23 ms·

Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

832 points by haunter 1y ago

haunter 1y ago
27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.
- tredre3 1y ago
  > 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been sold by the third anniversary of the device in February 2025. 27% of 4M gives us 1M Steam Deck + Legion users. Yet 4M were sold. That begs the question: How could it be? Do 75% of Steam Deck users run Windows? Have 75% of Steam Decks ended up in the landfill? Are the sale figures estimates wildly off-base?
  - netule 1y ago
    They likely stopped using them altogether.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kudos 1y ago
    Isn't the more obvious answer that the market research firm got their number wrong?
  - niij 1y ago
    #1 Is MAU. I wouldn't find it out of the realm of possibility that only 25% of owners played in the prior month. I wonder what this is for other consoles. I personally contribute to bursts of playing then months of not even touching some of my consoles.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Alternative options: - International Data Corporation is overestimating the amount of shipped Steam Decks. - Modified Steam Decks (i.e. running Bazzite) don't report themselves to be Steam Decks - Most likely: most Steam Deck users opt out of participating in the Steam Hardware survey/analytics. Last year, I didn't participate in the Steam Hardware survey on my Deck, only on my PC. This year, I participated on my Deck and my desktop, but not my laptop. I still have three devices running Steam. To any survey, it'll look like the amount of Steam devices doubled even though I'm only reporting 67% of my devices to analytics.
    - brianwawok 1y ago
      I’m Linux gaming bazzite on my tower. Sees at least as many of us as steam decks.
    - dm319 1y ago
      Another alternative - may depend on the period being measured. I haven't looked at the article or their methodology, but if they were measuring over a certain period of time, a few hours, or even 24 hours, it will still likely only pick up a proportion of Steam owners.
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      Even more likely: A sizable portion of Steam Decks sold are not played every month.
    - Jach 1y ago
      The third is close but it's even more likely that they just weren't prompted to survey at all rather than opting out. They're surveys, not automatic data harvesting, they don't represent things like Facebook's "total monthly active users". They're just a random sample of users, not a population count. Steam does sometimes report things like monthly active users in their annual reports, but haven't ever broken that down I don't think, but you can just infer it from the surveys. I also have steam on multiple devices including a steam deck. On desktop I'm pretty much always logged in and I play games frequently, but most months I'm not selected for a survey. I use my steam deck less frequently and have maybe only gotten the survey prompt on it once or twice.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    Why would it be strange that there are steam decks that sit unused ? I have a switch and a PS 5 that go untouched for months (even with a 4 year old who I occasionally let play some games). I think most people in my friend group are similar in that they have some gaming gear but rarely the time to use it. Still nice to have once you do.
    - vintermann 1y ago
      These stats are probably skewed by how much people play. Competitive FPSers and MMOers play a lot, and the genres are the least friendly to Linux for various reasons.
  - hamandcheese 1y ago
    I have a Steam Deck. Haven't booted it up in months. It convinced me that I could game on Linux, now I game on my Desktop.
    - omnimus 1y ago
      Similar thing happened to me. I borrowed steamdeck, realized that i don't like handhelds but i liked gaming on Linux. So i bought a laptop that replaced my macbook for work but it games better than steamdeck.
      - distances 1y ago
        I use my Steam Deck as a game console, connected to my beamer and with 4x PS5 controllers. Works great for that with the Steam game mode. But yes it's been a long time since I played anything on the big screen.
  - ShinTakuya 1y ago
    Or, you know, most steam deck users aren't using them constantly and so they don't get picked up in the survey.
- DanielHB 1y ago
  That is incredible! If you had asked me I would have guessed at least 80% were from Steam OS handhelds.
periodjet 1y ago
I honestly can’t believe it’s not much higher. It’s so easy these days with SteamOS and Bazzite.
- haunter 1y ago
  Look at the most played games, half of them won't work under Linux because of the online components / anti cheat system. BF6, PUBG, Rust, GTAV Online etc.
  - WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
    https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount only 6 out of the 50 most played right now aren't working 10 millions players ingame, 90% of players are not playing these titles
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      6 out of 50 is a huge number in terms of annoyance. It's the same reason alternative web browser engines like Ladybird are probably never going to take off. It might support 99.99% of web features - which sounds amazing! - but that probably means it's going to fail in some way on like 0.1% of sites which in practice is extremely frustrating.
      - efreak 1y ago
        Chrome no longer has the ability to run a number of extensions I like, and Firefox has abysmal performance at some bulk indexeddb operations. Safari isn't available outside Apple, and Opera and Microsoft are stuck following Google (along with all the other engines built on Chrome). There's no options left. I hope ladybird makes it far enough that smart people start optimizing small features that rarely get used. Do that and I think it'll be successful enough to be used as a daily browser. As much as the browser wars sucked, I can't wait for them to happen again. I'm already using 5 different browsers on mobile, since nobody wants to support containers, profiles, or organizing tabs with multiple windows.
AuthAuth 1y ago
Another Linux W, I love to see it. Thats 4 million gamer which is a sizable chunk of people to target
- keyringlight 1y ago
  It's one of those scenarios where I've felt for years that the steam survey doesn't break things down enough to be useful for anything besides the broadest generalizations. The PC gaming market is huge, but there's going to be a lot of variety and sub-groups within it and I expect few developers are trying to target 'everyone' (the opposite of targeting).
nubinetwork 1y ago
Again, I should mention that Linux users usually only see the survey once a year, if you want to get the survey once a month (like it does on windows), you have to close steam monthly and edit your config.vdf file to set the survey date to last year.
- starkrights 1y ago
  Are you saying that windows users are supposed get the steam hardware once a month? I’ve had steam installed on (and more/less used daily on) probably 4-5 different windows installs since roughly 2016, and I’ve never seen it more than once a year.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah it's definitely not monthly.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wiseowise 1y ago
Haters cheat sheet yo help you out, in case you’ve forgot your “arguments”: * SteamOS is not real Linux, because normies only interact with Steam launcher * “Only 3%?” * Windows is still the biggest platform
- bobim 1y ago
  I have a coworker who usually say that billions of flies can't be wrong. Maybe we should just start eating what they eat.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    I've been saying it for years. Windows are for bugs.
- ErroneousBosh 1y ago
  > * SteamOS is not real Linux, because normies only interact with Steam launcher Not quite sure what your point is. Not sure you are either. > * Windows is still the biggest platform 100% of Windows users are using Linux every single day.
TACIXAT 1y ago
I just made the switch. I had been developing on Windows for the last couple of years, mostly to get used to the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to write C and C++ like I do on Linux, without an IDE and with the native toolchain (i.e. no cygwin). On top of that, I play Overwatch every night. Windows just seems to have zero focus on performance though. React based start menu with visible lag, file Explorer (buggily) parsing files to display metadata before listing them, mysterious memory leaks not reflected in task manager processes. I installed Linux Mint. While it didn't just work (TM), and I had to go into recovery mode to install Nvidia drivers, it worked well enough. I can run Overwatch via Steam and pull comparable FPS to Windows (500 FPS on a 3090 with dips into the 400s). Memory usage is stable and at a very low baseline. It is nice to come back to Linux, and with games I don't really have a need to run Windows anymore.
- SteveNuts 1y ago
  The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. I’m not naive, I know a ton of huge enterprises still run huge fleets of windows “servers” but I still find it hilarious that a supposedly serious server OS would default to showing you the weather and ads in the start menu.
  - hamandcheese 1y ago
    I curious how profitable it has been for Microsoft so far. Are they making billions and billions from these dark patterns? I feel like they'd have to be making a fortune for it to be worth throwing their brand in the gutter like they have been doing.
    - PeaceTed 1y ago
      One would assume but I do wonder how much long term damage they are doing for short term gains with this drive? I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it. At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose through quality degradation rather than Linux to openly out wit. There is still a long way to go and MS could turn their boat around but they would have to stop chasing this data scrapping scheme of theirs to begin with. But how addicted are they to that cash flow? They are probably far more interested in keep share holders happy short term than customers long term and that is not a brilliant strategy if you want to have a life time of decades.
Hasz 1y ago
Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture. If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows for modern, multiplayer games.
- happosai 1y ago
  Reliable Anticheat rootkits are just not possible on Open PC platforms. Consoles should just add proper keyboard+mouse support and competitive online players can move over...
  - TingPing 1y ago
    Consoles support kb and mouse. Most popular fps games support it.
    - yetihehe 1y ago
      Nowadays you can mix&match however you like. I have one game that is available on PS, PC and mobile. You can use keyboard, mouse and PS controllers in this game on all of the platforms and it works the same. For now, I mainly play it on linux (it's not linux native game, heh) with ps4 controller.
- encom 1y ago
  I really wish there was an (k)Ubuntu-like Linux distro - apt-based, semi-annual updates, kde default or selectable - but without all the stupid Ubuntu-isms like snap and alpha quality rust coreutils and whatnot. I run Gentoo and Debian for myself, but I'd like something normie-friendly I can put on other peoples machines and not get a ton of support questions.
  - tmtvl 1y ago
    Is SolydK not good enough? There's also Mageia if you can stomach RPM instead of Deb (I prefer RPMs, but recognize it's a matter of personal taste).
hu3 1y ago
I didn't expect Linux to be above macOS despite Wine's awesomeness. - Windows 94.84% - Linux 3.05% - macOS 2.11%
- nurettin 1y ago
  There is wide spread disrespect against people who play games on mac. It is a running meme.
- anothernewdude 1y ago
  So few games support macOS that it is a real pain to find games to play on it.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    If you have a MacOS ARM system, than emulating old slow games can work: https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases For some, it is the only real legal option given windows 11 licensing. Apple M3/M4 are a great chip, but they EOL the hardware ecosystem every 12 years on average. Few companies can tolerate that level of development liability, and Apple users benefit from the FOSS ecosystems cross-platform efforts. =3
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Wonder what will happen with that percentage once they sunset Rosetta. I think steam has a native client, but the Mac support for most/all games is x86 based AFAIK.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    Rosetta is supposed to stock around for game compatibility only.
- fainpul 1y ago
  macOS is by far the worst gaming platform. I think most macOS users are fully aware of that.
p1necone 1y ago
