Linux 2.29% +0.29%
Although I’m glad our number is growing after starting from something barely measurable, less than 2.5% is pitiful. I’m not sure anything will happen until we’re over 10 or 15%.
There are two dozens of us!
Hey, you ha a a source for that high number ? ;) I’m one of that two dozen!
Running Bazzite (SteamOS merged with Fedora) on an AMD CPU+GPU desktop computer and life is good. Feels like playing steam deck but with the power of a desktop computer. I can play even the most demanding games the deck struggles to play. Literally the only barrier for Linux gaming to take over now are the stupid DRM+anticheats that hate Linux
I would have been salty about Apex dropping linux support, if I hadn’t already stopped playing due to them messing up the game itself.
Anecdotally, more of my techy friends are at least entertaining the thought of switching to Linux when they never did before. Great job, Microsoft!
Two I know have all but commited to switching after seeing me be able to join them in basically everything we might want to play together.
They’re just using their w10 installs until they inevitably need an OS reinstall, at which point they’ve said they’ll have me over to set them up with whatever I’ve figured out works best at that point.
Saw something on programming.dev about some extra telemetry Windows 11 was adding or something like that? I forget. It was definitely something I think is bad, that people on programming.dev also think is bad. Then, despite having done registry edits and everything else I could think of to turn off auto Windows updates to make sure I would not get the bad new feature added in an update, my Windows 11 computer auto updated anyways. Got mad, wanted to switch to Linux, asked !linux@programming.dev for help, and finally did it four months later, a few days before the new year started.Gotta be our best selves in 2025!
My 12yo learnt about Recall from some Youtube video and has now said they want to move to Linux. I’m not fully convinced it’s possible though, I know they have some modding tools etc for indie games that seem to be Windows only. Let’s see.
Depends on the games, but I play several games modded on linux, and some have even gotten linux-native mod managers.
Before them, proton usually lets you run stuff intended to mod windows games.
Encourage your little one to explore their interests!
This!! If little guy wants to brick his computer 3x times before getting it right , let him .
I haven’t bricked my computer once running Linux and yet with Windows I have gotten the blue screen of death 3 times and lots of freezes.
I’ve nuked my bootloader entries a handful of times. I wouldn’t trust a 12yo to know how to fix that. But maybe I’m not giving 12yos enough credit 🤷
Why the downvote tho? If lil guy wants to brick it, let him.
You’re using biased phrasing against Linux and no they will not brick their system.
Wow, right over your head dude. It’s just the sentiment he is sharing.
lmfao but what if he wants to brick it ? Let him!!
Presumably your using the word “brick” wrong. Or are you suggesting this poor person buys 4 computers until they learn how to do something?
This guy gets it! But in any case, I’d let him brick it. I would not be where I am if I had not bricked (for real) a couple of expensive devices during my youth.
Dual boot! Lets you keep one foot in the Windows door in case you need anything in Windows. I also run a Windows VM (Winapps) for small programs that don’t run well on Linux and also don’t require much processing power
Why do you include the “dont require much processing power” part?
I’m one. As a Mac user, I haven’t used windows in years, and avoid it like the plague. But, the limited games support meant I had to rely on consoles to get my gaming fix. With Steam’s strong support for Linux, I decided to build a gaming PC for Linux only. It’s been great. I just wish more publishers would support it — the ones adding kernel-level anti-cheat are ruining things, but I’m hoping if enough people switch to Linux, they won’t be able to ignore us.
I’m really lucky that I avoid anything that has anticheat. Not because I’m a cheater but because all the slur-screaming 12 year olds and my own fear of getting addicted to MMOs if I ever gave them a try have mostly dissuaded me from anything with online multiplayer.
Which means most of my games are Linux-compatible and I have no gaming group I’m giving up by making the jump :D
I’ve long had a mix of Windows and Linux machines, and currently have a gaming desktop with Win10, my old gaming desktop/media center PC on Win10, and my laptop/homelab machines all running Proxmox or Debian. At first I hadn’t migrated to Win11 because Microsoft hadn’t convinced me it’s an upgrade, but Copilot has now convinced me it won’t be an upgrade.
I haven’t decided exactly when, but the Windows 10 EOL is going to drive me to remove Windows from my remaining computers, and just use Linux.
Yes, good. Give in to your hatred (of Copilot). It makes you powerful!
I’m always surprised by how small the Steam Deck playerbase is. It has such strong word of mouth, but the niche it supports seems pretty small.
Honestly it doesn’t surprise me that much. Steam is such a MASSIVE platform that’s been around for 22 years, while the steam deck came OUT in '22.
Arguably the handheld market is also much more of a niche in comparison to a gaming desktop. In the broader context of the size of the platform the Deck is doing pretty good.
Yep, right? We’re talking about a pretty small number. Best guesses put it under 10 million lifetime, which is not only dwarfed by Steam’s wider userbase, but by all home consoles. It’s 10-20x less than the Nintendo Switch.
There are a ton more PC handhelds out there, and the backwards compatibility inherent on PC platforms probably means the share will grow over time… but it’s not as big as techie nerds assume.
