I did my part, at a gentle age of 48 i installed linux Mint.
You kids and your new fangled computers.
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
- Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit 3.23% +3.23%
WTF!! How!!
I believe Ubuntu Core would be the flatpak version of Steam but I could be misremembering
Edit: I am wrong
Ubuntu Core is the Snap-only embedded version.
I helped with that percentage
Oh I completely misremembered then!
Probably (example) 22.04 and 24.04 show up separately.
TLDR: It’s been revised to 3.58% from 3.19%
Also, what’s up with those dips in March ?
Heavy sampling of Simplified Chinese machines which primarily run Windows. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/#languagesanchor
Maybe spring break. Lots of kids are at home from school and they disproportionately use Windows.
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. 🎉
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.
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.
I like that the line appears to take an exponential growth curve. Hopefully it will keep going. Microslop sure is helping right now.
It’s probably more of an arctan.
I don’t think it can keep going at an exponential pace, but I think we can pass 5% in Q2 maybe Q3, especially with Steam Machine
Steam Machine would have helped, but now I’m pessimistic the price and availability will be decent because of the damn AI mania.
It must level off at some point, if anything for purely mathematical reasons. But the higher it gets before that happens the better.
The big players are driving this trend. Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel, etc are making the old status quo too expensive and obnoxious.
Adoption typically takes an s-shaped or sigmoid curve. A slow start, rapid growth, and then stagnation.
I’m curious whether gamers are going to pull Linux desktop into the mainstream. Discord is a good example. For many years only gamers knew what it was, now most of the users on aren’t using it for gaming, and it has fundamentally changed the platform.
Luckily Linux is an open source system with tons of variety and tailor made environments for specific use cases whereas Discord is a for profit company that shoves unwanted features like Nitro down everyone’s throats for their endless revenue chasing. So if it takes off because of gamers, we’ll see lots of needed features and bugfixes.
Wrong, we’re gonna blow right past the 100% marker and keep it going!! WOOOOO
🚀 800% here we goooo
To infinity and beyond!
In a constrained environment it will function more like a sigmoid curve. This looks like evidence that we’re approaching the linear slope in the middle.
That doesn’t actually make much sense for Linux adoption stats though
As linux gets bigger, more people will hear about it and consider it, there will be more pressure for Linux support, generally more focus on Linux
It seems like it will indeed be roughly exponential, until it levels out sigmoidly around 100%.
Is there a predictable difference between an exponential growth curve and a sigmoid curve before the linear growth section? Like I suppose you’d be able to measure the dropoff in acceleration as velocity reaches its peak, but given that this is also a random sample, sample noise would make that impossible to determine in real time.
I mean, it’s a % of people who use x chart, so the only way it won’t be sigmoid eventually is if it drops off as something else replaces it, but I don’t think looking at the chart will help predict where the chart is going any more than how well that works with stock prices.
No, it’s just a really commonly encountered curve for growth within a constrained environment. Fitting the curve could only predict where it is going with a probabilistic model anyways - it can’t predict the future.
And it gets better.
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.
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.
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.
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!
So just put steam on all those computers we’re already refurbishing into linux servers anyway?
Exactly.
Pump the those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
Hey i played on steam from at least 5 PCs last month. Doing my part.
Does Microsoft care about steam numbers?
The way they’re going I don’t think they even care about windows numbers
I dunno, but they cared enough to get the Xbox team in to build a handheld friendly interface to compete with Steam OS.
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)
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!!).
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.
Seems kinda crazy to me that Windows is still so dominant after all the shitty stuff MS has done.
As someone who semi-recently made the jump (june) to linux, you need a lot of time to do it, even for something that would seem trivial to an experienced user like going to mint. Most people don’t have the time to do something like that. New systems built by curious nerds will probably be where linux gets most of its new users. (so it’s a shame no one can afford to build one)
I installed Mint on my 72 year old fathers new Thinkpad. He loves it and has had relatively few complaints.
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I’ve installed Windows on thousands of machines and IMO, major Linux distros are usually easier to set up for home use but I say that having used both for a good amount of time, so my opinion is definitely biased compared to someone who doesn’t really use computers.
I would argue though, where Linux really shines is old systems, much like the many that MS chose to drop support for in Windows 11. There’s a pretty decent chance that the bullshit going on with RAM and drives might actually further drive Linux adoption as people try to get more out of their existing machines or old used\refurbished machines that they can actually afford (which Linux runs great on, unlike Windows).
Time will tell though…
It doesn’t really matter which is easier to install because only a very small percentage of people are comfortable with installing an OS of any kind. The vast majority of people just keep whatever OS was pre-installed. 99% of the time that’s Windows or MacOS.
Hopefully 2026 brings some more mainstream options to buy computers with Linux pre-installed. I think that’s unlikely though, other than Steam OS for some handhelds and Valve’s new hardware.
