I think there is a real change in people’s mind . Windows is at it worst since forever. Just this month 2 people in my inner circle just ask me how can they Make the switch and which distro should they use for there needs. Those 2 were hardcore Windows fan and gamer.
This vacation I finally decided to ditch Win for EndeavourOS, it has it’s quirks sometimes, but I can mostly play without issues, so refreshing to not rely on M$
I like how all Arch based distros are in “quotes” by the way.
Right? It’s oozing with sarcasm, like—ArCh LiNuX
lmao
Why would you run Ubuntu core? Are they only running steam?
this is steam as snap package, just like how they count flatpak steam
i’m presuming people are using a just enough os (JEOS) distro to install a gui of their choice and steam and not much else.
That makes sense. Pure gaming machine
Linux mint 21: loses a little
Linux mint 22: wins a little
my brother in christ. they just updated their pc
Importantly, there was a net increase in Linux users and a net decrease in Windows users.
Still increases in other areas ☺️👍
GamingOnLinux estimates >7% of English language install base for Steam is using Linux (if I’m understanding this correctly): GamingOnLinux Steam Tracker
Yeah, indeed. Steam language breakdown is about 40% English, 30% Chinese, 10% Russian, 5% Spanish, 15% other. Chinese speakers overwhelmingly use Windows rather than Linux, so choosing ‘English only’ basically doubles the Linux percentage.
I’d be interested to know why Linux has such bad update in Chinese-speaking regions. (It’s the lingua franca for much of Asia, so not just China, just largely China.) Obviously, inertia plays a part - easier to move to Linux if you know someone else that can help you, which if there’s no-one then you might be a bit stuck. Are the fonts crappy? Are the input methods greatly superior in Windows?
they do not care about many of the things that people in western societies care about. they do not care about privacy. they want to use the same type of computer their friends and coworkers are using. 11 is a higher number than 10.
unless there’s a chinese linux distro that gets pre-installed at the factory, along with a government ban of windows (it could happen), they will be the last society to adopt.
I would put it down to censorship. Not of Linux directly but of information about noncomformity. Windows is the default OS for desktop PCs and I imagine it is easier to get exposed to the idea of searching an alternative in the west than in China. If you never question the oppressive bullshit corporations are doing to you, you will not think to break free and use Linux.
i find this a little difficult to believe when china develops and promotes their own linux distro and desktop environment
Guessing Linux is associated mostly with the government attempts to make their own distribution. I think in their context windows may feel safer.
And how many of them are properly working at the moment?
are you asking which linux distros work or which distros steam works on? i’m having trouble squaring either question since any distro with guided installer is trivial to get set up once you know how to get into UEFI/BIOS and steam runs fantastic on linux. did you try steam on linux recently and run into issues? what distro did you try? do you have nvidea hardware?
Got my new bazzite gaming laptop YTD!
Screw you, windows, I’m out
Man I wonder when Valve manages to ship a 64-Bit Steam Client.
My understanding is that Steam has nearly or completely removed the old 32 bit dependencies recently.
Thanks for the users, Microsoft!
Microsoft turning Windows into Internet Explorer
It’s time to make Microsoft hurt. Let’s go!
Someone needs to show this to the higher ups of Ubisoft
I’m surprised Bazzite isn’t higher on the list, here, it really seems like the OS I hear about whenever Linux gaming comes up.
That list is just weird and only shows a few specific distros. If you go to the Linux only results you get way more info. It shows Bazzite as used by 5.53% of respondents, +1.29% from last month.
Ah, that makes way more sense. Nearly 6% of the gaming Linux market for such a new distro, and rapidly growing, sounds much more like where I would’ve expected Bazzite to place, based on my own experience and the tune of most recommendation threads here.
I switched to Bazzite based on a recommendation and it’s been a fantastic OS for me (gaming and light development/home labbing) and I no longer have any desire to distro hop.
Took a bit to figure out the immutable stuff for some very niche things I needed done, but other than that ezpz
Without having tried it, I think Bazzite fits a certain user group very well, but is less suited for other users. Which is fine.
I don’t really see how it’s particularly good for homelabbing, but use whatever works for you.
The person who replied to you is correct. I meant as a machine to write scripts on, manage servers, etc. I do agree though Bazzite probably isn’t the best for everyone, but that’s what is great about Linux, there is a OS for everyone
I don’t really see how it’s particularly good for homelabbing
I’m assuming by that he meant as a distro for his personal PC that he uses to SSH into his home lab or access the web interfaces. Not to run on the servers
This is correct.
I didn’t pick it for home labbing as a primary as I mostly use that machine for gaming, but just to show how well it works overall as a general purpose OS. I did end up switching over to their Dx branch for updates so that helped for some of that stuff as well.
