4 ms·

Steam on Linux Use Easily Hits an All-Time High in November

46 points by TMWNN 11mo ago

jp191919 11mo ago
I just made the jump in November. Gaming pc was the last computer in the house with windows. Now it's an all Linux household, well minus the router on FreeBSD.
- freedomben 11mo ago
  Similar. We haven't booted the Windows computer in almost 2 years at this point. It's truly incredible how good gaming is on Linux now! In related news, Bazzite is absolutely kicking ass, and I'm super happy to see it
devwastaken 11mo ago
Its going up and then back down when users cant fix one of a thousand experience breaking issues.
- vablings 11mo ago
  One of the thousands of issues I have yet to encounter on Linux Mint, it has been unironically more stable than Windows 11 :)
  - devwastaken 11mo ago
    thats great, and it is a significant minority of users.
- cpburns2009 11mo ago
  I have an obnoxious issue on Windows 11 that I cannot fix. I have an RTX 5060 and the monitor will not receive a signal after the computer wakes from sleep.
  - devwastaken 11mo ago
    monitor issue, not windows.
    - cpburns2009 11mo ago
      I didn't have this problem on Windows 10.
- foxyv 11mo ago
  We're starting to see more and more reports about this occurring on Windows 11. Especially in the VR community. Windows has pushed a ton of updates that break or even brick drivers. Also I've seen games have to be modified to run on it.
  - devwastaken 11mo ago
    which if applied to linux desktop with the same userbase would be 1000x worse.
    - foxyv 11mo ago
      Why? I've heard pretty good things about Framework laptops running perfectly with factory installed operating systems. Also the Steam deck seems to work better than my Windows laptop. A lot of the issues that Linux users run into these days are running hardware and software designed specifically for Windows. With the advent of hardware and software designed for Linux it's not surprising we are seeing stability improvements.
- KetoManx64 11mo ago
  You can have a the pain points with Linux or you can have the pain points of Windows and have tiktok and facebook added to your start memu, AI force added to your taskbar, your searches in the start menu sent off to microsoft, AI forced into your browser and notepad, have file explorer take multiple seconds to start up, Edge block downloads of .exe files with DANGEROUS FILE warnings, and I can go on and on.
bibimsz 11mo ago
I play world of warcraft and baldur's gate 3. installed cachyos yesterday and downloaded both games through Steam i was expecting the games to be laggy or glitchy, but they run smooth as butter. 240fps on WoW, I think it might perform better than Windows 11 but at least as good. im sure something about linux will annoy me eventually and I'll switch back to Windows, but I don't want to.
- DarkByte 11mo ago
  Last I checked WoW is only available from Blizzard directly.
  - jarjar2_ 11mo ago
    Likely installed the Battle.net client as a non-steam game and launched it from there. It’s what I’ve done with Battle.net
    - bibimsz 11mo ago
      correct
encyclopedism 11mo ago
Amazing! Steam could finally drag the Linux Desktop mainstream.
lispisok 11mo ago
On linux mint I can get games to run but they run horribly. I wish I could figure out the issue because running most of my games on linux would be awesome
- cheschire 11mo ago
  Are you running your games from your NTFS partition/drive still? Try running them locally off your Linux filesystem instead. Otherwise I would suggest installing Claude code and running it from the terminal and telling it to investigate for you…
  - drnick1 11mo ago
    I second this. Your experience is highly unusual, most of my games run very well on Linux (framerates within 10% of Windows). And that's with an Nvidia GPU.
- vablings 11mo ago
  It's probably a GPU issue. Either you have the wrong drivers, or they are not working correctly
left-struck 11mo ago
For years I dabbled with Linux and I tried switching from windows to Linux many times. There were always compatibility issues with some software and games that made me return to windows. Earlier this year I got so fed up with Microsoft’s relentless invasion of my privacy, annoying nudges and other enshitification efforts in Windows that I decided that not only is windows dead to me, but any software I can’t run Linux is dead to me as well. That was months ago and my only regret is that I didn’t do this sooner. I understand people need certain apps for work and maybe those need windows. Others have absolutely no power over the machines their work gives them, I’ve been there, no judgement. This is just my experience.
drnick1 11mo ago
I think the inflection point for mass adoption will between 5-10% market share. Then Linux will be too big to ignore and game studios will have to make their games work without kernel level anti-cheat or other restrictions or lose a very significant amount of sales relative to the cost of implementing the required changes.

