Steam On Linux Use Increases - Moves Closer To 2%, AMD CPU Linux Use Hits 72%

[skeevy420]

This just made me think avis is not a windows fanboy but actually a very clever troll. When I look at it like this, it gets really funny. Post some absurdity like "Rich APIs" or "Linux doesn't offer stability", grab a beer, have fun watching the not-so-clever linux-fanboys getting angry

He's really not wrong with a lot of that.

• Long term backward and forward compatibility
• Stability
• Rich APIs
• Support for many modern HW and SW features such as HDR, VRR, DLSS, FSR, XeSS, etc.
• Very poor graphics features (check AMD/NVIDIA graphics control panels)
• Very poor/incomplete HW monitoring
• Kernel level anticheats (you can hate them all you want but games using them have an order of magnitude fewer cheaters)
• Powerful tools for overclocking and undervolting (Linux has some but they are extremely basic and limited)
• DCI-P3 monitors support - I now have two such devices and both work horribly under Linux, both Xorg and Wayland

There is no easy way to run apps in Debian 6 or RHEL 8 compatibility mode. You have to spin up VMs, containers, etc. That means that there isn't a very good forwards and backwards compatibility system which also means that there isn't a long-term stability mechanism in place. Short-term stability is great, but long-term is king.

Everything else listed is all related. Most all of it exists somewhere but they aren't available everywhere; HDR, VRR, Scaling, HW monitoring and overclocking, and control panels all exist but they're scattered about and not available in an easy-to-use, synergistic manner. While Linux has Rich APIs, it's rather moot when the projects that make those APIs don't play nice with each other or when features of the API are optional like with Wayland.

I'm not sure about those monitors. I'd like to think all the HDR and colorspace work will help with them, but you know how thinking can go.

The biggest problem is that we're talking about "Linux" like "Linux" is one single operating system when, in reality, it's barely the same kernel from one version to the next in regards to long term hardware stability. It has no module API so anything developed out of tree breaks all the time. Linux is just a kernel and it isn't safe to go from one version to the next without recompiling parts of the OS. Even Godot, the game engine, knows the importance of long-term third party modules not breaking which is why they're focusing on a long-term module API, but not the Linux kernel that powers most of the world. Nope. No long-term stable API/ABI.

It isn't until you go from "Linux the kernel" to "Some Linux Distribution 9.5" that you have APIs for developers to adhere to, but then there's "Other Linux 4.3", "Dave Linux 5", "RebeccaBlack OS", and, well, go to Distrowatch. There are hundreds of distributions that all do their own things with a clusterfuck of APIs and ABIs. UI toolkits, shells, POSIX?, GNU tools?, C libraries, and a whole heck of a lot more.

Something Unix-like/Linux-like that offers one way to do it all would take over the market. If Valve and Oracle teamed up to turn Solaris into a gaming OS based on KDE and OpenZFS, that'd be one monster of an OS that could take on Windows without the burden of the preexisting Linux fragmentation or potential licensing issues in regards to kernel-level anti-cheats.

EDIT: The TLDR is that the same openness, fluidity, and freedoms that make Linux one of the greatest collections of FOSS software are the same things that are preventing it from being able to take on unified operating systems like Windows, macOS, and dare I even say Android since it is a Linux kernel with a set of software that only has the one way to do things.

[ben9191919191]

Some facts from a somewhat young person for the boomers here:

1) From your boomer experience using Linux already starting around the year 2000 or something like that, it may seems "What do you mean, look how Linux on the desktop is today". Sure buddy, if you compare today desktop Linux with the complete shit it was 25 years ago, then everything seems like the golden days. In reality it is still shit for most users.
2) The real game changer distro for newbies is still Ubuntu and maybe Linux Mint (an Ubuntu based distro), which I don't consider as secure or financed well enough as Ubuntu. But the problem with Ubuntu is snaps, for example the trash, that is called "steam snap".
3) Even if snaps were good, many from the community would still hate it, because it is somewhat proprietary and therefore many would not recommend Ubuntu, which leaves only distros that are not really well suited for newbies.

