11 ms·

Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

784 points by hkmaxpro 6mo ago

mikenew 6mo ago
Even if this is largely due to a change in how PCs in China are being counted, it's still amazing to watch Linux usage continue to climb like this. It's really the only opposing force to Microsoft's enshittification of Windows.
- WaterRun 6mo ago
  Linux’s ecosystem has also improved significantly over the past two years, especially in China. Due to the influence of “Xinchuang” (that is, domestically produced Linux rebranded under another shell), many Chinese desktop applications have been reworked in the past couple of years, switching from Windows-specific tech stacks to cross-platform ones—mostly Electron, basically browser wrappers—and now support the Linux platform. The commonly used software is basically all there. In addition, the development of LLMs has greatly lowered the barrier to using the Linux command line. Problems that used to take a full day to solve can now be handled easily by anyone who can write a prompt—just ask, copy, and paste. This has even made Windows’ command line unfriendly by comparison, despite its own major improvements in recent years, turning it into a significant drawback.
sonzohan 6mo ago
When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles) When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use. Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu. My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)
- malbs 6mo ago
  On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there. On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux. after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out
  - darkteflon 6mo ago
    Sadly, the original Assetto Corsa is also borked on Linux (AC Evo and AC Rally, on the other hand, run great).
    - ga_to 6mo ago
      In my (admittedly limited) experience, it does run, even with quite comparable performance, but getting a wheel to interact with the game has been a bit challenging. But this could be resolved with a custom driver for my specific hardware. Using the community standard mod manager seems to resolve the UI jank by completely bypassing it.
      - malbs 6mo ago
        yeah, I've heard this too.. and I'd rather my rig just works rather than try and stuff around making it work under linux + I know iracing is cooked anyway, and I've spent enough money on the rig to just want it to work, and not get stuffed over by some anti-cheat, maybe soon picture of my rig https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg
thrdbndndn 6mo ago
I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions. The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else? And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release. At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.
- Tade0 6mo ago
  I filled out the survey yesterday and it didn't notice my dGPU. No way to correct the entries as well.
- amarant 6mo ago
  I mean you make good points and all, but on the other hand I really want this to be the year of the Linux desktop, so I'm gonna go with the other interpretation anyway!
  - malbs 6mo ago
    to give you a single data point, I've finally committed to linux on my desktop machine at home (I posted in another comment on this thread regarding my sim setup, thats another issue), but on the desktop machine, I installed steam, proton, downloaded a few games from my library, and they just worked on install, no stuffing around at all, no searching the web for fixes to get it going. It's probably been 6 years since I tried it, and last time I tried pretty much every game needed _something_) to be done to get it working. The level of technical knowledge required to get it going now is minimal, so maybe 2026 is the year of linux the one caveat was, ubuntu 24.04 LTS still didn't recognise my xbox wireless controller out of the box, and I needed to get xone and compile it and install the driver, a minor inconvenience, but something that would be beyond one of my daughtrs or wife. I've since moved back to debian though but already armed with that knowledge so it wasn't any kind of surprise. next step will be to migrate my work machine, but that one is more difficult because the primary dev is in Delphi, so it'll probably be a case of linux on the hardware, and virtualbox running a win10 VM to do compilations, the other parts of the job are basically all o/s independent python dev, so no problem there.. although I will miss toad for oracle.
october8140 6mo ago
It’s great. Moving on from Windows has been like leaving an abusive relationship.
- cafebabbe 6mo ago
  They are even playing the "come back, i've changed" card recently :D
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    "Recently"? Did people forget the whole "Microsoft <3 Open Source" flop already? Feels like it was just some years ago.
    - octagons 6mo ago
      They’re still in step 2 of their general game plan: embrace, extend, extinguish.
bb88 6mo ago
2026 is the year of Steam Linux.
simmanian 6mo ago
A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly. The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route. I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.
- kelvinjps10 6mo ago
  I use an 8bitdo controller and they work very good in linux, I use the dongle instead of the bluetooh connection
  - tmtvl 6mo ago
    I have an 8bitdo Pro 2 and it's... kinda okay? 90% of the time it works great, but if I don't have an application running which looks for a controller then the controller gets disconnected and reconnected every 10 seconds or so.
- manbash 6mo ago
  Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.
  - 6mo ago
geetee 6mo ago
I was waiting for the steam machine and grew impatient. I instead built a PC to go behind our family room TV. I gave bazzite a chance before committing to a copy of Windows. I'm glad I did. It runs perfectly. Zero hassle, no chasing down drivers. The only thing to be aware of is that a handful of games are not compatible, generally due to their anti-cheat software (e.g. marathon won't run, but arc raiders does.)
- tapoxi 6mo ago
  Bazzite is incredible, I've been running it on my gaming PC for about two years now. Games just work these days, and the updates are silent so I never need to think about them.
  - Gigachad 6mo ago
    After installation, I haven't even used a mouse and keyboard with Bazzite. Everything is controller accessible. It just feels like a console like "just works" experience.
legitster 6mo ago
The top distro is Arch - implying that the Steam Deck userbase is moving the needle. Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile. It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.
- traderj0e 6mo ago
  Can Linus bless a particular desktop Linux distro where he can at least veto unreasonable decisions? So when someone says "I'm switching to Linux," it means that one.
  - tokai 6mo ago
    Linus has been using Fedora for over a decade.
    - timbit42 6mo ago
      I know why he uses Fedora but I think it's long term is questionable. It's only a matter of time until IBM F's with it.
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      Yeah but that doesn't make Fedora the default Linux. I'd be fine if it were, but it's not branded as such, and he doesn't have control over it.
- kombine 6mo ago
  It's not just the single distro, but single Desktop Environment upon which app and ecosystem developers will standardise. I'm glad that the latest generation of gaming distros are converging on Plasma.
- Karliss 6mo ago
  Steam Deck is currently ~25% of those 5% Linux users. Good chunk but not a majority. You can estimate it in two different ways which produce similar results: filtering to Linux only looking at OS list "SteamOS Holo 64 bit" is 24.48% and in the GPU list "AMD Custom GPU 0405"+"RADV VANGOGH" add up to 23.72%.
forrestthewoods 6mo ago
SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines. Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
- tapoxi 6mo ago
  SteamOS is just an immutable Arch, and all Steam Linux games use the Steam Linux container runtime or Proton. Bazzite and a few others provide a similar console-style experience.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
  > Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. It's really not; SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux, and pretty close to vanilla Arch Linux for that matter. > Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries! Proton works fine on other distros.
  - forrestthewoods 6mo ago
    > SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux if you are a gamedev considering support for SteamOS and considering support for generic Linux desktop they really really really REALLY are not the same. At all.
    - leononame 6mo ago
      Why not? Could you elaborate? I'd love to know more. I always had the feeling that supporting SteamOS basically meant that generic Linux Desktop support was almost implied because in the end it's almost always on Proton rather than native.
    - akimbostrawman 6mo ago
      That is not true. Proton and steam linux runtime which are the components actually responsible to run games are literally the exact same code provided by the steam client. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton
rigrassm 6mo ago
I was keeping a Windows install around solely to play Fortnite with my kids but they've finally found other games. Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux). Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.
thinkloop 6mo ago
AI fixes Linux on the desktop. Whatever obscure issues you’re facing, you’re a quick prompt away from the solution.
- HDBaseT 6mo ago
  Whilst I tend to agree, I also don't recommend just pasting every command from ChatGPT into your machine without having some understanding/validating process.
  - ozgrakkurt 6mo ago
