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Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.
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I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
Most will stay on Windows of course, but some don’t. And those who switch to Linux are likely not returning to Windows (for gaming at least).
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks, which run on Linux, not from people switching to Linux on their PCs.
If it continues to rise, this is the reason. The general public is less and less into using a desktop at all as time goes on, much less running, and much less changing to, an extremely niche operating system on one.
EDIT: The previous sentence is actually more of the reason, upon further reflection. The total number of people playing on desktops period is falling, and the vast majority of desktops are Windows, so non-Windows OSes will comparatively gain ‘market share’ as that happens, even if their numbers don’t change at all.
Actually, the raw number percentage shows that the increase is due to Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Maybe people are installing Bazzite on their Deck but likely not the other two.
I want to say that I’ve been helping people get onto Mint and Bazzite. Going to pat myself on the back for contributing what little I can to grow this awesome community
I switched from Windows to Bazzite on my main rig 2 weeks ago. Likely won’t go back to Windows for gaming as I’ve had pretty much no issues with Bazzite.
I did also get a Steam deck recently, so anecdotally, both above answers are right.
Insert “I’m doing my part” meme
Hannah Montana Linux support for Steam Deck when?
SteamOS Holo 64 bit - 27.18% (-0.47%)
Arch Linux 64 bit - 10.32% (-0.66%)
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit - 6.65% (+6.65%)
CachyOS 64 bit - 6.01% (+1.32%)
Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit - 4.55% (+0.55%)
Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64
bit - 4.29% (+4.29%)
Bazzite 64 bit - 4.24% (+4.24%)
Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit - 3.70% (+3.70%)
Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit - 2.56% (-5.65%)
EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit - 2.32% (-0.08%)
Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64
bit - 2.31% (-3.98%)
Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition)
64 bit - 2.12% (+0.19%)
Manjaro Linux 64 bit - 2.04% (-0.31%)
Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit - 1.93% (-0.04%)
Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition) 64 bit - 1.75% (-0.43%)
Other - 18.04% (-4.28%)
I joined that group today, but it wasn’t necessarily this support thing. I hated Windows update most of the time anyway. Mostly I just needed to buy a new SSD so I could dual boot, which will allow me to transition at my own pace while getting comfortable. I bought a cheap 500gb Saturday.
The other issue is my version of decision paralysis on choosing a distro, which generally is paralysis up until I suddenly just bite the bullet. I went with Nobara since it looked easiest to support my hardware and get into my games quickly.
So far I’ve gotten FFXIV, Warframe, and Enshouded running the way I want, and am slowly downloading my other current games. I have to keep a 200mpbs download limit because I’m working too. I also wiped one of my 2tb drives that mostly had games I was planning to play soon or just started playing to make it exFAT. I’ll probably eventually convert the others but may need to buy another 2tb drive for transfers if needed.
Update: exFAT gave me issues with another game so I ended up just making it a btrfs drive.
According to statcounter, Linux desktop was over 4% marketshare in April 2025, damn that’s impressive.
We really are getting there.
I wonder if Valve will ever release an official desktop version of SteamOS? I think Linux adoption would really increase fast if there was a gaming focused Linux desktop distribution with the support of an established company. But does Valve want that? A full featured operating system is a lot to maintain and provide support for.
Is that really needed?
I think what could really drive adoption is if computers with Linux pre-installed was more easily accessible. Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install and then it’s done. It doesn’t need to be SteamOS. Just any good distro will do.
Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install
Yeah, that’s not at all accessible to the average consumer; they don’t know what a “DE” even is, much less why they should choose any over any other.
Very, very few people want to deal with something other than a ‘just works’ situation.
They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):
- KDE - familiar, extensible
- GNOME - modern, minimalist
- Cinnamon/Budgie/MATE - something in the middle
- XFCE/LXQT - super lightweight for older systems
Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.
I agree with the other guy, that’s too much choice. People don’t want to deal with it.
Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.
I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:
- The image is weirdly large, it’s like 9GB in size. It takes awhile to download and a weirdly long time to write to a USB stick.
- Once written, you boot the image, and GRUB has the options to Install Bazzite or Test Media And Install Bazzite. By default, Test Media is selected. It always fails this test.
- If you use the typical non-live environment image, the scaling is tiny on a 4k monitor, and there’s no way to adjust this.
- If you use the live environment image (in beta at time of writing), it might just lock up. I had that happen twice just while clicking through the Anaconda installer.
- The Anaconda installer, which I think they inherited from Fedora, was I think designed by one of the contrarian idiots who work for Gnome. There’s a DONE button up in the far upper left hand corner of the screen that sometimes acts as a back button, sometimes acts as a forward button. You have to move the mouse from the top corner of the screen to the center of the screen a lot, for no reason. The top-left corner of the screen is a dumb place to put a DONE button because most languages read top to bottom, left to right, the DONE button is where a START button should go.
