I've been a Windows user since 3.0 came out. Windows the last 5 years has been annoying the ** out of me, even more than normal. I'll see what 12 looks like, but looks like I'll be Linux user in the future.
Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
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Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#32Wild how less than 24h ago we were told to assume Linux was finally a hardened contender for gaming OS. The facts are the facts, and they're yet again trending opposite of journalism's opinions. The users have chosen Windows. Again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770
It's clear that on the long term trends, Linux is rising. From 1.2% in 2022 from 3.2% now. It just didn't rise in December.
From the chart, it looks that Windows took some small share to some older OSX in December and Linux stayed mostly the same.
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#33> Linux slipped 0.01% month-on-month That's just noise Use habits in Dec diverge from the rest of the year because of the holidays. People are gifted new systems that come with windows 11 pre installed, and people who don't usually have time to game come online. I would not take this to mean that anything has stopped using Linux and is using windows 11 instead.
Phoronix has a good take on it [0]. Michael reports the same tiny slip but also points out that Linux was at 2.29% at the end of 2024 and sub 2% at the end of 2023. Those are pretty decent increases considering the size of the installed base. Hopefully the new Valve hardware coming out soon gives Linux another good bump by the end of 2026.
[0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-December-2025-Survey
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#34I've been a Windows user since 3.0 came out. Windows the last 5 years has been annoying the ** out of me, even more than normal. I'll see what 12 looks like, but looks like I'll be Linux user in the future.
I saw the writing on the wall back when Windows 7 went EOL. I'm now 100% Linux in my home, and insist on Linux with employers. I don't regret a thing; instead I laugh at people who have masochist tendencies with Microsoft.
Switch to Linux today. Unless you're working with a shit company, chances are pretty good that all of your software and workflows will work on Linux too, and possibly even work better. Plus, you'll be able to actually triage your own computer (if you want).
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#35Christmas happened. People got new PCs with Windows 11 preinstalled on them. This says nothing about the popularity of Windows itself.
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
note 580 is now also EOL, and a rack of hardware video encoders is less demanding than gaming. =3
No, 580 is the new legacy driver branch, it's still supported for a couple years. Just not optimized for new titles iirc. I'm not sure what the state of the open-source drivers is for the really old nvidia GPUs, but for Pascal and such it's pretty decent. No video hwaccel though. However, for hardware encoding, NVENC has improved a lot over the generations. So the old chunkers are probably beat on every metric by e.g…
I have yet to see a fully working nouveau based system, as most people are just looking to blacklist the mod given the collateral problems.
Depends on the hardware codecs use case, as some legacy cards are valuable to people that own legacy workflows.
Without CUDA + hardware-encoders a GPU is just a paperweight regardless of age for some use-cases. =3
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#37In my personal bubble of power users, Windows' dominance in gaming and coding has been heavily eroded. Even I switched to a Mac (considering I can't even play Red Alert 2 on this machine, that's a huge deal)!
Say "Good bye!" to your free time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991853 (but looks like you already knew, lol. Dishonest wink )
Yes, since then Chrono Divide also added modding docs and oh boy am I excited!
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#38Is there a specific Win 11 setup that gamers prefer? The non-IoT versions seem to be bloatware.
LTSC
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#39The way that Microsoft counts a Windows install is really the question, but they have never disclosed their methodology for exactly what constitutes an install.
If I have a laptop, it boots and contacts Microsoft, but I wipe it and install Linux, does that count? Microsoft doesn’t say.
Re: Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls
#40> Linux slipped 0.01% month-on-month That's just noise Use habits in Dec diverge from the rest of the year because of the holidays. People are gifted new systems that come with windows 11 pre installed, and people who don't usually have time to game come online. I would not take this to mean that anything has stopped using Linux and is using windows 11 instead.
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