this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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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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[–] network_switch@lemmy.ml 6 points 19 hours 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

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

I'm there as soon as I get a hard drive to dedicate to it.

[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 3 points 20 hours ago

Installed Nobara a few weeks back, I've barely touched Windows since. It's been a great.

[–] fin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago

They are using Arch instead of ubuntu crap so I guess that's good

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago (1 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

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why not just use linux on your current device

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can't replace the battery easily, or any component in a Surface. Microsoft products get the worst repair score from iFixit. I've been wanting a Framework as my daily driver for a while now so I can make repairs as I need them over time (or even make upgrades in the case of the 17" product).

I don't think I'll get rid of the laptop tho. Can probably add Linux to it and use it as a server. Right now though, I don't have the time for that. I want something out of the box that will work play-and-play

[–] okamiueru@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Have you considered booting up a live USB to try it out?

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Any guides for how to do that?

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)
[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 17 hours ago

Appreciate the links, and the one specifically for Surfaces!

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 49 points 2 days ago (13 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 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day 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 7 points 1 day 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.

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[–] TheFANUM@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day 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 1 day 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.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago

The Windows team has been looking for ways to remove the deeper hooks ever since the CrowdStrike outage last year.

[–] seralth@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That is still kicking it out of the kernel. For all functional purposes anyways.

The short of it to what I understand is they want to provide an official standardized way for anti virus and anti cheats and other software that would normally live in the kernel to do what it needs to.

Basically making everything live in user space unless it's made by microsoft. It should result in basically there being an entire layer between the kernel and the user and their software.

[–] pool_spray_098@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is wonderful news!

I've been using Linux full time for around 3 or 4 years. I just bought a Legion Go handheld gaming PC, which comes with Windows.

I knew before I bought it that I was going to load Linux on it instead, but decided to check out the Windows experience a little out of curiosity first. Holy fucking shit, it was a shitshow. A buggy mess and terrible experience .

And you hang out in the online communities for devices like this and you will see even totally nontechnical users who have no dog in the fight for a Linux bias are still vastly preferring the Linux experience. This is completely unprecedented.

Anticheat is the only thing Microsoft has ''going for them''' if you can even put it that way. Really starts to feel like Windows is toast.

[–] BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's interesting, anticheat and the xbox game pass are the only things stopping me from changing my main OS over. Not many other reasons to keep it, really.

[–] Joeffect@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I gave up game pass, i looked into paying more to be able to stream games from it... but i decided it just was not worth it... at some point the great deal is going to become shitty...

I don't regret dropping it and have just used steam...

I also didn't play games that had kernel level anti cheat... just never seemed worth it

[–] BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

I can't say the same, I enjoy some competitive games from time to time and would rather not maintain two OSs just for when I want to play one.

For now, game pass is a great value. Once they inevitably raise the price and restrict things for pc users, I'll gladly drop it. I'll get a lot of value out of it until then though!

Which is perfect for Linux. If it lives in userspace, it can be made compatible.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 2 points 19 hours ago

Not quite enough for me, personally. I am somewhere between casual and power user, so a "normie" distribution like SteamOS is probably where I want to be. Tried out Mint, but there was teething issues when I tried to customize my game install locations and whatnot. Lutris, Heroic, and so forth all had issues at that time, several months ago.

I play lots of indie and Japanese games, so having stuff reliably work without diving into a terminal is important for me.

[–] Nico_198X@europe.pub 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 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!

[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Add Nobara to the list too!

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My issue is that one might be alone on their obscure distro. I tried out Bazzite, but hit a fair number of issues getting stuff to run and my UI to look how I wanted. It contains many emulation layers to run packages made for other distros, but if they don’t quite work out of box, you can’t just look up the tutorial commands built for the other platforms.

My next go might be something popular like Mint or Ubuntu just to make issue searches easier.

[–] Nico_198X@europe.pub 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

understandable. if you're not afraid of the command line, i highly recommend EndeavourOS. great community, great doc, Arch-based.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I’d absolutely prefer getting away from the command line, but no distro I’ve tried has fulfilled that promise; there’s always something I’d like a certain way where there’s no intuitive UI to make that setting change.

I’m just knowledgable enough it doesn’t scare me off, it just annoys me.

[–] simple@piefed.social 31 points 2 days ago (9 children)

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

[–] exu@feditown.com 59 points 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago (4 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.

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 14 points 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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/

[–] ms_lane@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I wonder what it'd look like with English+German only.

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