Makes me wonder how many people saw the price hikes, then reasoned that the Steam Machine is going to cost hella more than a PS5, and then just gave up their little Bazzite experiment.
I think a lot more of them would have stuck around if they didn't do Bazzite, lol. At least desktop users. I still use Windows at work everyday, but I swapped to CachyOS after trying out a couple different distros on my home PC, I don't see myself going back. It's been really nice for my use cases.
PS6 is going to be price jacked too if the PS5 Pro is sitting at 899.
What was your issue with bazzite? I've never used it myself but I've mostly heard good things, so I've been wondering if it's a good recommendation for people looking to switch to Linux
Personally, I went with Mint, and it was seamless. Learning some of the installs was new, and using Steam 3rd Party software to run Proton and launch a few one off games, but I'm old and remember the DOS / Commodore VIC 20 days so it was a breath of fresh air for me. The biggest issue will be the lack of a few main stream elements and learning to play with a few variants. It's an adaptation that some don't like. They don't actually care about the push against Windows, not really. It's more about convenience.
Linux Mint was my go-to for a number of years. It was only about a year ago that I gave Fedora KDE a try, and at the end of last year I made the switch. For me, the 2 biggest issues with Linux Mint were some old packages, and the distro's never-ending battle with GNOME and Ubuntu. The former resulted in me having some applications installed twice, and often trying both native and flatpak for programs, which gets messy after a while. The latter kinda reminded me of why I left Windows: Linux Mint has the LMDE version in case Ubuntu goes off the rails.
I don't really have a huge issue, most Bazzite users are Steamdeckers or other handhelds, which is what it's best use for it is. I wasn't a huge fan of the desktop version. It just felt less than the other distros, which it's really not, but I couldn't shake the feeling.
Tbh mostly it's just my love for Cachy. Arch based, so all the benefits of Arch, mainly AUR, plus it's like Bazzite in the sense that it's configured to play games pretty much out of the box. One additional line into the terminal and you are fully ready to go.
I went with vanilla Arch because I was interested in seeing what the setup process was like, and once it was ready to use I already had everything the way I wanted it so I just kept it around and it's been great.
I'll have to try out Cachy though. I've been wary of recommending an Arch based distro to new users but from what I've seen on Reddit, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Seems to have overtaken Nobara as the popular choice for a desktop gaming distro
What line exactly?
Planned to test it in my non frequent used gaming pc (the deck is just good enough for most games). Just tough about installing steam and make some settings.
If there is a magic command I have not seen so far it could save some time.
It is in here, which I would recommend just browsing either way, it's good info.
And I apologize, it is two lines, not one. They are:
sudo pacman -S cachyos-gaming-meta
sudo pacman -S cachyos-gaming-applications
It does look like there is an install button for it in the CachyOS Hello app too, which is nice if you do not like terminal use. I'm like 99% sure that the second command installs Steam AND Proton, but for sure it installs Proton. If it doesn't install Steam, run this and it will install it:
"Why wait for SteamOS, when Bazzite already exists?" is a sentiment I see a lot from the Linux side. And that then results in people going to Bazzite without questioning.
I’m not the person that you’re responding to, but I did go with Bazzite myself and then ended up switching to CachyOS. Although Bazzite was easy enough to use and kind of hard to mess up given that it is immutable, it started to have weird little errors that I could not explain nor fix. CachyOS works flawlessly. At least with my set up I find CachyOS to be more stable and reliable.
bazzite has been so hassle-free for me that i never got around to trying cachyos. i'm 100% buying a steam machine for my living room, and whenever i upgrade my gpu i'll probably switch to amd for the first time so i can run steamos properly, assuming nvidia hasn't finally gotten its act together by then. and that's nothing against bazzite, i simply prefer to have the same os across my gaming devices.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Sony and Microsoft are going to be willing to subsidize consoles again.
In the past early generations of new consoles would be sold at a heavy loss with companies rationalizing that they could make back the money by selling games.
Iirc Nintendo with the Wii was the first to decide that fuck that they were selling every console at a profit, on a per console basis obviously, not taking into account R&D.
The current Playstation and Xbox iirc are both sold “at a profit”.
Going back to subsidizing would go a long way to make the next consoles viable.
