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Linux surpasses the Mac among Steam gamers

(arstechnica.com)
433 points Sporktacular | 1 comments | 04 Aug 23 00:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.251s | source
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015a ◴[04 Aug 23 05:12 UTC] No.36995730[source]▶
> But before you declare this a triumphant moment for desktop Linux, it's important to note that some of these Linux users are not, in fact, using Steam on a desktop. The Linux version "SteamOS Holo" 64-bit is the most popular reported, at just over 42 percent of the Linux slice of pie. That indicates that a huge portion of these Linux users are actually playing on Valve's Steam Deck portable, which runs Linux.

There's such a deep seeded, systemic bias against linux that it actually can never win, to any degree or magnitude, because the moment it starts winning we just move the goal-posts for the flimsiest of reasons to ensure it can't quite claim that victory.

Linux is obviously and clearly the most popular operating system kernel on the planet. Oh, no, that's no good a measure, servers are messy, let's refine it to most popular consumer operating system kernel? Oh... it, could also reasonably claim that title? No no, no Android, that doesn't count. Nope, No Chrome OS either, you can't have that, that's, well, that is linux, but its not. Just nice, pure, desktop linux, yes, perfect, arch linux, kde desktop, that'll never trend up and thus is the perfect new-new definition of desktop linu--wait hold up, I'm getting word this is, not possible, its actually SteamOS? Nope, kill it, that's not desktop linux either, kill it.

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1. SllX ◴[04 Aug 23 07:19 UTC] No.36996545[source]▶
> There's such a deep seeded, systemic bias against linux that it actually can never win

Probably the reason it can never “win” is because it’s an operating system kernel. It’s software.

You know what can win? People. Companies. In competition with each other. The Linux Foundation wins all the time when it gets contributions of code, money and capital. Valve wins all the time when people buy Steam Decks. Microsoft wins all the time when someone spins up a Linux server instance on Azure. Users when all the time when their Linux systems do the things they want it to.

But yeah, Linux never wins. Never can, never will. The same is true for Windows and Mac OS X and FreeBSD though, and postulating that a piece of an operating system code base can “win” or “lose” is the linguistic trap that sniped millions of nerds for over three decades. There’s no scorekeeper in this game.