I made the switch more than a year ago and it's been basically problem free. Almost all modern games work flawlessly through proton and I get better compatibility for really old stuff through lutris than I ever did on windows (I used to have to run a win 3.1/95/98 vm to play certain older games, now I just use lutris/wine). The only stuff that doesn't work is multiplayer games with unsupported anticheat - it's always a crapshoot when something new and multiplayer launches. My backup plan for those if I really want to play them is to just get them on PS5.
- john01dav 1y ago
  There's no game that I want to play badly enough to put up with DRM on consoles or rootkits (anti-chest) and DRM (windows) on my computer
- PeaceTed 1y ago
  The other day I tried Midtown madness, something that has become a bit of an issue to run on Windows. It took less than a minute to install and booted first time via Wine. It is amazing seeing just how well it works and feels almost like a native binary.
- twic 1y ago
  The majority of popular PvP shooters use anti-cheat which does not work on Proton, so "almost all modern games" seems like overselling it to me. But the stuff that does work, works well. I play Helldivers 2 via Proton on Fedora, and i experience far fewer crashes and instances of weird behaviour than friends on Windows or Xbox.
  - newdee 1y ago
    ARC Raiders is currently all working perfectly for me. Such a blessing. I hope it stays this way.
- tombert 1y ago
  This has been my experience as well. I don't play a ton of modern games, but my wife and I played through the HD remakes of Myst and Riven, released in 2021 and 2024 respectively. I didn't even look at the Proton compatibility before buying the games because for single-player stuff then Proton has gotten so good that I almost never have to worry about it. I don't really play multiplayer games (outside of the original Doom or Minecraft with a friend or my wife, both of which have native Linux clients), so there hasn't ever been an issue for me. My gaming box is a NixOS JovianOS thing, and I even get very good results using the official Microsoft adapter for Xbox One controllers. I really feel no desire to go back to Windows at this point.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
I am considering making the switch to Linux for my software + data science (primary) and gaming (secondary) setup. I use a LG OLED TV as screen, so no displayport inputs. Only HDMI 2.1. How is the support for Linux + HDR + HDMI 2.1 + 120 Hz + VRR + Nvidia (5000 series)?
- andoando 1y ago
  Thats my exact setup and Ive had no issues so far. Running Arc Raiders on PopOS, Nvidia 5070ti highest settings on 120hz monitor with 120-200 fps. Can always dual boot, so its worth a shot. I have windows just for a few games like BF6 which wont work on linux cause of its anticheat
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    It is shocking how well Arc Raiders handles ray tracing on Linux. I have a locked 60fps at 1440p on my 3070Ti, and tons of GPU headroom to spare. These Embark people... they scare me.
    - ThatPlayer 1y ago
      I think the issue is more about how other games handle ray tracing. For games that just treat ray tracing as an "ultra quality" setting, there's no point of making a low quality ray tracing option, because then you'd just turn it off when non-RT options look just as good. But Arc Raiders (and their previous game, The Finals) does use RTGI for good effects. And that low quality RT setting is still going to be better than no RT because of its realtime nature. https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y shows that off to good effect. You can see this kinda performance on Indiana Jones and Doom Dark Ages, which have switched to workflows that require RT. Low quality RT in these games is performant enough to run on Linux AMD drivers which run RT in software on cards that do not have hardware for it: https://youtu.be/44XaGU01J84 https://youtu.be/44XaGU01J84
  - breakpointalpha 1y ago
    Interesting, I'm running Pop_OS! as well with a 4070 RTX MSI laptop. Can't get Arc Raiders to load, just freezes 15-30 seconds into the launch process no matter what Proton compatibility I choose.
marginalia_nu 1y ago
It's weird how Steam doesn't automatically set the toggle that lets you play most Windows games through Proton instead of having that be an opt-in you need to know about. It really is extremely stable and polished these days.
- davet91 1y ago
  They do now: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/steam-update-brings-accessibility-settings-and-proton-enabled-by-default-to-make-linux-gaming-simpler/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/steam-update-brings-ac...
- Rohansi 1y ago
  I've only ever needed to enable Proton for non-Steam games. Are there Steam games that don't have Proton enabled and need it to be manually enabled by the user? (I've only used it on the Steam Deck)
  - debugnik 1y ago
    It already was the default for SteamOS, but not for overall Linux until recently, I believe.
  - ivanjermakov 1y ago
    I start non-Steam games with Wine and they run just as good. https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&iId=2&sAction=view&sTitle=Browse+Applications https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&i...
    - Rohansi 1y ago
      Proton is based on Wine so that's not surprising. If you're already using Steam you might as well use Proton, though.
  - Jach 1y ago
    Sometimes also a game will have a native linux binary but the Windows version with Proton works better (or at all) anyway...
justchill 1y ago
For me I have been enjoying bazzite os
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  It’s fantastic! Truly enjoy using my machine now.
- 4ggr0 1y ago
  +1, now using Bazzite as my main OS in general and for gaming, and only use the dualbooted Windows on a separate SSD when I have to play a game which contains a rootkit. There've been two of those, and I can live without them. Rotate games quite frequently, mostly just works. I think if you like checking it out and customizing the settings of your OS, then try it out! Or at least look up the games you care about on ProtonDB. Even encrypted the Bazzite SSD just out of paranoia caused by Windows. Even partner-proof so far. Only ever used Nvidia so far, probably going to switch to AMD in 1-2 years, as I hear that they're better on Linux.
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    I discovered that you can actually encrypt the home directory on SteamOS as well, its a kind of ultra beta feature but it actually seems to work fairly reliably aside from requiring you to set it up via SSH from another computer https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/dirlock/-/wikis/Enabling-disk-encryption-on-the-Steam-Deck https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/dirlock/-/wikis/Enabling-d...
    - 4ggr0 1y ago
      If I could install SteamOS on my PC I'd do it!
      - Gigachad 1y ago
        Bazzite basically is SteamOS for desktop. I’ve got a steam deck and PC with Bazzite and I probably couldn’t tell you which is which if you just showed me a TV with one of them running.
swilliamsio 1y ago
Made the switch to Mint recently. Steam says that of 750 games on my account, 748 can run on Linux, and I've had no problems with the dozen or so I've played lately.
- kurtoid 1y ago
  > 748 can run on Steam Assuming you mean on Linux?
  - mikkupikku 1y ago
    Probably meant "SteamOS" e.g. Linux.
  - swilliamsio 1y ago
    Yes, my bad. Fixed.
mirpa 1y ago
I started using Proton recently and it is quite impressive. Some games have native support, some use Vulkan, others want to run on SteamDeck. I haven't booted Win 11 in more than a month. Not having to dual boot any time I want to switch work/fun is great - even if reboot doesn't take that long these days. I tend to play older, single player games, not everything is perfect, but I like it much more than being frustrated by Windows - using Fedora btw.
xrd 1y ago
I was really proud that my kids (8,10,12) all have used linux for gaming for the last several years. Steam runs perfectly for most games. And, they know how to to use "flatpak update" to update the sober runtime for Roblox (I know this is not steam, but it is an example of how well other things run on linux). I'm so proud (and ashamed they play Roblox, but choose your battles). But, Fortnite. I tried to run a Windows VM, but that was a poor substitute. Is there an option for Fortnite on Linux?
- gausswho 1y ago
  Fortnite might be a battle worth choosing. I wouldn't want to carve my children's gray matter into grooves of cosmetic microtransactions of psychological warfare.
  - xrd 1y ago
    I actually totally agree. This was because a friend who lives a thousand miles away also plays it (and his parents have different views on what Fortnite means). I'm sure gaming companies optimize for peer pressure effects, because that's so powerful.
  - 71bw 1y ago
    ...and yet they play ROBLOX, which is undoubtedly 100x worse.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  The problem is DRM, so there is no good answer.
  - cheschire 1y ago
    The problem is anti-cheat, not DRM.
    - TheCoelacanth 1y ago
      Anti-cheat is effectively the same thing as DRM. Both are just ways for the software publisher to override the user's control of their machine.
elashri 1y ago
Does this over count because I think good chunk of Linux people (including me) have dedicated windows or maybe old windows machine where they play some of the games that are unplayable on linux. Also double boot is something that would be common in situations like that. In such case, I think this should be higher a little bit. Or Am I missing something?
- LelouBil 1y ago
  I don't think this should over count because the steam hardware survey is done once per account each time. It just depends if you're booted into windows or into linux when you have the survey popup.
- ozgrakkurt 1y ago
  It is an indicator but far from real imo. Percentage of users that participate in the survey could be different across different OS too.
shmerl 1y ago
Nice! Meanwhile Wine fixed 32-bit OpenGL path performance problem in new wow64 mode, so now you don't need 32-bit Linux dependencies to run 32-bit games in Wine anymore (that affects DX7 games for example that run through OpenGL via WineD3D).
kloud 1y ago
That linear trend line does not seem to fit very well, I say we are looking at the beginning of a hockey stick :) Stopped dual-booting for games and formatted the partition some time after Windows 7 EOL. Thank you Wine contributors, Valve and lord Gaben.
modeless 1y ago
Whoa, I thought Ubuntu was the most popular distribution. Arch and even Linux Mint are beating it?
- ShinTakuya 1y ago
  The average Linux gamer is likely to have a very different setup to the average Linux user in general. It's a subset of a subset.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- currymj 1y ago
  Steam Deck is Arch-based, that's most likely why.
  - modeless 1y ago
    SteamOS is counted separately.
    - cwbriscoe 1y ago
      Yes, but a lot of linux games use an Arch distribution such as CachyOS since SteamOS also is. They get updates faster because of the rolling releases.
- machomaster 1y ago
  I wonder how much Omarchy (based on Arch) made a dent... DHH said that it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    The hard part is never installing an Arch-like distro, it's making it past 5 sudo pacman -syu iterations without an AUR package going thermonuclear and requiring 45,000 pinned dependencies.
rufugee 1y ago
I only wish Fortnite were possible. that’s the only thing I keep windows around for.
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  Sweeney said Linux is cancer when they stopped Linux support for Rocket league, so probably unlikely.
  - zamalek 1y ago
    He said that the market share wasn't worth it. Yet they support MacOS (which has had a lower market share compared to Linux in this segment for a while).
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
kittikitti 1y ago
2026 WILL BE THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
wtcactus 1y ago
About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and get solely disappointed and return to windows. Most of the Linux hurdles in day to day work can be overcome (mostly is the lack of the apps I normally use that cause some attrition, but with some compromises and some work I can get around it). But for gaming (at least in NVIDIA GPUs) it keeps failing. I have very limited time for gaming (around 2-4h per week), I don't want to keep having to eternally fiddle with game settings, fixing bugs, fixing launchers, try different Proton versions, etc, etc, etc, every time I sit down for a bit of gaming. And Linux, unfortunately, is just not really there.
- ewuhic 1y ago
  Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS, so you 1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS; 2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again; 3) have best-in-class community support; 4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages out there among all the distros. Hope I did well on selling NixOS to you.
