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Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

phoronix.com

191–200 of 373 posts

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#191
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should broaden your hardware horizons. Straight out of Linux Foundation, https://www.zephyrproject.org/ There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Windows with its 80% market share has no Linux kernel. Zero Linux kernel running on the ca 15% Apple desktops. Zero Linux kernels running on iOS and iPadOS. No Linux kernels on Arduino or ESP32, althought they certai…

> There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox. Except the ones in the network cards and SSD, and probably a bunch of other embedded components. The year of Linux Everywhere was decades ago.

Sure, that is why there are so many embedded OSes to chose from, with much better enterprise friendly licenses, aka no GPL.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves a…

This is correct, if you want a good desktop Linux experience, you want to use a rolling release distribution. Debian will ship with old pieces of software that are updated and fixed on a daily basis upstream. Some of those changes and bug fixes really are showstoppers and you'll be stuck with them for months/years. Same thing with older kernels. Debian is great for servers, but if you're doing graphics, sound or mult…

that's right. graphic stack is one thing you dont want to use older release.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#193

Pewdiepie becoming an arch-pilled rice-maxxer who advocates Linux for freedom and gaming has surely had some effect. He's such a good sport he even swore off Photoshop and tries to learn to like Gimp.

Or maybe Microsoft continuously degrading their user's experiences has finally reached a breaking point, to the point where Pewdipie AND Linus Tech Tips are talking more seriously about linux.

So yeah Pewdiepie is part of it, but I honestly think that's only because Microsoft has done such a poor job at maintaining their operating system.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#194

Pewdiepie becoming an arch-pilled rice-maxxer who advocates Linux for freedom and gaming has surely had some effect. He's such a good sport he even swore off Photoshop and tries to learn to like Gimp.

Or maybe Microsoft continuously degrading their user's experiences has finally reached a breaking point, to the point where Pewdipie AND Linus Tech Tips are talking more seriously about linux. So yeah Pewdiepie is part of it, but I honestly think that's only because Microsoft has done such a poor job at maintaining their operating system.

Certainly Microsoft is responsible for most of it. I'm just saying Felix still has a lot of influence and has been pulling in the same direction to his millions of fans.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#196
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also never had any trouble with NVIDIA on the desktop. I think most issues people have are on laptops, which have odd hybrid/dual GPU setups, and which exercise suspend/hibernate much more aggressively.

That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I've never had a laptop with Nvidia, I probably subconsciously avoided those dual GPU setups as they sounded hacky and I never really needed fast 3D on a laptop.

FWIW I have an Asus Zephyrus G14 and the dual graphics cards works pretty well in Linux in hybrid mode. It's pretty cool, certain things (games) run on the dedicated Nvidia GPU. Everything else runs on the built in AMD GPU.

I'm guessing it's because the laptops are popular enough that there's a dedicated group of people that make it work [0].

I'm still on X11, dunno what the story is like with Wayland though.

[0] https://asus-linux.org/

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#197

I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions. The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Stea…

The explanation I've heard is simply: Chinese New Years happened, which means a lot more Chinese gamers are online in February during the week long national holiday. It happened in last year's March stats too: https://web.archive.org/web/20250404061527/https://store.ste... -25%

How does a Jan/Feb holiday affect this year’s March number (that was reported in early April)?

I’m not talking about the Feb number that is reported in March.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#199
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy minded Linux users probably also know, spoofing your user agent is likely to increase fingerprint entropy and actually decreases privacy. It may have been true in the past, but I don't think anyone even recommends it anymore.

There's still plenty of web sites that check the OS and if it's not Mac OS, Windows, or Andoid it's no service for you. Faking your UA is not always about privacy, it's about defeating stupidity.

Browser yes, but OS? Rarely, I have issues with Firefox, but never had Chromium not working, too.

It any case, it would be silly to assume services measuring OS popularity would put up such limitations. And more likely than not, people are changing their UA as a work-around on a case-by-case basis than make it a default, since that's gonna cause trouble.

In the last decade, the only time, I actually had to touch the UA is when breaking ToS with curl :D

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation I've heard is simply: Chinese New Years happened, which means a lot more Chinese gamers are online in February during the week long national holiday. It happened in last year's March stats too: https://web.archive.org/web/20250404061527/https://store.ste... -25%

How does a Jan/Feb holiday affect this year’s March number (that was reported in early April)? I’m not talking about the Feb number that is reported in March.

A holiday that warps numbers in February will no longer be warping things in March.
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