribution. Yeah. Ed Crisler (25:13.175) Okay. In the end, I settled on Bazite because I liked the immutable design. I liked the fact as I don't want to tweak it. want to use it. So I settled on Bazite. ran it for three months, dual booting between it and windows. do my work in windows by game in Bazite. So I spent a lot of time in Bazite and then January 1st, I made the move. said, forget it. I pulled my windows drive out of my PC. And I've been running nothing but Bazite with the exception of a couple of work machines that I have to for things I do, but nothing but Bazite ever since. I had to find ways to make certain things work, but it wasn't nearly as hard as people believe it is. Jason (26:04.27) Were there any myths about Linux or any horror stories that you heard that just ended up not being true? Ed Crisler (26:10.35) The myth about Linux is you have to understand the command line. I haven't touched the command line. Jason (26:13.55) Which is Ed Crisler (26:18.048) In, in bad site, there's a system update button. You tell it's it goes. Jason (26:23.478) Technically uses it uses command line, but it's not command line. All you have to do is click yes and and reboot or Ed Crisler (26:30.574) So you reboot or quit and you're done. it has been a very pleasurable experience. Now there are some things I don't like. Cause like I said, Linux has made me change how I look at an OS. So now I'm more focused on the applications. There are just some windows applications that are much more polished. Jason (26:40.526) Okay. Jason (26:46.402) Yeah. Jason (26:54.734) Which ones do you rely on? Ed Crisler (26:57.538) Well, the one, the one that bugs me the most is silliest of sounds is weather. I love the windows MSN weather app. I thought that it gave me the information I wanted. was easy to find. I use outlook a lot for my personal emails and stuff, but what I found was is I can go into my browser. What is it? PWA is what it's called when it does this. So what you do is you go into a browser and you can tell it to save a site as an app. Jason (27:02.657) What? Jason (27:26.575) right, yeah, yeah. Ed Crisler (27:27.714) And so I've done that for my two outlook and my Gmail account. Now that's a little more complicated than just opening Outlook on the desktop and having all three accounts in it. Jason (27:39.384) Sure, but it's- But- Ed Crisler (27:40.792) You what? It still works. It still does what I wanted to do. Yeah. know, soft office, but I use that through the web apps and they work well and only office actually is a solid alternative. The thing I did learn is if you're going to build a Linux system, the key is keep it simple, stupid. You've got to get rid of RGB because they, everybody's, use open RGB. It only works half the time and then it may not work completely. Jason (27:45.242) I have to use my Ed Crisler (28:10.018) I've got that problem. It, it, can change the color of my motherboards RGB, but I can't change the brightness. can't turn on special effects. Forget it. it's easier just to get rid of the RGB, which I did. It's also the same with peripherals. I've got a, it's a three 60, to see for my camera, which is working just fine. But here comes the book. I don't have fine control. Jason (28:35.726) Okay. Ed Crisler (28:39.994) I don't have the ability to really control the zoom. Well, I can't change if I want 4k or a hunt or 10 ADP. I can't use the, the buttons to move the camera up and down a little bit. Right. I can't use any of that. And then I've got a, I'm using a road, pod mic USB, which is a great mic, but what you're hearing is just default. I can't go in and change the feature set because that's all based in a windows driver. Those are the things I miss. Jason (29:11.342) Okay. And that's fair. I mean, there are, so there are apps on Linux designed for Logitech cameras, but I have not, I haven't seen one personally. If anybody knows one that's designed for the Insta 360 series, let know. Ed Crisler (29:26.306) Well, I've been asking around. Now the really sad part to me was I reached out to Insta. I reached out to road and I said, Hey, is there a chance you guys are working on a Linux? Because I'd be happy to help you test it. And the response was no, not at this time. Are we considering working on Linux software? And that is sadly a lot of the industry. Jason (29:49.994) It is, it is, but I feel like that's going to change. I feel like that's going to change and Valve is going to be the primary driver for that. Ed Crisler (30:02.37) People are giving too much credit to valve deserves all the credit for proton. Okay. Absolutely. Proton is amazing and it is what allows Linux gaming to be what it is. I've played with steam. It's a console that wants to be a PC. And by the way, valve admits that they're not worried so much about the desktop experience. They want that big screen experience. The steam box is supposed to be the introduction. to pull console gamers into PC world. A lot of PC gamers don't understand this. Okay. It's designed to function like a console, but with a PC library. So think about that. You've got a library that's a hundred times the size. You've got the ability to mod the games, the game prices are lower and you don't have a subscription fee. This is a huge driving point. I thought. Jason (30:57.038) I thought that Steam Deck was going to be everything that you just mentioned. not really. People will dock it, but no one uses it really. No one. mean, a very small percentage of Steam Deck owners actually use it as their desktop PC. Ed Crisler (31:11.278) Again, it's steam OS. It's a lousy desktop. No, yeah. It's a lousy desktop. You compare that. Jason (31:19.022) It's just a customized arch. Ed Crisler (31:21.986) Well, it's sorta, they, they really went out of their way to package it with a very specific focus. Yeah. When I compare it to Bazite or Cache at a desktop level, it's not even close. Jason (31:38.318) I mean, I do prefer bad side. I'm with you there. Ed Crisler (31:41.408) It's just not even close, but it was never meant to be that it's meant to be a console-esque approach to the PC gaming solutions. does that really well, just incredibly well, but it's, it helps because it took care of a very specific problem in the Linux community, which was gaming. Yeah. Now the rest of it, the community's got to fix and the community. Is great and terrible. Like every community is all at the same time. I've had people in the community that want to reach out and want to help me cause I'm still Linux new. They want to reach out and help me. And I love them for it. They're great people. They're very patient. They're very helpful. And then you've got the complete other side. Well, if you're not learning command line, you really shouldn't even be bothering with Linux. You shut up. You gatekeepers go away. Jason (32:35.916) You know, me and this community, like we just try not to acknowledge that they exist. Because