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this can happen if you've got very recent hardware.

Or simply recent enough, say latest generation of AMD GPUs that have minimum requirements that distros like Mint often don't supply by default. My point is that I find it a bit counter productive to recommend such distros for newcomers from Windows, since it results in them having problems.

On the other side of it, the trade off of rolling distros is the need to learn more stuff, but I think such trade off is worth it and that's not time wasted.

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I remember the gameplay in this game feeling... seriously disorienting for some reason. SS1 both felt old-school PC, and this one was a jump into more of a console feel to me. Maybe a odd in-between at best. One day I'll go back to it, but it most likely won't be through a gamepad.

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I periodically see a bunch of people complaining that their hardware doesn't work, which ends up being them using Mint which doesn't ship recent kernel and Mesa.

This can happen if you've got very recent hardware. You don't get anything newer than Ubuntu's HWE kernels via the kernel manager UI, and Mesa is whatever Ubuntu LTS ships. My own solution is to install latest Mesa from Kisak's PPA and the kernel from Xanmod. Only takes a couple of minutes to set these up, but it's not something I'd expect a complete Linux newbie to do, obviously.

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From what I gathered Bazzite is a very specific distro, it's not general purpose. So I'm not surprised it's more niche than general purpose Arch.

Not everyone uses computers only for gaming, I'd imagine majority actually uses them for everything, and gaming is just one use case among many.

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I'm surprised CachyOS and even Arch(?!) actually scores higher than Bazzite! You'd think that Bazzite being more user-friendly would score higher... seems like Linux gamers are more tech-savvy than I thought!

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Microsoft edit was released this year.

Ok you got a link to the article?

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Very excited for this game to just stop working in a future version of windows because of how they choose to prevent wine from working this time around 😂😂😂

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🥳🍾🐧💾

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[https://files.catbox.moe/nogivi.png](https://files.catbox.moe/nogivi.png)

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That's why I said Debian testing / unstable, not Debian stable.

My bad! :)

Mint which doesn't ship recent kernel

The version numbers might seem dated, by mind that Ubuntu based distros maintain these kernels for a longer time and backport newer features.

Also, I think KDE is a better fit for modern gaming features

I love KDE Plasma, really. Only reason why I didn't switch is because Cinnamon is "good enough" for the time being, and my requirements of DE features aren't all that high. Wayland is not required in any shape or fashion for gaming as of today. I'd notice if it were (still not using it). ;)

it's more stable than Arch

Anything is. ;)

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Mint user here. I think that's because for gaming, Mint is a great compromise. Debian's ultimate focus is stability, which makes it a fantastic choice for servers, but in gaming, you often want components that aren't quite that old. It still doesn't randomly break your stuff, unlike rolling release distros

That's why I said Debian testing / unstable, not Debian stable. Such kind of approach (whether in Mint or Debian stable itself) can cause problems too unless people understand its limitations.

I periodically see a bunch of people complaining that their hardware doesn't work, which ends up being them using Mint which doesn't ship recent kernel and Mesa.

Rolling flavors of Debian are a better fit in my opinion.

Also, I think KDE is a better fit for modern gaming features, due to Cinnamon being way slower in supporting Wayland. Having focus on its own DE and not keeping up with the times is a downside for Mint. Even Ubuntu stopped its own DE efforts for that reason.

irc every more or less official Debian related place tells you not to use those unless you really know what you're doing

You should know what you are doing no matter what you are using. That's my experience. I'd say Debian testing/unstable isn't any worse than a bunch of other rolling distros, like Arch or what not. If anything, it's more stable than Arch. Those who say not to use it are doing a disservice.

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Valve needs to drop the GabeCube2. If you could buy the GC2 in the brick and mortar stores, especially now with the Windows debacle going on currently. It's a good time for Valve to grab some easy market share.

