There’s been a sharp upswing of the Linux percentage in the last year or so which cannot be explained just by Steam. Steam’s popularity definitely contributes to a continuous rise but it’s usually a steady rise.
And it’s not so far-fetched that people are growing dissatisfied with Windows. Everybody’s been complaining about the ads and the AI.
Everybody here.
I have literally not heard a single person in real life complain about it. I work in a tech field where people largely use Windows for work. Not a one. We talk about nerdy stuff all the time, it hasn’t come up.
I genuinely don’t think people around here get how much of a bubble this weird “OSs as sports teams” stuff is.
As for the impact of the Steam Deck, we can actually cross-reference to estimate it by looking at the GPU numbers. Of that Linux blob, the Deck should account for 0.8% of the total, so that leaves desktop Linux proper at 1.52%. The Deck launched in February 2022. The last survey before the Deck launched had Linux at 1.11%, so that gives you a 0.41% increase. That’s not insiginificant, but… you know, it’s still pretty small.
