I recently played Age of Empires 4 on Bazzite on a Framework and I was surprised at how well everything worked. I didn't have to wade through a forest of permission dialogs and popups. Compared to macOS, Steam even opened up faster.

The minor things were wonky default graphics and mouse acceleration settings, but these were easily fixed from the game menus.

For me I have been enjoying bazzite os

Whoa, I thought Ubuntu was the most popular distribution. Arch and even Linux Mint are beating it?

Again, I should mention that Linux users usually only see the survey once a year, if you want to get the survey once a month (like it does on windows), you have to close steam monthly and edit your config.vdf file to set the survey date to last year.

I’m using steam on Ubuntu 24.04 with 9y old hardware (which was mid-tier when new), playing mostly 2d platformer games and older resident evil titles. Never had any issues, this setup runs like a champ

Recently, I had to switch from Windows 11 to macOS at work. While the MacBook's hardware is truly impressive, the desktop experience is so poor that I wonder how you are supposed to use it.

At least it reminded me of why I like my KDE Plasma desktop so much. And then I wonder why people are talking about the year of the Linux desktop, because in my experience, Linux already offers the best desktop experience.

As a Steam game developer I don’t think I can ever forgive Linux for being 1% of our players but 50% of our support tickets. I probably shouldn’t hold a grudge, but I do!

I suppose it’s probably better in 2025 now that the best API for Linux gaming is Win32. Proton is genuinely spectacular.

I love my Steamdeck. SteamOS is great. Supporting one distro is easy. It’s supporting a million unique permutations that is pure nightmare fuel.

It is always with great fear and trepidation that I install the drivers for my discrete GPU on my Ubuntu system and configure the system to use it. The state of affairs might be better these days, but I remember it rarely working and having a high likelihood of horribly breaking the configuration, and trying to rectify it in the terminal while frantically searching forums on my phone.

I was tired of sound stuttering on windows in expedition 33, nothing helped. Installed bazzite, issue almost solved. Game works much better.

These things go slowly an then all at once. The catalyst will be one or a few of the AAA November titles shipping with Linux support. That will eliminate most of the gaming crowd's last reason to cling to Microsoft.

It may even kill console gaming because the Steam Deck is already a fantastic experience just waiting for more games. It's not a small demographic either, it's something like 40% of males age 18-35, plus all of the people in their circles who come to them for tech support. Once market share gets up to 30% or so it becomes a cool trend, that other gamers want to emulate, streamers and influencers get involved. Then around 50% market share the bullying starts. "Windows is for people too stupid to figure out Linux" says a Linux Mint enjoyer to a Windows 11 plebian.

Valve has done a great job getting things started, but it's the studios' turn to make a move now.