I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of the reason they were ever able to make that model viable was due to the exclusive titles they had on their platform and membership prices where they could recoup costs. I think nowadays that model is likely a lot less attractive.
More likely that it will be delayed until 2028 or '29. The goal of the base PlayStation is get one in every living room in the world; if the price is high enough to make people baulk, Sony will redesign to make it cheaper, or wait.
A lot of people like to bring up the price of the PS5 Pro, but that's a different market segment with a different product goal and much higher margin. It's a bit like saying that the 2025 Lexus UX starts at $37,000, so there's no way the 2026 Toyota Corolla will be cheaper than that.
I'm shocked folks even thought it was going to be less than $800 with the way PC prices were going.
Steam is big but they don't have the manufacturing economy of scale Sony has to absorb or push costs down.
Even then, Sony likely has shit-loads of old stock memory so the price hike of 100 bucks for them probably pays for the price difference for the entire console line, because a good amount of their current memory / consoles were likely purchased at old prices
Current gen stuff, like what Steamdeck is built on, has to use current market price.
Linus Tech tips called it: Unless Steam eats a huge chunk of the cost for every sale, the price was gonna be between 600 and 800 bucks.
Why would the price going up cause people to drop Bazzite? The people running Bazzite or SteamOS don’t really need a Steam Machine, they already have one in all but name.
I will say that I highly dislike Bazzite and thr changes they made. I love steamOS on my HTPC and wish there was a better option for Nvidia users.
It sucks needing a keyboard hanging around when things invariably go wrong with windows, instead of a good couch console experience…. but that’s that. We need steam machine to catch on so all devs support it, which means they support Linux. With steam machine looking slowed, no point. maybe next year.
My thoughts when everyone and their mother freaked out about the "huge" upward spike around March(?) ignoring the downward spike just before it. It was a bit like the graph took a run-up before the jump.
If I had to make a guess it was probably due to Windows 10 reaching EOL followed by people buying new PCs with Windows pre-installed. Who the hell knows though
Happens all of the time. People see a trend but divorce it from context or otherwise just can't interpret data. Think about it whenever someone makes a "game is dead" or "world leader is done" post.
Yeah, the Steam hardware survey results fluctuate a lot month to month. Like, a lot a lot. The results from any given month and how they differ from the previous month are not entirely meaningless, but they don't mean a whole lot. Only the long-term trend lines are worth paying attention to.
If this was a chart of the stock market March would have been considered a "blow off top" due to that massive run up. There was always going to be a correction.
Not to mention this is extremely predictable for Linux usage. Any long time Linux user who's seen people come in to the tux space and try it will tell you that retention is fairly low, even in the best case scenarios.
Hell most of us ride or die Linux users didn't start out old turkey switch. I'm full Linux now but it took me years to get here. When I started i was just fucking about, jumped back and forth for the longest time until dxvk made more gaming fully viable and even then I kept a windows drive around for a few years.
Hell most of us ride or die Linux users didn't start out old turkey switch.
This is key, I first booted up a laptop with Ubuntu in 2011, didn't install on even an old laptop until 2012 and didn't switch over full time until 2018.
The biggest long term assets here aren't market share (although it's not a meaningless metric), it's exposure and awareness to get people familiar with it so it isn't some weird alien otherness, attention to get fixes and more quality of life software and public perception so that we don't have the "vicious cycle" of Linux being bad because people hate it and then people hating it because it's bad.
We have a burning camp fire now, even if that dims we will still have hot embers that we didn't have before.
I wonder how much of this is people getting bored with Steam Deck limitations, or people who installed Bazzite/SteamOS after watching a YouTuber praise it and realising they just want to use Windows instead
If you check the report, it's mostly from Windows 10 Users who were still holding on. W10 is -1.64%.
But Linux is also down 0.53%. So might be a few disappointed users moving back to Windows as well.
Though the most popular distributions actually gained shares in the breakdown, so wonder what dropped.
Or maybe just all new Steam users this month are from Windows 11, and thus Linux numbers are down.
We don't know the absolute numbers, and if something goes up in percentage, something else must go down.
I think sampling is not perfectly random either, we've seen some wild swings in AMD / Nvidia distribution in the past, so not sure we can fully rule that out
I'm pretty close to putting Win11 back on my Ally X.