So yes, desktop Linux is still shitty and not suited for the masses. Best solution would be to bully Canonical into making snaps completely open source and then help to make them better.

[tenchrio]

That would be feeding the troll, won't do any longer.

Man, I was looking forwards to a civil comment section where people could discuss the recent numbers and imagine my shock when I saw that Avis was unbanned.
Welp it was fun while it lasted, guess my initial theory was correct, only reason he isn't banned is because he must be generating mad add revenue for Phoronix with everyone constantly having to reply to Avis's opinion based on "facts" from a parallel universe.

Doesn't make sense why he does it (supposedly he "grinds" the games he plays but his Posts Per Day would say otherwise, only thing he grinds is more respectable Phoronix users their gears) let alone why Phoronix mods allow this to persist when he literally flames everyone he comes across (so breaking Forum Rule 1 constantly), and when he loses the argument (always does, half of what he says is never true and a 5 second google away like Apex Legends not working on Linux while in actuality it has a gold rating on protondb + steamdeck verified), and the ensuing flamewar he created he blocks them and puts them on his about as if he actually accomplished something (posts about it too directly in the comment, real mature).

[JPFSanders]

At the same time, what Linux doesn't offer:

• Long term backward and forward compatibility
• Stability
• Rich APIs
• Support for many modern HW and SW features such as HDR, VRR, DLSS, FSR, XeSS, etc.
• Very poor graphics features (check AMD/NVIDIA graphics control panels)
• Very poor/incomplete HW monitoring
• Kernel level anticheats (you can hate them all you want but games using them have an order of magnitude fewer cheaters)
• Powerful tools for overclocking and undervolting (Linux has some but they are extremely basic and limited)
• DCI-P3 monitors support - I now have two such devices and both work horribly under Linux, both Xorg and Wayland

Why would the average Joe abandon perfectly working Windows and start using Linux?

Yet I had a (Windows) friend visiting me over a few months ago and he was surprised that all the games we play work on my Linux box connected to my TV, he was intrigued by the fact that I had no need to configure anything or tamper with my temperatures, my FPS were constantly over 60fps, etc, I could alt-tab out of every single game and my audio was flawless (connecting disconnecting headphones) when gaming.

What can I say, Linux works on my computer.

[JPFSanders]

Only capable of insults.

Very rich coming from you mate, very, very rich.

[byteabit]

I could alt-tab out of every single game

BTW, this is amazing on Linux. While I don't Alt-Tab, but switch my virtual desktop with keybindings (Meta-1, Meta-2, etc). From the games perspective I don't minimize it and it stays fullscreen. I used it in X11 on tiling window managers and later on KDE. Now I am on KDE and Wayland and it still works like charm. On emulators, on Steam games, on videos. It's so cool.

---

Just an unrelated note: I love automatic window tiling and being able to customize my bars/panels the exact way I want them to be. Windows would be almost unusable for me without the perfect integration of virtual desktops, auto window tiling, customization and quick updates, when I want them to happen.

[Phoronos]

If you think that Distrowatch is an indication of how many users a distribution has, than you simply did not understand what Distrowatch is.

MX linux and MINT are the most used distributions in distrowatch.
I am certain they are right.

[byteabit]

MX linux and MINT are the most used distributions in distrowatch.

As I explained, no, Distrowatch does not list the most *used* distributions. It lists the most clicked pages on the website. A huge difference. When I visit Distrowatch, I never click the page for the distro I am using currently. Don't make the mistake to take the statistics on Distrowatch as the same as "used distribution".

[Tuxee]

MX linux and MINT are the most used distributions in distrowatch.
I am certain they are right.

No. They are not. Because that's not what distrowatch counts. For the more perceptive ones: They even state so on their webpage.

The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring interest in Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch was accessed each day, nothing more.

[JEBjames]

@Michael

We interrupt the regularly scheduled WW3 comment section for a message from our sponsor: typos.

"But thre was" should be "there"

"that jive with" should be "jives"