    Best flow is Llm -> manual research -> apply But no one has the time to validate everything llm writes via manually researching it unfortunately /s
- traderj0e 6mo ago
  Was not the case when I wanted to use a GameCube controller via Wii U adaptor without a lot of extra lag. Yeah that's a niche, but it works fine in Windows and even Mac.
  - ThatPlayer 6mo ago
    I believe most of those work with controller drivers in the application (Dolphin Emulator or Steam/SDL) rather than the OS level. That's why the Windows solution requires Zadig to replace the HID driver. On Linux instead of replacing the driver, you have to add an udev rule that allows applications to communicate with the USB device directly: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/60-steam-input.rules#L226 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/6... And you can see in this list, it's not the only controller with that requirement. SteamOS includes this by default.
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      I did add that rule, which if I remember correctly was needed for it to work at all. But then the problem is input lag. Many recommend https://github.com/hannesmann/gcadapter-oc-kmod https://github.com/hannesmann/gcadapter-oc-kmod which the author only tested in Arch, and for whatever reason it didn't work on Ubuntu. Was printing that "Failed to acquire lock for USB device" line and then I think "Could not reset device", don't remember. Anyway seems like a hack. This was for Slippi Melee, so even though I'm not super good at the game, the lag was too annoying.
pjmlp 6mo ago
It will reach 10% in 2050 thereabouts, given current velocity, assuming current computing models are still relevant by then.
- vkazanov 6mo ago
  Well, in the overall kernel space there is nothing but Linux-based kernels right now.
  - pjmlp 6mo ago
    You should broaden your hardware horizons. Straight out of Linux Foundation, https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/ There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Windows with its 80% market share has no Linux kernel. Zero Linux kernel running on the ca 15% Apple desktops. Zero Linux kernels running on iOS and iPadOS. No Linux kernels on Arduino or ESP32, althought they certainly can run ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS. And then there are INTEGRITY, vxWorks, QNX, NutXX, FreeBSD, OpenBDS, DragonFly, IBM i, z/OS, ClearPath MCP, OS 2200, ThreadX, SphereOS, Fuchsia,.... and plenty more I won't bother to list, none of them with Linux kernel.
    - WhereIsTheTruth 6mo ago
      You are right, in the grand scheme of things, Windows is probably only 20% of gaming market share PlayStation and Roblox have the same MAU as Steam, that says it all Steam's MAU probably includes people who boot their PC and have steam open in the systray
    - ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
      > There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Except the ones in the network cards and SSD, and probably a bunch of other embedded components. The year of Linux Everywhere was decades ago.
      - pjmlp 6mo ago
kleiba 6mo ago
That's possibly the first time that "skyrocketed" and "5%" have been used together in one sentence.
- dannersy 6mo ago
  Of total users 5% is a substantial number of consumers and some would argue a non-trivial amount of market share to ignore when making a product. This also goes without saying that the more adoption we see, the better these alternatives will get as we see consumers and businesses view Linux as worth the investment.
  - drnick1 6mo ago
    Exactly, 5% isn't much, but it's enough to compel developers to make sure their game runs well through Proton, which is all is necessary these days. Ports aren't really worth it, especially if they aren't going to be as well maintained in the long (cough, Valve, cough).
- sph 6mo ago
  The first 5% is the hardest. It won’t take 35 years to reach 10%.
  - samrus 6mo ago
    "You know whats alot harder? The first 50%" - windows
    - 59nadir 6mo ago
      Given how Windows 11 is going I would guess "You know what's a lot harder? Not trending downwards." would be the more obvious one.
    - herodoturtle 6mo ago
      I heard this in a Justin timberlake as Napster guy voice
- 6mo ago
ekianjo 6mo ago
This means nothing. There is so much up and down based on the active Chinese user base. PHoronox making headlines out of thin air again
- mikkupikku 6mo ago
  M$ shareholders ITT are sweating bullets! Gaming has always been Microsoft's redoubt; without it they will lose the retail market entirely and be left with only the B2B market coasting on the soon forgotten legacy of what Windows once was, and eventually that will dry up too as Windows fails to capture the attention of a new generation of engineers and administrators.
  - Neikius 6mo ago
    Microsoft pretty much abandoned desktop as is. They are just squeezing out what is left. Their main cash now is azure and office365. And they expect it to be AI next. Kinda obvious by the where the effort goes.
  - ekianjo 6mo ago
    They will never lose the retail market because they enforce severe rules towards OEMs.
scubadude 6mo ago
Long time Linux user, but I got lazy into the Windows ecosystem for too many years. My son convinced me to move over and I haven't looked back. I haven't found a game that hasn't run, the worst I have to do is change Proton version. Ubuntu was good, but Nobara is amazing (ndivia 5000 series drivers out of the box).
conception 6mo ago
Just another post saying stuck kde with the new plasma on it for my kids first computer and was blown away by the polish. Switching over my workstation this month for sure. Highly recommended
LennyHenrysNuts 6mo ago
Gaming is more than viable on a Linux PC these days. I'm using CachyOS with a PS2 controller or mouse and keyboard. I had to do virtually zero tinkering.
- ramon156 6mo ago
  Let me know how rainvow 6 runs for you :) I wish you were right, though
  - jabwd 6mo ago
    yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. And those games are easily ignored, as they should be.
    - akimbostrawman 6mo ago
      >yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. *unless the developers explicitly enabled linux userspace support which some do https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
      - coldpie 6mo ago
        > linux userspace support Note that this is a much less robust form of anti-cheat, which is why many developers do not enable it.
        akimbostrawman 6mo ago
        yes because its not a rootkit. it a lot less invasive and more secure for the client device.
    - traderj0e 6mo ago
      Plenty of games without anticheat won't work either. It's far from the Windows situation of installing whatever you want and expecting it to work out of the box. And the "gold" rating on ProtonDB/WineHQ means nothing, you have to check the comments. Sure Linux also works with a lot of games nowadays, and you can ignore whatever doesn't. I use a Mac and accept that it'll run even fewer games. Not my priority.
wafflemaker 6mo ago
When playing eve online on Linux (via Proton), the moment any other window gets focus, or the mouse slights off the game screen onto the second monitor on the side, game minimizes. I have a feeling it's just wine things. Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little? I remember that 13 years ago I did everything on Linux and only switched to Windows to play eve online. Now the game works beautifully (graphics and all) on Linux with just one slight modification in the "run command" in Steam. This is nothing, as anybody who tried to play games on Linux using wine can attest. It used to be a hell of modifications, dependency hunting and obscure hacks to get any windows game to work. Proton and Vulcan are Awesome.
- flohofwoe 6mo ago
  Vulcan is the home planet of Spock, the 3D API is Vulkan ;) (sorry for nitpicking)
- the8472 6mo ago
  Try running it in gamescope. Or the "always capture mouse in fullscreen windows" setting in winecfg.
- roomey 6mo ago
  Check your mouse focus settings in your desktop environment (gnome/KDE/whatever). There may be an option called mouse stealing prevention or something, but if you have a look you should hopefully see it. On xfce it's in its own tab in the mouse menu
- Zardoz84 6mo ago
  There is a weird bug in Helldivers 2 when you use the maximized window without borders and you have a multi monitor setup. Sometimes, the character stops of rotating with the mouse look... like if the mouse cursor found a limit. Another, it's with the full screen mode. When I switch windows with AltTab, sometimes the game restores with the wrong display proportions. As far I know, this bugs happens on Windows too.
- MayeulC 6mo ago
  Not sure why that happens, but you may want to try "borderless window" instead of fullscreen in the game options. If that does not work, you could try running the game in gamescope, or enabling the wine virtual desktop with winecfg (point it at your game-specific wine prefix, you can also run it from protontricks). These are just a few ideas, but it does sound like a mechanism that is part if the game, not wine. Just like some games crash when you alt-tab in windows; gamescope tends to fix that.
christkv 6mo ago
I've been happy with my Bazzite setup for play and work. Took a little time to get used to fedora atomic and the changes in installing and running stuff but used to it now.
BoredPositron 6mo ago
Phoronix lost the plot in the last year with their click bait garbage headlines and articles. February/March user data is always skewed because of the Chinese holidays. They know it, we know it, they even write about it in the article but still a dumbass hype bait headline and article. Just fucking stop it, the quality of your reviews took a dive as well. Go ahead and produce more garbage and you have lost all value as a news site by the end of the year.
throwaway45460 6mo ago
“I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down.” —Linus Torvalds
