timppu: That's certainly interesting! How come Arch Linux, which is considered quite hardcore Linux, and is not officially supported by Steam, is that much more popular than either Ubuntu or Linux Mint (the latter is based on Ubuntu, so pretty much everything that works on Ubuntu, works also on Mint)?

And where is Fedora? I kinda expected it to be much more popular among Linux gamers, as it gets all the latest stuff (including drivers or Wine versions or whatever) the fastest?

WinterSnowfall: Lack of Linux support is pushing me to Wine :P. We are not the same.

SargonAelther: Everything that Valve does simply ensures that Windows games run on Linux, rather than increasing more Linux native games. If anything Valve's efforts may end up discouraging native Linux game development.

Spectrum_Legacy: It's nice when you buy a game and developer was kind enough to provide a native linux build.

Wirvington: Agreed, but the unfortunate reality is that gog can't even fix or update their forums nor add much requested features to their storefront. Considering this, I'd wager that at this point in time and most certainly for the foreseeable future too, the possibility of supporting Linux like Valve does, remains quite a 'galaxy' away from them.

Heresy!

EverNightX: I disagree. Games used to be the only thing blocking many people from dropping Windows. So now that virtually every game is playable on Linux, it makes switching to Linux much easier for users and devs. Making games for Linux is easy enough. The main issue is that you never know what libs will be on someone's system since there is no authoritative or dominate distro. And even if there was, users are free to plug in whatever components they want to alter the system.

SargonAelther: Oh please... if Games were the primary showstopper, then Linux market share would be at least as big as that of Mac OS, but realistically larger. Most people use computers for work, not games. No corporation is going to torture its staff with Linux and LibreOffice... Not without seriously regretting it 2 years later anyway.

EverNightX: I disagree. Games used to be the only thing blocking many people from dropping Windows. So now that virtually every game is playable on Linux, it makes switching to Linux much easier for users and devs. Making games for Linux is easy enough. The main issue is that you never know what libs will be on someone's system since there is no authoritative or dominate distro. And even if there was, users are free to plug in whatever components they want to alter the system.

EverNightX: I thought we were talking about people who play games, not businesses.

I'm a developer, not a secretary. So I'm ignorant about the nuances of MS Office/Libre Office. As a casual user of spreadsheets and word processing they seem the same to me. But even if someone wanted/needed to use MS Office for some reason can't you do that via browser?

Dark_art_: As previously mentioned, I'm positive that the Steam OS (from the Steam Deck) is listed under Arch Linux.

sanscript: Well, Linux used to be pretty niche but we recently jumped >4%, mainly because of, right, because of Valve and Steam.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops

Yes, the developers are responsible for the games, but Galaxy is something GOG could open source and at least make available for Linux users.

SemilunarLiri: Since there seems to be some confusion regarding Linux distribution share, try selecting Linux Only in the hardware survey instead of Combined.

Then click on "Linux Version". You'll see the following:

[i]"SteamOS Holo" 64 bit
43.55%
+1.43%

"Arch Linux" 64 bit
8.15%
+0.39%

Freedesktop SDK 23.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit
5.52%
-0.30%

Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit
5.09%
-1.71%

Linux Mint 21.3 64 bit
3.56%
+3.56%

"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit
3.35%
-0.13%

Other
30.78%
+3.14%[/i]

SteamOS makes up roughly half of the 1.76% of Linux users on Steam in February. SteamOS is based on Arch, yes, but it's quite a bit different and counted as a distinct OS. But it is, importantly, just a generic Linux distribution. It's not particularly bespoke like ChromeOS; improvements to SteamOS and Proton benefit all Linux distributions and upstream Wine. Supporting SteamOS means supporting Linux in general. Valve only makes SteamOS available for the Steam Deck, and while they have talked about providing a general SteamOS for desktops, they haven't come out with an ISO image for that.

Installing Windows is supposedly quite easy as the Steam Deck is a general computing device (some people even use it as such when they dock it to a monitor). It seems unlikely that many people would do that. There are very few games it would be worth doing for; they would almost exclusively be games with anti-cheat that hasn't been enabled for Linux yet, like Rainbow Six: Siege. Doing so would sacrifice a lot of the usability and battery life for the device.

Additionally, Valve works with Codeweavers (hosts the WineHQ website, employs Wine's lead developer and many others, authored 50,000 commits for Wine over the past ~30 years) to develop Proton, and has funded work on DXVK, which is what has really made the biggest difference for gaming on Linux. They regularly make fixes in their compatibility layers to fix specific games on Steam. They also engage with the Wayland Protocol team on matters like the color management protocol. They have been very good citizens within the open source community and have made an incredibly meaningful difference in making gaming better on Linux, as well as a bunch of stuff peripherally related to that, like HDR.

I don't think anyone expects GOG to measure up to a legacy like that; they just want a native client as a download manager, with cloud saves, and built-in Wine + DXVK.

Raf..: emulation isnt ideal, native is.