It would be great if Lenovo or Dell or others prominently featured Linux options to try to capitalize on all the Microsoft hate. I know they already sell some Ubuntu options but they aren’t featured or advertised. I suspect they are afraid of pissing off Microsoft.
Dell definitely has an option for Ubuntu as a default install, but it’s definitely not the norm. Not sure about Lenovo, but I can tell you Linux runs great on Thinkpads (my daily driver is a T14 with Cinnamon Mint).
PSA: Michael Dell is a super shitty GOP megadonor. Don’t buy his shit.
I don’t personally, but they are one of the suppliers where I work.
Lenovo (as far as I’m aware) still has the Ubuntu deal going where you can order a new ThinkPad with Ubuntu pre installed
Makes sense, I never bought from Lenovo directly (mine’s a refurb), but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Lenovo started doing it before Dell.
Without researching it, I’m not sure who did it first, but I have a feeling it was Lenovo.
I’ve also never ordered from them directly either, imo a brand new T series ThinkPad is a horrible investment, I just let someone else lose the thousands and pick up a year old barely used on the second hand market for (I’m in Australia) 1.5k - 2.5k less than retail typically.
Only with certain models, sadly. Mine was not available with anything but W10 Pro, 3y ago. Zero support for Linux.
Also linux support for cellular models is atrocious, so I had to go with (k)ubuntu, even though I didn’t want to. Even then, it was more difficult than it should have been (didn’t work out of the box). Everything else worked fine on all distros and flavors I checked, but none else got the modem working (eventually).
But also, after that TP and then buying and returning two more (known cooling issues that Lenovo denies, and a custom build that they didn’t activate or provide a key for W10 Pro!), they will have to give me a free, top-tier machine to potentially get me as a customer again. Cs was nice but everything else is a dumpster fire.
The TP is on its second battery too - the first was replaced after 6 weeks. I never left the house with it, and yet it went from 3h to 20m capacity in that amount of time. The replacement did the same thing…
Up until more recently, all the shitty shit they did only affected people with more computer knowledge than how to open the browser and use google.
I think it affected more people than that, but the level of annoyance is way higher than ever with the average user these days for sure.
Most users don’t know how to enter a url any other way than to search for the site name and click on the most likely result.
I don’t see those people installing Linux (or anything else, for that matter) any time soon.
I think most users, given enough motivation, could definitely figure out how to install a distro from scratch especially for something like Ubuntu or Mint.
You’re much more optimistic than I am. Maybe I’ve spent too much time with users who are usually scared of clicking on an unknown button, because after all, who knows what could happen if they click on “ok”?
Realistically what’ll happen is these users will start hunting for alternatives. If Linux gains enough enthusiast marketshare, more small local IT companies will feel comfortable just handing folks an old PC loaded with Linux, more computer shops will directly support Linux and this will chip away at the norm. Eventually if such a trend continues for long enough folks will start asking for it “yeah my last computer had oombootoo on it instead of Microsoft. Do they still make that? Can you get me one of them oombootoo computers?”
I’ve spent shitloads of time with users (did stints at repair shops, MSP, desktop support, and analyst stuff), but even the most ignorant, careless user could probably get through installing Linux if they really wanted to.
But that kind of user typically won’t want to because it’s much too scary.
Of course it’s trivial to install Linux, you just have to click “next” five times or so.
It becomes a matter of which is scarier: Microsoft or having to try a new thing? The shittier windows gets, the more people will be pushed to jump ship, possibly to Linux.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
as a Pop user, it’s surprising to see most of its users sticking to the old 22.04.
https://blog.system76.com/post/pop-os-letter-from-our-founder At the bottom, “Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS users will receive an upgrade notification in the OS starting January 2026. If you wish to upgrade to Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS before then, after backing up your files, open Terminal and run”
Probably the Feb numbers should reflect a larger migration to the latest Pop.
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.
Now I’m curious, can you be more specific?
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.
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.
they chose lts for a reason
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.
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.
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
🫡
o7 right back atcha!
Debian since 1997, babes.
o7
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
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.
o7
This is me.
and this guy!
Haha, are you guys doing anything fancy? I am not - everything works out of the box.
o7
o7
that’s me and my gf! we caused it!
o7
I don’t always get steam surveys, but when I do it’s the rare moment I boot my windows partition
What’s the % share 9ng English installations? Can’t figure out how to view that
83.11% of Linux is English https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linux
that’s 7.59% of total
at the bottom here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
This makes a lot of sense because Steam doesn’t care about the OS lacales on Linux. It defaults to English and you can switch to other language, but you have to go to settings. I switch the language in my client after installation, but many people won’t care enough or won’t even know.
Thanks, I thought it was on Valve’s website. They’re just serving statistics based on the raw data probably. Got it