TurdF3rguson 6mo ago
Skyrocketed above 5% is an expression I would discourage anyone from using because it's a broken metaphor. Unless the trajectory of that rocket was a few degrees from horizontal. How about grasshopper-ed above 5%?
- KeplerBoy 6mo ago
  Let's revisit that topic if the FED raises interest to 5%.
- PurpleRamen 6mo ago
  The number doubled in the last year. April 2025 it was around 2.3%, and has been jumping around 2-3% for several years. Skyrocking seems justified when looking at a greater picture. Though, it's a longer process, not something that suddenly happened immediately. The combination of Steamdeck, proton, good gaming-distributions and Windows 10 phasing out, while Windows 11 sucks and becoming an AI+Ads-infested mess, seems to have pushed this trend. So let's see how high this sky will be. Edit: Found a good visualization: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
  - TurdF3rguson 6mo ago
    Right but clearly 5% is still much closer to the ground than it is to the sky. Not that ground-rocketed makes any more sense because it doesn't.
    - PurpleRamen 6mo ago
      Skyrocketing in this context is a fast steep rise, moving fast toward the sky; so it's about relative height in a specific timeframe, not absolute height. I mean, nobody would say Windows is skyrocketing, because it already is the sky (here).
    - Zhyl 6mo ago
      Things can skyrocket whilst being relatively small compared to other things.
esskay 6mo ago
Massive props needs to be given to the Proton and Wine teams and Valve and Codeweavers commercial efforts to help fund work on this.
Fokamul 6mo ago
Only blocker for Linux gaming are intrusive Anti-cheats. They can be bypassed on Windows, but with too much work (custom hypervisor etc.) To bypass them on Linux, a lot more easier.
- Neikius 6mo ago
  Not true. No way to even play those games in Linux....
acd 6mo ago
Go Linux. Gamers will have a better experiance in Linux. Predict that Windows will become an legacy emulation layer.
ph4rsikal 6mo ago
I am part of the 5%. But not on Steamdeck. Proton has made gaming on Ubuntu feasible, and I usually don't have issues with compatibility.
zelphirkalt 6mo ago
I wish things were working so seamlessly for me, as people describe in the comments. There seems to be something wrong with Steam and how it works, so that in my machine (and CPU and GPU from 2019, with official Linux drivers from standard repos, running Debian KDE) it almost never manages to start a Windows game. I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. This has been going on for years and I have tried various things, Including HWE kernel, OS reinstall from Linux Mint to Debian, installing the steam client via various means, and whatnot. I have a suspicion, that somehow Steam has issues when Guix is installed, which I am always using, but then the question is, why Steam is incapable of just shipping with whatever it needs and using the things it shipped with properly, instead of getting confused by Guix, which only puts things in the GNU store, and not in a place that Steam should ever look at. But like I said, it is only a hunch or suspicion, and I need Guix more than Steam on Linux. Then there are games that just work, like Stardew Valley. And maybe Terraria. I suspect, that it is somehow also about what engine the games use and what those engines rely on. But these games are very few, and most bigger mainstream games like AoE2 simple won't start, like I described. So for me it still seems, that it is not actually working that reliably on just any GNU/Linux system, and that there are still blind spots, that Valve or whoever is clearly not seeing or considering in their whole Proton development or how Proton is used by Steam. Probably some isolation thing that they are completely missing for several years now.
- BatteryMountain 6mo ago
  Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves all problems for me and stopped me from distro-hopping: media consumption, software dev tooling, system admin tooling, gaming - all just works. My current install is about a year old without breaking itself (still on Fedora 42). I gave gnome a couple of tries, but the plugin system is a crapshoot as they broken an install for me once after an update. Come to think of it, I haven't manage to break KDE yet. Then in steam itself, you can swap different versions of proton. I like to set the base version to one of the newer versions, but if a game doesn't work, I check on protondb which versions work so I override it per game. You can also give lutris a try as it has a few extra advanced levers that you can to get things working.
HeckFeck 6mo ago
I got my Steam Deck that month, so pleased to be a part of it. The Deck fills a gap that has been empty in my soul since the PSP was discontinued, and feels like a genuine step forward that makes technology fun again. It's fully open! It has a KDE desktop that I can access any time! I can shove in any size of SSD I like! And I'm playing Halo 3... on Linux... on hardware made by Steam. If you spoke that sentence to me in 2009, I'd suggest you ought to be sectioned.
- Levitating 6mo ago
  Yep it's crazy. The SteamDeck alone gives me the hope that we will see mainstream use of (desktop) linux within my lifetime. People need to get their hands on real, working, consumer-friendly devices running Linux out-of-the-box.
  - leftpad77 6mo ago
    Agreed. Roll on steam machine as well! I prefer handheld, but the more linux-based gaming we can get out there, the better
crest 6mo ago
Are the numbers by hours played instead of by installed clients? How are users with multiple devices counted?
mikkupikku 6mo ago
Pewdiepie becoming an arch-pilled rice-maxxer who advocates Linux for freedom and gaming has surely had some effect. He's such a good sport he even swore off Photoshop and tries to learn to like Gimp.
- jijijijij 6mo ago
  Things I hadn't had on my bingo cards, in this or any universe: Me really looking forward to a new PewDiePie video! Guy has become a wholesome tech entertainment retreat for me. It's like Martijn Doolaard, but Linux instead of Alps... I can't stress enough how wholesome and pleasant the content has become. Or maybe it's been always like that, and I was just an ignorant snob... Granted, I have SponsorBlock installed, so the occasional predatory supplement stuff gets cut, but he also kinda made clear he's rich enough and not in it for the money anymore - and I tend to believe him. PewDiePie won life, chose sanity and took the anti-corruption path. Bless him and his family, and God please, let it be real!
- alex_duf 6mo ago
  Or maybe Microsoft continuously degrading their user's experiences has finally reached a breaking point, to the point where Pewdipie AND Linus Tech Tips are talking more seriously about linux. So yeah Pewdiepie is part of it, but I honestly think that's only because Microsoft has done such a poor job at maintaining their operating system.
  - mikkupikku 6mo ago
    Certainly Microsoft is responsible for most of it. I'm just saying Felix still has a lot of influence and has been pulling in the same direction to his millions of fans.
  - ehnto 6mo ago
    If I am reading the room right, I think Wine/Proton/Steam making gaming almost effortless on linux has been the big swing. It was not like this 5 years ago. I have been a linux user for work for a decade, but still ran Windows for a gaming PC. But with Win11 dropping the ball so hard, and the general hype around Proton and where linux gaming was it, it was not hard to make the decision to switch. I haven't regretted it a single bit.
gchamonlive 6mo ago
I am a long time windows pc gamer, but lately I was having to re-pair my DS4 controller every week or so. But the windows Bluetooth device manager will just refuse to remove that device. So I was periodically having to open the old school device manager, click show hidden and remove the controller there. By the fifth time I got fed up, replaced windows with Bazzite and am happy now. Good riddance.
- nijave 6mo ago
  YMMV, I've not had good luck with Bluetooth on any OS
  - gchamonlive 6mo ago
    It's absolutely fine on Linux for all the devices I have so I'm happy with it. I daily drive arch (https://github.com/gchamon/archie https://github.com/gchamon/archie), bazzite which is fedora, and the notebook my current employer provides which comes with Ubuntu pre-installed.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    Fun how those things go, I've only ever had troubles with Bluetooth on Apple hardware (both phones and laptops), meanwhile I never had problems with Bluetooth on either Windows or Linux, both desktops and laptops, with controllers, headphones and keyboards. YMMV indeed :)
    - nijave 6mo ago
      On Apple, I've had interference problems but the daemon seems stable. On Linux, the daemon locks up and crashes sometimes but no interference issues (so maybe my chip is quirky or not well supported)
  - Pwntastic 6mo ago
    i run endeavour (arch) and have a handful of things using bluetooth without any issues. i even have my airpods paired and use them constantly with no problems
ugurs 6mo ago
[dead]
shevy-java 6mo ago
Considering how awful Microslop's Win11 is, Linux could really gain some traction if it were to begin to consider the desktop environment as a useful target. Server is already dominated, top 500 supercomputers running linux (since 2017; https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1/ https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1/) - yet the desktop area is one where I don't feel there is really a lot of real improvement. I know, I know, GNOME and KDE keep on promoting how above they are beyond epic perfection already, but this is just buzzword-PR-chaining. GTK is a mostly-GNOME-only toolkit now and qt has its own objectives. Things that should be super-simple and work on Linux, do not work that well for Average Joe for the most part. One can fix most things with some research, but not everyone knows how to do so, or will fatigue after a while. Now most gamers are usually young and tend to be more tech-savvy, so they can solve things more easily, but even then one has to wonder why so much time has to be invested to make things work well. Why does Linux not consider the desktop system a priority? Smartphones are a special place as the environment is mostly controlled by one private vendor or an open ecosystem (which then is usually much smaller, and still does not yield real improvements for the desktop system, for the most part, give or take; GNOME3 kind of looks and feels like a smartphone-UI).