there's no room for gatekeeping. they're the reason that I think a lot of people have been scared away from trying Linux is because they perpetuate those myths that were only true like in the early 2000s and the 90s with Linux. know, they act like it hasn't changed and it's evolved more than Windows has. Ed Crisler (33:04.556) last two or three years. Last two or three years is crazy. Jason (33:06.379) yeah, it's been wild. It's been wild. Ed Crisler (33:11.598) It's it, I get the question asked all the time. Is Linux better or is Windows better? That's the wrong question. Jason (33:20.386) Yeah. Is it, is it right? It's not a personal, it needs to be a personal question, Exactly. Ed Crisler (33:25.144) that your needs and Linux is not, it's not that Linux is better. It's that Linux is now for the first time in a long time, completely viable for almost every user. That's something that it's never had before. Jason (33:39.063) Yeah, and then- Because honestly, users are doing almost everything in a browser. Aside from gaming. You know, so who are the holdouts? The holdouts are probably, correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like the holdouts are probably people who are locked into the Adobe Creative Suite or who are developing Windows software. Right? I mean. Ed Crisler (34:07.246) Those are the big holdouts, but the everyday holdout. Windows for me is like your grandpa's old pair of tennis shoes. They've got holes in them, they're ratty, they smell bad, but they're comfortable and he's used to them. And that's the big thing that made it difficult for me to move from Windows. Jason (34:26.817) comfortable and familiar. Ed Crisler (34:34.472) Windows is that old pair tennis shoes. I've been around with windows since before it started. I was there at the beginning. I've watched the messes. I've, I've, I've written guides for windows. I've so I've done all of this. And when windows reaches a point that someone like me is looking at it going, hell no, this is this one step too far. Microsoft needs to step back because up until this year, this last year, I've been champions. Most people stay in with windows. Now I'm not telling you, you need to switch. So I tried to switch my wife to Linux. She only has one application that is an issue for her. And that is quicken, but quicken has a web browser solution that does work in Linux. So I told her, you just need to convert over to the web browser and you'll be done. Jason (35:22.712) There you go. Jason (35:27.022) full functionality in the, in the web app. Cause I've heard this before too. I've heard like basically tech software, like tech software is the reason, but it's all, it's all, everything's web based. Ed Crisler (35:29.07) Well fuck you, I don't think she does. Ed Crisler (35:36.59) Tax software is all web based. got a friend that does tax software. So her problem was one, she likes it not being on the web with, with the banking, which I get. And two, she doesn't suffer the issues I've seen with windows. And the third one, and probably for her, the most important is that outlook app. She uses that constantly. Jason (35:49.026) Yeah, totally fair. Ed Crisler (36:05.014) She uses it for scheduling. She uses it for email. She, she is constantly looking in outlook and doing something with it. I'm talking not the professional, by the way, I'm talking the one built into windows. This is something she uses all the time. And to her, the pain of the conversion. Is it worth anything? She sees as a game. Now she's used Linux. I've sent it out in front of Linux and had her use it. She just, and it wasn't hard. She just doesn't see it be worth the time and effort of the conversion. So I tried it with my oldest son, who's a hardcore PC gamer. He gave me exactly the same answer. He said, look, everything you're telling me about this is right. It's great. This is awesome. And if I'm building a new PC, maybe I'm going to go this way. But he said, right now, everything just works in windows. Why would I mess with that? That's the real killer right now. Jason (36:59.406) Yeah, well, I mean, I guess that's there's that's mostly true. But man, the driver like the graphics driver situation on Windows isn't is an abomination lately. agree. And so I'm surprised that someone who is a gamer. That's not that's not making their pull their hair out. You know, it depends on the game. Boy, that's true. Yeah. Ed Crisler (37:24.6) All of it at the end of the day comes down to the games you're playing. If you're a Windows user that wants to switch to Linux, but all you play is Fortnite and other, you're stuck. You're going to stay in Windows. It's not that Windows is your, is the operating system you want. It's the only one that does what you want it to do. Jason (37:40.43) That's right. I feel like a lot of people are just grudgingly using windows now not not enjoying it, but grudgingly like Ed Crisler (37:46.966) I really thought that that's a fair assessment. I want the community to slow down because they're, hear by like, man, look at the millions of people that have downloaded Linux. Looking at Linux is fantastic in three months. How many of them are still using it? Number. That's the number that's important. Jason (37:58.622) the Zor- Jason (38:06.604) We can't track that because... Yeah. And don't, and this is what I tell people all the time, which some of my audience might not appreciate, but it's, it's the way that I think you need to approach it. Don't just nuke windows right away. Don't nuke it. Use them both. Get used to it. Acclimate yourself. Don't just make the leap because I feel like you're asking for headaches if you do that. Ed Crisler (38:32.142) Okay, you know what? I'm gonna disagree with you partially. Jason (38:34.838) Okay. Because you did that, right? You used it. So them side by side. Okay. Ed Crisler (38:39.698) If you have certain usages, then it might be difficult to transition. Then yes, using it, using a dual boot makes sense because you time to figure out how to, to use the stuff that you're not sure you can get to work. Right. And by the way, there's very little you can't get to work. Right. If however, you're, you're just a gamer, you don't do. Jason (38:59.544) That's. Ed Crisler (39:09.514) Esports games. like adventure games. You like solo play simple co-op games. And by the way, there are great shooters that work in this. play hell divers too. I play space Marines too. Arc Raiders works in it. Okay. So you've got a lot of, you've got a lot of good options. If you're a regular user or a gamer that doesn't play esports, do not dual boot. And the reason I say that is we're back to that old comfortable shoe. Hmm. Okay. So if you buy grandpa a new pair of shoes, if you don't throw away those old shoes, he's never going to wear the new shoes. Jason (39:50.158) This shoe analogy is working for you. It really is working for you. Ed Crisler (39:53.674) about it every time you put on a new pair of shoes, what happens? Your foot hasn't conformed yet. It's a little uncomfortable. Grandpa's old enough. He doesn't want to mess with this anymore. He's just going to go back to the old shoes. It's the same thing with this. You're going to jump into Linux and you're going to have something to hit you in the face that that's like, well, damn, that didn't work. And then you're going to go seek help. And this is the one area that I wish the Linux community was better. So if I go to seek help on a problem. Jason (39:59.879) Might some blisters. Yeah. Ed Crisler (40:24.398) The first 10 people. Jason (40:26.046) Where do you go? Ed Crisler (40:27.828) I go a lot to Reddit. I also, I also am on Discord servers for a couple of different distros. Jason (40:37.588) like Universal Blues? Ed Crisler (40:38.99) Universal blue, Pop OS, Mint, Fedora. You asked the first 10 people and you know what you get for an answer? 