alt Hacker NewsAs much as I hope it to be mass exodus, and as someone who switched over to CachyOS as my main OS in Nov 2025, I'm not sure that 3% of the steam user base really qualifies as a 'mass' exodus.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Linux-gaming-growth-SteamOS-sh...
Going back to my Windows install every now and then to do things feels uncomfortable. Almost like I'm sullying myself! The extent of Microsoft's intrusiveness kind of makes it feel like entering a poorly maintained public space...at least compared to my linux install.
I'm not sure that the majority of people feel this way about Windows 11. They just put up with it in the same way as they do YouTube ads, web browsing without ublock origin, social media dark patterns etc. But certainly, never been a better time I think to move to linux for my kind of user, i.e. the only mildly technologically adept.
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> I'm not sure that 3% of the steam user base really qualifies as a 'mass' exodus.
Major tech reviewers are talking about Bazzite. Reddit gaming forums are full of people talking about Win11 vs Linux.
Microsoft only has two strangle holds on PCs - gaming and office apps. For home users they literally have 0 lock in now days other than familiarity. No one is writing native windows apps outside of legacy productivity apps and games. Even Microsoft is writing Windows components in React now days.
I moved to Linux earlier this year and literally none of my apps were unavailable. Everything is a browser window now days.
15 years ago that would've been crazy, I had tons of native windows apps I used every day.
Yeah but which 3%? It's important.
There are a lot of Steam gamers with 5 games in their library who log on once a month. There are a few Steam gamers with 5000 games in their library who are permanently logged in. There's folks who play one game obsessively, and folks who tinker around with many games.
I'm willing to bet that the 3% are the kind of people who buy a lot of games.
I'd love to see that "what percentage of games have been bought by people on which platform?" metric. I think it'd be a lot more than 3% on Linux, even if you count Steam Deck as a separate platform.