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.
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.
THPS offline mode is the same version as elsewhere, but it magically allows itself to operate offline when it thinks it’s running on a Steam Deck, which you can do with a launch parameter. Baldur’s Gate 3 actually has a native Linux version that is only officially supported for Steam Deck, and that might be closer to what you’re referring to.
On a separate note, the BG3 native Linux version is so strange. Larian is threating the SteamDeck like a console. As if it is a bundled OS+HW system with only one available game store and only one useable OS. So they are only releasing it in steam, not on any other store. As if that means it can only be installed on SteamDeck and not on other Linux systems on different Hardware. They forget that anyone can install other Linux distributions or even windows in SteamDecks or use other game stores.
This decision is so strange, because it disadvantages people that bought the game for PC elsewhere and own a SteamDeck.
Like will they make performance patches to their games gated behind which which store the game was bought from?
which you can do with a launch parameter
My point is they built functionality specifically for a Linux-based system. In THPS, that meant offline mode, but for other games it could be anti-cheat, where to store game saves, or default settings (I think Cyberpunk some?).
My point is that Linux is getting on the radar of game devs, and that’ll increase a lot at some level of adoption. I think that level is 5% on desktop Linux.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a unicorn in a lot of ways, so that’s not exactly what I’m talking about, but it’s related. I’m not going to expect BG3-level of support from devs, THPS 1&2 would be so much more than we’re currently getting.
It’s possible, but it’s also possible that they already had that offline segregation built into the code to support the Switch version, and that it was trivial to enable.
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.
Mostly on steam deck it means not that much on PC
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.
Would that be similar to Windows users who don’t set the language? Or do OEMs set that for the region they sell in?
In my non English native experience, they will often set the language.
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 ws hoping r6 could be accessible but no. Still that friggin battleeye bullshit
Maybe one day :(
BattlEye supports Linux, Ubisoft doesn’t.
So it’s not the anti cheat? Everyone always says anticheat whenever it’s brought up.
Not necessarily.
Ubisoft might argue that it will open up another attack vector, with isn’t entirely unreasonable. But they could support it.
Is Battefield 6 supported? That is the only thing fully getting off Windows
Technically you can with Bazzite.
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.
Yeah kernel level anti cheat sucks. But I like Battlefield. But yeah i’m with ya F Ea
It’s frustrating because kernel level doesn’t actually help. The cheats and cheaters can also do that and do! I soured on competitive multiplayer because it’s become impossible to ignore that every popular PvP game is infested eith cheaters and that anti cheat is the equivalent of the TSA at Airports but even less effective. It’s security theater.
The only real prevention is consoles in games without cross play and that haven’t been cracked/exploited yet. Even then there’s man…AI In The Middle external cheats now that record the display output and can aim bot with controller input splicing hardware. But that’s not as easy to set up so way less cheaters.
Except then you’re gaming on a console which usually aim bots for you anyways because joysticks are inaccurate crap. Labeled “aim assist.” Halo Infinite for example was so egregious you couldn’t compete with controller players because of aim assist vs mouse and keyboard. That’s built into the fucking game!
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
Technically they only benefit from money after the price was set, which was recently
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.
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I use arch btw.
There’s always one engorged asshole that had to show up and be a complete prick about people liking something. Fuck all the way off
You do realise that Im talking about YOU doing that, right? This me giving it BACK to you. And oh look, none of you like it. Funny how that works, aint it? Now, why dont you “fuck all the way off”.
Nah you’re just a cunt troll
lol, says the fart sniffer looking down his nose at people for using windows. Dont worry, little incel. Some day you’ll wake up, realise using linux doesnt make you better than anyone else and then, and only then, you’ll be able to get a woman to touch you. Until then, you just keep on dodging those showers like a frog does cars.
You’re on Lemmy, a site people use when they don’t like reddit. You don’t see any reason why there might also be a ton of people here who use Linux, an operating system you use when you don’t like Windows?
I dont give a fuck where I am, you start looking down your nose at people, Im gonna fucking say something. Snobby twats deserve every slap they get. As for using linux, use whatever works for you. Just dont start treating other people like shit just because they dont do the same thing you do. “I dont understand people who still use windows…” Cool, no one gives a fuck what you do or dont understand. I dont understand why you piss about with different linux distros, but here we are, and you dont give a fuck that I think that, right? And nor should you. You should just go about your day. Which is why I dont spend my time in windows forums moaning about linux users being snobs. I just get on with my day. And you lot should too. I know the console wars are over now, but fucks sake, lets not start PC vs linux wars now.
There’s something deeply ironic about how angry you are towards people because they disagree with your OS choice.
Perhaps some introspection might be in order, hmm?