10 different distros. Jason (40:49.486) Absolutely. And they don't, and they don't ask you about your own preferences, right? Yeah, it's just because they're just recommending what they use. Ed Crisler (40:54.882) This row is better. Now you go to the second 10 people. The second 10 people will give you 10 different command line solutions that you need to copy and paste to put in to be able to make work. Jason (41:07.904) Okay, to be fair, they're giving there. I believe they're giving you those solutions because they are mostly universal. Right across your environment. Ed Crisler (41:14.252) I believe they are too. Those don't work. One of those 10 people do 10 different distros again. Now you've got 20 different distros and you still don't have an answer to your problem. And this is the way the average windows user moving to Linux feels in a nutshell when they have a problem. The solution is try different distro. I made a joke once you asked 10, you asked 10 Linux users, what's the best distro is you'll get 13 answers. It's. And at the end of the day, it's irrelevant. We had this discussion on the Bazai Discord. Somebody was talking about Aurora. I don't know if you know what Aurora is. Ed Crisler (42:00.302) blue, it's part of universal blue, but it's, it's a non, it's just a desktop. Oh, yes. It's not focused. And I asked, what's the difference between Aurora and Bazite once you install steam, not enough to care. Jason (42:19.342) Aurora might have more flat pack integration, maybe? Probably. I don't know. Ed Crisler (42:25.89) more focused to general desktop use. And, but Bazight works great in general desktop. This is the, this is the mess that is the Linux community. And I love the Linux community. I think it's awesome that we've got choices. I think it's awesome to have an operating system. It just gets out of my way. lets me use my computer. I love this, but you can't look at this with rose colored glasses. Jason (42:28.268) Yeah, Ed Crisler (42:55.368) And, and try to convince people that they need to make these moves without preparing them for what the good news is now with, with, with versions like mint and, and pop and Bazite and a few others that are geared toward that. Put it on your system and run it. Don't do anything else. You don't need to. That approach is going to go a long way. I love the fact that I'm putting these distros on my computer. Jason (43:03.171) Get to. Ed Crisler (43:25.056) I don't have to go find the latest drivers. don't have to go download this software package at this website and then run an install and make sure I got the right version. I don't have to do that. Okay. I installed the O S the drivers are up to date. I go to the app store for lack of a better word for, for each distro. There are the apps I want. I tell it to download it. They're fully updated. ready to go. Jason (43:47.436) Yeah, I love that. Let ask you something about about drivers. When you first made that switch, because I'm going to assume that you're on all AMD hardware, right? Did you did you know at the time you were making the switch that all the drivers would be just baked into the kernel and ready to go out of the box? Or were you expecting to kind of have to install things? Ed Crisler (44:09.784) first started dealing with Linux? I did not know that. Jason (44:13.996) What was your reaction to that? So finding that out. Ed Crisler (44:15.734) I was, this was like life changing to me. This was so incredible. And I really thought that I would miss Radeon software. I don't miss it at all. Jason (44:29.518) Okay, I was gonna ask you about that too. Look, look, I'm sorry if this offends anybody out there, but the the Radeon adrenaline software, has become complex is a good is a good description. Ed Crisler (44:44.11) It's got a lot of features that I don't know what voodoo they pulled, but that's, just has games automatically enabling it. You don't have to go in and turn them on in the driver. You could do this. Here we go. Oh, F S R. That to me is such a transformative experience for me with the way I use my computer. Jason (44:57.518) The games go, Oh, do what exactly? Oh yeah. yeah. Yup. Ed Crisler (45:12.204) Because I'm not going, what's driver version do I need? And in windows, when you have a problem with a game, you're flopping driver versions, which by the way, affect everything in the, computer in Linux, change the proton for it. think about the game. I love this solution. This solution is so much better. I love the flat pack approach. I love the fact that the software. Jason (45:27.98) Yeah. Ed Crisler (45:40.504) doesn't attach to the kernel. It keeps a level of separation. I know to some people that might sound like a big deal, but as someone that values stability first, it's, it's amazing. It's a night and day difference to the way things are. This is what I want to see fixing game. I want to see kernel level anti-cheat go away. We don't need it at the kernel. Do anti-cheat without the kernel. Jason (46:05.528) You So why, let me ask you, cause you're probably a lot more tuned into the gaming community than I am. Why is there kernel level anti-cheat? Why isn't there a different approach on Windows? Ed Crisler (46:20.878) That's a question I would really love to get an answer from, from a developer because Windows supports container solutions. It has the ability to run container level software, which is basically flat pack. It can do it. Why aren't we doing it? Why are we sandboxing every piece of software, take everything off the kernel? My browser doesn't need to be linked to the kernel. My. Jason (46:30.487) Yeah. Ed Crisler (46:48.628) AI doesn't need to be linked to the kernel. Nothing needs to be linked to that kernel. That kernel. And this is why I think LTSC is the potential solution because they took everything off the kernel. They said, leave it alone. The OS is the OS. Leave it alone. Add what you want to add. This is Linux in a nutshell. Jason (47:09.582) Crowd strike is all I'm gonna say. Ed