Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux
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As people already stated in the comments, this may not be a permanent change for some (they find out something like destiny 2 refuses to work on Linux without bans, some other tools needed for certain use cases are not there yet or windows only), but I think is super important people understand there are alternatives, and not only windows or Mac. Hopefully gives more people awareness that something else is out there. And would be really cool if we had more of the user base that is on the verge to throwing away the machine because of windows 11 restrictions and instead, gives machines a second chance.
All we can do is guide them. Personally, I guide them to treasure I cannot have, since I’m damn near obligated to run and deeply understand Microsoft Windows because I work for IT support.
All of my work tools are Windows centric.
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Not sure what you’re saying…. I download drivers for my hardware, download and install steam and my game and start playing? Or is it not that straight forward yet?
That’s exactly how straight forward it is.
Which distro you pick is mostly a matter of taste.
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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?
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.
The average person just simply won’t upgrade. These are the people who find regular updates or shutting of their PC already a pain, what makes you think they would switch to a completely different OS?
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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.
I highly recommend Nobara.
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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
Bazzite is the go-to gaming distro. It’s basically Steam OS.
I’m personally a fan of Mint (old, stable) or Fedora Plasma (cutting edge), as both feel very familiar coming from Windows. I went with Mint personally.
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That’s exactly how straight forward it is.
Which distro you pick is mostly a matter of taste.
If Ubuntu works, I rather stick with that. Just weird I haven’t seen anything about using that one. If I can home lab/self host and develop either gaming, that would be sweet.
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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.
Unless their hardware doesn’t support it. A lot of people are going to be tossing out perfectly good systems because they don’t have a TPM.
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If Ubuntu works, I rather stick with that. Just weird I haven’t seen anything about using that one. If I can home lab/self host and develop either gaming, that would be sweet.
Nothing wrong with Ubuntu. If you like Ubuntu, go with Ubuntu.
Just weird I haven’t seen anything about using that one.
Most people don’t mention Ubuntu because they are pushing Snaps real hard, which cause issues for people. Mint is basically the same as Ubuntu, but without the stuff Ubuntu does people don’t like.
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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.
Garuda Linux if you want something that just works out of the box, but with the power to do whatever you want. It’s basically Arch with all the gaming stuff pre-configured for you.
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If all you do is game, outside of a few key games (Destiny 2, uhh,couple others) the experience on Linux is better for many folks.
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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.
I use arch, but they’re all equivalent. A distro is more like a preconfigured linux
Just pick one of the popular ones and tinker
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So Linux bumps up 2 percentage points due to steam decks and all the linuxbois are taking a victory lap
Windows lives in your head rent free
You’re worse than vegans, at least vegans have a moral position.
Edit: screenshotting this for when the mods ban me again
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Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
Yeah and honestly, whatever optimization they promise — or deliver, for that matter — won’t sway me because it’s the company itself and the country where it is based that I’m against at this point. So, there’s no way I’m ever going to buy any MS handheld.
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So Linux bumps up 2 percentage points due to steam decks and all the linuxbois are taking a victory lap
Windows lives in your head rent free
You’re worse than vegans, at least vegans have a moral position.
Edit: screenshotting this for when the mods ban me again
I’m in the process of jumping into Linux. Still getting my sea legs, but your take just seems intentionally inflammatory.
I’m not sure what you thought you were accomplishing by posting it.
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So Linux bumps up 2 percentage points due to steam decks and all the linuxbois are taking a victory lap
Windows lives in your head rent free
You’re worse than vegans, at least vegans have a moral position.
Edit: screenshotting this for when the mods ban me again
What an extremely normal way to respond to this post
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I’m in the process of jumping into Linux. Still getting my sea legs, but your take just seems intentionally inflammatory.
I’m not sure what you thought you were accomplishing by posting it.
It’s important to me for linux users to know how much I despise them
No one is more bitter than a disillusioned ex-believer, and I tried so hard to be an early Linux adopter in the late 90s, early 00s. I was bright eyed and full of hope for an open source future.
Spent 3 years trying to transition to linux as my daily driver, and every time I tried it was just days of frustration and every time I tried to go to any of the various linux forums at the time, all I got in return was literally hundreds of users telling me to read a list of books before I had the right to ask questions.
This happened EVERY FUCKDAMN place I went, forums, usenet, IRC, even oldschool bulletin boards
The worst part about the experience is that the environment is so fractured that every distro is basically it’s own unique thing, with quirks and differences that aren’t apparent to people who haven’t been using them for years already, and that everyone is so fuckdamn hard on depreciating still used functions or just renaming fucking functions for vanity sake
So past forum posts are likely just not going to be helpful anymore, which is a really fucking ridiculous design choice when one of the primary project goals is ubiquitous interoperability and long term support.
Linux is a waste of human energy. Can you even imagine the hundreds of millions of human development hours that went into failed distros and vanity changes being actually used to make one unified fucking amazing OS?
The original dream was a community of dedicated and passionate devs working together to unseat corporate software control
Instead what we got was a thousand fractured groups all doing whatever the fuck they feel like and now you need a fuckdamn college course to figure out which of the thousand distros are for you
Fuck linux
Fuck the people who promote it
That is all
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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.
I left Debian for Arch recently and let me tell you, you immediately feel the difference with running the latest drivers for your machine. The bleeding edge drivers have upped my frames per second significantly in videos games compared to sticking with stable releases on Debian (and Ubuntu).
With the built-in
archinstallscript making Arch so easy to get going, I’d only reach for anything else if I really needed the stability. -
most of my programs existed on both
Good on you. Plenty of people have many problems because a lot of industry standard tools (e.g. fusion 360 for CAD) don’t exist on Linux and actively break under Wine/Proton
And my games just worked
And great (and same). But most of that is just not actively breaking Proton. Which is the Wine team plus Valve.
As for BF6: the point is that one of THE biggest third party publishers out there has spent the past year or so actively blocking Proton in almost all of their games. And for their new flagship title that they want to be the biggest game ever (ha!), they are already actively blocking Proton again.
Which goes against the “many 3rd party companies are taking notice and releasing for both”. Which was already not even a thing since the vast majority of those aren’t doing linux binaries (tried that 10 and 20 and 30 years ago…) and are just not actively breaking Proton.
You can use Fusion 360 in Linux with Wine. But instead of even trying that, I used my switch to Linux as the catalyst to switch to FreeCAD. Using FOSS just feels so much nicer.
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Bazzite is the go-to gaming distro. It’s basically Steam OS.
I’m personally a fan of Mint (old, stable) or Fedora Plasma (cutting edge), as both feel very familiar coming from Windows. I went with Mint personally.
Bazzite is Fedora and you can get it in KDE Plasma or Gnome flavors.
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Won’t miss those years tweaking Windows to uninstall or disable bloatware and malware. I don’t mind if more or less people migrate to Linux, I’m just grateful to those who are making and improving such amazingly good distros.
Instead you’ll spend your time littering your own computer with bloatware!
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