The anger isnt at OS choice, its at snobs, trying to make other people feel small for their OS choice. Cant you read?
Take your aggressively rude snobbish attitude elsewhere.
Yes, please do. No one cares that you use linux. Its not a personality trait, and it doenst make you “cool”.
If you like Windows, that’s 100% fine, keep using it.
But I’m genuinely curious, what didn’t you like? Which distro(s) did you try? What problems did you run into?
I ask because you obviously cared enough to try it out but had a bad experience, so that’s something we could maybe look into as Linux enthusiasts.
I’m never going to berate anyone for their choice of OS, use whatever works for you. For me, that’s Linux, mostly because I found a workflow that works really well for me and it’s a pain to replicate on Windows. My SO still uses Windows because that’s what they like, and it’s totally fine, I’ll even help them fix stuff when it breaks. I honestly don’t care what people end up using, but I will mention my preference if I think others might be interested.
I’ve definitely run into some snobbish “Accept my incorrect solutions and be grateful, or go back to Windows, newb” types of people. I don’t have much love for them. I recognize it takes patience to acclimate new users, but it’s part of the job.
By and large I’m preferential to just stay with something that works; part of what pushed me off it has just been Microsoft themselves enshittifying the experience. I feel like I remember a day when Windows start search actually took you to what you wanted, and now “notepad” immediately queries the shopping network before your own program list, and when you get Notepad open it has a Copilot button.
You’re doing the right thing as long as you stay on an OS that keeps you going day in and day out. I tried Linux earlier in the year on two distros that did NOT work as well as the internet said they would, and went back to Windows. More recently, tried another one and there were stupid difficulties - but I got past them, at a time when Windows issues were just giving me “This is the way it is now, just put up with it”.
I’ve definitely seen angry people respond to windows bug reports on various apps. Is the Linux community worse? Anectodally, I would agree with you. Its also fine to have a preference, and I understand needing to besmirch your own because some people on Lemmy are toxic particularly around open source projects, but like, I try to not stoop to that level. I am happy youve generally had a good time bug fixing in Windows, unfortunately I switched away because my graphics drivers regularly crashed on Windows and I’ve never had said issue on Bazzite. Could it be my fault somewhere? Sure. I’ve had a better time since I left, though. Guess I’m a fart sniffer. Just wanted to voice that not everyone has had this experience, is all. Have a good one, hope you cheer up.
My experience is the opposite.
Whenever I have a problem with Linux, there’s often a solution available after some Googling. Often it’s just changing something in a configuration file. Not great, but at least doable.
Whenever I have a problem with Windows, there’s often that one thread where someone details the exact same problem, and there’s some ”official Microsoft tech support” whose only contribution is to ask if they have tried to reboot the computer and then radio silence.
I cant lie, those Microsoft tech support “have you tried rebooting” gits are the worst. But outside of that, even on Reddit, you get actual help. With linux, I see an ocean of “what a fucking newb” type shit. Even in here, everyone sucking their own cock because they dont use windows anymore. And if you do, well, you must be a pleb. Like people cant just use what works for them, and leave it at that.
And whats funny, is that everyone using linux is still having issues. They say its amazing, then harp on about not being able to play games and the solution is more often than not “have you tried installing this other distro???” Which is about as helpful as “have you tried turning it off and on again?”.
Everyone uses whatever works for them. Windows, MacOS, linux, whatever. And that should be fine. Instead, its become some kind of dog shit console war. PC users looking down their noses at console users, console users looking down their nose at mobile users, ISO users looking down their nose at Android users, Android users looking down their nose at IOS users, linux users looking down their nose anyone that isnt using linux. And even then, “Why you still using Mint, mate? Dont you know its better to use OSpop for gaming???” Its this never ending hole of cunts all shitting all over everyone else. If only we could just enjoy what we are doing and shut the fuck up.
I just banned Fortnite in my house because I don’t like the MTX nonsense. My kids either play on Linux or our Switch.
Minecraft Java edition with mods is so good. Get them accounts and use an open-source launcher like PrismLauncher, you’ll be having a good time :)
Yup, that’s what we do. I just installed a How to Train Your Dragon mod, and they love it. I have a server hosted on my computer, so my kids can play together.
Hell yeah, good on ya. Also nice Weezer username reference.
Weezer? It’s a Three Dog Night reference. :)
It’s mostly convenience. They know it works, so they keep using it.
Luckily Microsoft is making it inconvenient to continue using Windows.
Because sometimes Proton doesn’t work? Like, it’s good enough for most games, but there are always edge cases and games that randomly break one day.
As of now, you have to make an effort to find a game that won’t work through Proton, aside from games with malware (anti-cheat).
