- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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I have over 300 games installed and fully functional at least one from every year from 1989 to 2025. They all work. Some work better on Arch some (older 32 bit games from original CD) run better on Mint or wont install on Arch. Newer ones like Doom Dark Ages simply run better on Arch. Good luck installing DCS on Wayland though. Just dual boot an X11 focused distro and a Wayland focused one for best of both worlds. Windows hijacked my 25+ year old Hotmail account with their OneDrive ransomware and took my Linux EFI boot partition with it when it was promptly uninstalled. Every single game that is exclusive to Windows is a virus just like the OS that they run on. All cartooned out and loaded with microtransactions and invasive anti cheats. Ew. I would rather compute on a Texas Instruments calculator than install the Windows virus ever again. Id rather draw numbers in the sand than use one of their nasty products or play one of their ugly mass marketed games for dummies. Just absolutely wretched. X670E Creator Wifi, 7950x, 4080 Super, 64GB RAM, 1200W PSU, 4tb Samsung 9100 Pro gen5 nvme, 2x 2tb 990 Pro game drives, Arch and Mint share game drives and run the same files through Steam, Lutris, etc.
The year of the Linux desktop, babeyyyyyy!!!
Are we going to make a big deal out of every 0.3% shift in steams stats towards Linux?
Wake me up when we’re dealing in whole percentages… That’s when I’ll be excited about it, until then this could just be a sampling bias. A rounding error.
Steam OS handhelds are pretty much the entirety of the growth.
The market share of Steam Decks has been declining among Steam Linux users for at least over a year. Steam Deck users were 42% of Steam Linux users in April '24, and this year’s July it’s only 28%.
Linux went from 2.59% to 2.89%, that’s a 11.6% increase in the number of Linux users.
If it shifted .3% it would have went from 2.59% to 2.5977%.
The article is confusing ‘percentage points’ with ‘percentage’
Another way of looking at it is that the Steam Linux user population went from ~3,418,000 users to ~3,814,000 users. So there are nearly 400,000 new Linux gamers.
0.3% overall. There might be half a million new Linux gamers on steam, but there’s still hundreds of millions of PC gamers using Windows.
You can arrange the numbers how you want, the fact is that this is still a pretty small shift in the overall PC gamer landscape. I promise you, that’s how any larger developer sees it. Their pool of PC gamers shifted by a fraction of a percent. A good chunk of those that they “lost” as potential customers, probably wouldn’t have bought their games in the first place.
The demographic overlap for large studios of people who are intentionally using Linux for gaming, and people that are interested in their game, doesn’t overlap much, if at all, I bet. Until we get their key demographic switching over in large enough quantities to threaten their profits, the majority of the industry won’t budge from their windows centric views.
Look. I don’t hate Linux. Quite the opposite in fact. I’m rooting for these stats to move in and significant amount. I feel that’s an inevitable shift that will happen and until we do, we’ll keep getting these articles, describing a fraction of a percent move in the overall numbers as if it’s a huge culture shift for how people are playing games.
If you haven’t seen it, maybe you should watch field of dreams, becasuse the main tag line of the movie “if you build it, they will come” definitely applies here. The larger PC gaming community, there is a statistically significant number of indie devs and indie studios that support Linux as a platform, even if it’s just the steam deck they’re building for… Those studios just are not the biggest players in terms of revenue/sales… But they’re the ones building “it”. This is slowly but surely fueling the fires that will eventually burn down Microsoft’s dominance in the gaming space. It’s been a war that’s been waged for literal decades, since before steam was a thing.
There will come a day when we will hit critical mass and the large studios will be forced to either accept that their user base is shrinking because they don’t support Linux. That day is not today. We will need to see much more movement than a few percent difference before that happens. This isn’t even a few percent. This is a fraction of a percent of the total.
So forgive me if I’m not excited by any of this. It’s movement in the right direction, but it’s utterly meaningless to the companies that could actually shift the industry to Linux on a large scale.
I’m not trying to convince you to cheer for this, I’m just correcting a common math mistake.
0.3% overall.
.3 percentage points. 11.6% increase
Those are two different things
Linux market share has been growing at increasing speed. Last year, Steam Linux market share increased less than 20%, while it has already gone up by 40% this year. There is still 5 months left in this year.