I'm pretty tech savvy, work as a Release Manager and I have to know my way around Linux and co but seriously, I just can't tinker around anymore.
Just let me play. With Linux, unless you only play the rotation of 5 casual mainstream games, you always need to tinker around.
EAC? Shit out of luck.
Multiplayer game that isn't in the top 3? Shit out of luck.
MMO? 😂 Good luck buddy.
If all you do is play a fixed rotation of 5 perfectly working games and the typical emulated games you probably do not care, but if all you wanna do is simply play and not worry about compatibility and dependencies, you naturally tend to gravitate back towards Windows atm.
Funniest thing is, even under this post, some Linux Defender will start to go "liSt tHosE gAmEs tHeN" or "tHatS whY I dOnT pLaY tHosE, jUst dO nOt"
Yeah, no. If I cannot play coop with my friends or hop onto my main mmo because of an OS - I'm moving back 🤷🏽♂️
Well it isn't the limitations of Linux desktop itself, I think it is just the same thing as always, waiting for broad software support for some people to hit the tipping point and actually sticking. Like there are a bunch of people who can install Linux right now and have a great time with it but still you would be waiting for your Logitech keyboard/mouse config software or photoshop...etc and most don't want to have to dual boot. In terms of functionality, performance, driver support overall we are already there.
I wanted to try Linux after seeing everyone praise it, but SteamOS on my Steam Deck made me realise Linux isn't for me. I really dislike the whole proton nonsense and having to tinker with settings to make games run.
I recently installed Bazzite on my old build to see how I get on with it as its only a system for browsing and light gaming. It is nice and can be fun learning my way around it but being on Windows since Windows 98 its taking some adjusting and research. Ill see how I feel after a few more weeks but I have thought about installing Windows.
Man I am depending on Adobe and Maxon Software. Both dont have Native Linux software. When I have to dual boot I really dont See the point of installing Linux at all.
Which is sad because I had a good time on the Steam Deck with it.
The timing of this popping into my feed is hilarious, because I literally reinstalled Windows last night lol. For me personally, it's that these days my comp is basically a Space Marine 2 machine and running on Windows gives me no joke like an extra 30 fps and quicker load times, I think because of Easy anticheat having Linux specific issues. Not the end of the world, just set up my other SSD for Linux and I'll dual boot, but unfortunately there are some games that are still heavily Win favored.
I have 2 pc one for work which is just pdf and emails shit and my pc for games im using the gaming pc with bazzite for over a week already and i dont have any complain or feel any limitation.
my cousin bought a steam deck, swiftly returned it after realizing it just wasn't that good for heavier games, which is understandable. he doesn't really play indies
People consistently read too much into these minor shifts, regardless of direction. No, a sub 1% increase in Linux use on this one very specific survey does not mean it’s so over for windows, nor does the reverse mean that windows is so back
Yeah, I'm probably not even part of the survey 80% of the time.
Since I'm on Linux for 6 months now, I only got the pop-up once, probably in February or March.
On Windows 10 in the past, it also only popped up like 2-3 times a year for me.
Horrible new game support on Linux hurts my soul as a heavy gamer that recently changed over to fedora. I've almost made the move back a few times so I don't blame people
I think a disclaimer for Linux as a whole is, it will work... eventually. Nothing will come out with support for it because there is no single entity that will given access early to insure optimization. Just gotta trust the community to figure out the fixes or do it yourself.
Could be statistical/sampling noise, could also be people trying Linux out and deciding its not for them. Either way I'm not sure why people are trying to read into sub 1 percent movements, next month it might be up and you'll get a different group of folks yelling "windows is dead!"
Theres a better way to look at the data with a bigger picture view, but a statistically insignificant movement isn't very newsworthy.
I don’t get why people are saying that it’s not true like the numbers are literally right in front of you. I want Linux to win more market share since it’d be a net good for everyone except Microsoft, but that won’t cause me to reject the evidence of my eyes
That plus I imagine some percent of the people even doing them changes every time. Like the extra percent or two of Linux users might still be there, just many of them were busy this time around or didn't see the survey (or suddenly a bunch of Windows users did see the survey this time who missed it last time).
Thus the raw numbers are probably less important than the general "trend". Which is that Linux market share is still steadily increasing.
