Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux
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How do you know if someone owns a Steam Deck? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
So anyway, a couple years ago I bought a Steam Deck. And since I bought it, virtually all of my gaming is on the Deck. Prior to that, virtually all of my game time was on a Windows PC. So, for me personally, there’s been a big shift towards Linux for gaming.
The other big change that’s coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11. These computers are perfectly functional and do everything the users need them to do, and they have no inclination to go out and buy a new computer just because. Especially in this economy. Additionally, there are quite a few people with computers that are capable of running Windows 11, but they have no desire to upgrade to a worse experience and an experience that is randomly different in a myriad different ways for no good reason. Both groups are ripe for the picking in terms of a switch to Linux. No, the year of the Linux desktop is not here, but the conditions for such a change are building. And this Steam data may present a picture of the larger trend. Who knows?
I ran a dual boot back in college to dabble with Linux a bit but gaming support back then was literally nonexistent. The Deck and Proton really reinvigorated that drive nearly a decade later.
This past winter I started a huge degoogling push and trying to replace big tech platforms in general, and I’d also recently quit the only the game I regularly played that didn’t run on Linux due to anticheat bullshit, so I said fuck it and set up a CachyOS dual boot and I haven’t looked back since.
The dual boot is just there in case I ever need it for some odds or ends, or in case I break Cachy, but so far I’ve booted windows maybe 4 times since January.
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This is a great use-case for a live Linux environment. Throw one onto a drive and see if it works well, and if not, just restart and go back to what you have.
But, like you said, not a big deal either way.
Very true, if I find a DE that works with Embrilliance this weekend, I could use my Ventoy stick and see if she vibes with it. Good call!
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How do you know if someone owns a Steam Deck? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
So anyway, a couple years ago I bought a Steam Deck. And since I bought it, virtually all of my gaming is on the Deck. Prior to that, virtually all of my game time was on a Windows PC. So, for me personally, there’s been a big shift towards Linux for gaming.
The other big change that’s coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11. These computers are perfectly functional and do everything the users need them to do, and they have no inclination to go out and buy a new computer just because. Especially in this economy. Additionally, there are quite a few people with computers that are capable of running Windows 11, but they have no desire to upgrade to a worse experience and an experience that is randomly different in a myriad different ways for no good reason. Both groups are ripe for the picking in terms of a switch to Linux. No, the year of the Linux desktop is not here, but the conditions for such a change are building. And this Steam data may present a picture of the larger trend. Who knows?
They all can upgrade to win 11. Nothing is stopping them. But you have to do a couple of steps.
Either way, Linux is better and Microsoft is playing stupid games.
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It was written in the scrolls. The day prophezised for hundreds of years: the year of the linux desktop.
The prophecy is being fulfilled, and our prophet Gabe made it possible.
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I wonder how dual boots show up in these stats
They don’t. The survey pops up on one device only. Statistically speaking though, it’s more likely to show up on the OS you spend most of your time using, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
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With path tracing it runs significantly worse than it does on Windows. Without it, it runs roughly the same. RTX 4060 Ti.
Awesome, thanks!
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What? I have a 2060 and shit runs fine.
Of course. There’s always the ones for whom everything runs fine. These are the ones who aren’t affected by bugs in power management caused by Nvidia drivers because they use desktop PCs and not laptops. These are the ones who still used X11 five years after the rest of the Linux world moved to Wayland and when Nvidia drivers got good enough for Wayland, it’s always “see, how much Nvidia’s drivers have improved a lot since the 2010s!!”
Nvidia is lagging years behind on adopting newer technologies in the Linux graphics stack.
Edit: These days it’s “HDR can cause game-breaking graphical artifacts”.
Another good nugget, thanks (as I’d like to play in HDR).
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I ran a dual boot back in college to dabble with Linux a bit but gaming support back then was literally nonexistent. The Deck and Proton really reinvigorated that drive nearly a decade later.
This past winter I started a huge degoogling push and trying to replace big tech platforms in general, and I’d also recently quit the only the game I regularly played that didn’t run on Linux due to anticheat bullshit, so I said fuck it and set up a CachyOS dual boot and I haven’t looked back since.
The dual boot is just there in case I ever need it for some odds or ends, or in case I break Cachy, but so far I’ve booted windows maybe 4 times since January.
This last try at gaming under Linux (about a year ago with a desktop PC and Pop!OS) was a pleasant surprise given that my previous try (same machine, around 5 years before) was an exercise in frustration and I just gave up on it and that partition just stayed there in a dual boot config without being used until I nuked it in this latest try.
This time it went so well that I’m now full time gaming in Linux and even though Windows is available as dual boot, I haven’t booted it in many months. Granted, I don’t do online multiplayer so don’t suffer from Wine not being compatible with the Windows rootkits used for cheat protection in some of those games.
And this high success rate is not even exclusively with Steam and Proton - I get about the same rate of success for games from GOG with Wine under Lutris.
The ease of gaming in Linux seems to have advanced massively in the last few years.
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Nvidia seems to be the biggest hurdle for most people. The simplest solution I’ve found has been universal Blue, Bazzite (specifically the Nvidia images). You don’t have to think twice about Nvidia as everything is preconfigured for you out of the gate, forever, in perpetuity.