Glad to have made the jump! not even dual booting
Got Linux on my laptop, literally just waiting a year to put it on my desktop (Linux does NOT like brand new hardware)
My hardware’s new enough that my WiFi card doesn’t work on Windows 10 (and won’t, only Win11), but it works on recent-ish Linux kernels. Not contradicting you, but it was interesting to see.
That might be true for distros like mint, but fedora is usually fine with brand new hardware.
i have an i9 and a 5090 on linux
Yeah, unless they’re trying to use a laptop with some weird piece of hardware it should work.
Even the newest generation of graphics cards worked fine within a week or two.
Well, I for one installed Linux on my old surface book 2 yesterday, and my steam library works great on Linux. Even got better FPS.
So I became a Linux gamer yesterday and am super happy
If the survey hit for me 1 week from now I’d be on Linux, I’m literally setting my system up properly next Saturday
You can dual boot Linux to try it out.
My main gaming rig is my last system not running Linux right now, I’ve been migrating my stuff over on my other systems for a couple months now (I keep getting distracted lol)
But not that I’ve got alts for the software I normally use on my main rig it’s finally time, 2 months ahead of schedule.
That comes with its own risks because Windows has been known to destroy dual boot setups when doing updates. Not always, but it can happen and it’s burnt people.
Dual booting also makes it harder when you decide to get rid of windows fully, because you might yourself accidentally screw your bootloader as part of removing windows.
The option I would personally recommend if you are unsure is to disconnect your windows hard drive, keep it safe, and install Linux on a separate drive. Then you can always drive swap back if you need and you know everything is safe.
You can even put the windows drive back in after installing Linux, and then just use your BIOS boot drive selector to switch where you are booting from. Each drive has it’s own boot record in that case, so there’s less risk of any accidents.
Disconnecting is good advice. What worked for me after windowa scrubbed the EFI boot was installing Linux and assigning its own EFI partition, most distros probe foreign OS so your separate Linux partition gets a chainloader entry to the windows EFI boot. You set BIOS to use Linux boot, Windows gets a handoff if you choose it in the Grub Menu and doesn’t know about the other EFI partition. Kept my dual install save.
author has never used desktop linux and doesn’t really grasp what it is 😜
For someone out of the loop, could you explain what it is? What is wrong with desktop linux?
Honestly? The problem is the people who use desktop Linux. The environments are fine. It’s the people. Can confirm. I use Arch, btw.
Nothing
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I switched to Linux so I could spend $200 more on actual hardware for my build.
Not arguing with your choice (props actually, I respect the switch) but it is possible to get a legit grey market key for w11 Pro for a lot less. I think I got mine for $20-30 in early 2024?
Edit: I should have noticed I was in the Linux group before I posted that, I thought I was still in the gaming one I guess! Not advocating windows to anyone, it’s a terrible OS. But some people might need it for some things so I figured I’d share information that might help someone save a bit of money if they did. (Yes, there are other ways around that.)
And then you have to continously fight it because it switches your default browser to edge or starts showing you ads out of the blue or record your screen every second or whatever the fuck those greedy bastards think of doing next…
Noooo fucking thanks, I switched to Pop for a year now and I’m not going back ever.
Even with Windows Enterprise, I don’t trust Microsoft to not spy on me and fuck with my control over the machine. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be planning on switching over to Arch SteamOS Desktop when it releases.
I’ve used Enterprise IoT for a while, which is supposed to be the cleanest possible build of Windows (except for the Chinese government special one) and that STILL somehow managed to introduce ads after updates, reset settings, force me to use the GameBar, and so on.
Yup. Just last night, my machine decided to reboot itself without permission. I want to do updates on my timetable - that means backing up my passwords and bookmarks, figuring out what third-party things I want to update like my GPU, and preparations. Being forced to update also makes me feel extremely distrustful of MS, especially since they plan on having AI to take pictures of our activities. I enjoy LOTS of hentai, and feel that it is likely for MS to give the Trump Regime dirt on people.