  - Havoc 1y ago
    Link looks dead?
    - ewuhic 1y ago
      Remove trailing `;`
  - wtcactus 1y ago
    I just don't have time for that. I use Ubuntu (headless for work), I don't have the time to spend configuring yet another system. I'm willing to try stuff like Bazzite since it - supposedly - comes all pre-configured. But I'm not going down yet another rabbit hole with a totally new OS just for gaming... I just don't have time for that. It's just much easier to install Windows 11.
dingi 1y ago
That's awesome! I've come to take "the year of the Linux desktop" as a prophecy of sorts. It might take another 20 years, or desktops might vanish, but it is going to happen. Slow and steady wins the race. Best regards from a decade-plus Linux full-timer!
xcircle 1y ago
This weekend I finally freed my pc from Windows10 and installed cachyOS. It all worked better and easier than expected.
k__ 1y ago
I'm using Steam on Arch and am very happy with it. The recurring compilation of Vulcan shaders after every update bothers a bit, but it works very well.
forrestthewoods 1y ago
As a Steam game developer I don’t think I can ever forgive Linux for being 1% of our players but 50% of our support tickets. I probably shouldn’t hold a grudge, but I do! I suppose it’s probably better in 2025 now that the best API for Linux gaming is Win32. Proton is genuinely spectacular. I love my Steamdeck. SteamOS is great. Supporting one distro is easy. It’s supporting a million unique permutations that is pure nightmare fuel.
- lokeg 1y ago
  There is a somewhat famous post about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... Essentially stating that Linux users disproportionately care to actually report bugs they encounter rather than ignoring them. I find that very plausible.
  - forrestthewoods 1y ago
    > Essentially stating that Linux users disproportionately care to actually report bugs they encounter rather than ignoring them. I find that very plausible. In my lived experience, this 100% pure unadultered copium. It’s the wishful thinking lie that Linux people tell themselves to support their preferred choice of OS software which is, for some reason, part of their identity. Supporting “Linux” isn’t too bad in 2025 if all you care about is SteamOS and Ubuntu. But distributing pre-compiled binaries and getting them to run on an unbounded range of system configurations is a nightmare. Linux users do at least expect to run into problems. So they’re willing to fight through errors for several hours before asking for help. And the Linux gamer community is willing to help each other out to jump through all these hoops. But none of that changes the fact that supporting Linux is an additional mountain of work. Although in 2025 you should definitely support SteamDeck via either Proton or native.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      At this point I think it's reasonable for game devs to just target SteamOS. Other distros can adapt as needed.
andreldm 1y ago
After many years playing on Linux, first struggling with Wine then with Proton when it came out, had to install Windows on my gaming pc. I mostly play Overwatch 2 with friends on my very short free time, thanks to a Steam bug (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1028...), on every single evening I had to wait forever (seriously, 15+ min) for shaders to compile or start the game immediately but suffer on every match beginning (different map) with stuttering. That’s a deal breaker for me, I tried a fresh Bazzite install (from Arch) before giving up, exact same issue. I wish Valve comes around one day and fixes that, I’ll kick Windows out of life in a heartbeat.
- bblacher 1y ago
  How old is your GPU/does it/the driver support async shader compilation? I've turned off shader pre-comp like two years ago because of this bug, never had any problems/lags with any games.
  - andreldm 1y ago
    RTX 3060 mobile, nvidia blobs, default settings from the distro. Indeed, I disabled the shader cache at some point, for most single player games it was a good workaround, that was not the case for OW2 for some reason.
- aos 1y ago
  I play OW2 on Linux with Steam + Proton and I was having this issue a while back but somehow fixed it. I think it was by increasing the shader cache size! Happy to find the exact instructions that I did to fix it once I’m back on that PC.
lwansbrough 1y ago
Biggest hurdle for me to do this is just multiplayer games. I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though. Contrary to most Linux advocates I’m a big believer in giving studios the tools they need to defeat cheaters and I don’t care much about system integrity if it means fairer games.
- broodbucket 1y ago
  The anticheats themselves typically do support Linux, it's the devs that don't choose to use them
  - lwansbrough 1y ago
    Well EAC for example is user space only because it has to be, which some games decide is not an acceptable level of security.
  - ThatPlayer 1y ago
    Those are generally not the same anticheats with the same levels of functionality. As an analogy it's like saying Excel supports iPad. Or a gaming example that used to be way more common: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is supported on Game Boy Advance. It's a game and it is Tony Hawk, but it's not really comparable as Tony Hawk on PS1.
- chrneu 1y ago
  they have the tools they need to defeat cheaters, they just choose to go about it in very invasive and lazy ways because people still buy their product. then people complain when the product sucks and is invasive.
  - mvdtnz 1y ago
    This is just factually incorrect.
- ajvs 1y ago
  The anti-cheat creators other than Valve aren't bothered to invest into making a Linux kernel anti-cheat, and most Linux users would be unwilling to allow one to be installed either.
cvoss 1y ago
It is always with great fear and trepidation that I install the drivers for my discrete GPU on my Ubuntu system and configure the system to use it. The state of affairs might be better these days, but I remember it rarely working and having a high likelihood of horribly breaking the configuration, and trying to rectify it in the terminal while frantically searching forums on my phone.
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  I never update ANYTHING on my Linux system without a very good reason. The strike rate of updates causing damage to my system and costing me hours of debugging is not worth it.
endgame 1y ago
There have been a few mentions in this thread of portable gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. Has anyone here tried using them as a primary machine? I've been thinking that since I travel with a portable keyboard and mouse anyway, maybe one of those machines might not be too bad for actual work?
fastily 1y ago
I’m using steam on Ubuntu 24.04 with 9y old hardware (which was mid-tier when new), playing mostly 2d platformer games and older resident evil titles. Never had any issues, this setup runs like a champ
throw2312321 1y ago
I am a big fan of gaming on Linux, but I've been running into weird bugs with some of my favorite games. For example, a couple months ago, my install of TW:WH3 started to crash after 20-30 seconds in the main game. I think it started happening after a minor patch. Another example is Battle Brothers. The game ran flawlessly. Then I installed and played a copy on a Windows laptop using the same Steam account. After that the game stopped booting properly on Linux. (Maybe a coincidence.) As a result, I still boot into Windows now and again to play these games. I am dual-booting.
- dralley 1y ago
  The frustrating thing is that it's very difficult to figure out why a game is crashing unless you run Steam from a terminal. The logs are hard to find otherwise - at least if you're using the Flatpak version of Steam.
jjcm 1y ago
IMO the biggest barrier to linux is disappearing - the requirement to know how to use the command line. You still have to use it, but you don't have to know how to use it anymore with the introduction of LLMs. I also have switched my primary desktop from Windows to Linux, and now when I have an issue, I just ask an LLM. I play pretty fast and loose with just chucking commands it gives me into the command line. I'm pretty well versed in linux sysadmin things, but LLMs make it so easy I don't even bother trying to solve things myself first. I have a few people in my friend group who aren't well versed, but they're able to navigate linux just fine by doing this same approach. There's still friction, don't get me wrong, but it's a different type of friction. On Windows there are far fewer bugs, but there's friction introduced due to it being non-unix based (especially when it comes to code/doing any sort of model training) and due to anti-patterns Windows keeps shipping into the OS. On linux, the friction is just bugs. You can address / fix bugs for the most part, but you can't fix Windows' friction points.
- dralley 1y ago
  You don't really have to use it. Not for most of the things that a typical desktop user would need to do. It helps though.
  - strix_varius 1y ago
    While you don't have to use it much, if you spend a year daily driving Linux, it's a near certainty that you'll have to use the command line.
    - chrneu 1y ago
      disagree. it depends heavily on what the user is doing. that's like saying if you daily drive windows it's a near certainty you'll have to edit the registry or use powershell/cmd. It's useful if you know what you're doing but it isn't required anymore at all for most people. Most people just use their machines for the browser or office software. No reason to use command line for them, ever.
jjcm 1y ago
As strange as it sounds, I think Valve is extremely well-positioned to ship what becomes one of the first true Linux desktop experiences. There's a huge demand for gaming x ai development, both of which have similar hardware requirements, and Valve is already polishing their linux experience with Steam Deck. If they launch their own desktop with a properly managed OS and hardware, I think it would legitimately become a contender among a very wide range of users.
- bogwog 1y ago
  Valve, the monopolist, should not have more control over the Linux ecosystem.
  - maples37 1y ago
    If they make their own distro, though, they're not really gaining more control. They're just enabling even more choice for someone who's looking for alternatives. Let's say, hypothetically, that Valve releases SteamOS to the general public, and it's received generally well, and it becomes much more common for people to use "that Linux thing" than it is today. Then let's say, hypothetically, that Valve turns evil and... I dunno, starts charging money for updates? At that point you've got a large population already using Linux, I'm sure there would be a pretty big migration to Ubuntu or some other mainstream Linux desktop.
  - ASalazarMX 1y ago
    Valve, the monopolist, is releasing their secret ingredient (Proton) as open source, and actively maintaining it. I can't see how that could make Valve a monopoly on Windows-on-Linux gaming, actually the opposite.
- keyringlight 1y ago
  I think that comes with risks, they will need to do a lot of work to manage expectations which is likely to be an unending uphill battle getting users to read and absorb any notice you put in front of them. If there's ever an official version of SteamOS that installs as broadly as most other linux distros along with a general/minimally trained audience, they can't do Deck certified on how well each game works on your system, and I can see challenges for "why does this game I bought on the steam store not work on my steam system?" especially if it's the hot new multiplayer game that targets windows with windows-only anticheat. PC does have a fair amount of users that want it to operate in a console-like way when it comes to usability, the moment you tell them to fiddle with a runtime or experiment with the command line variables you lose them. That's to say nothing about handling stuff that lives outside steam, because PC gaming shouldn't equal Valve. The Deck is a nice manageable subset to deal with and fairly small enthusiast audience
shevy-java 1y ago
Guys, we can do it! LET'S GO FOR BROKE!!! LET'S BREAK THE 3.5% BARRIER BEFORE GNU HURD WINS NEXT YEAR!!!!
pmarreck 1y ago
Good. Hopefully it will tip to 95% in a few years. I'm so sick and tired of the Windows dependency. Microsoft doesn't give 2 fucks about games unless they can make money off it. I have a few Steam games I can only play on Linux now, ironically.
amiga-workbench 1y ago
I've been running Fedora at home for about a decade now, and I've been doing my gaming on it for the majority of that period. I've been running Fedora at work for about 6-7 years now too, with few issues. Work binned Adobe XD and moved to Figma which has made it even more viable. The one and only holdout I keep a Windows 11 install around for is VR. With Valve's new headset due to release any week now, we will hopefully have a bunch of Linux SteamVR patches on the way to sand the remaining sharp edges off.