Crisler (47:12.27) Yeah. LTSC and IOT are essentially Windows versions of Linux. For lack of a better word, in a philosophy point of view for the way it's designed. Jason (47:24.27) And you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but do you know about kind of the big performance gap between AMD and Nvidia on Linux versus on Windows, how Nvidia cards are much, much less performant? Ed Crisler (47:38.86) That's technically not true. The performance gap isn't, isn't as big as people make it out to be. It's sporadic. AMD is rock solid in Linux. It's a gold standard for how to make a driver for a video card in Linux. And Nvidia has moments when they work really well and moments when they suck. Okay. Just suck so bad. And so. That's the problem that Nvidia has. When I talk to people about building Linux systems, you're a builder of Linux system, build an AMD. Jason (48:17.686) I like that's pretty, I think that's pretty universal. Ed Crisler (48:20.322) Forget that I worked for Sapphire for a minute. You build AMD. It's the gold standard. That's why you build AMD. So if you're converting and you have a Nvidia video card, my advice is you go sell it. Take that money. You go buy a Sapphire card, which costs you less money than what you sold it for. You take the extra money, have a pizza party while you're enjoying your Linux game. Jason (48:36.75) I knew it. Ed Crisler (48:48.916) That's my opinion, but... Jason (48:51.054) Do you think, and you're absolutely right, but do you think that will remain as Linux adoption continues to increase? Like, you envision five or seven years from now, do you think AMD will be selling more dedicated GPUs because more people are moving to Linux and getting that narrative? Ed Crisler (49:14.582) I would like to hope they will, but that means AMD needs to lean into Linux more. AMD needs to put more focus in Linux. Now I know it's Sapphire. We're having internal discussions about this. We're talking about how can we do this? I've actually got the guy that, that maintains Bazite and the guy that maintains universal blue completely. We're emailing. Yeah. We're emailing back and forth, trying to figure out how they can help Sapphire help Linux. Jason (49:34.05) Kyle and George, right? Jason (49:43.9) I'm so happy to hear that because that was my next question was like, how, do you think your Linux experience will inform how you. Ed Crisler (49:53.208) Well, this is something, this is something I've initiated. got to understand the industry look at raw numbers and that's all they care about. And when you're working for a company that makes PC gaming hardware, you see 4 % of PC gamers. well, that's not worth the investment. Now I can tell you internally what we're discussing. We want to see user feedback. So if we see emails coming in through our social media, through our. Jason (49:57.378) me, yeah, tell us about it. us what you're Ed Crisler (50:21.006) through our discord, if we see the response from the community, we really want you to get involved. We might take the first step. Maybe the first step is we bring tricks RGB control to Linux. Okay. That would be, that may be a first step. And if the community responds to us, that's great. That's great. What's what else? What else? Then we, then we started investing as the community expresses an interest and shows a level of support. The more interest we get, the more the company's going to be willing to put into it. And that's any company that exists. I can tell you though, that this is actively being discussed at Sapphire. Jason (50:57.294) That's really refreshing to hear. That's great. Ed Crisler (50:59.778) So it it's, this is what I want to see AMD and I'd like to see AMD doing the same thing. And they are okay. Give them credit. Their Linux driver team is, I mean, between them and what the open source community does with what they give them. Fantastic. Jason (51:20.93) There is a lot, I'm hearing a lot of chatter about the next, about Mesa 26 being kind of a huge leap forward. Ed Crisler (51:29.056) That would be amazing. It w well, I'm not worried about the performance show. I want to see a little bit of feature set options. a little better support. Jason (51:37.846) Yeah. What's missing? What's missing from the, because my, like, again, I'm not a professional at this, but my understanding is that FSR support is solid. Is it not? Frame generation maybe isn't quite as, as. Ed Crisler (51:52.898) generation and Fsr support, in my opinion, is not as robustly supported as it could be. It's good. It's better than anything Nvidia is putting out there, but it's not at the level it could be at. This is what I'm saying. I'd like to see AMD lean into this. Now the question then becomes though, where are we going to be at in four or five years with Nvidia? Jason (52:18.272) My opinion is they want everybody to use G-Force now. That's what I think they want. Ed Crisler (52:22.69) I'll get into that in a minute. In my opinion, if AI didn't exist, there'd be a horse race and it would get ugly fast, not for the consumers, but for those two companies, it would get ugly fast with AI existing. I'm not sure Nvidia cares. Jason (52:40.482) Well, they're skipping. they're not releasing any, any new GPUs for the next year, In new consumer GPUs, rather. Ed Crisler (52:44.812) I really think I think personally, think that AMD is in a great position to lean in and take control of a market. already have a lead in now what they decide to do. Obviously, if I give you a dollar with that advice, you've got a dollar. Jason (53:05.388) Now what lead are you talking about? Ed Crisler (53:07.51) Well, right now they're the gold standard. Jason (53:09.809) for Linux, in Linux. yeah, Ed Crisler (53:12.14) Linux, AOD is the most used card. They need to lean into this. This is the, this is the chance. This is it. They said they want to market share. This is it. It's maybe not as sexy as the. Jason (53:15.303) and question. Jason (53:25.07) Because you know what, you're like if they do they're they're at kind of the hockey stick curve, right? They're we're approaching a hockey stick curve. Ed Crisler (53:31.842) The other thing to consider is this. Windows gamers are fickle. Whatever has the highest benchmark at the moment is what a windows gamer is going to buy. Okay. Now I'm not picking on windows gamers. think most of them are great people. I'm talking to the community as a whole. Linux users as a whole are junkyard dogs. They are loyal to the point of stupid. If you take care of them. You come in and you show them that you actually give a crap and they will back you to the wall. Even when you screw up, they will back you to the wall and let you fix it. Jason (54:13.836) And if you want proof of this, look at the opposite situation with Nvidia, right? Look how long the Nvidia grudge has been held by the Linux community. be fair, Linus Torvalds is now, you know, they have a pretty amicable