this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Steam Survey for July 2025 shows Linux approaching 3% (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that this is about as much market share as Mac ever had at its peak, and almost twice as much as it has currently. Another is that, if you click the link for the site's Steam Linux Data Tracker, you can see that English-only Linux market share (a crude way of filtering out the ebbs and flows of Chinese players on largely-identical hardware and operating systems) is more than 6%, up from under 2% just 5 years ago. A lot of people are unhappy with Windows in general, and especially 11, and Windows 10 is about to force the issue in just a few months as it loses official support. I have a friend whose computer is still in decent shape for gaming but with TPM settings that don't meet the minimum spec for Windows 11; at some point, he'll lose compatibility and have to throw out an otherwise perfectly functional machine, so it's good that some other OS is shaping up to be a good enough option for many people.

This has been an upward trend since slightly before the release of the Steam Deck, as you can see on the graphs, and I've come across YouTube videos from both James Lee Animations and PewDiePie about how they got to be so sick of Windows (and Adobe) they both switched to Linux with middle fingers raised at their old workflows. Folks like them making videos like that can have real effects on the market. Linux has been my daily driver for gaming for about 8 years now, and it's matured so much in that time that I've hardly booted to my Windows partition for any reason. It's not perfect, but if I'm choosing between the quirks that Linux has by accident and the deficiencies that are in Windows on purpose, I'll take LInux every time, and it seems like more people are coming to that same conclusion.

No doubt the biggest remaining frontier is live service gaming with kernel level anti-cheat, but if Linux becomes a larger user base, as it's doing right now, the developers making those games will have to solve that problem to reach that addressable market, and everybody wins.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 51 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I switched to linux because fuck microsoft. So far it's been fine. A minor issue with crackling in the audio in one game, and I can't figure out how to disable the "drag a window to the edge and it wants to tile it" thing (popos with the default gnome desktop environment). But those are minor things- my windows install I couldn't get the bluetooth to connect to one device, and a bunch of other little annoyances were inescapable.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

If you have an issue with the way gnome works by default, then you are using it wrong and you should feel ashamed for that.

- the Gnome dev team

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

For anyone in the future, I figured out how to turn off the edge tiling thing (which is what it's called when a window touches the edge and it wants to resize it)

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter edge-tiling false per https://askubuntu.com/questions/1107089/how-to-disable-auto-resizing-of-windows-when-moved-to-the-top

[–] imecth@fedia.io 8 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah GNOME exposes a bunch of settings for advanced users and extensions, you can look through them with dconf editor. PopOS isn't the best distribution for GNOME though as it's stuck on GNOME 42 so you're missing out on 3 years of updates.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I have that crackling thing sometimes too, but only on desktop and not on Steam Deck, so the issue lies in something that's different between those two things. On my desktop, my usual use case is to have a bunch of programs open at any given time and put it to sleep at the end of the night rather than close everything and power off. While low spec games like Skullgirls are fine, if I boot up a higher spec game like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II after waking my computer from sleep, I'll get the crackling. If I just rebooted, the crackling is gone. I don't understand the problem, but at least I have a workaround, and it's better than Microsoft determining when I should reboot my computer. It's my computer. I decide that.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah I don't get it when just playing music or watching video. It's mostly been when playing Guild Wars 2 in scenes with a lot of players. I wonder if there's something like "when the CPU is in high demand, the audio gets less priority" happening. I saw some posts about a cpu "niceness" value but I'm not familiar enough to fuss with it, and it's not a big deal right now.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

I did fuss with it according to the directions in forums, and it didn't change anything, but I also barely understood what I was doing.

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[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Try searching internet for something like: Linux proton crackling

Are you using gamemode, and have you added your user to the gamemode group? Crackling is likely caused by buffer underrun. Many reasons why that might happen, but one is that if the game isn’t given high enough privileges, the machine can’t fill the buffer quickly enough. Gamemode should solve that. Check your distro’s guide how to set it up. If that doesn’t work, Pipewire/PulseAudio might have been configured to use too short buffer.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think I know what gamemode is. Is it https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode ?

I'll do some searching for crackling next time I'm at the desktop

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

That’s the thing. It’s most likely in your distro’s package manager, unless you are using CachyOS, which uses different app for the same thing. Remember to add your user to the gamemode group or it won’t do much for you.

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[–] simple@piefed.social 31 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

If anticheats would work properly on Linux I would probably ditch Windows forever. Alas.

[–] exu@feditown.com 61 points 3 weeks ago

EasyAntiCheat and BattleEye work on Linux thanks to Valve's efforts. Unfortunately many devs explicitly deny Linux or only allow the Steam Deck.

https://areweanticheatyet.com/

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 24 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To be clear:

The anticheat software CAN work on Linux about as well as it does on Windows. Most of the more invasive syscalls don't exist but said tools are also backing away from those on the Windows side as diminishing returns and fear of pulling a Crowdstrike. Alternative calls are used and most of the major anti-cheat solutions actually already do that and already support Wine/Proton in ways that most game devs never will.

The issue is that the devs (so their publishers) actively disable support for that. They have EAC et al check if it is running in Proton and quit if it is. There are reasons for that (much smaller testing surface) but it is also hard to believe that companies like EA actively updating all their old Battlefields to block Proton isn't intentional and political.

Err, and then you have stuff like DBZ Xenoverse 2 which just will never have their EAC updated because it is more effort than adding a few new skins to go with the latest movie.