- lunar_rover 6mo ago
  > Why does Linux not consider the desktop system a priority? No company big enough has decided to heavily invest in Linux desktop for end users yet. The community is composed of techies and they make products for techies. Valve's solution is to use their own semi proprietary Steam Big Screen as the default interface of SteamOS.
  - scheeseman486 6mo ago
    Valve are the primary financiers of Techpaladin, a team of over a dozen developers that work specifically on KDE Plasma and Qt.
ameen 6mo ago
I wonder if part of this is usage by newer Android based emulators [1] used for emulating x86-based PC games on powerful snapdragon based devices (Retroid Pocket 6, AYN Odin 2 line, AYN Thor, AYANEO Pocket S2, etc). [1] GameNative, GameHub (and GameHub lite)
- gchamonlive 6mo ago
  I'd be surprised if the intersection of users that have such devices, use it to emulate x86 games and use steam on it is big enough to make such an impact.
bradley13 6mo ago
I've played exclusively on Linux for a couple of years now. Sometimes, very rarely, you have to select a specific Proton version for a game. Otherwise, it just works.
nickserv 6mo ago
My last Windows install was XP, but I stopped using Steam a couple years back. I prefer to own what I buy, so now only purchase on GOG. However I'm very thankful for the work Valve has done, as this has made Wine much much better. I can now just download a game from GOG, set it up with a winetricks one-liner, and expect it to work. Even the latest games that just came out. Although to be fair I usually wait a couple months to get a good discount. But, before, you had to wait years for support, if any at all. I'm also seeing some studios releasing support for Vulkan either day one or in updates, which is great.
sandworm101 6mo ago
Question: What percentage of windows gamers are actually Linux gamers who are using wine/proton or some anti-cheat workaround/VM that causes them to be reported as using windows when they are in fact running linux? Using proton, I regularly see crash reports where games want to report that I was running some version of windows, which is a result of how proton implements wine. I never send such reports as they are of little use to developers.
- ranger207 6mo ago
  This is from the Steam hardware survey. Steam doesn't run under Wine generally so this problem shouldn't come up
  - sandworm101 6mo ago
    Proton is a modified version of Wine. If the underlying game is sending a bug/crash report, it may "see" itself as running under windows as that is what wine presents. https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton "Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this."
    - hamdingers 6mo ago
      True but irrelevant, these numbers are reported by Steam which is running natively on Linux. It launches proton, it is not itself running on proton.
    - ranger207 6mo ago
      Correct. Steam, a native Linux app, will run Windows games via Proton. As Steam itself, which is collecting the data in TFA, is a Linux app, it shouldn't be affected by thinking it's running under Wine/Proton. As to your original question, I don't think many developers release information on what OSes their players are using, so I don't think we can tell
PaulHoule 6mo ago
I am impressed with the Steam Deck. Playing The Hundred Line on the deck brings back the glory days of the Playstation Vita. And it's the one device I have (including iPhone, iPad and Mac) for which AirPods are 100% a "just works" experience.
mzmzmzm 6mo ago
Personally, after using Windows at home since I was in kindergarten (3.1), having an employer-provided Macbook the last 15 years, and every few years dipping a toe into Linux for various projects, I can say they finally did it. I panic built a new PC for gaming, video editing, and messing with LLMs just at the start of the RAM crisis and thought what the heck, why not CachyOS. I might not be the average user, but it has been so much more convenient, snappy, and fun to troubleshoot than any other time I can remember. KDE just works and has sane defaults. The Arch repository has almost everything you can imagine, and usually the Cachy maintained "safe" repos do too. I downloaded Steam and immediately jumped into my saves from BG3, Cyberpunk, Claire Obscur, and more, like nothing happened. QGIS, Affinity apps (bye Adeobe), LM Studio can take advantage of my GPU. DaVinci Resolve is wonky, but Kdenlive is fine as a stopgap. I want to evangelize now as much as possible since it's all so starkly different from even 5 years ago, largely but not wholly thanks to Steam's Proton work. Microsoft really doesn't care about Win users (fine, it doesn't make them any money), and now is our chance.
tjpnz 6mo ago
GFN is releasing in India this month. Would be interesting to see to what extent that's reflected later on.
arafeq 6mo ago
[flagged]
octagons 6mo ago
I’ve had a good experience running Arch Linux on my “gaming” PC in the living room. It helps that I’m very comfortable with Linux internals, but I’d say I have no issues or issues that can be fixed with 2-3 clicks about 95% of the time. My setup is basically Arch Linux, ProtonUp-Qt (to easily install specific versions of Proton, the compatibility layer), Steam, and the proprietary Nvidia drivers/Vulkan. I generally have no issues with Easy Anti-Cheat games like Arc Raiders, but obviously anything that requires secure boot attestation like Arena Breakout Infinite won’t play. I’ve not bothered to try setting up full secure boot as the games that require it aren’t typically in my wheelhouse. I hope Linux adoption continues for my own, very self-serving, interests. I get the sense that those who primarily use their computer for gaming are the frogs slowly being boiled by Microsoft who continues to back their these customers into uncomfortable, unnecessary corners.
- drnick1 6mo ago
  > I generally have no issues with Easy Anti-Cheat games like Arc Raiders, but obviously anything that requires secure boot attestation like Arena Breakout Infinite won’t play. I’ve not bothered to try setting up full secure boot as the games that require it aren’t typically in my wheelhouse. I don't think secure boot will help. I use Arch, and have secure boot set up, but don't see how it would help with kernel-level anticheat. The issue is that anyone can sign their own kernels, so while secure boot is valuable from a security point of view, it does not really certify anything from the point of view of a third party.
thom 6mo ago
I've been very impressed with Bazzite on my ASUS dual screen laptop. Honestly feel like hardware support is better (especially in the absence of crappy ASUS software) and nothing on Steam runs noticeably worse. Hard to imagine going back to Windows at this point.
jms703 6mo ago
I moved from Windows to Linux after the lastest round of MS crap on my system. Not looking back.
pavon 6mo ago
Man the distro breakdown is an even bigger mess than normal: Feb 2026: 31.58% Other 23.83% SteamOS Holo 64 bit 9.07% ArchLinux 64 bit 8.59% CachyOS 64 bit 6.62% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 5.79% Bazzite 64 bit 5.26% Freedesktop SDK 25.08 3.82% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 2.83% Ubuntu 24.04.03 LTS 64 bit 2.59% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit March 2026: 25.64% Other 24.48% SteamOS Holo 64 bit 17.60% 0 64 bit 8.78% Arch Linux 64 bit 8.01% 64 bit 6.90% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 3.58% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 1.90% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 1.67% Ubuntu 25.10 64 bit 1.45% Manjoro Linux 64 bit I'm guessing that "0 64 bit" and "64 bit" are CachyOS and Bazzite, as I would be surprised to see either of those fall off the list given their current popularity. It is also interesting to see the flatpack installs (Freedesktop SDK) fall off the list. I really wish that Valve would increase the number of distros they report, or stop breaking out individual versions. The purpose of having multiple versions is to see how quickly people are upgrading and when to stop supporting older ones, but the current presentation doesn't actually let you do that since there is so much churn in which releases make the top 10 cut.
- drnick1 6mo ago
  I wonder who the "other" are? Gentoo users hiding in plain sight?
subjectsigma 6mo ago
I’m on Bazzite and I’m strongly considering switching back to Windows 11. Proton performance is just not as good as native. Games like Valve’s own Deadlock just run terribly on Proton and completely fine on Windows, using the same hardware. It’s a miracle that Proton works at all, but why compromise when I already have a Win11 license key?
pojzon 6mo ago
Valve doesnt have to do anything to win. Competition is shooting themselve into the foot constantly. Its only a matter of time before majority of playerbase switches to linux ecosystem. Work on proton and steamos are just the beginning.
ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago
I moved to Bazzite in October. Absolutely zero regrets.
j-kent 6mo ago
living room gaming PC Mobo died and was looking at $400 min to rebuild. I jumped on the BC-250 craze, which is a very capable bitcoin miner based on the PS5. installed Bazzite and it's been great.