- There isn’t a simple way to tell it “put / on this drive, put /home on that drive.” There’s an automatic installer which will do god knows what…fail, most likely. There’s a “custom” partition dialog which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and then there’s a “custom advanced” one that lets you set the size and position of each partition to the byte. Doing it this way apparently REQUIRES you to not only set up a /boot/efi partition, but also a /boot partition separate from /root.
- If you’re in the habit of putting /, you know, operating system and software, on one drive, and /home on another drive, you have to learn from osmosis that part of Bazzite’s immutableness means that there is no /home, there’s a /var/home symlinked to /home.
And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!
Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?
That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.
That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.
I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.
The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.
Also Valve will not likely go that path again.
I have a Windows laptop specifically for gaming, but I end up using my Linux coding laptop for games in the end.
It’s less hassle figuring out how to enable nvidia drivers on xorg in GNU linux so that I csn use Proton emulation than to deal with this weeks clusterfuck of windows update trying to make me turn on ads and spying and trick me into using a microsoft.com account to log in.
I am not joking.
The windows still has some dust on it from when I did some house renovations months ago, because I haven’t been bothered to use it.
Having been gaming on Linux for the past 10 years and facing basically 0 issues, I can also affirmatively I don’t understand the attachment to windows. I get it if you need specifically word or excel. and I guess if you’ve got kids who want to play fortnite.
It’s mostly convenience. They know it works, so they keep using it.
Luckily Microsoft is making it inconvenient to continue using Windows.
I spent the last two days building a machine from old parts and installing Linux Mint. It’s my first time using Linux and I am really surprised at how lovely it is. I am still learning, but I can easily see it replacing my home gaming PC. I have yet to find something I can’t get to work.
Fortnite.
Anything with anticheat unfortunately.
But I’m happily on Linux for daily and gaming. Welcome to the club
All anticheats are not made equal, and some are functional under Linux.
Plenty of anti-cheats work on Linux, and the ones that don’t are probably borderline malware anyways, so it’s really a win-win
Is Battefield 6 supported? That is the only thing fully getting off Windows
It’s not that it’s not supported by Linux, but that the developers of BF6 choose not to support Linux.
Personally speaking, fuck EA and fuck kernel level anti cheat anyway, good riddance.
Also fuck giving saudi arabia money. Sometimes its unavoidable, but this is a video game. There are other video games, but there is no regime worse than the saudi regime.
“bUt ThEy DoNt OwN tHeM yEt”
The price has been settled on, so any success from here on out absolutely does directly benefit the saudis.
I was not aware of this. I cannot take back what I’ve paid
Can I play pirated games on Linux?
Why wouldn’t you?
What makes the chart “only” on 3% is Chinese users. English Linux user alone has more than 6% percentage of Linux users.
We need Chinese government for their independent tech stack to include Linux further. At the moment, there are already several Chinese distro with big companies porting their basic apps to Linux (like chat app, office app, etc).
If Chinese gov force gaming company to support Linux as well, we will see a huge surge evenmore. There are a huge number of Chinese game that never made out of China, and exclusive to PC only.
Here’s a graphic showing that from this page:
I wish there was a graphic that showed English users with SteamOS separated from non-SteamOS users, because I think if we get 5% of non-SteamOS users, we should start to see devs pay a lot more attention. We’re starting to see devs make SteamOS-specific versions (e.g. THPS 1&2 offline mode), so the next step is getting Linux-specific adjustments for more games.
So uh, what happened between March and September 2021 that caused the current upward trend? Was the Windows 11 announcement that poorly received?
Yes, and 2021 was a perfect storm of a bunch of stuff:
- Windows 11 would break compatibility with older processors
- Steam Deck announced preorders in July - wouldn’t release until 2022, but there was a lot of excitement about Linux gaming
- LTT made a video series (part 1 was Nov. 2021) where Linus used Linux exclusively for a month
So yeah, a lot of people were curious at the time, and while not all of it was directly related to Windows 11, that certainly was a factor.
So 93% of the Linux users use English steam. I wonder how much of that is because Linux users just don’t bother to set system language (I am one of them), or maybe the language was not detected correctly.
So 93% of the Linux users use English steam.
No, 82% of the Linux users use English as UI Language. Less than 3% use Chinese.
I’m kinda in the same boat. I have an old gaming laptop that just barley didn’t make the win11 arbitrary cut. Not because it was below spec, it was way above. Just because it was too “old”. I installed Bazzite. But I do have a top tier premium gaming PC I built recently that’s still on Win11 with Dualboot with Bazzite.
Bazzite is great, but it still has the failure(maybe it’s not failure to you and me, but the average gamer) is that most stuff isn’t just, download .exe, run that .exe there are loops and frameworks that need to be installed through command lines. The average user will give up there really quickly.
Haven’t used bazzite, but there is an App Store you can get all of the apps anyone would need.
No longer do we live in the days of visiting a vendors website to download their executables. They are conveniently packaged for us in the App Store (package manager).
