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Linux surpasses the Mac among Steam gamers

(arstechnica.com)
433 points Sporktacular | 2 comments | 04 Aug 23 00:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | 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. egypturnash ◴[04 Aug 23 13:44 UTC] No.36999939[source]▶
This is in reference to a meme that has been around since the days when Slashdot was the king of tech news sites. "The Year Of Linux On The Desktop" has been just around the corner for all this time and is still not here.

Or is it? Whether or not we have come close to TYOLOTD depends on how you define "The Desktop". If "The Desktop" is a metaphor for "the hands of the non-specialist user who doesn't even call their device 'a computer" then yeah, it's doing great. The Deck is a major step forwards in that, it wraps up Steam's entire catalog of Windows games into a nice little bubble of virtualization that varies in seamlessness depending on how new the game is.

If you define it as a desktop computer, it's nowhere near that. Most people who sit down at a a desk with a large screen to do work that involves multiple windows and a mouse pointer are still sitting in front of a box that's running Windows or MacOS. Those two operating systems still dominate that domain, as well as the world of people popping open a laptop to do windows-and-pointer work away from their office.

Linux keeps nibbling at that domain, and the work Valve did on their fork of WINE to get fifty bazillion Windows games running on this handheld Linux device is probably going to help take some bigger bites. But what do people go buy when they want A Computer? When you answer that with "Linux", that's The Year Of Linux On The Desktop.

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2. fsflover ◴[04 Aug 23 13:55 UTC] No.37000094[source]▶
> But what do people go buy when they want A Computer? When you answer that with "Linux", that's The Year Of Linux On The Desktop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36892852