Steam On Linux For March Drops Down To 1.00%

[birdie]

Oh! I see the problem. You must not be aware that for the past several years, Valve has been directly funding KDE development--which makes sense, given how the Steam Deck's desktop session uses KDE Plasma. I can understand why you wouldn't know this, because nobody is exactly shouting it from the rooftops. Nonetheless, it has been happening. How do I know? I'm one of the people who they've been sponsoring (through my employer), along with about a dozen other KDE people. This isn't common knowledge, but it's not a secret either.

So I can assure you that Valve has invested very heavily not only in making Windows games run better on Linux, but also in the KDE Plasma desktop itself, and the middleware layer that supports it.

That's nice to hear but Linux has far deeper issues than the state of KDE. I'd say KDE even without Valve's help was doing alright.

Also, I'm almost sure Valve sponsors KDE to make it better for their use case, which means the bugs and feature requests that are outside the Steam portable continue to get very little attention if any.

I stopped using KDE when they released version 5. It was so rough and buggy I just couldn't make myself endure all the pain. Despite all the hate KDE 4 was in a much better shape during its entire history.

Lastly, I'm not a fan of Plasma and I've have asked KDE developers to abandon it or split it into pieces. That's not going to happen apparently.

[ngraham]

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but you are writing about things you don't understand, even though you think you do. This makes understanding and communication impossible, which is probably why the thread has devolved the way it has. This will be my last post in it.

[alex79]

Decrease partly due to new games that came out, like Lost Ark that doesn't run on Linux. Guilty of that myself, the only game I play on Windows.

[Luke_Wolf]

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but you are writing about things you don't understand, even though you think you do. This makes understanding and communication impossible, which is probably why the thread has devolved the way it has. This will be my last post in it.

I thought you'd been around here enough to know that one by now lol. Birdie has little interesting to say and most of what he does say is basically trolling.

[birdie]

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but you are writing about things you don't understand, even though you think you do. This makes understanding and communication impossible, which is probably why the thread has devolved the way it has. This will be my last post in it.

Speaking of "writing about things I don't understand" and then cutting off - that's a nice logical fallacy which could also be considered an insult. Your post lacked any crucial details, you spat some general statements which unfortunately doesn't work for me.

Meanwhile my reply was neutral and seemingly on point. Suit yourself.

[Mez']

I know it's not an ideal solution, but on Windows you can use some software through the Portable Apps platform. It has a centralized update system like on Linux (no need to double click exe's) and all the apps cleanly store all of their configurations in their own folders, so they don't pollute your Windows installation by leaving config files/folders in different locations. They even almost never make changes in the registry.

I know, I´ve used that at work a few times to get Firefox.
At least when the USB ports are not blocked at corporate level. Or when external executables are allowed.

But it´s not exactly standard practice. I was talking about the normal install way.

[Scellow]

GeForce GTX 1060 refuses to die. Lovely. Probably the best GPU ever made.

Jokes aside it's that popular because it had a decent price and "normal" power consumption.

Newer generations xx50 and xx60 NVIDIA cards are a lot worse in both regards.

AMD despite being worshipped by open source fans is nowhere to be seen.

I mean there's RX 580 at the 18th position which is just a joke.

RX 6600 and RX 6800? Nowhere to be found. I guess only the Linux community buys AMD cards.

No longer supported Windows 7 still commands a 4.14% share, while all the Linux distros combined are less than a single percent.

People still use old GPUs because since 2019-2020 GPU prices increased by close to 4x, even in the used market, due to the various global events and chip shortage

Nothing about people loving NVIDIA or specifically the 1060, it was a good GPU back in the days, but it's pretty bad right now for its price compared to what AMD has to offer nowadays

[frostedcookies]

I'd have to say I'm with birdie on a lot of what he or she is saying. I have linux on both my laptop and desktop. I want to love linux. I donate to KDE and a few other projects. I follow linux stuff peripherally. But honestly, I'm dual booted and I still end up using windows a lot more.

