Initially Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey for December 2025 showed Linux at 3.19%, but they appear to have amended it with a nice boost for Linux.
  • IEatDaFeesh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    90·
    7 days ago

    Yeah the unthinkable happened. One of my friends switched to Linux and I feel confident this is only the beginning. Microslop finally pushed one of my semi-normie friends to switch. 🎉

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      21·
      6 days ago

      I’ve had multiple of my normie friends ask me about linux in the last few months and I even got 2 to switch over. Which blew my mind I got them to.

      I think my favorite comment I’ve heard from them since switching is how much it just gets out of their way. It’s there and does the thing and is only there as much as it needs to be.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        6 days ago

        Before doing the switch, part of my mind thought that it was accepting a new pain that might equal or exceed the familiar pain in the short run but would be worth it in the long run to get away from the frustration of windows.

        The reality that I experienced is that it was less painful than wrangling windows to behave more like how I want it to.

  • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    7 days ago

    If we all got together as a team and each put Linux and Steam on 5 old/cheap/e-waste/whatever PCs for the next survey we’d pump those numbers up to ~20% and freak Microsoft out.

      • Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish
        42·
        7 days ago

        The way they’re going I don’t think they even care about windows numbers

      • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        6 days ago

        I dunno, but they cared enough to get the Xbox team in to build a handheld friendly interface to compete with Steam OS.

    • Randelung@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      So just put steam on all those computers we’re already refurbishing into linux servers anyway?

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      I will be replacing windows on all five of my home computers with Linux

      I’ll leave a couple as a dual boot, but the media server, laptop, primary desktop, and two media/‘console’ PCs (connected to TVs) will be swapped over. hopefully it will be easy to get the same setup on all of them and run reliably.

      • hardcoreufo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Just a suggestion but for the two htpcs I’d recommend using bazzite or steamos. Both are stable and hard to break and booting into a console likr interface is great. Use anything else for the rest of your machines. They lock both down a bit too much to be practical every day machines.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Having been daily driving Bazzite for a bit, as long as you’re willing to work with it it’s perfectly fine as a daily driver. Sure I’ve had to pop in to distro box a couple of times to run a specific utility that’s not in the immutable build but that’s just a couple of extra clicks plus I can pick whatever distro userland I want which is convenient for better compatibility with whatever GitHub script I’ve decided to blindly trust this week!

  • foodvacuum@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    7 days ago

    Windows won’t turn around and go back to a simpler advertisement-free offline account model this decade. Core Windows developers may know that they’re making things worse. Leadership won’t care as long as they get temporary boosts in numbers for office, copilot, and OneDrive subscriptions

    Amazing thing for open platform operating systems when Windows Phone failed (MS managed that like trash. It didn’t have a chance)

    • Richie’s Computer Stuff@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      7 days ago

      The other thing too are the shareholders. It’s not enough to just make a profit, there has to be quarterly growth or it’s seen like a failure. Because the PC market is saturated, they have to switch from expanding user base to extracting more value from each user. This is where you get things like upsells for subscription-based services which continuously generate revenue from each user instead of just once (no more one-time license purchase), data harvesting, and ads that are carefully tuned for each user to maximize engagement and conversion rate.

      I also suspect this is part of why Microsoft lets you use Windows without activating, even though they want you to (and will nag you to do so). Even if you never buy a license, there’s still ecosystem lock-in, data collection, ads, and future upsell potential. That’s just my thinking though. I haven’t personally used modern Windows (10/11) in over five years so I don’t know if it’s changed since.

      They go for quarterly growth regardless of the, uh… tradeoffs it actually creates. There is no way Microsoft isn’t aware of the growing irritation from users, the backlash, and resistance to frivolous and aggressively added AI features, which makes the fact that they keep doubling down all the more baffling to us. While I know this is a broad oversimplification and I’m not hitting every point involved, I’m fairly sure the user base is not who they’re serving, they’re more interested in meeting market and shareholder expectations.

      Keep in mind that I’m not an expert on the matter (not even close), I’ve just watched a few videos and articles to give me some sense of this sort of thing, so I am just speculating and thinking out loud. I am in no way defending what Microsoft is doing, and I’m glad I did that little lockdown-based experiment in 2020 to see if Linux really could replace Windows for me (it was a resounding success!!).

      • BarbedDentalFloss@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        The primary customer that Microsoft serves now is the stockholder, not the individual user. They don’t even have decent support for IT staff - which is bizarre because it’d be a great revenue source if it weren’t such a joke.

  • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    22·
    7 days ago

    Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) 64 bit 1.72% +0.14%

    🫡 Whoever caused this stat - I salute them!

    These are people who do not tolerate any nonsense from their computer, but also aren’t going to let anything get in the way of playing their games.

    • BeyondRuby@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      7 days ago

      I use CachyOS on my main rig but i have a home server with debian i also use to game on every now and again, it was a great experience (besides nvidia drivers ngl) i dont understand why people try to scare others away from gaming with it

      • Waryle@jlai.luEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Because using the latest drivers (and thus kernels) is important to play recent games, to get performance and bug fixes.

        Debian usually ships an older LTS kernel (6.12 right now, while the latest stable Linux kernel is 6.18), so you might hit more bugs and performance issues in Debian than in a less conservative distro.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I’m pretty sure I contributed to that stat. idk, I installed debian on my old laptop. super easy, FTL runs beautifully (I know it’s not a demanding game but it’s what I wanted to play at the time). The point is, the install was basically problem-free. boots faster than windows, much better user interface

  • dandu3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    2026 is the year of the Linux desktop for me at work at least. I really don’t use it much, but so far it does everything I need it to do, and what it doesn’t I use wine and it’s fine.