784 points by hkmaxpro 6mo ago

Even if this is largely due to a change in how PCs in China are being counted, it's still amazing to watch Linux usage continue to climb like this. It's really the only opposing force to Microsoft's enshittification of Windows.

WaterRun 6mo ago
Linux’s ecosystem has also improved significantly over the past two years, especially in China. Due to the influence of “Xinchuang” (that is, domestically produced Linux rebranded under another shell), many Chinese desktop applications have been reworked in the past couple of years, switching from Windows-specific tech stacks to cross-platform ones—mostly Electron, basically browser wrappers—and now support the Linux platform. The commonly used software is basically all there. In addition, the development of LLMs has greatly lowered the barrier to using the Linux command line. Problems that used to take a full day to solve can now be handled easily by anyone who can write a prompt—just ask, copy, and paste. This has even made Windows’ command line unfriendly by comparison, despite its own major improvements in recent years, turning it into a significant drawback.

sonzohan 6mo ago

When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles) When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use. Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu. My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)

malbs 6mo ago
On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there. On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux. after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out
- darkteflon 6mo ago
  Sadly, the original Assetto Corsa is also borked on Linux (AC Evo and AC Rally, on the other hand, run great).
  - ga_to 6mo ago
    In my (admittedly limited) experience, it does run, even with quite comparable performance, but getting a wheel to interact with the game has been a bit challenging. But this could be resolved with a custom driver for my specific hardware. Using the community standard mod manager seems to resolve the UI jank by completely bypassing it.
    - malbs 6mo ago
      yeah, I've heard this too.. and I'd rather my rig just works rather than try and stuff around making it work under linux + I know iracing is cooked anyway, and I've spent enough money on the rig to just want it to work, and not get stuffed over by some anti-cheat, maybe soon picture of my rig https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg

thrdbndndn 6mo ago

I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions. The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else? And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release. At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.

Tade0 6mo ago
I filled out the survey yesterday and it didn't notice my dGPU. No way to correct the entries as well.
amarant 6mo ago
I mean you make good points and all, but on the other hand I really want this to be the year of the Linux desktop, so I'm gonna go with the other interpretation anyway!
- malbs 6mo ago
  to give you a single data point, I've finally committed to linux on my desktop machine at home (I posted in another comment on this thread regarding my sim setup, thats another issue), but on the desktop machine, I installed steam, proton, downloaded a few games from my library, and they just worked on install, no stuffing around at all, no searching the web for fixes to get it going. It's probably been 6 years since I tried it, and last time I tried pretty much every game needed _something_) to be done to get it working. The level of technical knowledge required to get it going now is minimal, so maybe 2026 is the year of linux the one caveat was, ubuntu 24.04 LTS still didn't recognise my xbox wireless controller out of the box, and I needed to get xone and compile it and install the driver, a minor inconvenience, but something that would be beyond one of my daughtrs or wife. I've since moved back to debian though but already armed with that knowledge so it wasn't any kind of surprise. next step will be to migrate my work machine, but that one is more difficult because the primary dev is in Delphi, so it'll probably be a case of linux on the hardware, and virtualbox running a win10 VM to do compilations, the other parts of the job are basically all o/s independent python dev, so no problem there.. although I will miss toad for oracle.

october8140 6mo ago

It’s great. Moving on from Windows has been like leaving an abusive relationship.

cafebabbe 6mo ago
They are even playing the "come back, i've changed" card recently :D
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  "Recently"? Did people forget the whole "Microsoft <3 Open Source" flop already? Feels like it was just some years ago.
  - octagons 6mo ago
    They’re still in step 2 of their general game plan: embrace, extend, extinguish.

bb88 6mo ago

2026 is the year of Steam Linux.

simmanian 6mo ago

A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly. The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route. I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.

kelvinjps10 6mo ago
I use an 8bitdo controller and they work very good in linux, I use the dongle instead of the bluetooh connection
- tmtvl 6mo ago
  I have an 8bitdo Pro 2 and it's... kinda okay? 90% of the time it works great, but if I don't have an application running which looks for a controller then the controller gets disconnected and reconnected every 10 seconds or so.
manbash 6mo ago
Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.
- 6mo ago

geetee 6mo ago

I was waiting for the steam machine and grew impatient. I instead built a PC to go behind our family room TV. I gave bazzite a chance before committing to a copy of Windows. I'm glad I did. It runs perfectly. Zero hassle, no chasing down drivers. The only thing to be aware of is that a handful of games are not compatible, generally due to their anti-cheat software (e.g. marathon won't run, but arc raiders does.)

tapoxi 6mo ago
Bazzite is incredible, I've been running it on my gaming PC for about two years now. Games just work these days, and the updates are silent so I never need to think about them.
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  After installation, I haven't even used a mouse and keyboard with Bazzite. Everything is controller accessible. It just feels like a console like "just works" experience.

legitster 6mo ago

The top distro is Arch - implying that the Steam Deck userbase is moving the needle. Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile. It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.

traderj0e 6mo ago
Can Linus bless a particular desktop Linux distro where he can at least veto unreasonable decisions? So when someone says "I'm switching to Linux," it means that one.
- tokai 6mo ago
  Linus has been using Fedora for over a decade.
  - timbit42 6mo ago
    I know why he uses Fedora but I think it's long term is questionable. It's only a matter of time until IBM F's with it.
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    Yeah but that doesn't make Fedora the default Linux. I'd be fine if it were, but it's not branded as such, and he doesn't have control over it.
kombine 6mo ago
It's not just the single distro, but single Desktop Environment upon which app and ecosystem developers will standardise. I'm glad that the latest generation of gaming distros are converging on Plasma.
Karliss 6mo ago
Steam Deck is currently ~25% of those 5% Linux users. Good chunk but not a majority. You can estimate it in two different ways which produce similar results: filtering to Linux only looking at OS list "SteamOS Holo 64 bit" is 24.48% and in the GPU list "AMD Custom GPU 0405"+"RADV VANGOGH" add up to 23.72%.

forrestthewoods 6mo ago

SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines. Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!

tapoxi 6mo ago
SteamOS is just an immutable Arch, and all Steam Linux games use the Steam Linux container runtime or Proton. Bazzite and a few others provide a similar console-style experience.
yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
> Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. It's really not; SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux, and pretty close to vanilla Arch Linux for that matter. > Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries! Proton works fine on other distros.
- forrestthewoods 6mo ago
  > SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux if you are a gamedev considering support for SteamOS and considering support for generic Linux desktop they really really really REALLY are not the same. At all.
  - leononame 6mo ago
    Why not? Could you elaborate? I'd love to know more. I always had the feeling that supporting SteamOS basically meant that generic Linux Desktop support was almost implied because in the end it's almost always on Proton rather than native.
  - akimbostrawman 6mo ago
    That is not true. Proton and steam linux runtime which are the components actually responsible to run games are literally the exact same code provided by the steam client. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton

rigrassm 6mo ago

I was keeping a Windows install around solely to play Fortnite with my kids but they've finally found other games. Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux). Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.

thinkloop 6mo ago

AI fixes Linux on the desktop. Whatever obscure issues you’re facing, you’re a quick prompt away from the solution.