relationship. it's Ed Crisler (54:33.934) If you listen to him speak, he still doesn't want an Nvidia card in his product. He wants Intel or wants AMD. He actually doesn't mind AMD. It's, it's that, but he wants, and I love that he said this, he just wants it to work. Jason (54:41.687) No, he wants intel. Jason (54:53.25) That's, yes, exactly. Ed Crisler (54:54.624) That's the philosophy. Okay. Be forced now. for a classic rant. Cloud gaming is a cancer. It's a cancer upon gaming. Now let me explain to you why. If you've got cloud gaming, think about this. Your gaming experience is completely controlled by your ISP. That means if your ISP is having a bad day, your gaming experience sucks. Jason (54:57.356) So like, yeah, talk to me. Jason (55:07.576) Thank you. Ed Crisler (55:24.936) That who the ISP has connected to the backbone has a bad day. Your experience sucks. video servers have a bad day. In other words, you have no control of your computer gaming experience and that sucks, but it gets worse. So when you want to play a game, I can go to steam right now and I can find, I can go find total annihilation if I want to go back and play that. Okay. I actually found this the other day on a, on a really obscure website. There's a game I used to play in DOS called rules of engagement too. It's an amazing game by the way, it's just an incredible game at the time. It's DOS, but it was cool that I could download it. But if I'm stuck in a streaming, in a cloud-based service, I only get the games they choose to let me get. Okay. So now my freedom of choice of games are gone. wait, what about my play time? You know what? Occasionally I'll have. Jason (56:21.678) They limited that too, didn't they? Ed Crisler (56:24.044) Yeah. Six hours a day. well, you break it. You can break it up, but you and I both know that we have had those binge gaming sessions that have been nine, 10, 12 hours sometimes. They're telling me I can't do that because they decided I can't do that. And I can only have a hundred hours a month unless I want to pay them more money. So you take all of this. Jason (56:52.652) We are all sick. Ed Crisler (56:53.292) Gaming takes away everything that made computer gaming great. How do you mod with cloud gaming? There's a whole segment of gaming that just. Jason (57:03.504) wow. Yeah. Ed Crisler (57:05.774) It's, there is nothing about cloud gaming that I look at it and can find redeeming. And I looked at this a while back when the first cloud gave me like, what was it on, on gaming or something like that. Jason (57:18.766) live I had on I had an on live Ed Crisler (57:22.062) I read a review you wrote on it. Jason (57:25.102) That was awful! It was terrible! God, it was terrible! Ed Crisler (57:29.506) I get the concept. The concept is that you don't need a specific kind of device to be able to enjoy a video game. And there are circumstances where I can see that being good. Like if you're somebody who's on the road 20 days out of the year. Okay. You want to get in your hotel room, you want to relax, you hook your cell phone up to the TV and bang, you can play your game. Okay. I can see that, but most of us that are gamers don't have that. We want to sit down in front of my computer and I want to, or my TV, and I want to enjoy my gaming experience and cloud gaming gives control of that experience to somebody else. And I pay them to take the control from me. It's a cancer. We should stomp it out. Jason (58:21.25) Why do you think something like GeForce Now has succeeded where Stadia and Luna failed and on live failed like every other gaming solution, gaming cloud solution failed? Ed Crisler (58:33.142) Are we sure it has? Have they really published all that much data? Jason (58:36.94) Well, why do you think GeForce Now still exists then? Let's not use the word successful. Why do you think it's still around when the others? Ed Crisler (58:44.846) I don't have any tin foil here so can put on a hat. Okay. I'm going to say this upfront. This is a conspiracy theory, but it's the most plausible theory that this gives Nvidia something to do with all these servers are building. allows them to stop making video cards and keep the gaming community. Jason (58:58.092) Yep. Jason (59:04.014) Ed, look, I don't know if that's a real crazy conspiracy theory. Ed Crisler (59:08.746) I think it is, that's like, look, look at the end of the day, here's what this boils down to. And anybody in the industry that's listening, please pay attention. What I'm about to say. Gamers are not upset that PC gaming is in a state of decline right now. That doesn't upset us. We were upset because we're watching the major hardware players actively try to kill it. Jason (59:37.198) I just want to clarify for people listening that I believe what you mean is the PC building experiences on the decline, right? Because PC gaming isn't. Ed Crisler (59:47.128) PC gaming experience, because remember if you can't build PCs, how are you going to game on them? You're going to have to buy them from pre-made, but those are on decline because it's impossible for us to get parts. It's, I'm not saying they actively want to kill gaming, but their actions are doing it. When you see major Ram manufacturers say, forget the consumer, we want the AI market. Jason (01:00:14.888) For data centers that aren't even built yet. Yeah. Right? God. Ed Crisler (01:00:18.624) It's, this is, this is the frustration that gamers feel and you need to acknowledge that because a lot of these companies only exist today because of gaming. There you go. Jason (01:00:30.604) Yeah. I was, I was stunned when Crucial just exited the consumer market. Could not believe that was happening. Like what timeline are we on? Like Nvidia consumer GPUs. Isn't that just a small, hasn't it always been a small fraction of their business? Not always, but within the last decade, hasn't that always been a much smaller? Ed Crisler (01:00:36.162) That was crazy to me. Ed Crisler (01:00:49.592) Well, Ed Crisler (01:00:53.974) In the last seven, five to seven years, it's probably been to the point that they could have let it go and not hurt themselves financially. Jason (01:01:03.648) Interesting. That's kind of what I suspected. I just didn't have any proof of, know, Ed Crisler (01:01:08.846) Well, I don't have any proof. just, look at the numbers. I look at what their monetary reports are showing. It's, it's, it's a tiny fraction of what Nvidia is capable of. and Jensen's been saying for a long time, they're a software company, not a hardware company. There had already begun to be a move. The level that they've taken it to really surprises me. What is PC gaming? $10, $12 billion a year industry, the hardware side is. I understand it's not as big as some other aspects are. That's a lot of money to kind of turn your back on. Jason (01:01:52.744) Well, five trillion dollar company, Ed. Ed Crisler (01:01:55.412) Yeah, but, still you don't, you don't turn