Speaking of Linux, this OS family’s slice of the Steam Software Survey pie sits at 3.20%, with a not all that impressive 0.15% overall gain compared to the previous month.
Not impressive when you (deliberately?) use the absolute increase over one single month to minimize how fast the Linux share appears to be growing. If you look at its increase over approximately the last 5 years, there’s a significant and strong growth trend. November 2020 to November 2025, that’s ((3.2% - 0.9%) / 0.9%), which equals a 255% increase over that time frame. Not only is that solid growth, but the graph shows that this growth seems to be accelerating. Source for the numbers: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
You did a pet peeve of mine….
255% growth is really easy when the numbers are so small.
I worked at a place once where they were celebrating a new product because “it had 100% growth!” and ragging on another because it only had 0.5% growth and was obviously dying off.
Thing was, the product with 100% growth went from something like 200 to 400 customers, so it was technically 100%, and the 0.5% one added 800 customers but already had something like 160,000 customers so 200 customers would have been a rounding error to it.
My point is, don’t just focus on the percentages when you’re dealing with such large disparities, it can be disingenuous.
If Linux adoption was something of a single season, some sort of growth Linux community had in the “early 2020” your argument would be valid: you had a steady growth on Linux’s own name:
if in the 2020 Linux were 2 and.. in 2025 were were 20 = you had a 900% growthbut this is not what is happening, Linux isn’t growing on its own number, but on the number of the global PC gaming growth. New desktop/gaming PC are sold by default with Windows: it mean people don’t “choose” Windows, they simply come with the stuff they bought. Windows 11 “growth” is mostly like that: it’s not about a growth of users that willingly are choosing Windows. The very slow pace of decline of Windows 10 tell also that people is unwilling to buy into Microsoft experience… even if they are basically forced to: they also cannot chose Windows 10.
On the other side, every newcomers Linux userbase is an active and willing-fully choice: the fact that “new Windows 11” (aka: default new PC) is not restricting the Linux userbase which, on the contrary, is keeping up with the pace (no, it’s not “thanks” to steam deck also: the SD’s gpu stopped it’s growth as you can see in the Steam HW survey). These are the key elements:
-- PC gaming is growing, -- PC prebuilt market is slowing down (thanks to the ugly Windows 11) -- Windows 10 decline very slow (looks like used market and DIY rigs still attract the old "not ugly/AI" Windows 11) -- Linux is keeping the pace even tho the "pushing" of SteamDeck came to end.2.3 percentage points of growth is not all that small when talking about steam’s user base I think. and his point about acceleration is interesting, we might still be in the early phases of an s-curve.
personally though, as a 20-year Linux user I’m already gobsmacked by the number of new users and mainstream discussion around linux. if we never crack 5% that will already be more users than I ever thought Linux would get
Same boat, ~20-year user, really happy to see so much development around Linux. Great apps, environments, gaming, system light/dark mode, etc etc. Just enjoying the ride of it growing into a modern desktop.
My latest venture is Niri, which I think I’ll stay with for a long while if everything progresses in the right direction (or stays unchanged, it’s already great).
It’s pretty predictable, home users will refuse to upgrade, business will have to for compliance/insurance reasons
Microsoft offered me protection for another year and it didn’t cost me nothing. But I read they have a paid tier as well for support.
the paid scam is 30usd for a year of extended updates.
(the first year only, i’m guessing… if they did it like win7, the price will ramp-up year 2 and again year 3).
How is it a scam? They’re offering a service and asking for a price. It’s the same thing everywhere in software, if you want longer support you need to pay up.
Just turn ESU on with: https://massgrave.dev/
Granted it’s more effort but I recommend switching to LTSC at this point instead.
I think there’s a way of converting (first change to Enterprise, then LTSC) existing installs. I’ve only gone as far as Enterprise with MassGrave
I couldn’t say. I was having some recurring issues on my Pro installation so I was already set on doing a fresh install at the time so I downloaded the necessary ISO from MassGrave, backed up my stuff to an external and pulled the pin. There were some teething issues such as a couple of things I use needing the MS Store and I’m probably one of the few people who actually like Gamebar so figuring out how to install them to a version of Windows that wasn’t intended to have them was an interesting situation but I got there in the end.
If they want me to run Windows 11 then drop the specs as I am not buying a new computer. This one will either run Windows 10 until I die or it will run linux until I die. I am not buying a new computer at my age.
That’s IMO a big part of what’s different between the 7 transition and this one. Last time Microsoft was going around upgrading people’s computers for them, and even if people didn’t want to jump to 10 right away, they allowed Win 7, 8, and 8.1 keys to activate it pretty much whenever. Now with their hardware requirement, they’re official line is telling people without TPM that their hardware is junk when they stop supporting Win 10. That drove people to look for the better alternative Microsoft won’t tell you about.
I’m honestly amazed the windows 11 percentage is that high.
it was at 50 percent in aug 2024’s survey… that last 15 percent to 65 took over a year to achieve.
new systems came forced for a while now. you’d have to go out of your way to put 10 on and most can’t be bothered
I “upgraded” to 11 because of auto HDR, which does work quite well. I’m suspicious of this, however, and I’m sure that auto HDR should work just fine on 10, but they made it exclusive to 11. I knew I was being manipulated into switching but I was having lots of problems getting HDR to work on my machine.
Remember when DirectX 10 was exclusive to Windows Vista?
I can’t think of a single “feature” that Windows 11 brings that couldn’t easily be backported. I remember when 10 was new, there were actually major changes to the way certain things worked for the better and those were at least there to balance out any negatives.
With 11, all they did was add a fresh can of paint and bombard a series of garbage AI updates. AI features literally written by AI. I don’t know anyone who has a mentioned a single nice-to-have that wasn’t already in 10.
Why upgrade when you can get another year of updates? You don’t even have to have a MS account if you know what large rocks to look under.
Is there an official statement how long Steam will support and run on Windows 10?
I think they supported Windows 7 just until it became too much of a burden to do so. They dropped 7, 8, and 8.1 at the same time, January 1st 2024
They had to drop support because the chromium steam uses to display the store and many other things dropped support for those OS, so their hand was forced to fix security holes. I suspect a similar situation here - as long as the browser supports it, they will keep support for win10 alive.
They dropped 7, 8, and 8.1 at the same time, January 1st 2024
the actual ‘end of service’ dates for win7 (with the max 3 years esu) and 8/8.1 all occurred during the first half of 2023… so they gave a whole six months of extra life on those versions.
One point to consider: using Windows 7 after its end date was popular. Using Windows 8/8.1 after its end date was not.
it’s very surprising to me that the end of win7 was so close to win10’s end lol
Mass gives me years of safe use out of 10 ltsc iot and once that’s up I goto steamos.
I wouldn’t be so reluctant to upgrade if they didnt try to force onedrive down my throat. I do no want that shit.
That’s the least of it’s problems.
I mean it’s kind of a big problem that keeps popping back up with every update
It’s dead on my computers cos I dumped it for Linux