HDBaseT 6mo ago
Whilst I tend to agree, I also don't recommend just pasting every command from ChatGPT into your machine without having some understanding/validating process.
- ozgrakkurt 6mo ago
  Best flow is Llm -> manual research -> apply But no one has the time to validate everything llm writes via manually researching it unfortunately /s
traderj0e 6mo ago
Was not the case when I wanted to use a GameCube controller via Wii U adaptor without a lot of extra lag. Yeah that's a niche, but it works fine in Windows and even Mac.
- ThatPlayer 6mo ago
  I believe most of those work with controller drivers in the application (Dolphin Emulator or Steam/SDL) rather than the OS level. That's why the Windows solution requires Zadig to replace the HID driver. On Linux instead of replacing the driver, you have to add an udev rule that allows applications to communicate with the USB device directly: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/60-steam-input.rules#L226 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/6... And you can see in this list, it's not the only controller with that requirement. SteamOS includes this by default.
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    I did add that rule, which if I remember correctly was needed for it to work at all. But then the problem is input lag. Many recommend https://github.com/hannesmann/gcadapter-oc-kmod https://github.com/hannesmann/gcadapter-oc-kmod which the author only tested in Arch, and for whatever reason it didn't work on Ubuntu. Was printing that "Failed to acquire lock for USB device" line and then I think "Could not reset device", don't remember. Anyway seems like a hack. This was for Slippi Melee, so even though I'm not super good at the game, the lag was too annoying.

pjmlp 6mo ago

It will reach 10% in 2050 thereabouts, given current velocity, assuming current computing models are still relevant by then.

vkazanov 6mo ago
Well, in the overall kernel space there is nothing but Linux-based kernels right now.
- pjmlp 6mo ago
  You should broaden your hardware horizons. Straight out of Linux Foundation, https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/ There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Windows with its 80% market share has no Linux kernel. Zero Linux kernel running on the ca 15% Apple desktops. Zero Linux kernels running on iOS and iPadOS. No Linux kernels on Arduino or ESP32, althought they certainly can run ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS. And then there are INTEGRITY, vxWorks, QNX, NutXX, FreeBSD, OpenBDS, DragonFly, IBM i, z/OS, ClearPath MCP, OS 2200, ThreadX, SphereOS, Fuchsia,.... and plenty more I won't bother to list, none of them with Linux kernel.
  - WhereIsTheTruth 6mo ago
    You are right, in the grand scheme of things, Windows is probably only 20% of gaming market share PlayStation and Roblox have the same MAU as Steam, that says it all Steam's MAU probably includes people who boot their PC and have steam open in the systray
  - ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
    > There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Except the ones in the network cards and SSD, and probably a bunch of other embedded components. The year of Linux Everywhere was decades ago.
    - pjmlp 6mo ago

kleiba 6mo ago

That's possibly the first time that "skyrocketed" and "5%" have been used together in one sentence.

dannersy 6mo ago
Of total users 5% is a substantial number of consumers and some would argue a non-trivial amount of market share to ignore when making a product. This also goes without saying that the more adoption we see, the better these alternatives will get as we see consumers and businesses view Linux as worth the investment.
- drnick1 6mo ago
  Exactly, 5% isn't much, but it's enough to compel developers to make sure their game runs well through Proton, which is all is necessary these days. Ports aren't really worth it, especially if they aren't going to be as well maintained in the long (cough, Valve, cough).
sph 6mo ago
The first 5% is the hardest. It won’t take 35 years to reach 10%.
- samrus 6mo ago
  "You know whats alot harder? The first 50%" - windows
  - 59nadir 6mo ago
    Given how Windows 11 is going I would guess "You know what's a lot harder? Not trending downwards." would be the more obvious one.
  - herodoturtle 6mo ago
    I heard this in a Justin timberlake as Napster guy voice
6mo ago

ekianjo 6mo ago

This means nothing. There is so much up and down based on the active Chinese user base. PHoronox making headlines out of thin air again

mikkupikku 6mo ago
M$ shareholders ITT are sweating bullets! Gaming has always been Microsoft's redoubt; without it they will lose the retail market entirely and be left with only the B2B market coasting on the soon forgotten legacy of what Windows once was, and eventually that will dry up too as Windows fails to capture the attention of a new generation of engineers and administrators.
- Neikius 6mo ago
  Microsoft pretty much abandoned desktop as is. They are just squeezing out what is left. Their main cash now is azure and office365. And they expect it to be AI next. Kinda obvious by the where the effort goes.
- ekianjo 6mo ago
  They will never lose the retail market because they enforce severe rules towards OEMs.

scubadude 6mo ago

Long time Linux user, but I got lazy into the Windows ecosystem for too many years. My son convinced me to move over and I haven't looked back. I haven't found a game that hasn't run, the worst I have to do is change Proton version. Ubuntu was good, but Nobara is amazing (ndivia 5000 series drivers out of the box).

conception 6mo ago

Just another post saying stuck kde with the new plasma on it for my kids first computer and was blown away by the polish. Switching over my workstation this month for sure. Highly recommended

LennyHenrysNuts 6mo ago

Gaming is more than viable on a Linux PC these days. I'm using CachyOS with a PS2 controller or mouse and keyboard. I had to do virtually zero tinkering.

ramon156 6mo ago
Let me know how rainvow 6 runs for you :) I wish you were right, though
- jabwd 6mo ago
  yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. And those games are easily ignored, as they should be.
  - akimbostrawman 6mo ago
    >yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. *unless the developers explicitly enabled linux userspace support which some do https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
    - coldpie 6mo ago
      > linux userspace support Note that this is a much less robust form of anti-cheat, which is why many developers do not enable it.
      - akimbostrawman 6mo ago
        yes because its not a rootkit. it a lot less invasive and more secure for the client device.
  - traderj0e 6mo ago
    Plenty of games without anticheat won't work either. It's far from the Windows situation of installing whatever you want and expecting it to work out of the box. And the "gold" rating on ProtonDB/WineHQ means nothing, you have to check the comments. Sure Linux also works with a lot of games nowadays, and you can ignore whatever doesn't. I use a Mac and accept that it'll run even fewer games. Not my priority.

wafflemaker 6mo ago

When playing eve online on Linux (via Proton), the moment any other window gets focus, or the mouse slights off the game screen onto the second monitor on the side, game minimizes. I have a feeling it's just wine things. Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little? I remember that 13 years ago I did everything on Linux and only switched to Windows to play eve online. Now the game works beautifully (graphics and all) on Linux with just one slight modification in the "run command" in Steam. This is nothing, as anybody who tried to play games on Linux using wine can attest. It used to be a hell of modifications, dependency hunting and obscure hacks to get any windows game to work. Proton and Vulcan are Awesome.

flohofwoe 6mo ago
Vulcan is the home planet of Spock, the 3D API is Vulkan ;) (sorry for nitpicking)
the8472 6mo ago
Try running it in gamescope. Or the "always capture mouse in fullscreen windows" setting in winecfg.
roomey 6mo ago
Check your mouse focus settings in your desktop environment (gnome/KDE/whatever). There may be an option called mouse stealing prevention or something, but if you have a look you should hopefully see it. On xfce it's in its own tab in the mouse menu
Zardoz84 6mo ago
There is a weird bug in Helldivers 2 when you use the maximized window without borders and you have a multi monitor setup. Sometimes, the character stops of rotating with the mouse look... like if the mouse cursor found a limit. Another, it's with the full screen mode. When I switch windows with AltTab, sometimes the game restores with the wrong display proportions. As far I know, this bugs happens on Windows too.
MayeulC 6mo ago
Not sure why that happens, but you may want to try "borderless window" instead of fullscreen in the game options. If that does not work, you could try running the game in gamescope, or enabling the wine virtual desktop with winecfg (point it at your game-specific wine prefix, you can also run it from protontricks). These are just a few ideas, but it does sound like a mechanism that is part if the game, not wine. Just like some games crash when you alt-tab in windows; gamescope tends to fix that.

christkv 6mo ago

I've been happy with my Bazzite setup for play and work. Took a little time to get used to fedora atomic and the changes in installing and running stuff but used to it now.

BoredPositron 6mo ago

Phoronix lost the plot in the last year with their click bait garbage headlines and articles. February/March user data is always skewed because of the Chinese holidays. They know it, we know it, they even write about it in the article but still a dumbass hype bait headline and article. Just fucking stop it, the quality of your reviews took a dive as well. Go ahead and produce more garbage and you have lost all value as a news site by the end of the year.

throwaway45460 6mo ago

“I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down.” —Linus Torvalds

TurdF3rguson 6mo ago

Skyrocketed above 5% is an expression I would discourage anyone from using because it's a broken metaphor. Unless the trajectory of that rocket was a few degrees from horizontal. How about grasshopper-ed above 5%?