A lot of games have anti-cheat…
My daily drivers: Outlast Trials, Dead by Daylight, Wild Assault, Helldivers 2, Warhammer Space Marine 2.
All of those work fine on Linux. It just seems to be the most toxic, gamerfuel-heavy games that go full kernel anticheat.
And not all anti-cheat is malware. I was referring to the kernel level anti-cheats.
Never had any of these problems on windows. I kinda wonder what it is that you are all doing that you having such problems?
https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm <<<<< stops updates, unless you decide you want them.
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat <<<<< blocks telemetry and gets ride of all the useless dogshit.
Oh that’s handy, I set group policies on my wife’s Win10 computer, but I guess InControl automates that process. Nice.
I switched to Linux last year, but the wife has no interest in any of that. So I set the group policy and haven’t seen a single thing about Windows 11 popup on her computer… yet. But I have Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC flashed to a usb stick taped to her computer in case they find a workaround for that.
I run Windows normally.
How long does your Window box function without updates? How long does it remain safe? Historically, a few months at best until they bundle telemetry in a new way. Then you need to find another rando dude’s github for workarounds.
Anyway what you are describing is literally a hassle that for me is just not worth it. I can do all that and set up and update group policies for updates over and over oooooor I can literally spend less mental energy figuring out how to configure my drivers on Linux.
What you do works for you and you feel it is convenient. That is fine.
Perfectly. I have no issues. And its not really a hassle to click a button…
Why not installed something like cachyos which has all of that figured out for you out of the box? Nvidia drivers, steam install, Proton, etc. I was up and gaming in no time post install.
Well, it’s primarily my coding laptop, so I prioritize the OS that has the best tooling for my needs there. Gaming is just a happy secondary option on the machine. :)
Can I play pirated games on Linux?
Why wouldn’t you?
I was always under the assumption that I cannot run Windows games on Linux, and that in order for games to work on Linux they need to be compiled for Linux and not windows.
All the pirated games are windows games. I haven’t seen pirated games for Linux specifically.
So do I understand correctly that I can download pirated games for windows and run them on Linux?
Using a program like wine, yes. Though it’ll depend to what level is successful.
And I assume running wine adds overhead and makes games run slower?
So I can only run pirated games by going through extra hoops and even then the level of success is varying?
See that’s what’s been preventing me from switching to linux for years and years and it seems this hasn’t changed really :(
I support indie devs and buy their games, but most often I can’t afford AAA games or simply don’t want to support greedy devs ruining the gaming industry, so I pirate them.
I mean really it’s like one more step and it’s pretty much just as easy as running a game on Windows I mean I don’t know what to tell you other than dual boot install or grab a laptop install or something else so you can just throw an instance on and give it a try you might be surprised
Malware is a decent reason. You may get the game, but you’ll likely get more along with it.
Now movies on the other hand…
Outside of delisted games, I always encourage people not to, but yes.
I assume, it is often more easy to get games running without (or removed) drm, as drm may be the one tricky thing that is hard to get working with wine 🤔
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I’m dual booting with Windows because of a project I’m finishing that would be difficult to move OS, but Cachy is now my gaming OS. It’s nice to move away from the “forced” behavior from Windows.
Tangentially, a few UI decisions felt locked-in on Ubuntu and Mint too; or at least I couldn’t find an easy way to change them. I’m still a little annoyed my scroll wheel changes form options but it’s a minor thing.
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.
I play Fortnite with my kids, but the only way is using that Xbox streaming service in the browser.
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
EasyAntiCheat and BattlEye both support Linux/Proton, though not all devs have enabled/updated it.
Gamers be rising up
I’m doing my part!
Haven’t checked the news itself, but been following the hardware surveys from Valve for some years now, and on average, Linux is on a slow but constant growth. Also, been checking US’s official analytics site every now and then for some months now, and there, Linux oscilates between 3 and 6% of users per system.
I’ve tried playing Steam games, but my hard drives are all NTFS and the Linux (Mint) partition is exFat, and it seems like they don’t play nicely together. Since i don’t want to move all my steam games to an exFat partition, I’m holding off on switching. But until I get around to overhauling my storage and go single drive, I’m gonna stick with Windows using as many FOSS apps as possible.
Linux on exfat?! Do you mean ext4?
They can play nicely, it just requires some work. The NTFS-3G driver can map Windows users to Linux users and translate the permissions so that it basically Just Works™️ under both operating systems.
Here’s some documentation. There are also tools you can use under both Windows and Linux to generate UserMapping files. I wish I could help more, but I did this a couple years ago and have forgotten the details since then
It causes a bunch of frequent issues though. I strongly encourage users to select exFAT rather than NTFS for sharing a drive between Windows and Linux.