I’m not aware of the x3d issues you speak of.
In my experience the version of Pop!OS with Nvidia support also works out of the box with no hassle.
I suspect the horror stories are from people who had to install the Nvidia support themselves.
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I didn’t say there are never any issues I said it’s fine. The idea that “success stories” are only amd is silly. 90/100 times unless you’re using bleeding edge hardware or pathologically fussy you just hit play and stuff works. 9 out of the remaining 10 times you tweak a proton version or wine setting, the other time it’s a driver bug.
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing though.
As an example, I figured out (on a 4900HS CPU/2060 GPU) that Stellaris and modded Rimworld game ticks are on the order of 40% slower running linux native, and still slower (but less dramatically so) in Proton. There was zero public information on this until I tested it myself.
As another example, modded Minecraft is dramatically faster on linux.
They run fine, yeah, but one’s game settings are kinda capped by CPU performance in all these titles. I don’t have to know the difference, but would like to, hence I’m wondering about CP2077 from the opposite side: am I missing out on a boost from linux?
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People often repeat that Nvidia is a nightmare to get working and that you need to install some sort of pre-packaged distro that configures Nvidia for you but… that hasn’t been true for years?
Get any distro you want, from Fedora to Arch, install nvidia-open, reboot… that’s it? Maybe install extra packages for 32 bit support, video decoding and CUDA if you want, optionally. Not different from installing Nvidia drivers on Windows at all, except you’re not running a .exe, but that’s true for any package.
I believe one of the problems is that nvidia is an out of kernel driver so it requires each kernel update to rebuild it. There is a lot of distro’s that handle this with a proper configuration of dkms but some dont and it causes issues that are hard to solve for the average user.
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OSes are sticky as hell. People don’t like switching.
Every time they buy a new device they have to switch back to linux, because that device with very few exceptions ships with MS.
I see your point, but installing your usual linux distro on a new device is quite easier than switching to linux for the first time, which is what people don’t wanna do.
I’ve seen it first hand recently with a friend who sought advice regarding a low budget laptop purchase for school work and multimedia use. While he was open minded about what hardware to choose, there was no convincing him to ditch Windows. I told him he’d be better off using a lightweight linux distro on such modest hardware, but he insisted on Windows 11 based on questionable arguments (“I need office”), even knowing it’d be slow, bloated, full of ads and AI features no one care for. Old habits do die hard.
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I’m not sure. I’m a photographer and comic. I switched to mint cause it’s easy, I’m not much of a computer person.
Did you find mint easy? I am a bit of a computer person, and I’ve been struggling a bit with it
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I am not sure, as I’ve actually only played it under Linux. I have a laptop with an RTX 3070. It’s able to handle the raytraced low setting at 1080p, but I just run High instead so that the fan isn’t as loud. And in my opinion that even looks pretty good. I might try start it under windows and run its benchmark because I’m curious now! I’ll update here if I remember to do this test.
Also, you might be able to fix that!
I clock limit my 3090 to like 1700MHz-1750Mhz with Nvidia-smi (built into the driver) since any faster is just diminishing returns. You might check what “stable clocks” your 3070 runs at, and cap them slightlt lower, and even try an under volt as well.
Be sure to cap the frame rate too.
Do that, and you might be able to handle RT reflections and otherwise similar settings without much noise. The hit for just that setting is modest on my 3090 but much heavier with full “low” RT
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Did you find mint easy? I am a bit of a computer person, and I’ve been struggling a bit with it
Effortless. My only issue with it was installing Plank Reloaded.
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Effortless. My only issue with it was installing Plank Reloaded.
I’ve been struggling quite a bit switching file managers. Nothing is fully satisfactory
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What’s the best Linux distro to play games? Im currently on Ubuntu 22.04 and won’t leave it as my main but I have a AMD TR 1950 with a GTX 1080 TI will to play some final fantasy.
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Valve put together a good product this time compared to the first steam machines push. Most games work without fuss and it’s priced well. They didn’t start the handheld PC market but they sort of Apple’ed it by taking something other companies had been doing and streamlined it enough to get mainstream copycats, Lenovo/Asus/etc. Plus SteamOS/bug picture looks a lot better today than 10 years ago. So proven market/platform that can again try to undercut Windows machines in price because Linux is free and leverages the work of open source developers
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What’s the best Linux distro to play games? Im currently on Ubuntu 22.04 and won’t leave it as my main but I have a AMD TR 1950 with a GTX 1080 TI will to play some final fantasy.
All the major desktop distros play games about as well as one another, assuming you set them up correctly.
Choose a distro based on other criteria, like the release cadence and admin tools that you find most comfortable. If you don’t have any particular needs or preferences, I guess you could save 10 minutes by choosing a distro that installs Nvidia drivers by default, but it’s not going to run games appreciably better than the others.
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11% month on month expansion is fucking crazy. You can see from the data it’s mostly Windows 10 users deciding to upgrade to Linux…and even OSX.
Would love more support for MacOS but I’m also fine turning my windows 10 rig into a Linux machine. Need recommendations on a gaming distro! AMD TR 1950 w/GTX 1080TI