I think it was more of a fad for a short while, but there are a lot of other much more entrenched and mainstream distros
This graphic is just a bit misleading, and the more detailed results show the opposite story. Bazzite is as 5.53% of Linux users, up 1.29% from last month and one of the most used single distros, behind SteamOS, Arch, Mint, and CachyOS.
Source?
The page linked in the post. Click the drop down to filter by Linux only.
Bazzite has been one in a LONG line of Trendy Distros Of The Month. People have been trying to make CachyOS happen, Zorin has made a couple appearances, ElementaryOS and Pop!_OS traded blows for awhile, Nobara was in there, a long while ago there was Peppermint, I’m forgetting a lot of them.
Feels like youre really diminishing Bazzite’s popularity here. Ive seen it regularly talked about here and in a lot of YouTube videos for around a year now. Its also currently used by 5.5% of the Steam Linux player base (you can see by filtering the results by Linux only), making it one of the most popular distros for gaming right now. Also, CachyOS is just ahead of it at 6.74%. Definitely not flavor of the month numbers imo
CachyOS is attempting to fill the same workcase as bazzite and does it better. Which is the real problem for bazzite.
And cachyOS is basically just a gamer preset for endeavour. Since all the arch based distros kinda suffer from the same problem in differentiating themselves by just being glorified presets of all of the same thing. Which is both actually a rather good boon but also a bit of a problem with being a gimmick or a flavor of the month. You just kind of pick an arch preset to start with and go from there.
Of course manjaro being the weird one out.
Like if you’re just looking for a straight up preset up one button, go gaming distribution. Cachy and baz both are trying to be that same workload. But cachy just does it better with less weird quirks and issues.
Not to mention they’re both trying to be distribution so you can just put on a steam deck. And again the cachy option just has less issues and quirks.
But cachy is fighting against stupid outdated memes about Arch so it just won’t ever really catch on. So even as a flavor of the month distro, it struggles to really ever reach true fad territory.
While bazzite easily can reach it since it doesn’t have to deal with a decade of misinformation spreading memes.
I honestly think for most people atomic systems should become the default, so I’m team bazzite right now.
It just feels like they need to get over decades of bad app/file hygiene to improve.
Atomic distros should replace Chromebooks and managed work/school computers. They shouldn’t replace personal all-purpose computers.
I’m convinced Atomic systems are going to be useful in a lot of applications but I’m not giving up a typical Linux system for my main computer yet.
I have just run into such an insane amount of problems with atomic distros. The thing is that you don’t know it will be a problem until you start having a need for the functionality
I still daily drive bazzite, but embedded programming, wireshark (constantly breaks upgrading on atomic fedora), any VM that had to connect to the LAN, any sort of document signing, key management, using any sort of government ID software like Belgium’s EID to log in on a web browser, and much more is very difficult with most of the examples being dead in the water and will apparently never be attempted to be fixed.
It works great for most people, until they need to do 1 thing outside of the mainstream and it falls apart. Hell, there is literally no documentation at all on how adding a user to a group is fundamentally broken (fedora’s fault, not bazzite) and you have to copy groups manually from a non-documented file to /etc/group.
I’m on Bazzite because I use my PC at the TV with a controller these days. It’s simple to use for that. That’s pretty much it.
Also Mint gets a ton of traction here too.
It’s a fad at best. And immutable distros are awful outside of extremely ridged use cases.
It basically is just a worse version of normal fedora or cachy OS.
It tries to both and successfully does neither job as well.
It gives the "it just works"Ness that a Linux gaming distro for Linux noobs needed. (So far anyway)
Immutable distros are perfectly fine for 99% of use cases and are far less likely to be broken by and end user following poorly made guides on the internet.
Why do you not like immutable distros?
I’m asking as a long time Mac user, just tried Linux this year, and have settled on atomic fedora and bazzite, so looking to learn not imply I know more than you or anything like that. I’m just very sold on them and the ostree idea.
See the problem is that you’re a normal computer user and not one of the 3% that actually like the experience that is the traditional Linux desktop.
Somehow that does not help me know what I’m missing.
Gatekeepy bullshit.
Bazzite is great, and immutable just means some things are done slightly differently, that’s all.
November 2025So if I’m running Arch but running flatpak Steam, my Arch statistic will not go noticed?
Yes it’ll show up in the Flatpak category.
Other gang assemble!
Others rule 🫡
My niche distribution is cooler than your niche distribution.
Judean People’s Front - pah!
Was thinking of trying Cachy cause of Lemmy talking about it, glad you see it higher than what I previously used (Manjaro).
Cachyos has slowly become my go to. It’s basically just arch but with a good basic install along with a kernel and distro specific packages that are more optimised.
