Linux reaches new peak of 2.69% in Steam Hardware & Software Survey: May 2025

A lot of gamers want better performance, so a performance oriented distro with gaming quality of life features fills that gap. And ultimately there are a lot of YouTube channels promoting it and it kind of turned into a cool distro to use. This might explain the phenomenon.

I've been using it for a while now, and it's genuinely so good. Before this I was using EndeavourOS which was also a great distro, but I realized that I was basically putting in work to do things CachyOS does out of the box, so I switched and it's been great.

they offer some optimisations to the kernel and the packages that are supposed to yield a tiny bit better performance.

an incredibly small thing that rubs me the wrong way more than it probably should about their setup is that they set Plasma animation speeds to much higher values than the stock Plasma desktop uses. sure, it could be just a part of their customisation tweaks the same way using fish as the default shell is, but it feels like a cheap trick to reel in the "I installed it on my desktop and it's soooo much snappier" review kind of people. like, if your work is as good as you claim, you shouldn't need to artificially make the improvements seem bigger than they really are.

I started using linux full time about a year ago. I started with Arch, but moved to Cachy really quickly when I discovered it. All of the advantages of Arch, but repos optimised for modern hardware, and a whole heap of useful pre-configured tools, like Wine/Proton, fish, snapper etc. Arch is a bare bones, pick and configure your own setup rolling release distro. Cachy is a pre-optimised, rolling release distro with lots of useful stuff right out of the box.

I use the cachyos kernel on an otherwise plain arch setup. I don't game much, but I tried it out and just stuck with it.

I'm doing my part

I'm even running it on my Steam Deck.

<3

I'm on Slowroll though.

I’m here, and I’m proud! :-]

T U M B L E W E E D Master Race

Android uses the Linux kernel but none of the familiar "Linux" stack: GNU, X or Wayland, GTK or Qt, GNOME or KDE or other DEs, PulseAudio or PipeWire, APT or YUM or other package managers, and many others that define the Linux experience. Google could replace the Linux kernel with something else tomorrow without touching the rest of Android and most users won't tell, and many apps will run as-is.

Yeah, it is the most popular consumer OS

Then VR games will work at better than min specs. Trying hard to get off windows, mostly there. Except when streaming VR games, Kubuntu is my daily driver. All my flat games (like 8 of them) work flawlessly now that cloud is syncing. Just need drivers for one device and software for another but may just have to deal with the loss of a left hand kb, and 2 buttons on trackball.

I did get some useful looking apps recommended not long ago, not 1 will compile on my os and I am way to tired at the end of the work day to read read and read some more(I used to do more complex stuff 20 yrs ago but, well, I forgot most of what I knew. Why is "make" looking to github instead of the directory I am in?

Proton is is coming along great, I used to support Cedega to play win games before.

My prediction: Ten percent increase for Windows 11 with 25 percent still on 10 and barely an increase for Linux.

I hope I'm wrong.

AFAIK, this corresponds to the snap package of Steam.

I feel like Ubuntu has the greatest exposure among non-Linux folks. It's the only OS any place I've ever worked used on WSL back when I was still on windows. Probably a lot of corporate nerds want to stick to what's comfortable?

I have no idea if that's the reason, but Ubuntu and Mint are the only two distros I've tried for basically that reason. Heard good things about PopOS. Might try it some time if I wind up with an extra computer.

TF2 bots

Yeah I was asking myself the same question. But it looks like they've started doing an Ubuntu Core setup for the Steam Deck.

what if it's dedicated game servers?

i use mint btw

Mint is pretty much the best distro. It’s what I recommend to everyone.

Fedora or Bazzite (Fedora-based) are my top recommendations for new Linux users. I’m constantly surprised at Mint’s general popularity, especially for gaming. Even openSUSE Tumbleweed is a better option when it comes to gaming.

Also surprised about that. I use Nobara and that too is based Off Fedora.

yes

They did not use their brains enough.

Just use linux, it can do literally everything (via VMs) windows can; but better, faster and more customizable.

I mean, that's basically the same as Arch.

It is. The switch last year, coming from windows, was a bit rough but that's also partly due to the nvidia drivers. They got way better in the mean time. And then it's just learning how things work and how to troubleshoot if I do something stupid.

I've been thinking of switching back to Arch. Currently using Nobara, and its moved to rolling release anyway.

personally any Arch based distro is not great for beginners its alright for intermediate Linux users and great for advanced Linux users
but Arch based distros are the best for gaming cause newest packages and its quite easy to get game packages (especially when you put repos like Chaotic-AUR

No thanks. I'd like to keep full control over my operating system and only accidentally ruin it every few years.

The Year of the Linux Handheld on the Desktop

Definitely surprised to see it's such a low percentage that it was swept under the Other category.

In other

Pretty much the original comment that was here was wrong in every conceivable way, which I noticed after posting it. So I'll just post this instead.

Slide over a bit, I'll join you.....

 undefined

    
$ cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="Arch Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"
(...)


  

Because this is how distributions declare their names

Because that's people not using Arch Linux but "Arch Linux".

Just a guess, maybe those don't have explicitly set distribution names and are basically named by Valve themselves.

Debian is understandable since its packages are frozen for 2 Years

I'm sorry for your drivers

debian is bestian

I take it, you use arch?

We’re doing our part!

Can't you run it through Proton or Wine tricks at this point?

I wonder if it works on WINE i never tried it

Same here, for some reason my covid hobby was learning a new keyboard layout and while I now prefer using Dvorak, my attempts at remapping key bindings like cut/copy/paste on linux has has been unreliable at best, and then switching between Dvorak and QWERTY for games that don't support layout-agnostic controls usually doesn't even register (at least on the steam deck it doesn't seem to)

AutoKey might be what you are looking for

I hope you enjoy your time here in Linux land.

There are phone vendors like murena (not a manufacturer i think) who have some privacy OS preinstalled so you dont have a rooted phone that gets blocked for "privacy concerns"

If you are unsure if the apps you need work you can install waydroid on linux

IMO, mainly Valve.

Its because the Snap version of Steam Displays itself as Ubuntu Core to the Steam Client

once during summer i just stuck my pc out the window in a screened off porch, shoved the cables through the window, boom... no more heat :3