your back on a market that that that's that big, especially since it built you. Jason (01:02:05.038) That's what, you know, okay. And this has been like, I'm gonna look, I have shown my AMD fanboy colors throughout the years. There's no questioning it. And it started when Nvidia blacklisted me when I was at Forbes for saying that the Titan Z was a ripoff. Like I think that's the word I use. It was a complete ripoff compared to whatever the AMD equivalent, I don't remember the model number. Ed Crisler (01:02:30.424) always was. Jason (01:02:31.276) But it was like the Titan was something like $2,000 where the AMD equivalent was a thousand dollars. I, the second I published that, like I never heard anything from Nvidia again. I was never offered any product. They wouldn't respond to emails. It's like a silent blacklist. Right. And at the same time, I always got the impression that Nvidia, like Nvidia doesn't care about you as a gamer, but I feel like there are large pockets within AMD that do care. You know, there are. like companies like Sapphire, genuinely, I've always had the impression they genuinely care about their community. Nvidia doesn't give a crap. And so I've always, that's the impression I've always had. I don't know if that's true. That's my, that's my POV. That's the POV. Ed Crisler (01:03:16.682) I have direct communication with a lot of people inside Nvidia. And I'd like to change that. like a lot of the people inside Nvidia. That would be something that maybe if you get Peterson to sit down and talk off the record, you could get, you could get a more inside look into. Jason (01:03:33.88) Duck I genuinely cares. Ed Crisler (01:03:36.002) The impression they've given over the years is they don't care about the community. Jason (01:03:40.288) Right, the public facing impression. That doesn't mean people inside the Ed Crisler (01:03:43.246) The has been very clear that you guys are just here because we allow you the pleasure of our existence. I feel like corporate America in general too often focuses, it's back to bigger number better, bigger stock share better, bigger stock price better. The entire industry to a small extent. has moved away from what do we do for the industry to what does the industry do for us. Jason (01:04:21.72) meant to ask you this earlier, but in the communities, in the, Sapphire communities that you've built and that you engage in, have you noticed an uptick of people asking you, Hey, Ed, you know, what do you think about Linux? Like, should I switch to Linux or have you had any questions like that? Ed Crisler (01:04:39.202) Well, we actually have an active Linux, channel in our discord. Cool. And so we discuss, I put it there just because of my adventure. I'd like the channel to be a lot more active, but in the grand scheme of things, we're a small player in all of this. I did myself and a few others went to AMD and begged them for a Linux channel in their discord and got it. so we're seeing active discussion. Jason (01:04:44.355) That's Jason (01:05:02.627) Ed Crisler (01:05:07.564) The number I brought up internally at Sapphire that I think is important. I did a couple of polling. Now I can't get a big enough sample size to be meaningful on this. Okay. But the polling was how many of you have switched to Linux? How many of you are considering to switch to Linux? How many of you are not? Well, the number that switched was like 20%, but I take that number with a grain of salt. Jason (01:05:18.455) Yeah, that's fair. Ed Crisler (01:05:33.698) Because Linux users will flock to a poll like that. So it becomes artificially inflated. I take that number with a grain of salt, but the thinking about switching to Linux to me was the much more important number because it was like 45%. Okay. That's a big jump. You're only going to get about half of that to actually try. And you're only going to end up with about half of that. That's going to actually stay. Jason (01:05:48.942) Yeah. Jason (01:06:01.034) Sick. Yeah, yeah. Ed Crisler (01:06:02.584) But still that's a, that's a reasonable number. And as you said, we're looking at the hockey stick. Okay. Linux is I'm thinking when you see the steam survey hit five to 6 % Linux, that's when you're going to see critical mass. Jason (01:06:22.286) I think it's going to happen by the end of this year. Ed Crisler (01:06:24.704) It's possible if, if Microsoft doesn't get its act together, I believe it will happen. Microsoft would really get its act together and clean up the OS and, and, and simplify things back down. Like we've discussed, I really think they could stall off Linux. Jason (01:06:33.272) Yeah. Jason (01:06:45.826) Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I think, you know, what your, your survey results, although it's not a huge sample size, I feel like it is kind of representative of the, of the, like the general mindset right now. Let's just say in the last year, and I've never seen this before when in Linux coverage, you have major outlets like the verge, hyping up Linux. have major mainstream YouTubers like Dave 2D, like, like PewDiePie. like Linus Tech Tips talking up all the good things about Linux. That's not something that's happened before. And there's a real, that's why I think we're kind of at that hockey stick. Ed Crisler (01:07:26.104) Here's the one problem with all those examples. Where are they at today? They haven't talked it up since. Jays two cents talked about Linux gaming, how cool. Jason (01:07:38.104) He didn't have a best experience but... Ed Crisler (01:07:40.936) followed up. Jason (01:07:42.966) So do you think it's just clickbait? Well, that's harsh, but... Ed Crisler (01:07:49.534) I think that there is not a genuine push on many of their cases to actually make the move. They see it being talked about. They look at it. They think it's really cool. And then they ignore it and move on. Now, when you show me one of those major people that says, Hey, I've been driving nothing but Linux on my personal rig for the last six months. Jason (01:08:12.742) That's PewDiePie though, PewDiePie with like 10 plus million. Yeah, yeah, he really went down that rabbit hole and... and... He... Man! Ed Crisler (01:08:15.766) I'll give PewDiePie. Hardcore. went. Yeah, no, I'm not even going down that rabbit hole. But when you look at the, the people like a hardware and boxed or, or J's two cents or gamers nexus or minus or hardware Canucks, or you look at all these websites, when you see one of them. start talking about, we've made the move to Linux. We're going to go for Linux for gaming. We're done. That's when you're going to see something really happen. Publishing an article that this is viable. This is cool. Those are great articles. Jason (01:08:53.645) You know what I think? I have a theory on this as someone who's done technical marketing at Radeon and someone who's done like benchmarking. I think that once automated solutions present