shaggie76 1y ago
Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Cool! I have fond memories of playing Warframe on Linux with my 1050ti ~5 years ago. Kudos to the team for keeping us in the loop, I apologize for the strange crashlogs my OOM killer sent.
- matoro 1y ago
  Just want to say that a decade ago Warframe was the first game I ever played on WINE when I was first learning Linux in school. If it hadn't been so friendly and easy to keep playing I wouldn't have the skills and job I do today. Thank you!
- mentos 1y ago
  I’ll never forget a rep from Warframe joined the teamspeak server I was in for a Planetside 2 group back in 2012 to pitch us on playing the game. :)
  - thor-rodrigues 1y ago
    Coming from PS1, I am still waiting on PlanetSide 3 :(
mortsnort 1y ago
I suspect that if this number gets much higher and I also suspect it will, MS is going to deploy nuclear options to break Proton and, with it, Valve's Linux ambitions.
philipwhiuk 1y ago
It's crazy to me that Arch Linux is the second biggest Steam distro. That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists. You'd think the more 'user-friendly' distros would be higher.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- embedding-shape 1y ago
  > That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists I thought so too, that's why I mostly used Ubuntu up until 22.04 sometime, used Ubuntu since I moved before that. Then I moved to Arch, and everything just got so much easier. Upgrading Ubuntu versions was a bit hit-or-miss, especially if you'd changed configs for one reason or another. And after 22.04>22.10 failed for whatever reason, I restarted with Arch then never looked back. Probably it helped that I already knew Arch by the time I started using it, compared to starting to use Ubuntu coming from Windows and not knowing squat. But now with an installer, good defaults, and a helpful community (maybe slightly controversial) I think Arch can be a pretty good beginner OS, as long as you want to understand how your system is put together.
- maples37 1y ago
  I was about to comment that SteamOS is based on Arch, but after looking at the actual graphs, they've got SteamOS as its own separate category. I wonder how much of that is "hackers and experimentalists", versus random gamers* preferring Arch Linux's bleeding-edge latest-and-greatest packaging approach versus Ubuntu's seemingly-slower-paced development? * though I suspect even the most casual 25% of PC gamers are probably significantly more tech-savvy than the average PC user of the population in general.
- Havoc 1y ago
  After arch got an installer much of the initial barrier went away
- phyzome 1y ago
  It might help that Arch has an absurdly good wiki.
outlore 1y ago
I recently played Age of Empires 4 on Bazzite on a Framework and I was surprised at how well everything worked. I didn't have to wade through a forest of permission dialogs and popups. Compared to macOS, Steam even opened up faster. The minor things were wonky default graphics and mouse acceleration settings, but these were easily fixed from the game menus.
theragra 1y ago
I was tired of sound stuttering on windows in expedition 33, nothing helped. Installed bazzite, issue almost solved. Game works much better.
donkeylazy456 1y ago
running supertuxkart windows build with proton.
darkteflon 1y ago
I zeroed my (last ever) Windows gaming rig just yesterday. I’ve been eyeing Bazzite but ended up going with Pop, since I’ve previously had good experience on it with Nvidia. What finally let me do it was moving all my social gaming to PS5. Ime it’s really only games with anti-cheat requirements that can be a crapshoot on Linux. I can’t really recall ever running into other issues with anything on my (Linux-based) Steam Deck over the past couple of years. I’ve emigrated from my home country so gaming is important to me as a way of staying in touch with friends and family - something I wasn’t willing to risk by switching away from a working setup. A PS5 is a convenient and reasonably economical way to address that. Feels pretty great to know that after 40+ years of relying on it - some good but a lot bad - I’ll never have to touch Windows again.
sylens 1y ago
I doubt I was included in this survey but I finally wiped my Windows partition and went all in on CachyOS on my gaming PC this week. Gaming Copilot spying on me in Windows 11 was the last straw.
hoherd 1y ago
My son (8yo) and I have been running bazzite on mid tier AMD hardware for almost a year. It was so solid and such a good experience that I just upgraded us to a desktop with an nvidia 5080. Bazzite deck mode (beta) has been glitchy, but desktop mode has been rock solid. This is a total game changer. I gave up my Xbox subscription and am so happy to be back on Steam without having to tolerate windows. Steam Deck on the go, Bazzite for desktop. Match made in heaven.
alphazard 1y ago
These things go slowly an then all at once. The catalyst will be one or a few of the AAA November titles shipping with Linux support. That will eliminate most of the gaming crowd's last reason to cling to Microsoft. It may even kill console gaming because the Steam Deck is already a fantastic experience just waiting for more games. It's not a small demographic either, it's something like 40% of males age 18-35, plus all of the people in their circles who come to them for tech support. Once market share gets up to 30% or so it becomes a cool trend, that other gamers want to emulate, streamers and influencers get involved. Then around 50% market share the bullying starts. "Windows is for people too stupid to figure out Linux" says a Linux Mint enjoyer to a Windows 11 plebian. Valve has done a great job getting things started, but it's the studios' turn to make a move now.
senectus1 1y ago
My son and I made the cut over to Fedora about a year an a half ago. Neither of us miss windows at all. There are some games we cant play but at the end of the day... I dont really want what they offer (in the kernel level shenanigans.), so I cant say I miss them much.
rmrf100 1y ago
I contributed 2 devices of Linux Steam devices, I can now play windows only game, such as black myth: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358720/Black_Myth_Wukong/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358720/Black_Myth_Wukong...
tmoertel 1y ago
I'm one of them! I dipped my toe in the water with a Steam Deck and had such a great experience that I recently purchased a Framework Desktop and installed Bazzite on it. It's been great. Everything I play just works and the performance is good enough to just forget about as a concern.
yani 1y ago
Windows will maintain its user base until schools adopt a different OS. Until that happens, Linux will keep growing into the single digits.
kikkia 1y ago
Going on 2 years of linux only, between Debian and Endevour, other than linux nvidia drivers crapping themselves basically every update its been awesome. I do miss Fusion360 and League with friends, but its been overall very good and I recommend it to anyone on the fence. Break free.
conorh 1y ago
I installed steam os this week on some old hardware I had lying around (all AMD) everything runs perfectly, zero fiddling around. All my games run fine - admittedly I'm not playing any of the latest and greatest aaa titles but baldurs gate 3 and the latest katamari game run great.
gnarlouse 1y ago
I’m so sick of Windows. Steam and VSTs (music production) are the core hold outs im grappling with to make the permanent linux switch.
sanex 1y ago
It hasn't been totally flawless but I am able to play expedition 33 and poe1 using mint on my Thinkpad (it's not a toaster it has a 3080ti, biggest issue is cooling).
abustamam 1y ago
I finally got around to switching to Ubuntu, keeping my windows partition open just in case. Other than a few configs I needed to copy from windows, I haven't felt the need to go back to windows. I control my work computers from my gaming machine using Synergy and a customizable keyboard (Zsa moonlander), and though it took some time to get things to work properly, it works without a hitch. I play games on my Ubuntu machine and also do some imagen work with comfy ui and it works a treat. Other than the keyboard shortcuts for deleting a word Vs deleting a line differing (cmd delete deletes a line, whereas ctrl delete deletes a word, but in 99% of other case, ctrl/cmd are interchangeable in shortcuts), the experience is great.
bullen 1y ago
I recommend everyone to switch not only to linux but TWM (thin X11 desktop) and ARM (3588 to be specific). That way you are saving 10x electricity AND moving away from M$ in one blow. Then stop using closed source software, and start releasing your software as open or source-available. And I promise the world will become a more peaceful place, slowly then all at once.
0xedd 1y ago
[dead]
Spectadrone 1y ago
I'm no stranger to Linux and its setup. homeservers, pi's and any old laptop I come across. But for my main Desktop(gaming,dev,fun,...) I've reluctantly bought a W11 key (cheap one thank god). I don't mind working through driver issues and needing time to figure stuff out but the thing that bothers me is 'Compatibility between online games and Linux is hindered by anti-cheat software, which often lacks Linux support, especially kernel-level anti-cheat systems' (thx google). I could go on a very technical rant, or start about setting up w10/w11 vm's with 5% loss in performance etc... But honestly, I wanna play my online gaems =(
gruturo 1y ago
Make that 3.0000001% After trying Bazzite for a few weeks around 1.5 years ago, I was pleasantly surprised but the (back then) poor state of nVidia support was an issue. I went back to the Windows 10 partition with the intention of switching over for good once the support ran out. I went a few days past that date, but seeing this article yesterday evening made me pull the trigger. Made a CachyOS USB stick, swapped the NVME out for a fresh one (the 3080 was blocking it and the release springy thingy on the PCIe connector was almost inaccessible, grr) and it's been smooth sailing. I'm also trying not to install Chrome at all this time, let's see if I manage. I was keeping my games in a separate drive already, so when I mounted it and told Steam to look there, it just recognized everything and let me play right away! It also exposed me to a new shell (fish) but that didn't go well. I ripped it out within seconds when the tab completion picked up files NOT matching what I had already typed, WT actual F? I'm sure it's configurable but screw that.
- mitchell209 1y ago
  I also settled on CachyOS after distrohopping a few times in the past month. I had Brave at first but it doesn’t play well with shutting down on any Linux distro IME so I switched to LibreFox, but I might switch back and simply deal with the Brave issues instead because everything else feels better using Chromium-based. I thought the auto-complete in that shell they use was neat, but I made a typo and it kept autocompleting that typo and I’m about to do the same as you lol. I’m having wifi issues with my setup for some reason when it’s perfectly fine in Windows, so I need to diagnose that or switch back to windows until I build a new PC with a more Linux-friendly hardware.
npteljes 1y ago
Gaming on Linux is great. I do it on PC and my Steam Deck handheld, on my laptop, with Steam, Heroic Launcher, and sometimes plain Wine. For anti-cheat multiplayer stuff, I reboot to my Win 10 LTSC, and that's about it for my Windows usage for the last 10 years.
tempodox 1y ago
With the Steam Deck included, I had no idea we are so few. macOS even fewer, which I can understand. That Apple had to introduce a literal Game Mode in their OS, to make games viable at all, speaks volumes.
rcbdev 1y ago
The Year of Linux on the Desktop is actually coming...
jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
Considering how Microsoft is handling the Windows 10 to 11 upgrade it wouldn't be surprising to see many developers jump ship over to Linux. Some European countries/companies are already trying to get away from Microsoft due to security and monetary concerns, so why wouldn't developers and consumers do something similar?
arendtio 1y ago
Recently, I had to switch from Windows 11 to macOS at work. While the MacBook's hardware is truly impressive, the desktop experience is so poor that I wonder how you are supposed to use it. At least it reminded me of why I like my KDE Plasma desktop so much. And then I wonder why people are talking about the year of the Linux desktop, because in my experience, Linux already offers the best desktop experience.
mgdev 1y ago
After 20+ years with Apple, I'm 90% on Linux at this point. Two desktops, two AI workstations, two laptops, and a handheld. Even my wife is running Linux. My personal phone and work laptop are the last holdouts.