Just switch. SteamOS is specifically designed for the Deck, and other handhelds. It doesn’t do anything special outside of defaulting to a handheld friendly view that you can’t get in another distro. I would say it’s probably going to be worse than one designed for desktop, if you’re putting it on a desktop. Bezzite is pretty much the same as what SteamOS will be (with the option of desktop or handheld mode at install I think). Garuda and CachyOS are great for gaming if you want a distro that isn’t immutable. They come with everything you’ll need for gaming.
It’s trivial to set up. Just switch. Stop creating an excuse to wait. SteamOS isn’t special, unless you are putting it on a handheld potentially.
SteamOS is special in that it has the direct support and maintenance from Valve, but I agree with the spirit of your response
Yeah, but it doesn’t do anything special. Sure, it’s pretty much guaranteed to work for the Deck, but other than that you don’t get anything out of it that you can’t get elsewhere. There’s no special sauce that Valve puts in. The only thing they put in that’s special is Proton, except the contributions are open source and freely available everywhere.
All distros are supported by some group. Valve isn’t particularly special in that, except it isn’t their specialty like other distro maintainers.
If you’re switching to Linux to avoid a huge corporation then you should do that —and Valve is a pretty damn large corporation. Sure, they’re doing good things now, but people would have said the same thing about MS at some point in time. Don’t build them up into something else. Use the best option, not just following some brand loyalty for no good reason.
Sure, but Valve specifically have a focus on a gaming experience, so if your focus is gaming, there’s a good chance steamOS will provide timely fixes and updates.
Again, I don’t disagree with the general sentiment of your reply, and I wouldn’t personally bother waiting for steamOS, but there are valid reasons to want to specifically choose steamOS
I’ve never needed to activate windows on any of my computers since I just prefer Linux. But the gray market seems scary to me with the possibility of the key coming from a stolen card victim’s wallet.
Is there any reason a non-dirty key would be available on the market? Does Microsoft do promotions or deals like that?
Those are good questions that I don’t have the answers to. Although from the research I did at the time it seems most likely they were purchased with regional pricing in a lower price region.
You aren’t taking anything from anyone. It’s just an algorithmically generated activation.
This is so easy it’s kinda nuts, and there are multiple methods to activate. All you should need for Windows these days.
Microsoft doesn’t give a shit to stop it, because they profit off your data. They give it away for free themselves. They don’t care how you get it if you are on their system, and then they do everything they can to trap you. They don’t make their profit from key sales.
A ton of them apparently come from regional pricing, or from keys purchased by businesses. Windows offers volume licensing where you can buy bulk keys at a steep discount, basically. The business might not use all of them, and then they turn around and resell them. That’s technically against the terms of the license, but afaik Microsoft has never bothered to enforce that.
I’ve also heard people will take the Windows keys off of older OEM towers and resell them. I have no idea how true that is, but it would also be against their terms.
It’s not exactly likely, but Microsoft could probably just deactivate all of those keys at once if they decided to.
You can get it for tree from them directly. They don’t care about that upfront cost. They make money off your data.
I’d rather buy a high end noctua fan for my CPU then spend $30 on a windows license. Although I have bought those in the past.
Yeah but Microsoft is making money off your data.
I don’t doubt it, but do you happen to have a source?
The only plus side I guess is I only use that computer for a bit of gaming and not for anything else, and i did manage to turn of automatic updates before they AI-ified everything. If I had more time and energy in my day I’d dual boot it, maybe some day.
So you’ve decided unpatched security flaws is better than learning a superior OS? I’m not much for gambling.
No, I just haven’t had the time and energy to do something better. Happens when you’re approaching middle age and have health problems.
Sorry to hear that.
Just so you’re aware, it’s super easy. You can even leave your Windows drive(s) the same if you want too if you’re up for buying a new drive. Linux can access the data fine —though probably not the other way around, depending on the format of your Linux drive(s). I have a drive that’s mostly media from back when I used Windows that just works like any other, but a worse format but that hardly matters.
If you’re a gamer, Garuda, CachyOS, or Bezzite are good and take minutes to set up, and come with everything you need out of the box. Bezzite is immutable, so it’s harder to mess up, but it also limits what you can do (which probably doesn’t matter for you). If you do need help, which you probably won’t because it’s easier than installing Windows, you can ask and plenty of people will volunteer.