KeplerBoy 6mo ago
Let's revisit that topic if the FED raises interest to 5%.
PurpleRamen 6mo ago
The number doubled in the last year. April 2025 it was around 2.3%, and has been jumping around 2-3% for several years. Skyrocking seems justified when looking at a greater picture. Though, it's a longer process, not something that suddenly happened immediately. The combination of Steamdeck, proton, good gaming-distributions and Windows 10 phasing out, while Windows 11 sucks and becoming an AI+Ads-infested mess, seems to have pushed this trend. So let's see how high this sky will be. Edit: Found a good visualization: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
- TurdF3rguson 6mo ago
  Right but clearly 5% is still much closer to the ground than it is to the sky. Not that ground-rocketed makes any more sense because it doesn't.
  - PurpleRamen 6mo ago
    Skyrocketing in this context is a fast steep rise, moving fast toward the sky; so it's about relative height in a specific timeframe, not absolute height. I mean, nobody would say Windows is skyrocketing, because it already is the sky (here).
  - Zhyl 6mo ago
    Things can skyrocket whilst being relatively small compared to other things.

esskay 6mo ago

Massive props needs to be given to the Proton and Wine teams and Valve and Codeweavers commercial efforts to help fund work on this.

Fokamul 6mo ago

Only blocker for Linux gaming are intrusive Anti-cheats. They can be bypassed on Windows, but with too much work (custom hypervisor etc.) To bypass them on Linux, a lot more easier.

Neikius 6mo ago
Not true. No way to even play those games in Linux....

acd 6mo ago

Go Linux. Gamers will have a better experiance in Linux. Predict that Windows will become an legacy emulation layer.

ph4rsikal 6mo ago

I am part of the 5%. But not on Steamdeck. Proton has made gaming on Ubuntu feasible, and I usually don't have issues with compatibility.

zelphirkalt 6mo ago

I wish things were working so seamlessly for me, as people describe in the comments. There seems to be something wrong with Steam and how it works, so that in my machine (and CPU and GPU from 2019, with official Linux drivers from standard repos, running Debian KDE) it almost never manages to start a Windows game. I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. This has been going on for years and I have tried various things, Including HWE kernel, OS reinstall from Linux Mint to Debian, installing the steam client via various means, and whatnot. I have a suspicion, that somehow Steam has issues when Guix is installed, which I am always using, but then the question is, why Steam is incapable of just shipping with whatever it needs and using the things it shipped with properly, instead of getting confused by Guix, which only puts things in the GNU store, and not in a place that Steam should ever look at. But like I said, it is only a hunch or suspicion, and I need Guix more than Steam on Linux. Then there are games that just work, like Stardew Valley. And maybe Terraria. I suspect, that it is somehow also about what engine the games use and what those engines rely on. But these games are very few, and most bigger mainstream games like AoE2 simple won't start, like I described. So for me it still seems, that it is not actually working that reliably on just any GNU/Linux system, and that there are still blind spots, that Valve or whoever is clearly not seeing or considering in their whole Proton development or how Proton is used by Steam. Probably some isolation thing that they are completely missing for several years now.

BatteryMountain 6mo ago
Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves all problems for me and stopped me from distro-hopping: media consumption, software dev tooling, system admin tooling, gaming - all just works. My current install is about a year old without breaking itself (still on Fedora 42). I gave gnome a couple of tries, but the plugin system is a crapshoot as they broken an install for me once after an update. Come to think of it, I haven't manage to break KDE yet. Then in steam itself, you can swap different versions of proton. I like to set the base version to one of the newer versions, but if a game doesn't work, I check on protondb which versions work so I override it per game. You can also give lutris a try as it has a few extra advanced levers that you can to get things working.

HeckFeck 6mo ago

I got my Steam Deck that month, so pleased to be a part of it. The Deck fills a gap that has been empty in my soul since the PSP was discontinued, and feels like a genuine step forward that makes technology fun again. It's fully open! It has a KDE desktop that I can access any time! I can shove in any size of SSD I like! And I'm playing Halo 3... on Linux... on hardware made by Steam. If you spoke that sentence to me in 2009, I'd suggest you ought to be sectioned.

Levitating 6mo ago
Yep it's crazy. The SteamDeck alone gives me the hope that we will see mainstream use of (desktop) linux within my lifetime. People need to get their hands on real, working, consumer-friendly devices running Linux out-of-the-box.
- leftpad77 6mo ago
  Agreed. Roll on steam machine as well! I prefer handheld, but the more linux-based gaming we can get out there, the better

crest 6mo ago

Are the numbers by hours played instead of by installed clients? How are users with multiple devices counted?

mikkupikku 6mo ago

Pewdiepie becoming an arch-pilled rice-maxxer who advocates Linux for freedom and gaming has surely had some effect. He's such a good sport he even swore off Photoshop and tries to learn to like Gimp.

jijijijij 6mo ago
Things I hadn't had on my bingo cards, in this or any universe: Me really looking forward to a new PewDiePie video! Guy has become a wholesome tech entertainment retreat for me. It's like Martijn Doolaard, but Linux instead of Alps... I can't stress enough how wholesome and pleasant the content has become. Or maybe it's been always like that, and I was just an ignorant snob... Granted, I have SponsorBlock installed, so the occasional predatory supplement stuff gets cut, but he also kinda made clear he's rich enough and not in it for the money anymore - and I tend to believe him. PewDiePie won life, chose sanity and took the anti-corruption path. Bless him and his family, and God please, let it be real!
alex_duf 6mo ago
Or maybe Microsoft continuously degrading their user's experiences has finally reached a breaking point, to the point where Pewdipie AND Linus Tech Tips are talking more seriously about linux. So yeah Pewdiepie is part of it, but I honestly think that's only because Microsoft has done such a poor job at maintaining their operating system.
- mikkupikku 6mo ago
  Certainly Microsoft is responsible for most of it. I'm just saying Felix still has a lot of influence and has been pulling in the same direction to his millions of fans.
- ehnto 6mo ago
  If I am reading the room right, I think Wine/Proton/Steam making gaming almost effortless on linux has been the big swing. It was not like this 5 years ago. I have been a linux user for work for a decade, but still ran Windows for a gaming PC. But with Win11 dropping the ball so hard, and the general hype around Proton and where linux gaming was it, it was not hard to make the decision to switch. I haven't regretted it a single bit.

gchamonlive 6mo ago

I am a long time windows pc gamer, but lately I was having to re-pair my DS4 controller every week or so. But the windows Bluetooth device manager will just refuse to remove that device. So I was periodically having to open the old school device manager, click show hidden and remove the controller there. By the fifth time I got fed up, replaced windows with Bazzite and am happy now. Good riddance.

nijave 6mo ago
YMMV, I've not had good luck with Bluetooth on any OS
- gchamonlive 6mo ago
  It's absolutely fine on Linux for all the devices I have so I'm happy with it. I daily drive arch (https://github.com/gchamon/archie https://github.com/gchamon/archie), bazzite which is fedora, and the notebook my current employer provides which comes with Ubuntu pre-installed.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  Fun how those things go, I've only ever had troubles with Bluetooth on Apple hardware (both phones and laptops), meanwhile I never had problems with Bluetooth on either Windows or Linux, both desktops and laptops, with controllers, headphones and keyboards. YMMV indeed :)
  - nijave 6mo ago
    On Apple, I've had interference problems but the daemon seems stable. On Linux, the daemon locks up and crashes sometimes but no interference issues (so maybe my chip is quirky or not well supported)
- Pwntastic 6mo ago
  i run endeavour (arch) and have a handful of things using bluetooth without any issues. i even have my airpods paired and use them constantly with no problems

ugurs 6mo ago

[dead]

shevy-java 6mo ago

Considering how awful Microslop's Win11 is, Linux could really gain some traction if it were to begin to consider the desktop environment as a useful target. Server is already dominated, top 500 supercomputers running linux (since 2017; https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1/ https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1/) - yet the desktop area is one where I don't feel there is really a lot of real improvement. I know, I know, GNOME and KDE keep on promoting how above they are beyond epic perfection already, but this is just buzzword-PR-chaining. GTK is a mostly-GNOME-only toolkit now and qt has its own objectives. Things that should be super-simple and work on Linux, do not work that well for Average Joe for the most part. One can fix most things with some research, but not everyone knows how to do so, or will fatigue after a while. Now most gamers are usually young and tend to be more tech-savvy, so they can solve things more easily, but even then one has to wonder why so much time has to be invested to make things work well. Why does Linux not consider the desktop system a priority? Smartphones are a special place as the environment is mostly controlled by one private vendor or an open ecosystem (which then is usually much smaller, and still does not yield real improvements for the desktop system, for the most part, give or take; GNOME3 kind of looks and feels like a smartphone-UI).