832 points by haunter 1y ago

haunter 1y ago

27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.

tredre3 1y ago
> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been sold by the third anniversary of the device in February 2025. 27% of 4M gives us 1M Steam Deck + Legion users. Yet 4M were sold. That begs the question: How could it be? Do 75% of Steam Deck users run Windows? Have 75% of Steam Decks ended up in the landfill? Are the sale figures estimates wildly off-base?
- netule 1y ago
  They likely stopped using them altogether.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Kudos 1y ago
  Isn't the more obvious answer that the market research firm got their number wrong?
- niij 1y ago
  #1 Is MAU. I wouldn't find it out of the realm of possibility that only 25% of owners played in the prior month. I wonder what this is for other consoles. I personally contribute to bursts of playing then months of not even touching some of my consoles.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Alternative options: - International Data Corporation is overestimating the amount of shipped Steam Decks. - Modified Steam Decks (i.e. running Bazzite) don't report themselves to be Steam Decks - Most likely: most Steam Deck users opt out of participating in the Steam Hardware survey/analytics. Last year, I didn't participate in the Steam Hardware survey on my Deck, only on my PC. This year, I participated on my Deck and my desktop, but not my laptop. I still have three devices running Steam. To any survey, it'll look like the amount of Steam devices doubled even though I'm only reporting 67% of my devices to analytics.
  - brianwawok 1y ago
    I’m Linux gaming bazzite on my tower. Sees at least as many of us as steam decks.
  - dm319 1y ago
    Another alternative - may depend on the period being measured. I haven't looked at the article or their methodology, but if they were measuring over a certain period of time, a few hours, or even 24 hours, it will still likely only pick up a proportion of Steam owners.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    Even more likely: A sizable portion of Steam Decks sold are not played every month.
  - Jach 1y ago
    The third is close but it's even more likely that they just weren't prompted to survey at all rather than opting out. They're surveys, not automatic data harvesting, they don't represent things like Facebook's "total monthly active users". They're just a random sample of users, not a population count. Steam does sometimes report things like monthly active users in their annual reports, but haven't ever broken that down I don't think, but you can just infer it from the surveys. I also have steam on multiple devices including a steam deck. On desktop I'm pretty much always logged in and I play games frequently, but most months I'm not selected for a survey. I use my steam deck less frequently and have maybe only gotten the survey prompt on it once or twice.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  Why would it be strange that there are steam decks that sit unused ? I have a switch and a PS 5 that go untouched for months (even with a 4 year old who I occasionally let play some games). I think most people in my friend group are similar in that they have some gaming gear but rarely the time to use it. Still nice to have once you do.
  - vintermann 1y ago
    These stats are probably skewed by how much people play. Competitive FPSers and MMOers play a lot, and the genres are the least friendly to Linux for various reasons.
- hamandcheese 1y ago
  I have a Steam Deck. Haven't booted it up in months. It convinced me that I could game on Linux, now I game on my Desktop.
  - omnimus 1y ago
    Similar thing happened to me. I borrowed steamdeck, realized that i don't like handhelds but i liked gaming on Linux. So i bought a laptop that replaced my macbook for work but it games better than steamdeck.
    - distances 1y ago
      I use my Steam Deck as a game console, connected to my beamer and with 4x PS5 controllers. Works great for that with the Steam game mode. But yes it's been a long time since I played anything on the big screen.
- ShinTakuya 1y ago
  Or, you know, most steam deck users aren't using them constantly and so they don't get picked up in the survey.
DanielHB 1y ago
That is incredible! If you had asked me I would have guessed at least 80% were from Steam OS handhelds.

periodjet 1y ago

I honestly can’t believe it’s not much higher. It’s so easy these days with SteamOS and Bazzite.

haunter 1y ago
Look at the most played games, half of them won't work under Linux because of the online components / anti cheat system. BF6, PUBG, Rust, GTAV Online etc.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount only 6 out of the 50 most played right now aren't working 10 millions players ingame, 90% of players are not playing these titles
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    6 out of 50 is a huge number in terms of annoyance. It's the same reason alternative web browser engines like Ladybird are probably never going to take off. It might support 99.99% of web features - which sounds amazing! - but that probably means it's going to fail in some way on like 0.1% of sites which in practice is extremely frustrating.
    - efreak 1y ago
      Chrome no longer has the ability to run a number of extensions I like, and Firefox has abysmal performance at some bulk indexeddb operations. Safari isn't available outside Apple, and Opera and Microsoft are stuck following Google (along with all the other engines built on Chrome). There's no options left. I hope ladybird makes it far enough that smart people start optimizing small features that rarely get used. Do that and I think it'll be successful enough to be used as a daily browser. As much as the browser wars sucked, I can't wait for them to happen again. I'm already using 5 different browsers on mobile, since nobody wants to support containers, profiles, or organizing tabs with multiple windows.

AuthAuth 1y ago

Another Linux W, I love to see it. Thats 4 million gamer which is a sizable chunk of people to target

keyringlight 1y ago
It's one of those scenarios where I've felt for years that the steam survey doesn't break things down enough to be useful for anything besides the broadest generalizations. The PC gaming market is huge, but there's going to be a lot of variety and sub-groups within it and I expect few developers are trying to target 'everyone' (the opposite of targeting).

nubinetwork 1y ago

Again, I should mention that Linux users usually only see the survey once a year, if you want to get the survey once a month (like it does on windows), you have to close steam monthly and edit your config.vdf file to set the survey date to last year.

starkrights 1y ago
Are you saying that windows users are supposed get the steam hardware once a month? I’ve had steam installed on (and more/less used daily on) probably 4-5 different windows installs since roughly 2016, and I’ve never seen it more than once a year.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Yeah it's definitely not monthly.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

wiseowise 1y ago

Haters cheat sheet yo help you out, in case you’ve forgot your “arguments”: * SteamOS is not real Linux, because normies only interact with Steam launcher * “Only 3%?” * Windows is still the biggest platform

bobim 1y ago
I have a coworker who usually say that billions of flies can't be wrong. Maybe we should just start eating what they eat.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  I've been saying it for years. Windows are for bugs.
ErroneousBosh 1y ago
> * SteamOS is not real Linux, because normies only interact with Steam launcher Not quite sure what your point is. Not sure you are either. > * Windows is still the biggest platform 100% of Windows users are using Linux every single day.

TACIXAT 1y ago

I just made the switch. I had been developing on Windows for the last couple of years, mostly to get used to the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to write C and C++ like I do on Linux, without an IDE and with the native toolchain (i.e. no cygwin). On top of that, I play Overwatch every night. Windows just seems to have zero focus on performance though. React based start menu with visible lag, file Explorer (buggily) parsing files to display metadata before listing them, mysterious memory leaks not reflected in task manager processes. I installed Linux Mint. While it didn't just work (TM), and I had to go into recovery mode to install Nvidia drivers, it worked well enough. I can run Overwatch via Steam and pull comparable FPS to Windows (500 FPS on a 3090 with dips into the 400s). Memory usage is stable and at a very low baseline. It is nice to come back to Linux, and with games I don't really have a need to run Windows anymore.

SteveNuts 1y ago
The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. I’m not naive, I know a ton of huge enterprises still run huge fleets of windows “servers” but I still find it hilarious that a supposedly serious server OS would default to showing you the weather and ads in the start menu.
- hamandcheese 1y ago
  I curious how profitable it has been for Microsoft so far. Are they making billions and billions from these dark patterns? I feel like they'd have to be making a fortune for it to be worth throwing their brand in the gutter like they have been doing.
  - PeaceTed 1y ago
    One would assume but I do wonder how much long term damage they are doing for short term gains with this drive? I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it. At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose through quality degradation rather than Linux to openly out wit. There is still a long way to go and MS could turn their boat around but they would have to stop chasing this data scrapping scheme of theirs to begin with. But how addicted are they to that cash flow? They are probably far more interested in keep share holders happy short term than customers long term and that is not a brilliant strategy if you want to have a life time of decades.

Hasz 1y ago

Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture. If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows for modern, multiplayer games.

happosai 1y ago
Reliable Anticheat rootkits are just not possible on Open PC platforms. Consoles should just add proper keyboard+mouse support and competitive online players can move over...
- TingPing 1y ago
  Consoles support kb and mouse. Most popular fps games support it.
  - yetihehe 1y ago
    Nowadays you can mix&match however you like. I have one game that is available on PS, PC and mobile. You can use keyboard, mouse and PS controllers in this game on all of the platforms and it works the same. For now, I mainly play it on linux (it's not linux native game, heh) with ps4 controller.
encom 1y ago
I really wish there was an (k)Ubuntu-like Linux distro - apt-based, semi-annual updates, kde default or selectable - but without all the stupid Ubuntu-isms like snap and alpha quality rust coreutils and whatnot. I run Gentoo and Debian for myself, but I'd like something normie-friendly I can put on other peoples machines and not get a ton of support questions.
- tmtvl 1y ago
  Is SolydK not good enough? There's also Mageia if you can stomach RPM instead of Deb (I prefer RPMs, but recognize it's a matter of personal taste).

hu3 1y ago

I didn't expect Linux to be above macOS despite Wine's awesomeness. - Windows 94.84% - Linux 3.05% - macOS 2.11%

nurettin 1y ago
There is wide spread disrespect against people who play games on mac. It is a running meme.
anothernewdude 1y ago
So few games support macOS that it is a real pain to find games to play on it.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  If you have a MacOS ARM system, than emulating old slow games can work: https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases For some, it is the only real legal option given windows 11 licensing. Apple M3/M4 are a great chip, but they EOL the hardware ecosystem every 12 years on average. Few companies can tolerate that level of development liability, and Apple users benefit from the FOSS ecosystems cross-platform efforts. =3
candiddevmike 1y ago
Wonder what will happen with that percentage once they sunset Rosetta. I think steam has a native client, but the Mac support for most/all games is x86 based AFAIK.
- p_ing 1y ago
  Rosetta is supposed to stock around for game compatibility only.
fainpul 1y ago
macOS is by far the worst gaming platform. I think most macOS users are fully aware of that.

p1necone 1y ago

I made the switch more than a year ago and it's been basically problem free. Almost all modern games work flawlessly through proton and I get better compatibility for really old stuff through lutris than I ever did on windows (I used to have to run a win 3.1/95/98 vm to play certain older games, now I just use lutris/wine). The only stuff that doesn't work is multiplayer games with unsupported anticheat - it's always a crapshoot when something new and multiplayer launches. My backup plan for those if I really want to play them is to just get them on PS5.

