Chrome OS saw a good raise too. OS X(Mac) saw a decrease.
Thanks, Steam Deck.
Most OS statistics come from web usage which is probably pretty minimal for Steam Decks.
It’s not so much about browsing on steam decks. It’s about the technical improvements Valve has brought to Linux gaming compatibility that has now made full Linux conversion without a Windows dual-boot for gaming (and many other Windows programs) a true reality. Once people don’t have to reboot every time they want to start a game they’ll stay in Linux full time.
Very true, more of a Thanks Valve :)
I think SteamOS might help a bit, but the driving factor might be that Microsoft decided to ditch much of good hardware on their upgrade path to Windows 11.
Yeah my current PC is only just starting to hit it’s (gaming) limits now, still plenty strong for literally any other purpose, but yeah no I’ll just build a whole new PC just so I can be forced into an OS I don’t want when they stop supporting the one I’m on. It’s a fucking joke, I hate this ride and I want off of it.
I’m only just starting to get comfortable on Linux, I had a crack many years ago but switched back promptly to windows. Once I’m more comfortable and there’s better gaming support I’ll make the switch, it’s just not quite there yet for me.
I’ve been distro hopping a bit with my orange pi, I’m glad I didn’t dual-boot my desktop as I’m already struggling for storage with these 100+gb games being the norm now. I don’t think my steam library folders have seen more transfers between HDD and SSD ever.
With that said though, I did just order all the parts for a new PC, but that was only because of some good deals and am able to bring a bunch across. I’ve got a fair few parts that are still very new or low mileage, or were overspecced for the future and still have many years of viability left.
It seems like a nice one-two punch of Microsoft shitting the bed with Windows 11 at the same time Valve is taking big strides towards making Linux a viable option for gaming. I don’t think you would see this if either happened in isolation.
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Now just release the damn thing in Australia so I can buy one from someone other than the shady fb market scalpers.
sorry, best we can do is “lol”
This comment so accurate my heart aches
I just bought a ROG Ally.
There’s a lot of stupid stuff written/on you tube about it, but it’s great and clearly a notch up on the Steam Deck in most ways.
Were it not so extremely expensive in my currency I’d already be using one. I just spent slightly more than that for a rig that will last me close to 10years. I really want to see more competition in the handheld space, near future is looking promising, but its not there yet.
If Steam Deck counts does ChromeOS count? How about Android?
ChromeOS is “sort of linux” but sandboxed and uses it’s own user agent string.
Android is the same way- Technically a Linux kernel. But sandboxed to death and uses a separate agent.
Just an FYI that at this rate it’s only going to take another 115 years before Linux has 100% market share.
2138 is the year of the Linux desktop!
What if S-curve instead of linear rate?
You mean Linux isn’t going to have 200% market share one day? Shit, I’m starting to think my calculations may have not been totally serious.
I get that, I just like math
Entirely possible if the population dubbles
Market share is usually a curve.
2138, year of the Linux desktop.
Exacting 100years after y2k38
This is the same logic that a right wing ex-president of my country used to criticize the current leftist president while talking about the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
That’s fine, there’s no rush.
That’s for August. And the growth is exponential, not linear.
To a point. Let’s be honest it’s going to be more like an S-curve since you can’t go past 100% market share, and some people will refuse to switch.
And people not wanting to switch is fine imo. Having competition will likely help all OS’s get better over time
i mean i’d prefer the competition to be BSD and such, not windows and macos
Why would market share increase linearly?
The critical mass needed to tip the scales is not high. Once Linux has enough market share to matter as a customer base, game studios will switch to developing as cross-platform for it by default, so that they don’t lose launch sales. Once this happens, a lot of people won’t have any reason to stay on windows anymore as gaming was the only thing holding them back. This will then create a virtuous cycle of users migrating and games (and then apps) switching to it. Along then come hardware vendor supporty and then pre-built PCs and laptops. If the tipping point is reach, the rate of market share gain will be exponential.
The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6
The only thing that can stop this is outside pressure from software giants like Microsoft through lobbying the Governments, buying out game studios or buying exclusivity, or strong-arming hardware vendors.
steam deck is helping a lot on that front.
MacOS holds a nearly 30% market share and few game developers give a shit about publishing their games on Mac. Why would Linux be any different?
Apple is notorios about being anti-gaming, yet many games support it while not supporting linux. Don’t know the actual stats though.
If you throw proton and wine into the mix, Linux is almost as good as Windows in game support
Because linux doesn’t have deprecated opengl, doesn’t run their own proprietary api for gpu instead of implementing vulkan and last but not least because linux does still have support for 32bit application.
Are you including iPhones in this market share?
Although macOS holds a high market share, it holds a smaller percentage of Steam users than Linux right now. Essentially, there’s more people on Linux known to buy games than on Mac (at least on Steam).
Gamers only seem to think that the only reason people have a computer is to game.
You can’t build a gaming mac. Or a mac at all. Apple does seem to have better gaming support than Linux does though. The majority of my steam library has macOS support. Only a couple support Linux.