Thanks! I’ve actually done it before back in the days when Mint was quite new,and I’m a programmer by trade (although mostly on Mac) so I’m not too worried about it, but I don’t have a second drive (and don’t really want one given a 2TB NVME drive) so I’d want to do all the backups first, at least for important stuff like my friend and I’s Minecraft server. For a computer I barely use it hasn’t felt worth it. Most of my computer time (outside of work) is on my Mac laptop.
The vibe I’ve been getting lately looking at Steam’s push for Steam OS compatibility is that it might actually be worth trying a dual boot again next time I can bestir myself to mess with it. I’ve got W11 but managed to disable auto updates so I haven’t received all the AI crap, but also means my OS is increasingly behind on security updates, which I’m not pleased about.
I don’t care about the latest and greatest either, generally, so maybe even more worth it…although most of my new game purchases are indie titles and most of those only release for windows. So we’ll see. I already have a strong preference for Mac support so I can play stuff on my laptop too.
Generally speaking, as long as the game doesn’t have kernel-level anticheat, it’ll work on Linux. Basically, you miss out on some competitive multiplayer games, but not all. Everything else works fine, you might have to check protondb.com for some specific fixes, but usually Steam handles all that stuff in the background. For GOG/Epic/itch.io etc. Heroic Games Launcher is your best option, though sometimes I have to use Bottles for certain games. Some people like Lutris, I haven’t had any luck with it. But, for the most part, games “just work” on Linux now.
That’s great news. A lot better than last time I tried to make it work.
Using valves proton means most windows games will run flawlessly (usually better) on Linux, so it’s really a non issue if the games you want to play are “windows only” (unless they use some kernel level anti-cheat).
Also worth mentioning that if you did want the latest and greatest, that would be more of an incentive to switch to Linux.
Good to know!
Windows still is way farther ahead
Not really. Proton has done wonders for Linux gaming. The only games that really don’t run have drm configured to block Linux specifically.
I think OP is referring to the percentage, not functionality. Windows, especially the office suites / GUIs are micht more refined. Someone somewhere pointed out at some point in time that backend development is often open source because developers are dedicated to the cause and the function. Designers, on the other hand, not so much (maybe they need payment because their main job pays less… I don’t know.
In the end, the user uses the front-end, not the backend. And unless money flows into front-end development, for example, by a growing market of companies who want to switch away from office 365 for functional and financial reasons, we won’t see front-ends which are attractive enough for people to switch to Linux for daily/ work related tasks.
I was referring to the percentage like you said
The Windows UI used to be solid back in the day but now days it is incredibly chaotic. Between the dark patterns and weird design choices it has become very cumbersome to navigate.
Windows has a 95% market share on Steam
100% of Steam Decks are not shipped with Windows.
That is a true statement
It’s good to see people making a switch to Linux. But the real tell will be in finding out how many of those people actually stick long term.
Dual booting will likely be a part of it, and microsoft will do whatever they need to make sure the bootloader is broken constantly.
VMs. easier and less troublesome.
That possible for sure. But I don’t see dual booting being as common as it once was. Owning an old spare computer is pretty common these days. Heck, you can even get a dirt cheap mini desktop off of amazon and a referb/used/spare monitor and have a completely fine old time messing around with different distros without a care in the world. And that’s a far easier entry into Linux than dual booting anymore.
Dual booting has always been a pain in the ass. Unless you’re a multiplayer gamer that needs kernel level Anti-Cheat it’s easier to just swap over and suffer the transition.
Funny enough my reason for dual booting has nothing to do with anti-cheat I think, rather it’s because a couple of my more graphically intensive games will randomly cause my entire system to completely freeze while I’m on linux and they don’t on windows. (I also have a couple games that I would need to fiddle with wine to get them to work, but the primary motivation is the system freeze)
That’s a valid way too. It’s just that a lot of people aren’t really ready to dive in with both feet from the start. No matter how easy Linux has become or we might think its is. Change is scary and hard. And I think that’s a problem that holds back many people yet today.
Its more about having the option. I’d be more comfortable going to linux if I knew that there would be a way to continue using something in a pinch, even if I just need to figure out how to fix it later.