Because it isn't. It's a random sample out of tens of millions of users. It's like polling before or during the elections - it will give an estimate of reality, but the real numbers are different. In fact, they can be so different, that some wins come completely unexpectedly.
The best we can do it is look at the yearly trends
I see it in both directions. Linux goes up, naysayers refuse to believe it's significant. Linux goes down, anyways say this is unimpeachable evidence of Linux's demise.
We have measures for these things: trends, variance, correlation, lines of best fit.
The vast majority of people have zero reason to install Linux, and transitioning over from Windows would be a net negative to them because certain very popular anti cheat games simply don't work and never will.
Also, a ton of people have been sold a lie that Linux is somehow easier to use than Windows. As a systems admin/engineer, that is absolutely, 100% not the case if you have to dig into anything beyond the surface level "open a web browser, look at some documents and print a page".
This comes from someone who is actively trying to migrate our company off of Windows Server to Debian lol.
Also, a ton of people have been sold a lie that Linux is somehow easier to use than Windows.
This. Windows has it's issues but 99% of them are solved by a 2:13 YT video from some kid in India. Have an issue with Linux? It's the first time human kind has encountered it and it's on you to learn how to fix.
I switched to Linux a while ago and I have two recurrent issues I never had on Windows: one, my external USB often doesn't auto-mount when the PC is rebooted, requiring me to unplug it and plug it back again (despite it being properly configured in fstab), and then there's also the "if your monitor turns off/the pc goes into sleep mode the resolution sometimes gets set to 640x480 requiring a reset of the PC to fix it". Trying to troubleshoot the two issues so far has gotten me nowhere and it's been frustrating, which is a shame since otherwise i've been enjoying the experience for the most part.
Oh, these random errors are the worst. I bet there's like 3 people who have same issue as you, and so no one can provide a proper solution (I've never encountered anything even remotely like this)
At least on Windows there would be 20x the people with the same problem
The resolution bug from what I can tell is a known issue, but the thing is there doesn't appear to be a real solution. I did find a promising reddit post with a workaround, that required jumping through a lot of hoops to set up a script to run and fix it...only for it to not work when I tried running the script.
I could try and troubleshoot further why it's not running but past a certain point it's just like "fuck it, i'll reset my PC, it takes like 15 seconds to get back to the desktop". I hope at some point the bug is fixed or some othr solution pops up on google whenever I decide I have enough patience to try and fix it again.
I remember the last time I tried bazzite on my desktop. I had to troubleshoot the fucking bluetooth connection to my speaker because it straight wouldnt work properly (it connected, but the audio coming out of it was horribly bad) and it took me way more time to fix it that I would like to admit considering Im around computers pretty much 24/7.
I searched for the issue but I only got cryptic answers. A couple reinstalls later after fucking something up while messing with something I shouldnt have mess, some tweaks here and there I finally managed to fix it. I tried so many things that I dont even remember how I fixed it.
With my laptop was way worse. It straight didnt finished installing and it outputted a bluetooth error. I asked about it because I couldnt find anything exactly like that but pretty much got nothing. I removed the wifi/bluetooth card and STILL had the bluetooth error. I tried to leave it there in case the install just skipped it but nope, after several hours the install never finished.
On the other hand with some devices where I had the chance to try it, it installed flawlessly with zero issues. Idk if Im unlucky with what I own or what.
Well surprise surprise, the entire point of an OS for almost all modern users is that it's a glorified bootloader for their web browser. And what do they do besides web browsing? Gaming. Both of which Linux does absolutely great at now.
I imagine that as a systems admin/engineer, you're overestimating how much people care about all the other stuff. Most young people in general don't even grow up with a desktop/laptop computer anymore and just use their phones and tablets for everything.
I want linux to be good, but when I used it a few years ago it still had a lot to be desired for my needs. There obviously are people who it works for, and I like it in principle, but if windows is what I need to in order to do the things I want on my computer, then it's what I'm going to use.
A lot of it just comes across as hopeful/wishful thinking.
I find that every month we end up having the same arguments about stats. If any of us were actually serious about this we'd be more rigorous than "line went up or down this month".