john01dav 1y ago
There's no game that I want to play badly enough to put up with DRM on consoles or rootkits (anti-chest) and DRM (windows) on my computer
PeaceTed 1y ago
The other day I tried Midtown madness, something that has become a bit of an issue to run on Windows. It took less than a minute to install and booted first time via Wine. It is amazing seeing just how well it works and feels almost like a native binary.
twic 1y ago
The majority of popular PvP shooters use anti-cheat which does not work on Proton, so "almost all modern games" seems like overselling it to me. But the stuff that does work, works well. I play Helldivers 2 via Proton on Fedora, and i experience far fewer crashes and instances of weird behaviour than friends on Windows or Xbox.
- newdee 1y ago
  ARC Raiders is currently all working perfectly for me. Such a blessing. I hope it stays this way.
tombert 1y ago
This has been my experience as well. I don't play a ton of modern games, but my wife and I played through the HD remakes of Myst and Riven, released in 2021 and 2024 respectively. I didn't even look at the Proton compatibility before buying the games because for single-player stuff then Proton has gotten so good that I almost never have to worry about it. I don't really play multiplayer games (outside of the original Doom or Minecraft with a friend or my wife, both of which have native Linux clients), so there hasn't ever been an issue for me. My gaming box is a NixOS JovianOS thing, and I even get very good results using the official Microsoft adapter for Xbox One controllers. I really feel no desire to go back to Windows at this point.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

I am considering making the switch to Linux for my software + data science (primary) and gaming (secondary) setup. I use a LG OLED TV as screen, so no displayport inputs. Only HDMI 2.1. How is the support for Linux + HDR + HDMI 2.1 + 120 Hz + VRR + Nvidia (5000 series)?

andoando 1y ago
Thats my exact setup and Ive had no issues so far. Running Arc Raiders on PopOS, Nvidia 5070ti highest settings on 120hz monitor with 120-200 fps. Can always dual boot, so its worth a shot. I have windows just for a few games like BF6 which wont work on linux cause of its anticheat
- bigyabai 1y ago
  It is shocking how well Arc Raiders handles ray tracing on Linux. I have a locked 60fps at 1440p on my 3070Ti, and tons of GPU headroom to spare. These Embark people... they scare me.
  - ThatPlayer 1y ago
    I think the issue is more about how other games handle ray tracing. For games that just treat ray tracing as an "ultra quality" setting, there's no point of making a low quality ray tracing option, because then you'd just turn it off when non-RT options look just as good. But Arc Raiders (and their previous game, The Finals) does use RTGI for good effects. And that low quality RT setting is still going to be better than no RT because of its realtime nature. https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y https://youtu.be/MxkRJ_7sg8Y shows that off to good effect. You can see this kinda performance on Indiana Jones and Doom Dark Ages, which have switched to workflows that require RT. Low quality RT in these games is performant enough to run on Linux AMD drivers which run RT in software on cards that do not have hardware for it: https://youtu.be/44XaGU01J84 https://youtu.be/44XaGU01J84
- breakpointalpha 1y ago
  Interesting, I'm running Pop_OS! as well with a 4070 RTX MSI laptop. Can't get Arc Raiders to load, just freezes 15-30 seconds into the launch process no matter what Proton compatibility I choose.

marginalia_nu 1y ago

It's weird how Steam doesn't automatically set the toggle that lets you play most Windows games through Proton instead of having that be an opt-in you need to know about. It really is extremely stable and polished these days.

davet91 1y ago
They do now: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/steam-update-brings-accessibility-settings-and-proton-enabled-by-default-to-make-linux-gaming-simpler/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/steam-update-brings-ac...
Rohansi 1y ago
I've only ever needed to enable Proton for non-Steam games. Are there Steam games that don't have Proton enabled and need it to be manually enabled by the user? (I've only used it on the Steam Deck)
- debugnik 1y ago
  It already was the default for SteamOS, but not for overall Linux until recently, I believe.
- ivanjermakov 1y ago
  I start non-Steam games with Wine and they run just as good. https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&iId=2&sAction=view&sTitle=Browse+Applications https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=category&i...
  - Rohansi 1y ago
    Proton is based on Wine so that's not surprising. If you're already using Steam you might as well use Proton, though.
- Jach 1y ago
  Sometimes also a game will have a native linux binary but the Windows version with Proton works better (or at all) anyway...

justchill 1y ago

For me I have been enjoying bazzite os

Forgeties79 1y ago
It’s fantastic! Truly enjoy using my machine now.
4ggr0 1y ago
+1, now using Bazzite as my main OS in general and for gaming, and only use the dualbooted Windows on a separate SSD when I have to play a game which contains a rootkit. There've been two of those, and I can live without them. Rotate games quite frequently, mostly just works. I think if you like checking it out and customizing the settings of your OS, then try it out! Or at least look up the games you care about on ProtonDB. Even encrypted the Bazzite SSD just out of paranoia caused by Windows. Even partner-proof so far. Only ever used Nvidia so far, probably going to switch to AMD in 1-2 years, as I hear that they're better on Linux.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  I discovered that you can actually encrypt the home directory on SteamOS as well, its a kind of ultra beta feature but it actually seems to work fairly reliably aside from requiring you to set it up via SSH from another computer https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/dirlock/-/wikis/Enabling-disk-encryption-on-the-Steam-Deck https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/dirlock/-/wikis/Enabling-d...
  - 4ggr0 1y ago
    If I could install SteamOS on my PC I'd do it!
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      Bazzite basically is SteamOS for desktop. I’ve got a steam deck and PC with Bazzite and I probably couldn’t tell you which is which if you just showed me a TV with one of them running.

swilliamsio 1y ago

Made the switch to Mint recently. Steam says that of 750 games on my account, 748 can run on Linux, and I've had no problems with the dozen or so I've played lately.

kurtoid 1y ago
> 748 can run on Steam Assuming you mean on Linux?
- mikkupikku 1y ago
  Probably meant "SteamOS" e.g. Linux.
- swilliamsio 1y ago
  Yes, my bad. Fixed.

mirpa 1y ago

I started using Proton recently and it is quite impressive. Some games have native support, some use Vulkan, others want to run on SteamDeck. I haven't booted Win 11 in more than a month. Not having to dual boot any time I want to switch work/fun is great - even if reboot doesn't take that long these days. I tend to play older, single player games, not everything is perfect, but I like it much more than being frustrated by Windows - using Fedora btw.

xrd 1y ago

I was really proud that my kids (8,10,12) all have used linux for gaming for the last several years. Steam runs perfectly for most games. And, they know how to to use "flatpak update" to update the sober runtime for Roblox (I know this is not steam, but it is an example of how well other things run on linux). I'm so proud (and ashamed they play Roblox, but choose your battles). But, Fortnite. I tried to run a Windows VM, but that was a poor substitute. Is there an option for Fortnite on Linux?

gausswho 1y ago
Fortnite might be a battle worth choosing. I wouldn't want to carve my children's gray matter into grooves of cosmetic microtransactions of psychological warfare.
- xrd 1y ago
  I actually totally agree. This was because a friend who lives a thousand miles away also plays it (and his parents have different views on what Fortnite means). I'm sure gaming companies optimize for peer pressure effects, because that's so powerful.
- 71bw 1y ago
  ...and yet they play ROBLOX, which is undoubtedly 100x worse.
zamadatix 1y ago
The problem is DRM, so there is no good answer.
- cheschire 1y ago
  The problem is anti-cheat, not DRM.
  - TheCoelacanth 1y ago
    Anti-cheat is effectively the same thing as DRM. Both are just ways for the software publisher to override the user's control of their machine.

elashri 1y ago

Does this over count because I think good chunk of Linux people (including me) have dedicated windows or maybe old windows machine where they play some of the games that are unplayable on linux. Also double boot is something that would be common in situations like that. In such case, I think this should be higher a little bit. Or Am I missing something?

LelouBil 1y ago
I don't think this should over count because the steam hardware survey is done once per account each time. It just depends if you're booted into windows or into linux when you have the survey popup.
ozgrakkurt 1y ago
It is an indicator but far from real imo. Percentage of users that participate in the survey could be different across different OS too.

shmerl 1y ago

Nice! Meanwhile Wine fixed 32-bit OpenGL path performance problem in new wow64 mode, so now you don't need 32-bit Linux dependencies to run 32-bit games in Wine anymore (that affects DX7 games for example that run through OpenGL via WineD3D).

kloud 1y ago

That linear trend line does not seem to fit very well, I say we are looking at the beginning of a hockey stick :) Stopped dual-booting for games and formatted the partition some time after Windows 7 EOL. Thank you Wine contributors, Valve and lord Gaben.

modeless 1y ago

Whoa, I thought Ubuntu was the most popular distribution. Arch and even Linux Mint are beating it?

ShinTakuya 1y ago
The average Linux gamer is likely to have a very different setup to the average Linux user in general. It's a subset of a subset.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
currymj 1y ago
Steam Deck is Arch-based, that's most likely why.
- modeless 1y ago
  SteamOS is counted separately.
  - cwbriscoe 1y ago
    Yes, but a lot of linux games use an Arch distribution such as CachyOS since SteamOS also is. They get updates faster because of the rolling releases.
machomaster 1y ago
I wonder how much Omarchy (based on Arch) made a dent... DHH said that it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  The hard part is never installing an Arch-like distro, it's making it past 5 sudo pacman -syu iterations without an AUR package going thermonuclear and requiring 45,000 pinned dependencies.

rufugee 1y ago

I only wish Fortnite were possible. that’s the only thing I keep windows around for.

yoyohello13 1y ago
Sweeney said Linux is cancer when they stopped Linux support for Rocket league, so probably unlikely.
- zamalek 1y ago
  He said that the market share wasn't worth it. Yet they support MacOS (which has had a lower market share compared to Linux in this segment for a while).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

kittikitti 1y ago

2026 WILL BE THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

wtcactus 1y ago

About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and get solely disappointed and return to windows. Most of the Linux hurdles in day to day work can be overcome (mostly is the lack of the apps I normally use that cause some attrition, but with some compromises and some work I can get around it). But for gaming (at least in NVIDIA GPUs) it keeps failing. I have very limited time for gaming (around 2-4h per week), I don't want to keep having to eternally fiddle with game settings, fixing bugs, fixing launchers, try different Proton versions, etc, etc, etc, every time I sit down for a bit of gaming. And Linux, unfortunately, is just not really there.

ewuhic 1y ago
Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS, so you 1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS; 2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again; 3) have best-in-class community support; 4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages out there among all the distros. Hope I did well on selling NixOS to you.
- Havoc 1y ago
  Link looks dead?
  - ewuhic 1y ago
    Remove trailing `;`
- wtcactus 1y ago
  I just don't have time for that. I use Ubuntu (headless for work), I don't have the time to spend configuring yet another system. I'm willing to try stuff like Bazzite since it - supposedly - comes all pre-configured. But I'm not going down yet another rabbit hole with a totally new OS just for gaming... I just don't have time for that. It's just much easier to install Windows 11.