And that’s exactly why my Windows install is locked away in VM hell. Fucked with my bootloader twice and I said never again.
I even set up a custom boot option that autoloads the Windows VM and passes through all USB and auxiliary storage devices in a lightweight Linux environment, so other than the brief Linux boot log, it feels exactly like a native install, 10/10 recommend
The July 2025 data shows that Windows’ market share on Steam dropped by 0.44% while Linux’s market share grew by 0.32%.
While okay this is growth, it’s not exactly meteoric. Hopefully the trend picks up steam (cough) as the win10 EOL approaches.
I dunno .32% in a single month seems pretty significant. Obviously it’s not like Windows is going to go the way of the dodo but it’s looking like Linux may be taking a permanent piece of the pie where it had no staying power before.
I hate to say it, but it’s literally PewDiePie recording a video and showing young gaming fans Linux and calling it “cool”. That’s it. The guy’s got 110M subscribers.
Maybe. But so what? Pewdiepie wouldn’t have made the video if windows didn’t have serious problems, and if Linux wasn’t an incredibly good kernel to build an OS on.
That video highlighted that you don’t have to be technical to use Linux, it’s here, and it’s ready for mass adoption.
It’s about half a million active users. So, yeah, a tiny city’s worth.
Though things often start snowballing this way and Windows 10 end of life is likely see see a jump.
So 2026 year of the Linux?
Well uh… if that is month to month growth…
A year at .32% growth works out to about 4% growth, if that is rate is sustained for a year.
That would be roughly a doubling of linux marketshare in a year.
Actually, it is meteoric.
Linux’s market share didn’t grow by 0.32%, it grew by 0.32 percentage points. It actually grew by 12.5% month-over-month. That huge. It went from 2.57% to 2.89%, which is only an increase of 0.32 percentage points. But that’s because the starting value is such a small percentage. But, the number itself grew by about 12.5%:
2.57 * 1.125 = 2.89If it could keep up this month-by-month growth it would go from 2.57% to over 10% within 1 year. If it could keep it up for 2 years Linux would be nearly half of all Steam users.
On one hand, I don’t think that would happen because the people making the switch now are early adopters and more adventurous users, so at some point it’s going to slow down. On the other hand, I think adoption will speed up at some point once there’s a critical mass of Linux users and Valve and nVidia start putting even more effort into Linux builds.
I think we’ll see a bump in users centred around October, since that is when MS had announced support for Windows 10 ended. They have recently announced that you can (maybe) get into the Extended Security Updates program for a year for free, but that’s perhaps too little too late.
If there’s any company that can make money from users installing Linux instead of Windows, that October deadline is a great time for a publicity blitz.
Lots think the gamers will switch over as win10 gets to EOL. I don’t think so. Most gaming machines need to be more modern tomsupport modern games, so they will likely stick with windows and move to win11. I think Linux has a chance to convert many with older PCs, but they won’t be the gamers.
This is just wrong. All modern hardware will work on an equally modern kernel.
However when it comes to games, some competitive multiplayer games that require kernel level rootkits might not run on Linux if the developers think gaming on Linux is cheating.
I always suggest cross referencing protondb with you game inventory to see if you would have any issues
No, you’re misunderstanding. Linux supports new and old. Windows only supports newish. Gamers are more likely to be on newer hardware and so the end of win10 will still allow them to upgrade to win11. They won’t have obscelecence. Older PC users will have forced obsolescence due to win 11 requirements and the eol of win10.
So, while I expect Linux use to rise with the end of win10, it won’t be mainly gamer PCs. Gamers with a steam deck, already familiar with Linux might be included but that’s a tiny demographic.
I think you underestimate the share of gamers that stick with hardware for quite a few years. I maybe I overestimate them. but I think there are tons of people who have computers not eligible for win11
I agree with this and would also like to add the current economic situation to the list. People have less disposable income to spend on buying a brand-new computer just because Windows says so. Especially outside of North America and Europe, people are much more likely to be running hardware that’s multiple generations behind the latest hardware. I believe Windows 7 still holds the majority of installs currently in use, and end of life for that was 5 years ago.
