11 years ago this month GOL was created, Happy Birthday to GamingOnLinux

11 years ago this month on July 5, the GamingOnLinux website was created and what an absolutely insane ride it's been. It's truly difficult to fully comprehend how far Linux and Linux Gaming has come in this time.

From the rise and fall of LinuxGamePublishing, Humble Indie Bundles, the indie store Desura rising and falling, Steam and GOG started supporting Linux, itch.io grew much bigger, the Vulkan API being formally released, to Steam Machines, SteamOS, Steam Play, the slow rise of game streaming services and more. We've seen such a huge amount of ups and downs over the years. We plan to continue going for the next 11 years and beyond too! So we hope you will stick with us for daily Linux + Gaming news.

Our growth has been pretty spectacular over the last year, as traffic continues ticking up and followers pouring in across social media channels. Twitter especially saw quite a big bump over the year! Here's a reminder of where you can follow us: Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, Steam Group, Steam Curator, Mastodon, Discord, Telegram News, Telegram Chat, JoinDiaspora*, IRC and Matrix (which is bridged with the IRC).

The website as a whole has been through some big adjustments this year too. To sum up some fun stuff: a dark theme switcher with automatic detection, multiple improvements to page load speed, our Steam Play page, our continually expanding Crowdfinding Page, our Steam Tracker got a nice trend-line, we started covering more Linux distribution news after a great many requests, upgraded our server RAM due to increased traffic, started using a dedicated Digital Ocean Spaces for in-article media to help handle the load, our login system had security overhaul and upgrade, we added per-category RSS feeds for articles, expanded our notification system across the Forum and so much more that's impossible to condense down here. We're constantly working to improve and expand.

A reminder whilst you're here: we're entirely funded by our readers. If you wish to support us, it would be appreciated. You can find all ways to do so on the dedicated Support Us page but here's a few quick links:

• Patreon - Best way for regularly monthly support and rewards.
• Paypal - Best way for irregular donations, also supports monthly subs.
• Liberapay
• Flattr
• Twitch - Amazon Prime gives you a free Twitch sub but you need to re-do it each month.
• Ko-fi
• Brave browser users can also send BAT

You can also buy games using our affiliate/partner links, which is incredibly helpful:

• GOG
• Humble Store/Humble Bundles

Don't forget if you need some Linux or Linux + Gaming help to pop on over to the GOL Forum. It's had lots of tweaks over the last year, including per-forum RSS feeds you can follow which is super handy for following exactly what you want.

How to end such an article? That's always the hard part. I'll just say: thank you. Thank you for reading, for being here, for the comments, correction reports against my often hilarious spelling and most of all—your wonderful support overall through the years. It's a true pleasure to run GOL.