themselves or are built that they will switch. Yeah, so Steve at the Gamers Nexus worked with Wendel to come up with kind of a benchmarking environment, but like they were very transparent about it said this is an awful lot of work compared to what we do on Windows because it's all automated. Ed Crisler (01:09:21.675) I'm not talking about the benchmarking environment that that. Jason (01:09:24.414) You're saying like, I'm personally, like, these hosts go, I'm personally using Linux now. Actually. Okay. Ed Crisler (01:09:30.184) Using it. A lot of the people that follow these guys, when they say it's what they use in their personal system, a thousand people go out and get it. Jason (01:09:41.58) this one thing to do a you know one a one-off video about it. Ed Crisler (01:09:45.582) A one off is a good informative video. It's useful. It has purpose. It has meaning. And for the loose community, it's important. I'm just saying that if you really want that impact from those channels, that's the one thing that's missing. Jason (01:10:01.902) Because people who are in influencer roles like that, people are not subscribing to what they talk about. They're subscribing to who they are. You know what I'm saying? Ed Crisler (01:10:11.554) A lot of times. There is a level of cult of personality. Jason (01:10:16.748) When there's not, when it's not do as I say, not as I do, when it's actually do as I do, then yeah, I hear what you're saying. Ed Crisler (01:10:26.155) And I mean, there's something wrong with it. A channel like yours is amazing, but a channel like yours saying Linux is awesome. Jason (01:10:34.19) It's expected. Yeah. Ed Crisler (01:10:36.45) That's like me saying, Sapphire makes awesome graphics cards. You expect me to say that. Jason (01:10:42.391) But there is data to back it up on book Ed Crisler (01:10:44.59) My point is if you, if you want to get this growth kickstarted, that's the kickstart it needs. PewDiePie probably accounted for a million Linux users by himself. Jason (01:10:49.101) It's Jason (01:11:01.666) kind of compliment what you're saying. think the other thing that is required to kickstart Linux, more Linux adoption is selling PCs with Linux on it. know, laptops, mainstream PCs. if Zotac or, or Origin or Alienware came along and they're like, Hey, we're offering a Bazite option in our install, our, in our configurator, right? That's huge. think that's huge. mean, Dell does it. with certain laptops, they don't really promote it. You know, it's not for gamers. Ed Crisler (01:11:35.118) Just give me the choice, be a major manufacturer of computers and say, here's your option. Jason (01:11:41.1) I guess that means they also have to support that OS then, right? Maybe that's why it doesn't happen is because they have. Ed Crisler (01:11:48.92) know what, how hard is it to support Linux? I mean, if you're, if, if you're selling it and you're making clear that there's a level of using your own risk with certain factors of it exists in windows too. Okay. Call up Dell, tell them you did a registry hack and watch them hang up on you. Jason (01:11:52.216) I don't know. Jason (01:12:13.55) Actually, right, right, right. Ed Crisler (01:12:16.898) The thing is to remember when you buy hardware like that, the support really, you should be getting is on the hardware. Jason (01:12:23.608) then what do you think is stopping all of these like these boutique PC companies from just offering Linux? Why don't they at this point? Because there is some momentum happening like with Bazite and Casio as a... Ed Crisler (01:12:36.48) You're back to the comfortable shoe theory. I'm sorry. The analogy might break down for some people, but that's really the way the choice feels right now. Linux is good. It does what we need it to do. That's awesome. Windows is comfortable, familiar, and has a massive compatibility bonus. Windows also comes with a ton of baggage. Linux has less. How do you choose? You choose what's comfortable for you. Jason (01:13:06.582) Well, yeah, I guess it just, most people don't choose, right? Most people buy a PC. has windows. don't choose. just default. know, there's not a lot of people who want to install a new operating system that they're not familiar with. that's, that's real, but if those things, if those same people had to install windows from scratch, my God. Ed Crisler (01:13:13.582) They don't Ed Crisler (01:13:23.726) to install an operating system. Ed Crisler (01:13:30.926) If you shut them down. Jason (01:13:34.564) That's just that's a horror show now, okay Ed Crisler (01:13:37.194) If you set down the average user and set them in front of them, by the way, I just did the pop OS install. So I'll use that as an example. I'm down, you set them down and you give them windows 11 home and pop OS and tell them to do the install. If they don't choose pop OS every time after using both, they're masochists. Okay. It is night and day different at how simple. Jason (01:13:45.142) Okay, I'll use Windows. Ed Crisler (01:14:06.912) a Linux install is. And you know what? There's even unseen advantages. People don't realize with clinics. found, I had this hit me the other day. I've got my Plex server stored on my wife's computer. Jason (01:14:20.19) you flex too. Very cool. I've got mine on a TrueNAS system. Ed Crisler (01:14:24.078) Well, mine's on a computer in windows, that's because Plex server and Linux is a bit of a finicky mess. So I told it is. Jason (01:14:31.724) not. I will change your mind. I will change your mind. Ed, I've been using it. I've been using it for four years without a single. I can tell you, I have, I have personal experience on actually migrating it the same server environment with all the metadata and everything from windows to Linux. I can help you out with that. it. Ed Crisler (01:14:37.582) Well, you and they talked it. So anyway. Ed Crisler (01:14:50.616) Anyway, though, I wanted to back up the, the movie folder. so I hooked up my USB, drive. I started the backup and this is going to be like five hours. Okay. And I know what's going to be. That's okay. So I back it up and I get it going. I go make some lunch and I'm doing some other stuff in my old man brain. I forgot that I was in the middle of that backup. So I opened up no man's sky and started playing. And I just played, I just enjoyed it. had a good time and all of a sudden I get a pop up in the bottom. says your backup has your file copy has completed and blah, blah, blah. Wait a minute. What it was doing that the whole time. So I had to know I went to the window system out there and this is on wireless for hers, by the way. So, I hooked up the same drive. Jason (01:15:44.949) okay. Ed Crisler (01:15:49.75) I hooked it up to the USB port. started the download and then I opened no man's sky. It was a chuggy. Jason (01:15:57.443) This! Ed Crisler (01:16:00.384) In Windows, was a mess in Linux. didn't care. Jason (01:16:05.826) Yeah, I'm not surprised. It