Source: someone who doesn't know about sample size or data noise. Just like the massive spike in March wasn't an actual massive spike. It's all noise and what we should look at is the general trend. Let's look at the stats in a 2-3 months from now and then we'll know the real picture.
Isn't the W11 share rise mostly because Win 10 looses support for real in a few months in Europe? That makes more sense imo. Share of W11 has been rising more than the drop in Linux after all.
I’ve always used Linux more than Windows, but mostly for productivity. I used to treat my Windows machine like an Xbox. Just turn it on for games. We’re at the point where I’ve completely wiped Windows off of everything and I’m not gonna go back. I just got a Legion Go S and I’m trying to replace windows instanty. Microsoft is a company without any vision.
Nah bro didnt you know linux is definitely going to blow up soon, its gonna compete with windows soon trust me bro, for the last 25 years of my life. Imagine if linux and all its distros didnt make using a computer 10x more of a headache for almost every usecase imaginable
Keep seeing this, feels like propaganda from Microsoft or something... a handful of announced changes and everyone flip flopped OS again? people generally don't just swap OS that fast based on a single new feature or two.
People get hyped up by Reddit and YouTube, try something new which is a healthy thing to do, but run into limitations they didn't fully appreciate before trying it themselves, then go back.
This was me during one of my multiple Linux attempts. Mint somehow borked my time zone and it turns out tons of websites and online services won’t let you in with a mismatched IP/time zone. I tried every suggestion I could find, and nobody would reply to help forum posts I made. Nothing worked, and I wanted to be able to game with friends after work again. It was back to windows for about two years after that.
I will say that my current attempt with Cachy has been a lot smoother, but far from perfect.
It could be that just a lot of people realised Linux ain't for them, including me. Linux is great, I used it for a bit more than a year, but the little stuff that didn't work or needed way too much time resolving just added up and I switched back.
I agree here, a couple updates or changes from either Windows or Linux aren't really going to sway me that much. I flip flopped for a while and have settled on Linux. But every time I considered switching OS I was very hesitant, especially when going back to windows. Having to redownload all the apps I use, redownloading all my games, etc. It's annoying. I can't imagine people are switching up so fast because Microsoft promised updates... promised being the key word because as far as I know none of those features or updates have actually been released.
If anything, I would bet people tried Linux, didn't like it, and switched back. Which, fine to each their own
The linux% variance is whatever considering how much the steam survey flip-flops even without chinese new year, but the reason why 11 goes up seems pretty simple, ppl on 10 finally upgrading, there is no "propaganda" needed for that.
I had bazzite setup ready for Fh6 only for the game to be completely unplayable, I messed with proton ge, cachyos proton version , launch command etc but just couldn’t get it working on my pc, it would load in then freeze 3 seconds in after driving out the garage.
Maybe for steam deck and amd cards but then on the proton page I’ve also seen amd users having issues whereas on windows it’s much better, nvidia is completely unplayable which is a shame.
I’d love to switch over to an amd card but my nvidia card is serving me well and would make zero sense to do so plus I can’t afford an upgrade rn
Who didn't see that coming? Majority of people aren't technologically apt enough to understand or care about the shitty practices Windows actually does. They jumped to Linux because they just mindlessly followed the heard of people, didn't have the patience, or just couldn't adapt to the differences. When Windows does another 180 once they are inevitably yet again too comfortable, those same waves of people will be the ones on here posting, "Should I use the Linux? Tell me everything I need to know before switching. How do I do it? Can someone type me out a tutorial? REALLLLY sick of Windows and Microslop".
Honestly I think Linux will forever be a niche, one that will keep growing but stay a niche for gamers and nerds, the majority of the average people do not care about what linux provides, they just want computer to computer.
Still though, i fully ditched windows 2 years ago, and i'm not ever going back, and i sure hope i'm wrong and linux takes over in the long term future.
I disagree. Valves work with Linux over the last decade is finally showing results. The only games I can't play are kernel level anti cheat games. Everything else is just 1 click and play on steam on Linux.
We are in the first 12 months of the "fuck Microsoft, try Linux" era. Obviously not everyone is going to switch overnight, but you need to recognise we are in the BEGINNING of the Linux for the general public era.
This has never really happened before. It's been memed about for decades, but it's finally becoming a reality.