46 points by TMWNN 11mo ago

jp191919 11mo ago

I just made the jump in November. Gaming pc was the last computer in the house with windows. Now it's an all Linux household, well minus the router on FreeBSD.

freedomben 11mo ago
Similar. We haven't booted the Windows computer in almost 2 years at this point. It's truly incredible how good gaming is on Linux now! In related news, Bazzite is absolutely kicking ass, and I'm super happy to see it

devwastaken 11mo ago

Its going up and then back down when users cant fix one of a thousand experience breaking issues.

vablings 11mo ago
One of the thousands of issues I have yet to encounter on Linux Mint, it has been unironically more stable than Windows 11 :)
- devwastaken 11mo ago
  thats great, and it is a significant minority of users.
cpburns2009 11mo ago
I have an obnoxious issue on Windows 11 that I cannot fix. I have an RTX 5060 and the monitor will not receive a signal after the computer wakes from sleep.
- devwastaken 11mo ago
  monitor issue, not windows.
  - cpburns2009 11mo ago
    I didn't have this problem on Windows 10.
foxyv 11mo ago
We're starting to see more and more reports about this occurring on Windows 11. Especially in the VR community. Windows has pushed a ton of updates that break or even brick drivers. Also I've seen games have to be modified to run on it.
- devwastaken 11mo ago
  which if applied to linux desktop with the same userbase would be 1000x worse.
  - foxyv 11mo ago
    Why? I've heard pretty good things about Framework laptops running perfectly with factory installed operating systems. Also the Steam deck seems to work better than my Windows laptop. A lot of the issues that Linux users run into these days are running hardware and software designed specifically for Windows. With the advent of hardware and software designed for Linux it's not surprising we are seeing stability improvements.
KetoManx64 11mo ago
You can have a the pain points with Linux or you can have the pain points of Windows and have tiktok and facebook added to your start memu, AI force added to your taskbar, your searches in the start menu sent off to microsoft, AI forced into your browser and notepad, have file explorer take multiple seconds to start up, Edge block downloads of .exe files with DANGEROUS FILE warnings, and I can go on and on.

bibimsz 11mo ago

I play world of warcraft and baldur's gate 3. installed cachyos yesterday and downloaded both games through Steam i was expecting the games to be laggy or glitchy, but they run smooth as butter. 240fps on WoW, I think it might perform better than Windows 11 but at least as good. im sure something about linux will annoy me eventually and I'll switch back to Windows, but I don't want to.

DarkByte 11mo ago
Last I checked WoW is only available from Blizzard directly.
- jarjar2_ 11mo ago
  Likely installed the Battle.net client as a non-steam game and launched it from there. It’s what I’ve done with Battle.net
  - bibimsz 11mo ago
    correct

encyclopedism 11mo ago

Amazing! Steam could finally drag the Linux Desktop mainstream.

lispisok 11mo ago

On linux mint I can get games to run but they run horribly. I wish I could figure out the issue because running most of my games on linux would be awesome

cheschire 11mo ago
Are you running your games from your NTFS partition/drive still? Try running them locally off your Linux filesystem instead. Otherwise I would suggest installing Claude code and running it from the terminal and telling it to investigate for you…
- drnick1 11mo ago
  I second this. Your experience is highly unusual, most of my games run very well on Linux (framerates within 10% of Windows). And that's with an Nvidia GPU.
vablings 11mo ago
It's probably a GPU issue. Either you have the wrong drivers, or they are not working correctly

left-struck 11mo ago

For years I dabbled with Linux and I tried switching from windows to Linux many times. There were always compatibility issues with some software and games that made me return to windows. Earlier this year I got so fed up with Microsoft’s relentless invasion of my privacy, annoying nudges and other enshitification efforts in Windows that I decided that not only is windows dead to me, but any software I can’t run Linux is dead to me as well. That was months ago and my only regret is that I didn’t do this sooner. I understand people need certain apps for work and maybe those need windows. Others have absolutely no power over the machines their work gives them, I’ve been there, no judgement. This is just my experience.

drnick1 11mo ago

I think the inflection point for mass adoption will between 5-10% market share. Then Linux will be too big to ignore and game studios will have to make their games work without kernel level anti-cheat or other restrictions or lose a very significant amount of sales relative to the cost of implementing the required changes.