The Switch is a bad metric to measure against since it’s on track to be the highest selling console of all time. Even if they have similar form factors.
Well, no, it seems to me that’s why it’s a good metric to measure against.
I mean, the Switch invented the big form factor hybrid handheld as we know it. The Steam Deck is a very obvious direct response to its success. Comparing how well the Valve version of it is doing is… actually a really good apples to apples thing.
Except for the fact that the Switch is largely an outlier in terms of total sales when it comes to all consoles and additionally has the benefit of having a strong list of exclusive IPs that require the purchase of the device to (legally) play. It was also a full $100 cheaper at launch than the Deck, allowing it to be sold to more people with less disposable income. And it has the benefit of being the first to innovate from a company with a good reputation for quality. The Deck, on the other hand, will never reach the same level of sale as the Switch, has no exclusives to draw greater adoption, is more expensive, and may be seen as a “knockoff Switch.” I think that the form factor is really the only apples to apples aspect of the two devices - there are differences between the two devices that are too confounding for an accurate comparison.
Well, as of right now, as far as we can tell, the Wii U has also outsold the Steam Deck, so there’s that.
But man, no, what are you talking about. I hate how confirmation bias-y some of the fanboyism gets. Suddenly “it’s a PC, it plays everything” is supposed to be a negative for the Deck? Why? Isn’t the case for it supposed to be that you already own tons of games for it up front instead of having to buy them from scratch? Does Valve not have “a reputation for quality”? Since when? Valve and Nintendo may well be the two most recognizable names in gaming, it’s not like Valve is this little startup thing.
Seriously, it’s fine to put things in perspective. The Deck got great reviews, from what we can tell it’s easily the most successful handheld PC out there and it cracked that market wide open, setting the stage for a new PC hardware segment in a way the Chinese handhelds released previously really didn’t do…
…but it’s also still a relatively niche device compared with traditional consoles and it’s an order of magnitude less popular than the device it’s chasing, which is the Nintendo Switch, despite being significantly more performant and having a ready-made preexisting library.
It will be very interesting to see how the Switch 2 does and whether it feels any of the pressure from the competition given that it’s all but confirmed to still be a hybrid handheld device with similar specs and form factor to handheld PCs. It’s not a matter of fanboyism, whether it sells incredibly well again or struggles with heavier competition nobody should be in denial about it.
When did I say that “it plays everything” was a bad thing? I said it has no exclusives. And that’s 100% verifiably true. Nintendo is all exclusives. Couldn’t give a fuck about Skyrim on the Switch. But I wanna play Mario Kart. So I’ll buy a Switch. Sure you could pirate it but depending on how you obtain that ROM then you could be breaking the law. Most parents don’t really want their kids doing that, so they’ll buy a Switch. And yes, Valve and Nintendo are likely the two most recognizable names in gaming. In gaming. In the surrounding culture at large, who even knows what Valve is? Sure, most people have probably heard of Steam. But your parents still call your Playstation a Nintendo. So they’ll buy a Switch.
And I want to make this very clear: I think the Deck is great and, as you’ve stated, is a huge innovation in handheld gaming. The only point I’m trying to make is that the Deck and the Switch are not readily comparable because of the aforementioned key differences.
As for the Switch 2, I don’t think it’s going to feel much pressure at all. Again, the presence of exclusives basically guarantees sales. It’s why the Wii U sold 13 million units despite its marketing woes and generally being underwhelming. But I also don’t think that the Switch 2 is going to see as many sales as the Switch because many won’t see a need to make the switch unless the Switch 2 is significantly innovative.
Man, I genuinely doubt that even anyone at Valve would dispute the Switch and the Deck being comparable. They sure as hell are more comparable than a PS5 and a Deck. I genuinely don’t understand the impulse to defend this take beyond being contrarian.
But hey, it’s good to know that you think exclusives are such a key to success. I guess we can agree that Epic’s focus on securing exclusive content is fully justified, then, right? Riiiight?
The screen is small.
It’s an old person thing, probably, but I don’t enjoy phone sized screens beyond reading and such. I don’t know how people see an Apple Watch well enough to use it comfortably.
Laptop is fine most days but I really want that desktop screen when I can get it.
I can’t imagine Stellaris or AC or even Pathfinder on a phone or iPad mini sized screen. Like TV, most people aim bigger not smaller. I can still have portable games at 15” instead of 7”.
Oled is noticeable larger, on paper it’s only 0.4"diagonally but it’s obvious having my lcd deck beside my partner’s oled one, plus the oled one just looks a lot nicer. I’ve had more issues personally with some games not letting me scale down the ui, rimworld is totally playable on the deck but I find the interface gets in the way.
Steam deck xl could be an idea but you’d probably have some weight/ergonomics issues. Deck itself already dwarfs my switch lite (and is more comfortable to use…), do find I prefer some games on a larger screen, but it does usually work well at the distances I hold it.
I don’t know how people see an Apple Watch well enough to use it comfortably.
My sister struggles, I don’t (not the Apple Watch, the small screen) . I have a decent set of glasses, she cant be fcuked… I’m 58.