dingi 1y ago

That's awesome! I've come to take "the year of the Linux desktop" as a prophecy of sorts. It might take another 20 years, or desktops might vanish, but it is going to happen. Slow and steady wins the race. Best regards from a decade-plus Linux full-timer!

xcircle 1y ago

This weekend I finally freed my pc from Windows10 and installed cachyOS. It all worked better and easier than expected.

k__ 1y ago

I'm using Steam on Arch and am very happy with it. The recurring compilation of Vulcan shaders after every update bothers a bit, but it works very well.

forrestthewoods 1y ago

As a Steam game developer I don’t think I can ever forgive Linux for being 1% of our players but 50% of our support tickets. I probably shouldn’t hold a grudge, but I do! I suppose it’s probably better in 2025 now that the best API for Linux gaming is Win32. Proton is genuinely spectacular. I love my Steamdeck. SteamOS is great. Supporting one distro is easy. It’s supporting a million unique permutations that is pure nightmare fuel.

lokeg 1y ago
There is a somewhat famous post about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... Essentially stating that Linux users disproportionately care to actually report bugs they encounter rather than ignoring them. I find that very plausible.
- forrestthewoods 1y ago
  > Essentially stating that Linux users disproportionately care to actually report bugs they encounter rather than ignoring them. I find that very plausible. In my lived experience, this 100% pure unadultered copium. It’s the wishful thinking lie that Linux people tell themselves to support their preferred choice of OS software which is, for some reason, part of their identity. Supporting “Linux” isn’t too bad in 2025 if all you care about is SteamOS and Ubuntu. But distributing pre-compiled binaries and getting them to run on an unbounded range of system configurations is a nightmare. Linux users do at least expect to run into problems. So they’re willing to fight through errors for several hours before asking for help. And the Linux gamer community is willing to help each other out to jump through all these hoops. But none of that changes the fact that supporting Linux is an additional mountain of work. Although in 2025 you should definitely support SteamDeck via either Proton or native.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    At this point I think it's reasonable for game devs to just target SteamOS. Other distros can adapt as needed.

andreldm 1y ago

After many years playing on Linux, first struggling with Wine then with Proton when it came out, had to install Windows on my gaming pc. I mostly play Overwatch 2 with friends on my very short free time, thanks to a Steam bug (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1028...), on every single evening I had to wait forever (seriously, 15+ min) for shaders to compile or start the game immediately but suffer on every match beginning (different map) with stuttering. That’s a deal breaker for me, I tried a fresh Bazzite install (from Arch) before giving up, exact same issue. I wish Valve comes around one day and fixes that, I’ll kick Windows out of life in a heartbeat.

bblacher 1y ago
How old is your GPU/does it/the driver support async shader compilation? I've turned off shader pre-comp like two years ago because of this bug, never had any problems/lags with any games.
- andreldm 1y ago
  RTX 3060 mobile, nvidia blobs, default settings from the distro. Indeed, I disabled the shader cache at some point, for most single player games it was a good workaround, that was not the case for OW2 for some reason.
aos 1y ago
I play OW2 on Linux with Steam + Proton and I was having this issue a while back but somehow fixed it. I think it was by increasing the shader cache size! Happy to find the exact instructions that I did to fix it once I’m back on that PC.

lwansbrough 1y ago

Biggest hurdle for me to do this is just multiplayer games. I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though. Contrary to most Linux advocates I’m a big believer in giving studios the tools they need to defeat cheaters and I don’t care much about system integrity if it means fairer games.

broodbucket 1y ago
The anticheats themselves typically do support Linux, it's the devs that don't choose to use them
- lwansbrough 1y ago
  Well EAC for example is user space only because it has to be, which some games decide is not an acceptable level of security.
- ThatPlayer 1y ago
  Those are generally not the same anticheats with the same levels of functionality. As an analogy it's like saying Excel supports iPad. Or a gaming example that used to be way more common: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is supported on Game Boy Advance. It's a game and it is Tony Hawk, but it's not really comparable as Tony Hawk on PS1.
chrneu 1y ago
they have the tools they need to defeat cheaters, they just choose to go about it in very invasive and lazy ways because people still buy their product. then people complain when the product sucks and is invasive.
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  This is just factually incorrect.
ajvs 1y ago
The anti-cheat creators other than Valve aren't bothered to invest into making a Linux kernel anti-cheat, and most Linux users would be unwilling to allow one to be installed either.

cvoss 1y ago

It is always with great fear and trepidation that I install the drivers for my discrete GPU on my Ubuntu system and configure the system to use it. The state of affairs might be better these days, but I remember it rarely working and having a high likelihood of horribly breaking the configuration, and trying to rectify it in the terminal while frantically searching forums on my phone.

mvdtnz 1y ago
I never update ANYTHING on my Linux system without a very good reason. The strike rate of updates causing damage to my system and costing me hours of debugging is not worth it.

endgame 1y ago

There have been a few mentions in this thread of portable gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. Has anyone here tried using them as a primary machine? I've been thinking that since I travel with a portable keyboard and mouse anyway, maybe one of those machines might not be too bad for actual work?

fastily 1y ago

I’m using steam on Ubuntu 24.04 with 9y old hardware (which was mid-tier when new), playing mostly 2d platformer games and older resident evil titles. Never had any issues, this setup runs like a champ

throw2312321 1y ago

I am a big fan of gaming on Linux, but I've been running into weird bugs with some of my favorite games. For example, a couple months ago, my install of TW:WH3 started to crash after 20-30 seconds in the main game. I think it started happening after a minor patch. Another example is Battle Brothers. The game ran flawlessly. Then I installed and played a copy on a Windows laptop using the same Steam account. After that the game stopped booting properly on Linux. (Maybe a coincidence.) As a result, I still boot into Windows now and again to play these games. I am dual-booting.

dralley 1y ago
The frustrating thing is that it's very difficult to figure out why a game is crashing unless you run Steam from a terminal. The logs are hard to find otherwise - at least if you're using the Flatpak version of Steam.

jjcm 1y ago

IMO the biggest barrier to linux is disappearing - the requirement to know how to use the command line. You still have to use it, but you don't have to know how to use it anymore with the introduction of LLMs. I also have switched my primary desktop from Windows to Linux, and now when I have an issue, I just ask an LLM. I play pretty fast and loose with just chucking commands it gives me into the command line. I'm pretty well versed in linux sysadmin things, but LLMs make it so easy I don't even bother trying to solve things myself first. I have a few people in my friend group who aren't well versed, but they're able to navigate linux just fine by doing this same approach. There's still friction, don't get me wrong, but it's a different type of friction. On Windows there are far fewer bugs, but there's friction introduced due to it being non-unix based (especially when it comes to code/doing any sort of model training) and due to anti-patterns Windows keeps shipping into the OS. On linux, the friction is just bugs. You can address / fix bugs for the most part, but you can't fix Windows' friction points.

dralley 1y ago
You don't really have to use it. Not for most of the things that a typical desktop user would need to do. It helps though.
- strix_varius 1y ago
  While you don't have to use it much, if you spend a year daily driving Linux, it's a near certainty that you'll have to use the command line.
  - chrneu 1y ago
    disagree. it depends heavily on what the user is doing. that's like saying if you daily drive windows it's a near certainty you'll have to edit the registry or use powershell/cmd. It's useful if you know what you're doing but it isn't required anymore at all for most people. Most people just use their machines for the browser or office software. No reason to use command line for them, ever.

jjcm 1y ago

As strange as it sounds, I think Valve is extremely well-positioned to ship what becomes one of the first true Linux desktop experiences. There's a huge demand for gaming x ai development, both of which have similar hardware requirements, and Valve is already polishing their linux experience with Steam Deck. If they launch their own desktop with a properly managed OS and hardware, I think it would legitimately become a contender among a very wide range of users.

bogwog 1y ago
Valve, the monopolist, should not have more control over the Linux ecosystem.
- maples37 1y ago
  If they make their own distro, though, they're not really gaining more control. They're just enabling even more choice for someone who's looking for alternatives. Let's say, hypothetically, that Valve releases SteamOS to the general public, and it's received generally well, and it becomes much more common for people to use "that Linux thing" than it is today. Then let's say, hypothetically, that Valve turns evil and... I dunno, starts charging money for updates? At that point you've got a large population already using Linux, I'm sure there would be a pretty big migration to Ubuntu or some other mainstream Linux desktop.
- ASalazarMX 1y ago
  Valve, the monopolist, is releasing their secret ingredient (Proton) as open source, and actively maintaining it. I can't see how that could make Valve a monopoly on Windows-on-Linux gaming, actually the opposite.
keyringlight 1y ago
I think that comes with risks, they will need to do a lot of work to manage expectations which is likely to be an unending uphill battle getting users to read and absorb any notice you put in front of them. If there's ever an official version of SteamOS that installs as broadly as most other linux distros along with a general/minimally trained audience, they can't do Deck certified on how well each game works on your system, and I can see challenges for "why does this game I bought on the steam store not work on my steam system?" especially if it's the hot new multiplayer game that targets windows with windows-only anticheat. PC does have a fair amount of users that want it to operate in a console-like way when it comes to usability, the moment you tell them to fiddle with a runtime or experiment with the command line variables you lose them. That's to say nothing about handling stuff that lives outside steam, because PC gaming shouldn't equal Valve. The Deck is a nice manageable subset to deal with and fairly small enthusiast audience

shevy-java 1y ago

Guys, we can do it! LET'S GO FOR BROKE!!! LET'S BREAK THE 3.5% BARRIER BEFORE GNU HURD WINS NEXT YEAR!!!!

pmarreck 1y ago

Good. Hopefully it will tip to 95% in a few years. I'm so sick and tired of the Windows dependency. Microsoft doesn't give 2 fucks about games unless they can make money off it. I have a few Steam games I can only play on Linux now, ironically.

amiga-workbench 1y ago

I've been running Fedora at home for about a decade now, and I've been doing my gaming on it for the majority of that period. I've been running Fedora at work for about 6-7 years now too, with few issues. Work binned Adobe XD and moved to Figma which has made it even more viable. The one and only holdout I keep a Windows 11 install around for is VR. With Valve's new headset due to release any week now, we will hopefully have a bunch of Linux SteamVR patches on the way to sand the remaining sharp edges off.

shaggie76 1y ago

Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!