just kept I'm not surprised. Ed Crisler (01:16:08.974) Um, that was a really impressive little trick to me. it, it, little things like that are what's really keeping me here. Jason (01:16:19.926) Yeah, that's, that's awesome to hear. It's the experience. It's just smoother. It's less intrusive. It's less intrusive too. Well, this has been a really awesome, enlightening. Ed Crisler (01:16:22.433) If. And like I said, Ed Crisler (01:16:32.958) Well, did you have fun? I enjoyed talking to you. Jason (01:16:35.15) It's nice to hear some fresh perspectives, right? Cause I didn't come from using Windows just three months ago and switching to Linux. You know, I haven't, I haven't used Windows actively in years unless I'm benchmarking something. Unless I'm doing a Windows versus Linux type of, you know, type of benchmark, which I do a lot. And it's never a good time on the Windows side. It's never a good time. Ed Crisler (01:16:59.985) My advice to you is stop comparing it to Windows for performance. Compare it for feature set, compare it for desktop productivity, compare it for stability. These are the things that at the end of the day are more important to most people. Jason (01:17:14.316) Well, but I do think that when you're talking to gamers and you show them like that side by side and you say, know, look, these are pretty similar, but look at how the windows experiences. Ed Crisler (01:17:23.437) These numbers Ed Crisler (01:17:27.768) think you have to ignore it. I think though that it can't be the focus. Jason (01:17:32.6) You're right. You're right. mean, I think, I think the myths need to be dispelled. The myths of like, it's hard to install. There's no driver support. You have to use a command line for everything. all of it. There's no apps like there, are mostly like you there's native discord. There's native Spotify. There's there's teams. There's, know, there's so much stuff. Ed Crisler (01:17:45.698) Yeah, that's the one I have. Ed Crisler (01:17:56.206) Well, I know I don't, silly as it sounds, I don't use teams with the native app. I use the, uh, the browser WPA or PWA again, uh, to do that. And I found that it, it worked better. It had better control. Jason (01:18:08.686) much better choice. Jason (01:18:12.654) And have you one last question have you Any of the games that you personally play has it been an obstacle getting any of those to run on Linux for you? Ed Crisler (01:18:21.646) Only one. the only game I have had trouble with is a very old game called demigod. Was it DOS? no, no, it's Windows. It was actually one of the first ever MOBAs to be created. Stardoc, was the company that made it. It's an amazing game. It's just so much fun. It will not run in Linux. Jason (01:18:40.567) doc. Jason (01:18:48.32) It's called Demigod? Ed Crisler (01:18:49.91) We got D-E-M-I-G-O-D. Jason (01:18:52.654) ProtonDB says it might. Ed Crisler (01:18:56.234) It does it. But that's not I tried. Jason (01:18:59.02) Yeah, it's rated silver and there's, it looks like there's a lot of people saying it works and a lot of people saying it doesn't work, is also genuinely one of the problems with Linux gaming is there's so many different variables that can affect, is it going to run or is it not? Ed Crisler (01:19:07.069) for about an hour. Ed Crisler (01:19:19.758) about an hour, couldn't get it to work. And I just said, Hey, you know what? I haven't played it in a while anyway. Jason (01:19:25.432) Ha, that's a bummer. Ed Crisler (01:19:27.532) That's okay. It's an older game. I've moved most of my time right now is well, no man's sky quite a bit. I, no man's sky to me is very relaxing. Going out and exploring the universe for summer is just very relaxing. I've been playing that, I've been playing starfield lately. it, it's, it's still a little empty, but the game's not terrible. It's just really sad because. Bethesda could have had an amazing winner of a game there and they just kind of. Jason (01:19:59.138) Yeah, they got a lot of hate when that game launched. Ed Crisler (01:20:02.238) Yeah, they haven't done much to really bring it back up. Then Space Marines 2, Helldivers 2. Jason (01:20:10.926) Yeah, it's a blast. Raiders is a blast. Space Marine 2 is, Man, that's a demanding game. Yeah. Ed Crisler (01:20:13.154) Road Traitor Ed Crisler (01:20:19.33) I love that guy. I actually prefer it to hell divers. Jason (01:20:24.768) Yeah, it's, well, yeah, different experience, but. Ed Crisler (01:20:29.132) Yeah, well, it's a different, it's it's a different approach to the same concept. Jason (01:20:32.492) how heavy Space Marines 2 feels. it just, there's like this weight to the characters and the weaponry, kind of like Gears of War, there's this weight to it. Ed Crisler (01:20:42.743) and then I've been playing a Mac war five cleanse. Jason (01:20:46.355) Damn. I haven't heard mechware in a long time. Jeez. Ed Crisler (01:20:52.242) So I play a lot of different games. try a lot of different games. Some I keep some I don't. I'm excited about, I don't know if you saw owl cats making, RPG for the expanse. Jason (01:21:08.046) yes. Yes. I'm hearing about that. I don't know how soon it's happening. Ed Crisler (01:21:13.55) That's the, that's the argument I've been actually having with the devs on Twitter because they'll post all this stuff about we're going to do this. We're going do this. said, give me a fricking launch window. Tell me when you expect a lot. They've got pre-order sales up to pre-order. Give me a launch window. Jason (01:21:28.17) I- I am, I was not am I guess, but I was obsessed with the Expanse. I read all the books and then I loved every single minute of the, of the show. And yeah, I'm just waiting for, just waiting for more Expanse stuff now. Ed Crisler (01:21:36.887) Yes. Ed Crisler (01:21:41.464) TV show was fantastic. Ed Crisler (01:21:47.458) The only, the only better TV show to me was Babylon 5. Jason (01:21:53.944) I thought you were going to say Battlesar Galactica. Ed Crisler (01:21:56.702) No, you know what? The new battle star Galactica wasn't bad. I think it leaned into romances a bit too much. it, I'm a sci-fi buff. mean, I'm all excited. got hail Mary's coming up next month. Jason (01:22:12.492) Yeah, I- Damn it, I need- I have that book and I need to read it before the movie because I al- I always try to read the book before the- Ed Crisler (01:22:16.142) The book is rolling. Another book series to try if you want good sci-fi is the Rama series by Arthur C. Clark. Jason (01:22:27.764) Arthur's- okay, I know that, I know that. Ed Crisler (01:22:29.902) It is less science fiction than a delve in the duality of humanity, but it does it in a science fiction setting in six books. Jason (01:22:42.126) All right, I'll throw a recommendation back at you. Children of Time. Pardon? The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Ed Crisler (01:22:49.912) That's actually my read list. Jason (01:22:51.414) Yes, it's so good.