Steam Deck is on my list for '25
I’m the same age and the screen size is mostly ok. Some games are unplayable because of tiny text, but that’s really a minority. My main problem with it has been learning to use a controller, as I’d never gamed on a console and never really used one on my various PCs.
Apart from that, the system is really solid, and the whole thing works great. It’s really a great little machine. It’s saving my life at the moment when I can’t use my main machine (home being basically rebuilt) and I have nothing else to game on (laptop isn’t at all suited to it).
I’m finally going to finish Fallout 4… It seems like it was designed for it.
if the small text isn’t an UI thing where you have to be able to read it while doing something else in-game (like reading lore or item stats), the steam deck has a button chord for a magnifying feature (Hold Steam button + L1 for default, but can be mapped as a toggle to one of the back buttons or wherever you like) which is enough for a lot of titles.
True. I know about that. It’s ok in menus for example.
I was thinking of a game like Lobotomy Corporation which really has a font problem.
When I play on my Steam Deck, it’s less than a foot from my face, so the practical screen size (i.e. what I see) is largely equivalent to my desktop monitor, which is more than a foot from my face. I tend to play laying in bed or on the couch instead of at my desk.
Play demanding games on desktop, and easy to pick up and put down games on the Deck.
Personally, I use mine just like that, except the Deck is mainly an emulation portable since I have the desktop for the more beefy games I play.
Don’t knock it 'til you try it as they say!
I just got the Steam Hardware survey, so I’m doing my part to start 2025 off strong.
Personally, I really only game on my steam deck anymore. Occasionally I play on my personal laptop when I’m on the road for work and I don’t feel like holding the deck up, and that’s running endeavourOS. I dual boot windows and endeavourOS on my desktop at home, which my son uses to play sometimes. Lately he’s just been playing on Linux instead of rebooting into Windows without issues. We’re finally in a place where most games just work.
I’ve got my main OS that loads after boot as openSUSE, but there are still plenty of reasons I need my Windows SSD.
I LOVE modding my games (if they allow me, the cowards) so that is really the biggest drawback for someone like me on Linux. Skyrim/Oblivion/Fallout 3/New Vegas/Fallout 4 are practically a no go on Linux (besides dragging and dropping the hundreds of mods that make Skyrim actually as stable as it should be… Bethesda…). I do want to help out NexusMods with their Nexus app that supports Linux, but they only support Cyberpunk 2077 and Stardew Valley right now (last I checked anyway) but those older Bethesda games are the reason I fell in love with computers in the first place, and it was because of modding.
On Windows, I can open up Vortex, find a Collection, click install, and go play another game while hundreds of mods are downloaded and installed in the background. On openSUSE, I can’t do that (yet). Which is fine for most people, but I like to bring attention to those of us who delve a little deeper than “Click play button and play”.
Other than Bethesda games, I’m playing through Metaphor: ReFantazio right now on Windows. Why? Because again, there is a Windows only mod manger called Reloaded-II that is needed for modding that game. With Bethesda games, at least I can go the slow and arduous path of one by one modding. Not on here. If I wanted to mod Metaphor on Linux, I would need to extract alllll of the game files, find the files that my mod is going to replace, replace them with the mod, and then compile the game back to how it was. Yeah, honestly, I just want to play the damn game as time is limited due to work, so that isn’t really the best option. Cool for those that want to do it that way though!
Now, the biggest crux I had before these modding issues was WeMod. WeMod has saved me so much damn time and effort on games that expect you to be a person with a lot of free time. I did find a guide on ow to get WeMod working at least, so I do plan on playing MOST games through openSUSE now that I’ve got that working! So, I am really excited for that at least, as games generally in my experience, do play better under Linux!
Now, “ONLY modding?” you might say. “Why not just play the game how the developers want you to?” Well, really, because I just grew up doing this kind of stuff and always like seeing what you can bring into an old game to freshen it up. New armors, new weapons, new quests, in the case of Metaphor, allowing me to use my 21:9 ultrawide I bought back in 2018 because I bought one like a fucking fool who thought most games would support it in the future. Yeah, some do, but I will not get another 21:9 display for gaming ever again. :P
I just thought I’d bring these up in here for some reason because I see plenty of people talking highly of Linux gaming, and while it is VERY good, there are still a few things that are absent that PC gamers would find essential, such as mods or even Cheat Engine/WeMod. These are things I wish more people would talk about so that expectations are set appropriately. For example, I had a friend install Linux Mint, even after I told him to go in it with the expectation that all the things he normally does on Windows will not work the same way if at all. He still went through with it, and within a week, he wanted me to put Windows back on it because he likes to mod GTA5 and other things like CloneHero.
Sorry for the rant, but I always see these types of comments about Linux gaming, but never the about the stuff that I really enjoy about being a PC gamer.
Thank you for reading if you did, and I hope I made sense!
I understand reluctance to move because of ease of modding.
This does not answer it for all your games, but did you see this post about Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim modding on Linux? It might help for those at least.
I didn’t read all of that, but yes, modding. Or just console commands.
Hey, when you started PC gaming with BG and NWN with user crafted modules which continued the adventures for years, you just expect it as basic form for PC games.
The one little game I’ll play on a mini is Scrsbble/Words w/Friends, with ad blocking.