windows and mac most definitely have problems. But there are a lot of pain points in using linux that I think people ignore. I don't think simply getting linux pre-installed will work for anyone who is using their computer beyond webrowsing (which again, hardware acceleration is finicky and frequently broken in linux! needs custom commands to get working, and, if not, your laptop heats up and video performance isnt' great). If you're playing games there's a lot more fiddling. If you need a drawing tablet there's a lot more fiddling. If you are trying to work with Office/Word docs that are anything beyond simple, there are lots of issues. There aren't perfect 1:1 alternatives for photoshop etc for creatives. There can be serious driver issues for a major graphics card manufacturer (again Nvidia's fault, but doesn't change much for the end user), if you're trying to get your trackpad to work (scroll speed, gestures like using two finger swipe to go back in the browser) there's a lot of fiddling and some stuff you can't do easily if you're on wayland vs xorg, having to sometimes switch between xorg and wayland sessions for one thing to work better than the other thing depending, having a number of different ways of installing something without a clear choice for most users most of the time is difficult, battery life on laptops can be problematic and not easily remediable (speaking from some experience trying to get TLP to work, with battery life still much worse than in Windows). Davinci resolve does not work nearly as well for me on linux as it does on Windows, and I'm just doing simple things on the side, not even professional level.

I'm sorry as a non-technical user with some more advanced requirements beyond email and browsing, linux has been been frustrating. I dual boot but I still end up using windows more often and linux as a "sigh...someday hopefully?" I will continue to donate to KDE with my fingers crossed. i'm more than willing to pay for seamless linux experience. But I have to say, for me, it's been anything but. And that's despite having a willingness to try (which i don't think is going to be most people either).

[Ironmask]

What on earth are you on about? This is a completely non-sensical comment. apt and pacman do not "brick your install". This is effectively impossible unless you try really hard to go out of your way to do something incredibly stupid like remove core system packages.

As an aside, I'm sick and tired of people misusing the term "brick" when it comes to computing hardware. for something to be "bricked" means it is not recoverable, i.e it is now equivalent to a brick. it is physically impossible for a linux package manager to "brick" a system. The only way that could happen to a modern pc is a bios update gone wrong.

Are we forgotting LTT's infamous video where apt uninstalled his DE? And that happens all the time, that is far from being a one-off issue. I used many distros for six years and the package managers would constantly break packages. Yes, I call that bricking, because you can't use the install anymore. You can rescue it, but you can't use it as it is. I use the same term if Windows can't boot because NTOSKRNL.EXE is missing. I use that term because, to the average user who experiences these issues, they may as well be unable to use their computer anymore unless they know how to at least reinstall (forget about rescuing).
Instead of being defense and doing the typical Linux user "well if it doesn't work for you then you're just stupid" shtick, you could at least help out a little by acknowledging how broken some things are so they can get fixed. Nix solves this issue perfectly, it just needs some more usability enhancements like a GUI. Responses like this "well achksually" post is exactly why nobody even bothers with Linux.

[Ironmask]

The pre-installed OS myth among Linux fans just refuses to die

Nope, that has never been the real issue and it has almost nothing to do with Linux being (very un)popular.

The real issue is packaging and applications. In bug ridden broken malware infested Windows (all myths btw), you run an .exe and it. just. works.

Wake me up when it's the case with Linux. In year 2122 maybe?

The "pre-installed myth"?
The overwhelming majority of the sale of Windows is in pre-installed, they make virtually nothing by selling Windows to end-users. Windows being pre-installed is what made Microsoft the multibillion dollar corporation it is today. How is that a myth? It's basic business sense. People use the OS the computer comes with. The OS stops working? Time for a new computer. Most people don't even know they can reinstall their OS, much less install an entire new one. Most people don't even know how to get into their BIOS/UEFI settings! And you're blaming the billions of computer users out there of being smart enough to even know what a Linux is but just actively deciding they prefer Windows?
Now, being able to double-click an exe is very much a myth. Ubuntu and friends come with GUI app stores, everyone knows how to use that. And they know where to find the apps once they're installed. Is it totally streamlined? Not really, but it's definitely close enough. You certainly can't "double-click an .exe" in Android but that doesn't seem to be slowing down it's adoption.