bigyabai 1y ago
Cool! I have fond memories of playing Warframe on Linux with my 1050ti ~5 years ago. Kudos to the team for keeping us in the loop, I apologize for the strange crashlogs my OOM killer sent.
matoro 1y ago
Just want to say that a decade ago Warframe was the first game I ever played on WINE when I was first learning Linux in school. If it hadn't been so friendly and easy to keep playing I wouldn't have the skills and job I do today. Thank you!
mentos 1y ago
I’ll never forget a rep from Warframe joined the teamspeak server I was in for a Planetside 2 group back in 2012 to pitch us on playing the game. :)
- thor-rodrigues 1y ago
  Coming from PS1, I am still waiting on PlanetSide 3 :(

mortsnort 1y ago

I suspect that if this number gets much higher and I also suspect it will, MS is going to deploy nuclear options to break Proton and, with it, Valve's Linux ambitions.

philipwhiuk 1y ago

It's crazy to me that Arch Linux is the second biggest Steam distro. That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists. You'd think the more 'user-friendly' distros would be higher.

deleted 1y ago
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embedding-shape 1y ago
> That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists I thought so too, that's why I mostly used Ubuntu up until 22.04 sometime, used Ubuntu since I moved before that. Then I moved to Arch, and everything just got so much easier. Upgrading Ubuntu versions was a bit hit-or-miss, especially if you'd changed configs for one reason or another. And after 22.04>22.10 failed for whatever reason, I restarted with Arch then never looked back. Probably it helped that I already knew Arch by the time I started using it, compared to starting to use Ubuntu coming from Windows and not knowing squat. But now with an installer, good defaults, and a helpful community (maybe slightly controversial) I think Arch can be a pretty good beginner OS, as long as you want to understand how your system is put together.
maples37 1y ago
I was about to comment that SteamOS is based on Arch, but after looking at the actual graphs, they've got SteamOS as its own separate category. I wonder how much of that is "hackers and experimentalists", versus random gamers* preferring Arch Linux's bleeding-edge latest-and-greatest packaging approach versus Ubuntu's seemingly-slower-paced development? * though I suspect even the most casual 25% of PC gamers are probably significantly more tech-savvy than the average PC user of the population in general.
Havoc 1y ago
After arch got an installer much of the initial barrier went away
phyzome 1y ago
It might help that Arch has an absurdly good wiki.

outlore 1y ago

I recently played Age of Empires 4 on Bazzite on a Framework and I was surprised at how well everything worked. I didn't have to wade through a forest of permission dialogs and popups. Compared to macOS, Steam even opened up faster. The minor things were wonky default graphics and mouse acceleration settings, but these were easily fixed from the game menus.

theragra 1y ago

I was tired of sound stuttering on windows in expedition 33, nothing helped. Installed bazzite, issue almost solved. Game works much better.

donkeylazy456 1y ago

running supertuxkart windows build with proton.

darkteflon 1y ago

I zeroed my (last ever) Windows gaming rig just yesterday. I’ve been eyeing Bazzite but ended up going with Pop, since I’ve previously had good experience on it with Nvidia. What finally let me do it was moving all my social gaming to PS5. Ime it’s really only games with anti-cheat requirements that can be a crapshoot on Linux. I can’t really recall ever running into other issues with anything on my (Linux-based) Steam Deck over the past couple of years. I’ve emigrated from my home country so gaming is important to me as a way of staying in touch with friends and family - something I wasn’t willing to risk by switching away from a working setup. A PS5 is a convenient and reasonably economical way to address that. Feels pretty great to know that after 40+ years of relying on it - some good but a lot bad - I’ll never have to touch Windows again.

sylens 1y ago

I doubt I was included in this survey but I finally wiped my Windows partition and went all in on CachyOS on my gaming PC this week. Gaming Copilot spying on me in Windows 11 was the last straw.

hoherd 1y ago

My son (8yo) and I have been running bazzite on mid tier AMD hardware for almost a year. It was so solid and such a good experience that I just upgraded us to a desktop with an nvidia 5080. Bazzite deck mode (beta) has been glitchy, but desktop mode has been rock solid. This is a total game changer. I gave up my Xbox subscription and am so happy to be back on Steam without having to tolerate windows. Steam Deck on the go, Bazzite for desktop. Match made in heaven.

alphazard 1y ago

These things go slowly an then all at once. The catalyst will be one or a few of the AAA November titles shipping with Linux support. That will eliminate most of the gaming crowd's last reason to cling to Microsoft. It may even kill console gaming because the Steam Deck is already a fantastic experience just waiting for more games. It's not a small demographic either, it's something like 40% of males age 18-35, plus all of the people in their circles who come to them for tech support. Once market share gets up to 30% or so it becomes a cool trend, that other gamers want to emulate, streamers and influencers get involved. Then around 50% market share the bullying starts. "Windows is for people too stupid to figure out Linux" says a Linux Mint enjoyer to a Windows 11 plebian. Valve has done a great job getting things started, but it's the studios' turn to make a move now.

senectus1 1y ago

My son and I made the cut over to Fedora about a year an a half ago. Neither of us miss windows at all. There are some games we cant play but at the end of the day... I dont really want what they offer (in the kernel level shenanigans.), so I cant say I miss them much.

rmrf100 1y ago

I contributed 2 devices of Linux Steam devices, I can now play windows only game, such as black myth: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358720/Black_Myth_Wukong/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358720/Black_Myth_Wukong...

tmoertel 1y ago

I'm one of them! I dipped my toe in the water with a Steam Deck and had such a great experience that I recently purchased a Framework Desktop and installed Bazzite on it. It's been great. Everything I play just works and the performance is good enough to just forget about as a concern.

yani 1y ago

Windows will maintain its user base until schools adopt a different OS. Until that happens, Linux will keep growing into the single digits.

kikkia 1y ago

Going on 2 years of linux only, between Debian and Endevour, other than linux nvidia drivers crapping themselves basically every update its been awesome. I do miss Fusion360 and League with friends, but its been overall very good and I recommend it to anyone on the fence. Break free.

conorh 1y ago

I installed steam os this week on some old hardware I had lying around (all AMD) everything runs perfectly, zero fiddling around. All my games run fine - admittedly I'm not playing any of the latest and greatest aaa titles but baldurs gate 3 and the latest katamari game run great.

gnarlouse 1y ago

I’m so sick of Windows. Steam and VSTs (music production) are the core hold outs im grappling with to make the permanent linux switch.

sanex 1y ago

It hasn't been totally flawless but I am able to play expedition 33 and poe1 using mint on my Thinkpad (it's not a toaster it has a 3080ti, biggest issue is cooling).

abustamam 1y ago

I finally got around to switching to Ubuntu, keeping my windows partition open just in case. Other than a few configs I needed to copy from windows, I haven't felt the need to go back to windows. I control my work computers from my gaming machine using Synergy and a customizable keyboard (Zsa moonlander), and though it took some time to get things to work properly, it works without a hitch. I play games on my Ubuntu machine and also do some imagen work with comfy ui and it works a treat. Other than the keyboard shortcuts for deleting a word Vs deleting a line differing (cmd delete deletes a line, whereas ctrl delete deletes a word, but in 99% of other case, ctrl/cmd are interchangeable in shortcuts), the experience is great.

bullen 1y ago

I recommend everyone to switch not only to linux but TWM (thin X11 desktop) and ARM (3588 to be specific). That way you are saving 10x electricity AND moving away from M$ in one blow. Then stop using closed source software, and start releasing your software as open or source-available. And I promise the world will become a more peaceful place, slowly then all at once.

0xedd 1y ago

[dead]

Spectadrone 1y ago

I'm no stranger to Linux and its setup. homeservers, pi's and any old laptop I come across. But for my main Desktop(gaming,dev,fun,...) I've reluctantly bought a W11 key (cheap one thank god). I don't mind working through driver issues and needing time to figure stuff out but the thing that bothers me is 'Compatibility between online games and Linux is hindered by anti-cheat software, which often lacks Linux support, especially kernel-level anti-cheat systems' (thx google). I could go on a very technical rant, or start about setting up w10/w11 vm's with 5% loss in performance etc... But honestly, I wanna play my online gaems =(

gruturo 1y ago

Make that 3.0000001% After trying Bazzite for a few weeks around 1.5 years ago, I was pleasantly surprised but the (back then) poor state of nVidia support was an issue. I went back to the Windows 10 partition with the intention of switching over for good once the support ran out. I went a few days past that date, but seeing this article yesterday evening made me pull the trigger. Made a CachyOS USB stick, swapped the NVME out for a fresh one (the 3080 was blocking it and the release springy thingy on the PCIe connector was almost inaccessible, grr) and it's been smooth sailing. I'm also trying not to install Chrome at all this time, let's see if I manage. I was keeping my games in a separate drive already, so when I mounted it and told Steam to look there, it just recognized everything and let me play right away! It also exposed me to a new shell (fish) but that didn't go well. I ripped it out within seconds when the tab completion picked up files NOT matching what I had already typed, WT actual F? I'm sure it's configurable but screw that.

mitchell209 1y ago
I also settled on CachyOS after distrohopping a few times in the past month. I had Brave at first but it doesn’t play well with shutting down on any Linux distro IME so I switched to LibreFox, but I might switch back and simply deal with the Brave issues instead because everything else feels better using Chromium-based. I thought the auto-complete in that shell they use was neat, but I made a typo and it kept autocompleting that typo and I’m about to do the same as you lol. I’m having wifi issues with my setup for some reason when it’s perfectly fine in Windows, so I need to diagnose that or switch back to windows until I build a new PC with a more Linux-friendly hardware.

npteljes 1y ago

Gaming on Linux is great. I do it on PC and my Steam Deck handheld, on my laptop, with Steam, Heroic Launcher, and sometimes plain Wine. For anti-cheat multiplayer stuff, I reboot to my Win 10 LTSC, and that's about it for my Windows usage for the last 10 years.

tempodox 1y ago

With the Steam Deck included, I had no idea we are so few. macOS even fewer, which I can understand. That Apple had to introduce a literal Game Mode in their OS, to make games viable at all, speaks volumes.

rcbdev 1y ago

The Year of Linux on the Desktop is actually coming...

jsbisviewtiful 1y ago

Considering how Microsoft is handling the Windows 10 to 11 upgrade it wouldn't be surprising to see many developers jump ship over to Linux. Some European countries/companies are already trying to get away from Microsoft due to security and monetary concerns, so why wouldn't developers and consumers do something similar?

arendtio 1y ago

Recently, I had to switch from Windows 11 to macOS at work. While the MacBook's hardware is truly impressive, the desktop experience is so poor that I wonder how you are supposed to use it. At least it reminded me of why I like my KDE Plasma desktop so much. And then I wonder why people are talking about the year of the Linux desktop, because in my experience, Linux already offers the best desktop experience.

mgdev 1y ago

After 20+ years with Apple, I'm 90% on Linux at this point. Two desktops, two AI workstations, two laptops, and a handheld. Even my wife is running Linux. My personal phone and work laptop are the last holdouts.