When I switched over my home desktop to Mint, it was a very short time before I looked at Windows and said “I’m too old for this shit.” I mean, the reason I am a Mint fan in the first place is that I am a FOSS loving nerd but with a family and pets and hobbies and a career and a middle aged energy level. The decades I’ve spent fixing Windows based PCs is enough for a lifetime, thx.
I say consolidate old files you want to keep. Shuffle them between drives as necessary to be able to format everything. Go all ext4 on the drives you already have. (once you’re ready)
This is the way.
I feel you. I have my old PC with quiet an “ancient” chipset. Installed an NVMe and installed Linux on it… Just to find out that my AHCI controller isn’t supported by it with all my Windows hard drives. It’s either booting that NVMe with the Linux one or booting the deprecated Windows ones from BIOS. 12-13 years of reliable hardware… :/ Hope there is a kernel patch supporting it again
shoutout to WUBI for making factorio and space age native on linux.
Silksong is also native on Linux
ngl the hk and silksong native ports were pretty crap on my machine (but proton + Windows version worked perfectly)
It’s sad in a way but I kinda feel like proton is going to near wipe out the very few Linux native ports we get. It’s so much easier and more stable than trying to build and package for Linux.
Yeah, even more casual games like Balatro are proof of that, despite how easily you can port a game of that nature otherwise, people will choose to use proton because it’s still able to sync with their progress and symlinking is too inconvenient to consider unless you’re running like 2gb ram or something.
And, I totally get that! It’s like yeah, I know how to setup a symlink to probably make that work, but you know what’s a lot easier than that… Just not doing that and just having it work.
Hopefully we can surpass 5% by the end of the decade :D
I switched this year, but the laptop I switched with was on repair during the survey so I probably wasn’t counted this time :(
5% at the end of the decade is quite a pessimistic take 😉
Looking at the graph 1% was crossed mid/late 2021, while 2% was crossed mid 2024, so almost 3 years later. Now 3% is crossed a little more than a year later. Next year we would be likely to have crossed 4% and 5% should be no later than 2027, even if it doesn’t speed up much further.
Not at, by. Hopefully sooner.
Do I need to do the yearly survey or do they know I’ve swapped already?
It’s a random statistical sample. They know that approximately 3 people for every 100 are on Linux, but it doesn’t matter which 3.
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).
Haven’t used bazzite, but there is an App Store you can get all of the apps anyone would need.
Its one of the quirks of a lot of the atomic distros. Because they are specifically built around the idea of having a specific set of packages at a specific range of versions for every rev of the distro itself… adding more packages is kind of a clusterfuck.
For flatpaks (and I think appimages too?), it is seamless. For anything else you are googling the commands to add packages as “layers” and so forth
And, to be fair to Bazzite (which I use for my HTPC and love it on there), I have had zero issues with actual gaming. Steam out of the box and Heroic is one flatpak away. But holy shit was adding
iperf3to test some network infrastructure tweaks a Thing.Its why I personally recommend to friends to just raw dog Fedora rather than use one of the atomic distros. Atomic distros make a lot of sense for deployed machines but for anything someone is going to use as “their” computer? Just learn to not type
sudobefore every command you run… and maybe get a jetkvm so your tech savvy friend can fix your computer after an nvidia driver update.Its why I personally recommend to friends to just raw dog Fedora
Probably sound advice if they are in (presumably) the 0.01% of users (like you) that need other utilities that are hard to get.
If they aren’t, then Bazzite, etc would be perfect for them (as you said, zero issues with gaming/more common uses).
Bazzite is a vehicle for Steam. If your basis for using it isn’t ‘gaming through Steam’, you’re already intentionally venturing into un-average lands.
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 line
Strong disagree on “most”
For the vast majority of users? Everything they need is in Steam and MAYBE Heroic, which is the same as on Windows.
In terms of non-gaming? I… have very strong Thoughts on atomic distros and the hoops Bazzite et al make you jump through with regard to layering and the like, but they are in Discover and the like. So “app store” experience.
I personally don’t think Bazzite is a good desktop OS (but I love it for my HTPC). But any of the user friendly distros (e.g. Fedora, Mint, and Ubuntu) should be almost zero command line usage unless you have a reason to use it.
the hoops… [they]… make you jump through with regard to layering
I played around with a few atomic distros and it seems like rather than layering, running things in containers is the preferred solution.
It won’t be the solution for everything that layering could “fix”, depending on your situation, but it is something that I wasn’t initially aware of when I started playing with Bazzite, Fedora Atomic, and now Aurora.
Basically, if you could just run whatever you need to run in a container, that might be another solution.