30%? Wtf is the source
Other than gamers, there’s a huge share of enterprise Windows users. And they’re not likely to shift OS, because of IT admin issues. Others in this thread have commented on how Apple is struggling to get devs to build native games compared to Windows.
Sure the number of home PC users might decline, one can always hope.
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I can actually imagine a scenario where MS actually wants that to happen. They don’t really make money on windows sales anymore (comparatively to their other products). So this could free up quite a lot of resources and reallocate them elsewhere.
The majority of home consumers basically just use browser services anyways.
People are really late to the party but better late then never…
Linux is awesome.
That was me, I switched my desktop and laptop to ubuntu.
Same here. Switched my laptop to Pop!OS + KDE and planning on doing the same with the desktop soon-ish
Haja you beat me to this comment
Is it actually truly the year of the Linux desktop?
Linux desktop has basically become the Be-so-good they-can’t-ignore-you man
It helps that Microsoft has been alienating their customers and set high bars for OS upgrades.
This is definitely a major reason. Windows 11 forces TPM 2, random hardware requirements that make no sense, and is objectively a downgrade from windows 10 (like every other windows version always is). Since Windows 10 is two years out from EoL and all major Linux distros have gotten so much better… might as well upgrade while you can still go back to 10 should you need to, before you have to be on Linux or throw out a bunch of otherwise fine computers.
Can confirm. Would probably be maining windows if the workspaces actually… functioned…
Linux gets better and and Windows gets worse.
Meanwhile Macs still cost a God damn fortune and you still can’t repair them.
The Linux handheld
Speaking of…Lenovo announced the Legion Go handheld. Can we put Linux on it?
I’ll give it 1 hour after launch
I bet someone will leak a prototype and the GitHub will be up and public before it launches. That seems to be the latest trend for people trying to make headlines on tech.
It’s very likely. But why buy a Lenovo handheld? They are shit at customer service, they are terrible at updating their software, they preferably don’t contribute back to Linux. I have a fabulous Lenovo tablet that was updated once, and the update was shit, a terrible experience, they didn’t release the source code to build the required kernel modules for it to be usable. The firmware had to be modded as hell to prevent it to be a very expensive brick.
Not until you can actually choose it. Think if you could in the store see Linux Desktop to buy and to try out.
What if EU forced computer manufactures to install both OS, Windows and Linux Desktop, and you had to choose during the first boot what you want to use. Trust me, the that will change the numbers, just because of all who picked the wrong one by mistake.
hint: the wrong one is Windows.
Is it for me this year. Both the main and couch gaming rigs are on Linux now. Glad to be free
Oh yeah
This is the year
Partly my fault - I have that page set to auto open on my browser every week
It’s ok, I’ve never been on that site and I changed windows to tumbleweed nearly 2 months ago on my laptop.
Proud to be one of them. I tried to disable the job that runs windows update, they said I don’t have permission, so I switched to Ubuntu on every single computer except the one that runs VR games.
As a bonus, as an enthusiast for artificial intelligence stuff, more programs run on Linux than they do on Windows
On the VR PC you may find O&O ShutUp 10. It has a collection of settings for privacy and generally control over your PC that microsoft didn’t make really accessible.
Powershell as admin then type set-service wuauserv -startuptype manual; stop-service wuauserv
This will disable the windows update service. If you do want to run updates again (and you should do that regularly), just type start-service wuauserv and use the windows update page in settings.
Linux is still way better though.
Wow, if it keeps going at this rate, it’ll be the year of Linux on the desktop (50% share) in 2079.
Idk, mass adoption is usually slow at first, and then gets faster as it goes on.
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Is Linux actually growing, or are other users simply buying fewer computers because their phones have reduced the need for personal computers?
I didn’t crunch the numbers, but as far as I see, most of the linux growth comes from the Steam deck, which runs a Linux OS.
This could also be the reason for the decrease of OSX, because more other, non classical computer, devices are included, which automatically reduces the share of Laptop and PC devices.
So there is a similar percentage of users in the desktop and laptop space as before but more Linux-based handheld systems. Overall market share has become too broad nowadays for at a glance look at percentage of users for each platform as different sectors of systems will have different market share percentages.
I swapped to Linux in the last month. But honestly being able to use my phone as a backup made me not worry about needing a computer right then.
Seriously considering swapping over to my Linux partition as main and virtualizing the Windows side this weekend. Still need the Windows because well, I make Windows software.
Why do you make Windows software?
Job?
Who has those?
Apparently God’s found whole new ways to test him.
🤡
Is this some r/antiwork insanity?
Every hour spent on developing Windows software is completely wasted time of your life. Especially when you understand the importance of GNU/Linux and FOSS. Windows keeps the user enslaved. But most people won’t understand that, they don’t want to. So all I can reply to that is 🤡
It’s fun, they pay me for it, I’m good at it, and I can work entirely from home.
I helped! I installed Linux Mint on 2 of my friends aging laptops.
I wish librewolf had a toggle for its user agent. The default user agent is windows and you can’t change it without extensions
Welp I’m of those “windows” users then 😉
What I want to know is how many people are using Librewolf on Linux. I imagine it isnt’t a small number
One of the things i give my privacy up to, representing Linux to make a change.