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I'm surprised in general that Linux Mint is ahead of Debian (testing / unstable)

I would be surprised if something that is explicitly unstable was significantly popular. Iirc every more or less official Debian related place tells you not to use those unless you really know what you're doing in a way that makes Arch or Fedora much more appealing if you want fresh packages

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I'm surprised in general that Linux Mint is ahead of Debian (testing / unstable)

Mint user here. I think that's because for gaming, Mint is a great compromise. Debian's ultimate focus is stability, which makes it a fantastic choice for servers, but in gaming, you often want components that aren't quite that old. It still doesn't randomly break your stuff, unlike rolling release distros.

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Literally what I rejoined Steam for. Glad I could be part of the big 3.00% percent push.

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I'm surprised in general that Linux Mint is ahead of Debian (testing / unstable).

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I'm glad that the Steam Deck only makes up a fraction of the userbase.
Once marketshare is high enough for more multiplayer games, it makes limiting support just to the Steam Deck hardware much less viable. That is definitely a risk as seen with games like Delta Force.
But if the trend continues, they'll have to support a wide range of hardware and distros.
Let's keep climbing.

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Interesting that MacOS usage went up as well, been a while since that's happened.

It's been trending back up since around the start of the year.
https://i.ibb.co/tT3g0WT7/Combined.png
It's a smidge behind non-Deck Linux.

A bigger non-Windows share (above 5% for the first time since 2013) is a good thing for encouraging multi-platform development and support, although Apple makes it harder than it needs to be with their refusal of Vulkan, and harder than it used to be when OpenGL would work on Windows, Linux and Mac.

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Interesting that MacOS usage went up as well, been a while since that's happened.

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I guess Debian is pushed in to "other" category because Debian 13 is new and the userbase is now split between Debian 12 and Debian 13.

Also please split the linear approximation in pieces (Steam Deck release is a good mark)

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To the Moon!

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@AsciiWolf

OpenRazer is great, but sadly still unusable in immutable systems because of the very custom udev rules and other system-wide changes needed.

Like on the Steam Deck?

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(now known as Welcome to Basingstoke)

Wise decision. Understandably, the town proper gets priority on many a search engine when searching without the "welcome to".

it's criminally neglected, probably because of the original asking price

It is on sale now on gog until 05/11/2025. Methinks that they moved to the other extreme with that silly low sales price of €2.

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This is simply not true anymore and you need to update your sources. It was true maybe 5 years ago but today the difference between native packages,

Microsoft edit was released this year.

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Speaking as an owner of a RX 6800 I'm not very worried that RDNA 2, the same chip that's in two consoles and the Steam Deck, will loose support.

"New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs in the maintenance mode branch," an AMD spokesperson told [Tom's Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/amd-clarifies-that-rdna-1-and-2-will-still-get-day-zero-game-support-and-driver-updates-discrete-gpus-and-handhelds-will-still-work-with-future-games)

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Picked this up after reading your article and it is really good! Quite a lot of strategic depth, varied missions, and nice map design. One of those "simple to learn, hard to master" kind of games. Worked out-of-the-box on desktop Linux, but apparently limited controller support so might not be great for Steam Deck.

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Are there benchmarks of old nVidia GPUs comparing old & new drivers with new games? Is nVidia actually still optimizing games for old GPUs, say 1080 or 2080?

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Partial Controller Support
* Xbox Controllers

I really need "Full Controller Support" to be happy on a Steam Deck.

There are many games from the 2000s to 2010s I play a lot on Steam Deck, but what they have in common is that they have Full Controller Support.

It puts a dent in the fun when you constantly notice you are playing a game that was never designed for your device -- it makes it impossible to be immersive.

I think Serious Sam could stand to gain a lot of ground and fortify their cult following by giving some some tender loving care and quality updates to their most famous old games.

Plus a few bucks to buy into a franchise pushes sales of later games. People have a tendency to want to collect.

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Its still a slap in the face, its anti consumer and planned obsolescence.. They have apparently backtracked to say those older cards will still get optimisation, fixes etc based on market needs

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Maybe they're taking the same route as Microsoft is taking with Windows 11. Sorry but in order to receive driver updates you have to buy a new GPU from us.

Anyway, it's another...

Linux Wins!

Flawless Victory!

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