Steam On Linux Still Tap Dancing Around 0.9% Marketshare

[Espionage724]

Linux is easier to install than Windows

A Windows 10 install generally takes 6 clicks from a cold boot to the OOBE set-up. I've done it more than enough times to know

Confirm the language, click Install, agree to terms-of-use, custom install, select a HDD/SSD, install. An extra click is to choose the edition if you have a custom ei.cfg or aren't using a firmware product key.

Linux isn't much different either to be fair, assuming you're using Ubuntu or Fedora. openSUSE has a lot more clicks (for more options), but isn't too complex. Overall, ease-of-installation isn't really worthwhile to compare.

...And if you come to find out that your motherboard doesn't support TPM while trying to install Windows 11, then Linux is light years ahead of windows in terms of easy of use on the clean install. At that point, Linux blows Windows out of the water.

Most modern Ryzen and Skylake+ machines have TPM 2.0, which is either enabled by-default or takes a few seconds to enable in firmware settings.

The (GPU) driver handling (and implementations) are certainly better on Linux vs Win. Who wants to manually maintain a driver?
And if anything, only Nvidia drivers come with a gotchas on Linux. Who should we blame?

Driver handling overall is better on Windows. You don't want to maintain a driver? Microsoft designed Windows Update with Windows 10 just for you! During the OOBE (or shortly afterwards if you get through it quick with a slow ISP), a display driver will be downloaded. No open-source vs proprietary decisions, no concern about how dual-graphics laptops are configured, no concern about Xorg vs (X)Wayland.

Who wants to manually maintain a driver?

I do. There's been a few times on Windows where I've had to switch drivers due to an issue.

On Linux, if any major part of the graphics stack updates (Mesa, kernel), good luck trying to downgrade it. No way an inexperienced user is going to be able to do this without opening a Terminal, and in most cases, having to go find some arbitrary package name (like Mesa-libGL1-21.1.4-1236.1.i586), force install it, and lock the package to prevent it from just being updated again. And this requires trial-and-error through browsing websites.

On Windows, it's as easy as downloading an older driver, and installing it (AMD's drivers provide an option to factory reset and remove the existing driver during install).

Meanwhile on Linux, you have different instructions depending on the distro and NVIDIA, and good luck if you have a laptop with an Intel iGPU/NVIDIA dGPU combo. For AMD, the past month or two I have some unknown color brightness/saturation issue that only affects the AMDGPU Xorg DDX driver, which comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 21.04, Fedora 34, and openSUSE TW. The fix for this is to uninstall AMDGPU and go to modesetting, and I only found this out by trial-and-error.

[Espionage724]

I tried to go back to Linux primarily for gaming last week, but gave up quickly. I have a RX 580 and was using openSUSE TW:

• I have an Oculus Quest 2, so all PCVR gaming is out (ALVR was a jittery mess with a RX 580, but at least shows hope that it'll be possible at some point)
• Can't use my Xbox Series X wireless controller (xow didn't work, and I don't care for wired)
• Can't play DJMAX (xincode3/anticheat)
• Can't log-into AoE2 DE (Xbox log-in doesn't do anything)
• Can't play Halo MCC online (largest reason I bought it)
• Can't play Star Wars Squadrons (PCVR and EAC)
• RuneScape has audio issues and crashes at random (it's OpenGL, I had expected it to do better than it did)
• Can't use OBS iOS camera (over USB)

If I could do VR decently, I could possibly look past those other issues, but that still presents the main issue that gaming on Linux still has caveats, and generally no real advantage. The games I've tried that do work on Linux, work just as well if not better on Windows. Even anti-cheat is still a problem on Linux (Overwatch had a large Linux banwave recently, and even Valve with CS:GO had a trust drop issue with AMD users).

So for the foreseeable future, I dual-boot. Linux for general things and server administration, and Windows for gaming.

[drakonas777]

I play old games only, because for me personally, almost every PC game released after ~2010 is a soleless garbage. I also despise driver GUIs or "optimized for zoomers driver application features (in-game bullshit for video capture, pictures and other gimmicks)". Driver should be transparent software component for OS requiring no user intervention. GPU hardware should also automatically use smart and optimal work parameters requiring no user intervention (fortunately the latter one is somewhat true now with smart boost algorithms and stuff ).