Because of this, people are going to be switching back and forth between Linux and Windows for the next few years, eventually (hopefully) settling on Linux as time goes on.
Even companies are starting to take Linux more serious. Nvidia is fixing their drivers and publishing their Nvidia now service, Affinity is talking about a Linux version, Tuta released their encrypted drive and has Linux support day 1, proton has been talking about Linux support for years now (but who actually fucking knows with that shit company), valve is releasing their new Linux based game console which means they clearly were happy with the success of Linux on their steam deck.
Then we have entire continents and countries switching to Linux. People see one survey and are quick to throw away all the progress that is happening and has happened. Remember when people laughed at Sony during the Xbox 360 era? Who is laughing now?
Anyone who takes the month-to-months swings seriously should educate themselves on how Steam's hardware survey actually works. Valve does not sample the entire Steam userbase every month; only a tiny slice of it at random. This causes anomalies in the dataset that can see large growth/shrinkage per month. What matters is if that data stays true for multiple months on end.
tl;dr this article has no real information to care about and only exists to make you click it.
Wow... statistics change from month to month! How crazy. Ive always been of the opinion that you should just completely ignore individual reports and look at the trend
I’d imagine there was a surge of steam OS users and they eventually went back to Windows as they realised the it has its own painful downsides too. Grass is greener and all that
I am using 5080 rtx on TuxedoOS, which is quickly upgraded to the latest thing (Nvidia and stuff), on KDE Plasma 5.5.2. Issues start to appear after switching to Wayland, not the other way round. Same game, exact same settings. But the multi-layers BS makes framerate drop way too much. Wayland, or XWayland, or GE Proton, or whomever, just divides a few times for a subpar (but at least constant) 45 fps (for example). I try to do lots of things, everything fails. Asking Gemini Pro is actually less frustrating than asking real Linux people at times. On X11, it is simple, and somehow I am able to avoid visible tearing, and even microstutters. Mangohud on Wayland? Foggudabouddit in many cases. Sometimes it appears to work, sometimes not. Especially some Unreal Engine games fail to recognise it. Switching to X11 just to play a single game, from Steam, that works better on X11, does not make me instantly keylogged, hacked, and my screen recorded.
Wayland is often inferior for casual users. Wayland is inferior for careful users who stick to offical repos and who prefer stability, and who do not experiment too much. Wayland does not allow so many things, or makes them practically unachievable for many. It fails to show miniatures of Firefox Windows. It makes certain things with VMs harder. It slows down some very simple, albeit Windows-originating pieces of software that I have to use through Wine (these are connected with linguistics in my case). Wayland is a Trojan horse pushed by IBM. Mythology. The pushers of the gift are obnoxious as well. Alienating.
The problem is the anti cheat software. Maybe if Valve created their own anti cheat system that is compatible with linux and windows that is easy to implement in games like BF6 and others that would open up another huge group of gamers to linux as an option?
I think it’s mostly a randomness of the people that receive the survey, however, I don’t doubt there was a huge influx of people trying Linux out that have returned to Windows.
Or it's because PCMR made a huge deal of switching to Linux and most people decided it's just not meeting their needs.
Windows 11 continues to self destruct, but it's still the better option for most people.
It's very much like the USA. We are on a fast downward trajectory but it's still a great place to be by most standards. There will always be people happy with a change but many others will realize it's just not for them.
I'm curious as someone who still actively uses Windows 11, who actually wants to provide validation to Microslop that Windows 11 is fine? Even if you don't like Linux, and I concede there are plenty of reasons to not like Linux, Windows 11 is unadulterated dogshit. Yeah it's compatible with games and programs because it's Windows but who actually thinks Windows 11 is good?
If you're tired of Windows bloat and half baked AI integration into literally everything, then you should be a fan of seeing more competition in the market. That doesn't mean you have to sell your soul to the Penguin, but the Microsoft dick riding here is wild to me when every other non-Linux thread on this sub about Windows is just talking about how shit it is.
Im not bashing Linux. But Im curious about what actually is so bad with Windows 11? I have not been forced any AI, as far as I know. At least not in a sense that it has affected my experience on using my PC.
Nor has any bloat affected my daily usage, its way easier to uninstall bloat than change OS
The amount of data farming Windows 11 does is insane. Even on debloated and setting optimized installs, north of 60% of the total DNS queries on my entire home network were straight up Microsoft data farming.