I’m personally strongly considering switching when support for Windows 10 ends. I actually started testing the waters by installing Mint on an old netbook today. I game on PC, but the truth of why I’m considering changing is because I’m just sick of the crap with windows. Every new edition is just bigger, slower, filled with more bullshit. I’m just getting tired of disabling all the shit they want to force on me. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but of course this is just my personal experience.
Hell I switched to Linux specifically because I refused to get W11. I do have to agree with you though, the average gamer probably won’t switch to Linux unfortunately.
They most certainly will not switch (or switch and not decide to go back after a few weeks) with the timing of the release of Battlefield 6, which requires Windows. It’s an EA game, so I’m not touching that, but they’re doing a lot of marketing and it’s working.
This is exactly how it’s going for me. I’ve been simply too lazy to move everything, test it all, and probably do it all over a couple times to find the distro I actually like.
I’m a gamer, and I ditched windows permanently early this year. shrug
I’m a gamer but on console. My PCs are all older so I use Linux on some of them…one still has windows for work software…it’s glitchy enough on Windows so I haven’t even tried wine.
Try it, you might be surprised. I played WoW under Linux like 15 years ago, and for a couple of patches WoW ran much better under Linux than Windows because of a bug in the GPU driver or something. The Wine folks handle buggy Windows software all the time, and might fix bugs that MS won’t bother with.
Relative, it is. Going front 2% to 2.32% (for example) is pretty good, though I don’t know where these numbers come from because the latest I saw had Linux at about 5%, and growing by something like 50-100% per year (for a year). Sure, the total number compared to Windows looks small, but compared to where it was it’s growing incredibly quickly.
Edit: Someone said that was monthly, in which case yeah, that’s pretty fucking big.
Only thing not working properly right now for me is Trackmania 2020, i get massive lagspikes due to it.using 100% Cpu for some reason.
I mean its ubisoft so thats probably why its shit but i like.the game and would love it if it would work properly
Are you on an Nvidia gpu?
Yes why? 3070ti
Mandatory F Nvidia
I have had the most issues with Nvidia gpus. Have you double checked it didn’t go back to the open source drivers after an update? Sometimes you need to download the proprietary drivers from Nvidia’s website after every kernel update.
The game is also horribly optimized. Are you using open planet? You can install the tweaker plugin and reduce render distance, although this probably only reduces the load on the GPU. For me on steam deck it works fine if the maps aren’t too big, at least I don’t get cpu spikes.
Funnily, my performance in trackmania is fine… But I have an entirely different issue - if at any point I open the Ubisoft overlay, from that point on, if I tab out of the game and back in, I’m unable to control the car until I open and close the overlay again. The UI accepts inputs normally, it’s just the car that doesn’t.
Previously I had an issue where the game would refuse to accept controllers being connected while the game was running - the button prompts would actually switch to controller style, but the game would refuse to accept controller inputs, and the controller wouldn’t show up in settings.
But yeah, those are issues very specifically with that game, I don’t even know how they managed that.
I’m really not far off. Once my Tiny11 install breaks, it’s on to Bazzite.
Personally running Nobara with my 4080, works great.
Would recommend CachyOS, especially if you have a nvidia card
Good looking out, I’ll check it out.
Had thought of Fedora with Plasma, have been.using Linux Mint for the last 18 months. any thoughts?
I’ve been using CachyOS for about a month now with no problems. Very fast and easy distro based on Arch, so it’s “bleeding edge.” I haven’t needed to, but be prepared to tinker if an update goes south. I came from Bazzite and liked that well enough too, but I wanted better access to some softwares.
Let us know how it goes! Never tried Bazzite!
I installed it on my SteamDeck and have its non-gaming sister on my laptop and I love it.
I wouldn’t trust a premade iso like that. Get an iso directly from Microsoft and use an unattended autoinstall script to clean things up.
I respect that, but I built my own Tiny11 iso. You can do so as well here: https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder
Folks gotta give me a little benefit of the doubt. I’m not raw-doggin’ the modern Windows experience here.
I’m not saying just it for you, I’m saying so other people don’t just search “tiny11” and install whatever they find.
Your more nuanced response is appreciated.
I still think the unattended install script is a bit more transparent.
Fair enough. 👌