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Linux is the best gaming platform for me personally, better than anything else ever. I'm super glad that Valve is developing Proton and it's basically the only reason I use Steam and purchase games in general, because of Valve supporting this niche case of mine (for their own benefit of course, like it was explained, but still, it benefits me too).

So yeah, I surely understand why Windows is superior gaming platform for the mainstream and it's fine, but for me it's a wise versa entirely.

[yoshi314]

Good joke. Linux was always "install and forget about it" unlike Windows. And Linux automatically installs and upgrades the drivers for decades. Educate yourself.

it mostly was. but if you sit around on linux forums you'll see people who cannot even get their storage working, or having boot loops in the live media. or the live media randomly booting or hanging on startup.

quite often it boils down to hardware quirks, e.g. system has two sata controllers and one is a bit off. or some other trickery. sometimes there are regressions in the kernel used on the media or hardware requires something special to get working.

so maybe the 'forget about it' part is true, but the 'install' part is sometimes really tricky.

[mppix]

This is simply not true.

Please check your facts.

Under Windows you can choose any version of drivers to install. You can even update them on the fly in the case of NVIDIA (AMD for some reasons always requires a reboot. sometimes even two, Intel also requires a reboot).

So you need a separate piece of software to manage the GPU, and if you have a hybrid solution two. Why? Seriously?
I like my GPU's as 'boring' as my CPU and network cards and 'just work' to their full potential.

Under Linux Mesa and the kernel are tied to your disto updates cadence and absolute most users have no expertise to install the version of drivers (mesa/kernel) they actually need. And then debugging what works and what doesn't under Linux is a PITA.

Simply false.

All Linux distros come with good GPU drivers packaged. So no need for expertise.

Of course if you bought Nvidia, this may very well be the point where you start hating your life depending on your distro of choice.
Still almost any distro packages the Nvidia driver and some may even ensure that your computer does not break and/or your DE can run under Wayland.
But the, you bought Nvidia to run Linux.. ?

[mppix]

You clearly haven't played any recently released AAA games on Linux. Its not uncommon that Linux can only handle such games after they have been worked on/patched in Wine/Proton and until everyone finally moves to a newer kernel that can run the game well because they need the latest in tree graphics driver.

On windows you just go to NVidia/AMD and download/update the latest driver (in fact both of these companies have drivers that also auto check for updates).

The context of the thread/article is not about basic desktop environments where someone is just using a browser (and even that has problems, wayland/pipewire anyone?)

Since when are windows GPU drivers and games not patched for each other?
It just happens more behind the scene...

[StarterX4]

OS Version:
Linux                  0.89%      +0.03%

Languages:
Simplified Chinese     23.68%     +6.18%
Korean                 3.74%      +2.16% [I](wow, what an increase. Or just a calculation error?)[/I]

And the increase of Chinese (usually Intel with Win7) didn't violate the Linux share, nice.

[mozo]

Sure, but

1. Secure boot has nothing Microsoft specific about it, its just a mechanism that stores keys which are used to sign boot images. The problem here is that for secure boot to work with every linux distribution they have to preload hundreds of keys (which constantly change over time).
2. Its still the case that Linux is harder to set up (which you are ignoring).

But it's not, I don't know why you have this attitude but it's wrong. Prepare a USB flash and install it with a few clicks, even without a single restart. And it installs many times faster than Windows. On newer machines it can be installed for less than 2 minutes! Hard to install? C'mon... And you can even listen music and browse the web until the installation process. Awesomness and perfection. Windows is decades behind.

[pmorph]

You are a very uncommon use case. Desktop Linux market share is below 3%. Absolute most (over 95%) people who use it are IT professionals (either developers, programmers or devops). It's near unusable for those who have no IT background. People claim their grandmas use Linux only ... grandmas do not install or maintain it which makes this statement false.

I was pointing to your statement that "only people with too much time" game on linux, which is simply incorrect.

[mdedetrich]

Almost every modern distro supports Secure Boot. And Secure Boot was invented by Microsoft, so...

Sure, but

1. Secure boot has nothing Microsoft specific about it, its just a mechanism that stores keys which are used to sign boot images. The problem here is that for secure boot to work with every linux distribution they have to preload hundreds of keys (which constantly change over time).
2. Its still the case that Linux is harder to set up (which you are ignoring).