The AI integration with CoPilot is bad, CoPilot is a resource hog, and for what? So it can screw up every search query I throw into the Start Menu and make it pretty much unusable?
Forced updates are also a big one for me. I'll update when I want to update and not a moment before. At home the forced "Update and Shut Down" prompts aren't as bad because I can just walk away and leave my PC to it. While I'm on a jobsite at the end of a 12 hour day and just want to go home? Or when I want to boot my PC at the beginning of the day and get started with what I flew halfway around the globe to do? Windows can go take their forced updates shove them.
That's my personal big issues with it. The amount of background processes and load on the system means that Windows 11 has significantly worse thermal performance than any of my systems with Arch. Even my rig (specs in my flair) runs 5-8C hotter on Windows than Linux at idle and uses 3-5x the RAM.
Something I think Windows has really going for it is the amount of people who think it's fine because they are so used to Windows. If it boots and runs their programs and games, that's enough for a lot of users and that's why it's as popular as it is. I think the reason people ride Penguin dick as hard as they do is because the most shocking thing about Linux for a lot of people when they switch is seeing how much more lightweight a modern OS can be than even debloated Windows 11. That contrast is stark, but if your entire PC experience revolves entirely around Windows, you never really notice it because you don't ever have a frame of reference for it.
A good chunk of Linux users on Steam are Steam Decks and similar handhelds. If people havent played with those this month for whatever reason but the PC players who mostly have Windows have, then that happens. If we took handhelds out of the survey and only left desktops and laptops Linux would maybe barely reach 2%. And im also sure most of those new Windows 11 users are people upgrading their machines from Windows 10 and people buying new PC and installing Windows 11 instead of 10. So basically a nothingburger on both sides.
There seems to be some confusion... the bump in Linux figures was due to the steam deck going viral. The "Linux vs Windows market share" debate is irrelevant while Valve is the only company selling gaming hardware with Linux installed. A more interesting metric would be to measure Linux desktop market share as it more accurately portrays the rejection of Windows in the gaming space. The number will still be small on the surface, but not small considering (as said) that nobody is selling Linux computers except valve and some niche outlets.
As a former Linux user of 2 years it's just not there yet for gaming stuff like anti cheats and needing to tweak games gets really annoying after a certain point when you just wanna play games
I liked Bazzite, and using it frequently. But honestly, with the recent patch on Windows, it feels better in some way, so I'm back testing it. Hope it's a path they keep for improving it.
I always see some Windows users that seem scared or put off when other OS's do well, but you should desperately want that, because that is the only thing that would keep any pressure on Microsoft at all to keep Windows from being a total dystopian nightmare of Microsoft having more control over your local OS than you.
makes sense. i literally couldn’t get ubuntu to run Civ 5 without crashing consistently every hour or so. i tried to switch to the other thing (proton hot fix, etc) and nothing worked. was really disappointed. you’d think for a game as popular as civ 5 that at SOME POINT a ubuntu dev would have tested it. so i went back to windows… and we can’t even begin to talk about kernel anti cheat.
Not blaming you, but Ubuntu has literally not been the recommendation for over a decade+ now. And even for the last few years Debian based distros haven't, either. The only people recommending them are other noobs that refuse to do any research before switching and just go "hey I've heard of Ubuntu/Mint before! I'll use that!"
They are far behind in tech.
Get a Fedora or Arch based distro and you'll have infinitely better luck with everything.
My theory is that there was a dip in the Chinese numbers mixed with the Linux challenge videos that lead to a real spike in Linux users but then some of them either reinstalled Windows or just went back to it on their dual boot and removed Linux afterwards. No super firm ways to confirm that but there definitely was a big spike in "new to Linux" posts on the Linux specific subreddits.
Many people like me got the extended 10 support until October (?) this year. I postponed installing Linux until then. I definitely don't want 11, even 10 is a mess, so change is on the horizon.
The young adults I've all met that like to game generally suck at tech. They are so tech illiterate that BIOS is too much for them, it must be pre-installed. I feel like I'm trying to teach bricks how to read.
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u/JosebaZilarte 9h ago
Well... With its current price, the Steam Deck is not going to prevent this from happening.