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There are also rumors that Microsoft will remove third-party apps like antivirus apps and anticheats from Windows kernel. If that happens, it will pretty much solve the anticheat problem for Linux as well.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 12 points 3 weeks ago

Yes. That is the aforementioned "pulling a Crowdstrike"

But, as I said, stuff like EA actively going through basically every Battiefield since 3 and actively disabling Proton "support" indicates a political aspect to things. And there will still be the same testing surface issues that make live games hesitant to support "Valve and some company say this is fine" for games that make more money than many small nations.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Just avoid the games that use them. Games and the software they install should NEVER EVER run kernel-level. Also the games that use those ac's are bad anyways.

If you must play those games, passthrough your GPU and hide the fact that the VM is a VM.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Just avoid the games that use them.

Agreed. I have no desire to give EA root access to my system, full access to everything I do on it ... just to play a game.

I'm amazed Microsoft even allows such on their platform, given how large of a vulnerability it creates; as CrowdStrike demonstrated.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago

Well...microsoft was allowing kernel-level apps (in general). Now they're shooing every app from the kernel.

Good: ACs won't run as root anymore :D

Bad: It includes AVs (anti-viruses) D:

Of course, it's rolling out slowly.

[–] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

passthrough your GPU and hide the fact that the VM is a VM.

Careful with that, I've heard of folks getting banned because it can still look fishy.

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[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's definitely some selection bias for me that made it easy to not even be interested in buying the types of games that won't work on Linux, and that made my switch easier. I hope the solution that we eventually arrive at isn't, "Here's a custom kernel compatible with our anti-cheat," but instead, "Here's a way to play our game without kernel level anti-cheat."

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The only way to do that is to use Linux anyway, ditch Windows, and give them the middle finger until they make their game available. No amount of asking politely or screaming obnoxiously will make them care if people just continue using Windows because they feel like they "have to" play this game and keep paying them money, because all they care about is money. Only when they can clearly see their position is losing them money (3% is probably not clear enough for many of them but time will tell) are they going to change their behavior. There's nothing else that motivates them more than seeing money slipping through their fingers.

Depending on white knights like Valve and CDPR to ride to our rescue is good but they can't do this on their own either, and in fact they've already done very close to as much as they reasonably can. They need our help, we consumers are the ones who are statistically not doing our part. We need to recognize that we have the bulk of the agency here and we need to start to use it.

We have to choose what matters more to us, the future of playing video games on our own terms or letting the developer dictate how much we need to spend and what rights we need to give up to able to play a popular video game right now. We're not talking about something we need to live. This is a choice we can make. Will enough people choose the future instead of immediate gratification? I don't know, available evidence doesn't paint a particularly reassuring picture, but I never am willing to give up on hope.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

A little dramatic, but yes, I'm already not playing those games.

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[–] TheFANUM@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think Windows is kicking anti cheat out of their kernel (thanks, crowd strike) so it may become a non issue.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What I had heard was that they were looking for other hooks into the operating system that weren't as deep, not that they were removing the deeper hooks.

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think it's particularly controversial these days to say that Linux gaming is way ahead of Mac gaming, so I'm not sure that part is suprising, beyond the notion that in other metrics the OS split for those is more like 15% to 5%.

I mean, the Mac side was celebrating this month that Cyberpunk finally runs natively on it, and it is borderline unplayable on most of the hardware out there, gets comparable to what? A 5060? on the very top end.

I read in that two missed opportunities: One, Mac gaming should get so much better. Two, somebody on the Linux side should really start taking non-gaming compatibility seriously.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

The Mac thing is two-fold. Apple moved to new architecture before it was primed and ready for gaming, and Valve has been slow to adapt Steam to it. Apple's solution, which will not work, because Valve tried the same thing a decade ago, is to juice the market by funding ports. Apple's putting far more money into it, because it's such small potatoes on their balance sheet, but the result will be much the same. This isn't a situation where getting a few heavy hitters will solve their library problem and get everyone else to fall in line. The problem is Apple and its platform are hostile to getting this sort of game on it.

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[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

An interesting fact: English-language adoption of Linux on Steam is over 2x the overall, all-language adoption. This mostly cuts out Chinese (25% of users), Russian (8% of users), and Spanish (5% of users). Seems America and Europe is adopting at record pace while China isn't.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 weeks ago

Looks like Linux adoption has been skyrocketing since early this year in English speaking areas.

[–] fading_person@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

It always bugs me that china has higher windows usage than the rest of the world.

By the way, is it really around 6% for english-speaking users? That's huge!

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The avalanche will only grow

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Tux shall rule all desktops.

all hail tux

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[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

The latest Windows update that rolled out a few days ago literally bricked my Surface.

I had the same CPU & RAM load running before and after the update. After, even Task Manager wasn't responding!

Next paycheck, I think I'm buying a Framework

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[–] network_switch@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

I've been advocating for Linux for a long time. At least to people I know use nothing but the web browser. Gaming and art have been a slow grind. Gaming Steam Deck was the game changer for single player gamers.

Art, it's people that never use software close to their fullest but feel like they have to use what their favorite YouTuber/social media personality uses. Professionals I never encourage a switch unless they're paid too. Already stressed doing edits in the software they know to make a deadline let alone adding in learning new software

Hobbyist and aspiring indies, you don't work with a team of a dozen editors, try Kdenlive. Solo music artist, try ardour especially if you don't even plan to drop your day job for a full time pursuit of a music career. At least practically every hobbyist I've met that focuses on digital drawing/painting uses Krita

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I am figuring on switching once Arch Desktop SteamOS is officially released. I want Linux's privacy, without technical irritations and official support from an 800-lb gorilla.

[–] Nico_198X@europe.pub 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

there are lots of communities ready to help you dive into Linux.

  • Bazzite
  • EndeavourOS

just to start. the nice thing about Linux is that you're not alone!

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[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Some distros like fedora and ubuntu have support from ~500-lb gorillas, if that's heavy enough for you

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