lunar_rover 6mo ago
> Why does Linux not consider the desktop system a priority? No company big enough has decided to heavily invest in Linux desktop for end users yet. The community is composed of techies and they make products for techies. Valve's solution is to use their own semi proprietary Steam Big Screen as the default interface of SteamOS.
- scheeseman486 6mo ago
  Valve are the primary financiers of Techpaladin, a team of over a dozen developers that work specifically on KDE Plasma and Qt.

ameen 6mo ago

I wonder if part of this is usage by newer Android based emulators [1] used for emulating x86-based PC games on powerful snapdragon based devices (Retroid Pocket 6, AYN Odin 2 line, AYN Thor, AYANEO Pocket S2, etc). [1] GameNative, GameHub (and GameHub lite)

gchamonlive 6mo ago
I'd be surprised if the intersection of users that have such devices, use it to emulate x86 games and use steam on it is big enough to make such an impact.

bradley13 6mo ago

I've played exclusively on Linux for a couple of years now. Sometimes, very rarely, you have to select a specific Proton version for a game. Otherwise, it just works.

nickserv 6mo ago

My last Windows install was XP, but I stopped using Steam a couple years back. I prefer to own what I buy, so now only purchase on GOG. However I'm very thankful for the work Valve has done, as this has made Wine much much better. I can now just download a game from GOG, set it up with a winetricks one-liner, and expect it to work. Even the latest games that just came out. Although to be fair I usually wait a couple months to get a good discount. But, before, you had to wait years for support, if any at all. I'm also seeing some studios releasing support for Vulkan either day one or in updates, which is great.

sandworm101 6mo ago

Question: What percentage of windows gamers are actually Linux gamers who are using wine/proton or some anti-cheat workaround/VM that causes them to be reported as using windows when they are in fact running linux? Using proton, I regularly see crash reports where games want to report that I was running some version of windows, which is a result of how proton implements wine. I never send such reports as they are of little use to developers.

ranger207 6mo ago
This is from the Steam hardware survey. Steam doesn't run under Wine generally so this problem shouldn't come up
- sandworm101 6mo ago
  Proton is a modified version of Wine. If the underlying game is sending a bug/crash report, it may "see" itself as running under windows as that is what wine presents. https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton "Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this."
  - hamdingers 6mo ago
    True but irrelevant, these numbers are reported by Steam which is running natively on Linux. It launches proton, it is not itself running on proton.
  - ranger207 6mo ago
    Correct. Steam, a native Linux app, will run Windows games via Proton. As Steam itself, which is collecting the data in TFA, is a Linux app, it shouldn't be affected by thinking it's running under Wine/Proton. As to your original question, I don't think many developers release information on what OSes their players are using, so I don't think we can tell

PaulHoule 6mo ago

I am impressed with the Steam Deck. Playing The Hundred Line on the deck brings back the glory days of the Playstation Vita. And it's the one device I have (including iPhone, iPad and Mac) for which AirPods are 100% a "just works" experience.

mzmzmzm 6mo ago

Personally, after using Windows at home since I was in kindergarten (3.1), having an employer-provided Macbook the last 15 years, and every few years dipping a toe into Linux for various projects, I can say they finally did it. I panic built a new PC for gaming, video editing, and messing with LLMs just at the start of the RAM crisis and thought what the heck, why not CachyOS. I might not be the average user, but it has been so much more convenient, snappy, and fun to troubleshoot than any other time I can remember. KDE just works and has sane defaults. The Arch repository has almost everything you can imagine, and usually the Cachy maintained "safe" repos do too. I downloaded Steam and immediately jumped into my saves from BG3, Cyberpunk, Claire Obscur, and more, like nothing happened. QGIS, Affinity apps (bye Adeobe), LM Studio can take advantage of my GPU. DaVinci Resolve is wonky, but Kdenlive is fine as a stopgap. I want to evangelize now as much as possible since it's all so starkly different from even 5 years ago, largely but not wholly thanks to Steam's Proton work. Microsoft really doesn't care about Win users (fine, it doesn't make them any money), and now is our chance.

tjpnz 6mo ago

GFN is releasing in India this month. Would be interesting to see to what extent that's reflected later on.

arafeq 6mo ago

[flagged]

octagons 6mo ago

I’ve had a good experience running Arch Linux on my “gaming” PC in the living room. It helps that I’m very comfortable with Linux internals, but I’d say I have no issues or issues that can be fixed with 2-3 clicks about 95% of the time. My setup is basically Arch Linux, ProtonUp-Qt (to easily install specific versions of Proton, the compatibility layer), Steam, and the proprietary Nvidia drivers/Vulkan. I generally have no issues with Easy Anti-Cheat games like Arc Raiders, but obviously anything that requires secure boot attestation like Arena Breakout Infinite won’t play. I’ve not bothered to try setting up full secure boot as the games that require it aren’t typically in my wheelhouse. I hope Linux adoption continues for my own, very self-serving, interests. I get the sense that those who primarily use their computer for gaming are the frogs slowly being boiled by Microsoft who continues to back their these customers into uncomfortable, unnecessary corners.

drnick1 6mo ago
> I generally have no issues with Easy Anti-Cheat games like Arc Raiders, but obviously anything that requires secure boot attestation like Arena Breakout Infinite won’t play. I’ve not bothered to try setting up full secure boot as the games that require it aren’t typically in my wheelhouse. I don't think secure boot will help. I use Arch, and have secure boot set up, but don't see how it would help with kernel-level anticheat. The issue is that anyone can sign their own kernels, so while secure boot is valuable from a security point of view, it does not really certify anything from the point of view of a third party.

thom 6mo ago

I've been very impressed with Bazzite on my ASUS dual screen laptop. Honestly feel like hardware support is better (especially in the absence of crappy ASUS software) and nothing on Steam runs noticeably worse. Hard to imagine going back to Windows at this point.

jms703 6mo ago

I moved from Windows to Linux after the lastest round of MS crap on my system. Not looking back.

pavon 6mo ago

Man the distro breakdown is an even bigger mess than normal: Feb 2026: 31.58% Other 23.83% SteamOS Holo 64 bit 9.07% ArchLinux 64 bit 8.59% CachyOS 64 bit 6.62% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 5.79% Bazzite 64 bit 5.26% Freedesktop SDK 25.08 3.82% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 2.83% Ubuntu 24.04.03 LTS 64 bit 2.59% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit March 2026: 25.64% Other 24.48% SteamOS Holo 64 bit 17.60% 0 64 bit 8.78% Arch Linux 64 bit 8.01% 64 bit 6.90% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 3.58% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 1.90% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 1.67% Ubuntu 25.10 64 bit 1.45% Manjoro Linux 64 bit I'm guessing that "0 64 bit" and "64 bit" are CachyOS and Bazzite, as I would be surprised to see either of those fall off the list given their current popularity. It is also interesting to see the flatpack installs (Freedesktop SDK) fall off the list. I really wish that Valve would increase the number of distros they report, or stop breaking out individual versions. The purpose of having multiple versions is to see how quickly people are upgrading and when to stop supporting older ones, but the current presentation doesn't actually let you do that since there is so much churn in which releases make the top 10 cut.

drnick1 6mo ago
I wonder who the "other" are? Gentoo users hiding in plain sight?

subjectsigma 6mo ago

I’m on Bazzite and I’m strongly considering switching back to Windows 11. Proton performance is just not as good as native. Games like Valve’s own Deadlock just run terribly on Proton and completely fine on Windows, using the same hardware. It’s a miracle that Proton works at all, but why compromise when I already have a Win11 license key?

pojzon 6mo ago

Valve doesnt have to do anything to win. Competition is shooting themselve into the foot constantly. Its only a matter of time before majority of playerbase switches to linux ecosystem. Work on proton and steamos are just the beginning.

ahhhhnoooo 6mo ago

I moved to Bazzite in October. Absolutely zero regrets.

j-kent 6mo ago

living room gaming PC Mobo died and was looking at $400 min to rebuild. I jumped on the BC-250 craze, which is a very capable bitcoin miner based on the PS5. installed Bazzite and it's been great.