This is me. Always Windows for my gaming computer and when I built a new one recently, I went full Linux. No regrets so far.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Same. Overall it's been a great experience, but it's had a few issues. Nothing making me even consider going back though
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the switch to linux felt like getting out of an abusive relationship
Linux is not a perfect rose-colored relationship but it's a mature one.
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I still run Windows on a rarely-used old laptop. Every time I use it, it reminds me how much that's true.
- Forcing you to reboot to install updates, sometimes interrupting a download or something just because it knows best
- Ads creeping in all over the place
- More and more "features" you don't want and never asked for
- AI being shoved in your face
- Surveillance everywhere
- Constantly trying to push you to use "Edge" instead of your chosen browser
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The July 2025 data shows that Windows' market share on Steam dropped by 0.44% while Linux's market share grew by 0.32%.
While okay this is growth, it's not exactly meteoric. Hopefully the trend picks up steam (cough) as the win10 EOL approaches.
Lots think the gamers will switch over as win10 gets to EOL. I don’t think so. Most gaming machines need to be more modern tomsupport modern games, so they will likely stick with windows and move to win11. I think Linux has a chance to convert many with older PCs, but they won’t be the gamers.
Hell I switched to Linux specifically because I refused to get W11. I do have to agree with you though, the average gamer probably won't switch to Linux unfortunately.
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I'm personally strongly considering switching when support for Windows 10 ends. I actually started testing the waters by installing Mint on an old netbook today. I game on PC, but the truth of why I'm considering changing is because I'm just sick of the crap with windows. Every new edition is just bigger, slower, filled with more bullshit. I'm just getting tired of disabling all the shit they want to force on me. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but of course this is just my personal experience.
I’m a gamer, and I ditched windows permanently early this year. shrug
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Well uh... if that is month to month growth...
A year at .32% growth works out to about 4% growth, if that is rate is sustained for a year.
That would be roughly a doubling of linux marketshare in a year.
I dunno .32% in a single month seems pretty significant. Obviously it's not like Windows is going to go the way of the dodo but it's looking like Linux may be taking a permanent piece of the pie where it had no staying power before.
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It's about half a million active users. So, yeah, a tiny city's worth.
Though things often start snowballing this way and Windows 10 end of life is likely see see a jump.
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Linux only gamer for 3+ years now. It is a good time for the penguins.
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I switched to Linux so I could spend $200 more on actual hardware for my build.
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Fuck microsoft. Fuck the Idea that everything needs to make a profit. Essential stuff should be publicly owned.
I want to nationalize seashores. It's unfair rich people privatized entire coastline.
Same with natural resources. WTF are they owned by corpos? Anything mined and drilled should be owned by all citizens
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People don't have a choice. Microsoft made W11 incompatible with a lot of hardware and Microsoft said, "lol, buy new hardware"
Giving nary a single fuck about whats best for their users.
I liked the comment going "Steam doesn't have data on PC gamers, only Steam gamers.", hinting at the seven gamers that stubbornly refuse to use Steam and still hunt for CDs, or old archives of shareware. They are people too dammit!
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The change is even more dramatic if you consider only those users who use English as their language in Steam. Also, Linux adoption rate has sped up this year. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ collects various data about Steam usage. One of the charts (screenshot below) show Linux market share among Linux/English users and overall Linux market share. I added the red line to demonstrate how I see the growth. There's only few data points this side of the year, so my drawing is most likely wrong, but the growth starts around March. The green line is at 4.8% in January and February and 6.31% in July, so a nice 30% increase within about 6 months among Linux/English users.
EDIT: The post is now more in line with reality. Couple more data points:
- Linux market share among all Steam Linux users has gone from 2.06% in January to 2.89% in July. That's a 40% increase within the first seven months only. And as another commenter said, the growth rate might increase towards the end of the year as more people starts abandoning Windows 10.
- The same numbers for last year are 1.95% in Jan '24 and 2.08% in Jul '24, which is only a 6% increase.
- But because the data is a bit jumpy, if I use approximate values of 1.75% for Jan '24 and 2.05 for Dec '24, the Linux market share increased by 17% in the entire last year.
- I'll stop now.
Considering how people love to delay things until the last minute, I expect it'll sharply rise in October.
I know this because I'm one of those people. Linux on several PCs and servers for years, but I've been too lazy to format & rebuild my gaming PC to get it off win10 and onto Linux.
You'll switch and then ask yourself why you waited so long.
I run Linux in English (because translated Unix looks weird) even though I'm not in or from an English speaking country. Sorry for skewing the stats.
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I'm really not far off. Once my Tiny11 install breaks, it's on to Bazzite.
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Are we going to make a big deal out of every 0.3% shift in steams stats towards Linux?
Wake me up when we're dealing in whole percentages.... That's when I'll be excited about it, until then this could just be a sampling bias. A rounding error.
Linux went from 2.59% to 2.89%, that's a 11.6% increase in the number of Linux users.
If it shifted .3% it would have went from 2.59% to 2.5977%.
The article is confusing 'percentage points' with 'percentage'
Another way of looking at it is that the Steam Linux user population went from ~3,418,000 users to ~3,814,000 users. So there are nearly 400,000 new Linux gamers.
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Doesn't really help that the AAA scene has gone straight in the shitter, while the quality games are all coming out of the Indie scene.
What Valve is doing is making it easier for indie Devs to better support Linux. They don't have the funds for separate Linux builds. But with proton, it's a pleasure to make it work. So... It's great that quality games are coming out of Indie studios and they can be played on linux. Fuck the AAA
It's good to see people making a switch to Linux. But the real tell will be in finding out how many of those people actually stick long term.
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author has never used desktop linux and doesn't really grasp what it is 😜
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Fuck windows, and copilot, and recall, and most especially OneDrive, and start menu ads, and unnecessary upgrades and ... And ... I gotta say I'm so much happier on Ubuntu, took me a little googling on some stuff and proton is still finicky sometimes, but man o man is it nice to have an OS which does what I tell it to.
I'm currently configuring my new linux dev/gaming machine. Thanks for giving me the push I needed, Microsoft!
Been on gaming kn Linux for a while now. Overall with Steam and Proton I rarely have any issues.
If the survey hit for me 1 week from now I'd be on Linux, I'm literally setting my system up properly next Saturday
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switched to arch 7 or so months ago because of the recall spyware breaking the camels back. havent looked back since, i shouldve switched sooner i actually like using my computer now!
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I don't plan on moving to spyware11. just too lazy to reformat and start from scratch on everything so haven't made the jump yet.
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I am moving over once win10 support ends and it starts to cause friction for me.
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