    I have a Windows external SSD for gaming but that’s only for GTA online, I’m not gonna buy GTA 6, fuck em

  • JayGray91🐉🍕@piefed.socialEnglish
    11·
    7 days ago

    This great and I hope to make it as a statistic in the round 😉

    A friend I didn’t expect said he was interested, but idk how willing he is to break free of Windows-brain. I am most certainly am willing to learn (just check out my comments history).

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      if your friend is already a basic knowledgeable user and can partition their drives, tell them to just go install xubuntu and try it out. no need to worry about the multiple partition options during install, just do a basic single partition install and try to do a few common tasks. see how it goes and then wipe it and reinstall later.

      edit: it took me maybe 3 hours total to install Linux on two computers, including downloading and creating the installation media and waiting for it to finish running the installation etc. and the installs themselves were problem-free, all of my issues were related to other things like trying to sort out SSH and remote desktop viewing access.

      • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Maybe something other than Ubuntu? Ubuntu is past its prime, it used to be good, but as other distros got better, it didn’t, leaving it outcompeted. I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, Fedora, or PopOS, but that’s just the sentiment I’m getting from the community; I myself have only used Ubuntu and openSUSE on desktop, and have used Debian in VMs for stuff.

        Currently I use openSUSE, which I like, but it’s not a beginner distro. It’s quite universal, but that means not targeting beginners nor advanced users specifically. Debian is also like that (Maybe I’d use Debian if it had a good rolling release, but Debian Unstable is for testing and not meant to be stable, as opposed to openSUSE Tumbleweed which is probably the stablest rolling release out there, with a good QA system, because it’s meant for daily use.). I’ve also heard that Fedora is universal like this. So why is it regarded as so good for beginners? Maybe openSUSE is actually fine for beginner usage? I don’t know. The install would probably require the guidance of a Linux user though.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          I would suggest separate partitions for data/game installs if you want to try multiple distros without needing to reinstall your games. Just need to mount the partition in the new distro, maybe have steam scan it (or just set it as your game install location) and you’re good to go. Encryption might complicate the steps, but I don’t see much point in encrypting a game install partition in the first place.

          Edit: Meant this comment to add on to your reply and address the “just set up a single partition”, since you addressed the distro. On that note, I’ve been happy enough with Fedora KDE that I haven’t even gotten around to trying a new distro (took me almost a year to try KDE and realize I liked it better than cinnamon in practically every way).

      • JayGray91🐉🍕@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Hmm, yeah I think they can handle it. I’ve showed them massgrave to not pay microslop for Office and they seemed fine*. It’s really not too different than that. And besides, as windows users, they have to had reinstall windows cleanly at least once in their lifetime. Personally I found installing linux distros a lot easier, so they might think that way too.

        It’s just which distro. and it’s mainly for gaming first. So maybe bazzite because it’s atomic? But it’s relatively new and maybe the community and docs aren’t as many as say fedora or ubuntu. as far as I understand it despite bazzite is atomic fedora, there’s still some quirks that’s not fully applicable fully? So maybe just vanilla fedora? I kind of don’t want to suggest ubuntu even if that’s what they might have heard of before.

        *I know, I know, libre office suites are out there and I personally already use them. But it’s being used to it is the thing.

        • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          see this is what I mean, stop thinking about it and just tell them to go install xubuntu with the knowledge that they’re going to wipe it in a few days anyways

    • HolidayGreed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      I’m not surprised by this at all. I tried 24.04 and found it lacked what attracted me to 22.04. It had some great new features, but overall the 22.04 experience is better. I’ll keep trying it though, still early days.

        • HolidayGreed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          The experience of 24.04 feels incomplete and lacking when compared to the well established desktop of 22.04 with their fantastic UX modifications. I don’t recall thinking, I wish 22.04 could do this or that. The 24.04 experience had me wishing for customisation features that don’t exist (last tried two weeks ago).

          As an example, I love the 22.04 theming, wouldn’t change a thing. In 24.04, I appreciate that I can set rounded, semi-round or square corners, but I don’t want that applied everywhere. I want my toggle switches rounded and window corners semi-round, like 22.04. I think it just comes down to theming customisations really. I couldn’t increase mouse pointer size either. They all feel like things that can and will probably be fixed/added in future, or by a Cosmic Tweaks type app. I’m not ready to accept it in the current form. Turning my back on the best experience in 22.04 to an unsatisfactory experience is what will keep me on 22.04 for the foreseeable future.

          It feels like I’ve enjoyed Coke for years and now somebody is trying to convince me Coke Zero is better. Less sugar is obviously better, but it doesn’t taste the same, it’s not Coke.

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            6 days ago

            Does ubuntu not support other desktops? I had little annoyances like that with fedora cinnamon, not quite enough to make me miss windows but enough that I’d notice them and wish I could adjust them, also I eventually learned that it was a desktop environment that heavily relied on some form of javascript, which likely explained why it sometimes couldn’t keep up with mouse updates. But then I tried KDE and it addressed all of my issues, plus some others that I didn’t even realize until I saw a better implementation, plus it’s able to maintain that realtime responsiveness cinnamon struggled with (and my machine is far low end).

            It’s been a while since I used Ubuntu, and even then, it was just for school so I only really needed the terminal and didn’t care what the GUI was doing as long as it didn’t interfere with that.

            Hope they update those to your liking soon in any case.

      • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        I need colour management and it’s going to arrive with HDR support later. :(

        Edit: 22.04 GNOME has it, 24.04 COSMIC does not.

  • InFerNo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    57·
    7 days ago

    I don’t always get steam surveys, but when I do it’s the rare moment I boot my windows partition