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Proton to Lepton? What kind of particle physics-themed naming is that?? Well, I suppose Electron was already taken. And it's probably too late to rename Proton to Baryon…touché, Valve.

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It's not entirely clear what Valve uses to sort the Linux list, as distributions seem to randomly flick in and out of it each month.

Checking back for the past few months: it appears to be sorting distros by percentage, from most to least, then showing the top 13 or 14. If it just shows the top N results every month, then the natural variation in sampling would cause distros to jump in and out of the list depending on how well sampled they got each month.

For instance, Debian 12 (Bookworm) is 2.27% in April, 1.98% in June, 1.96% in July, then drops off the survey until this month where it reappears as Debian 13 (Trixie) at 1.58%. Obviously there's some noise in those numbers, but Trixie was released November 15 last year so I suspect this reflects an underlying trend of people slowly upgrading their systems over the intervening year*, causing the share of Bookworm to drop low enough for Debian to disappear from the list for a few months until Trixie had accumulated enough users for it to show up again. But it could also drop again next month if some other distro with a similar number of actual users gets better represented in the random sampling, who knows. That's my guess, anyway.

*I sat on the upgrade from 11 to 12 for almost a year because it came out right before I moved internationally, then my computer was in transit for 5 months (COVID…), then I just didn't have the brainspace for it for a while, so I get it.

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Quoting: spymastermattI'm looking forward to Valves next project... Electron.. err Neutron?
Whatever the name is, I'd love to see a counterpart to Proton, allowing devs to natively target Linux but still let their games run on Windows via a compatibility layer

And Mac. It would probably be easiest to do with WebAssembly and WebGPU.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismIn the near future, possibly the year 2030, you will not be allowed to own a modular computer as we know it now.

Quoting: walther von stolzingThe relative 'openness' of the x86 PC platform really was a historical accident, the result of IBM scrambling to make a late entry to the 'micro market'; and they did try to take some measures against it, but failed ultimately.

To be fair, we are already extremely lucky that the IBM open PC architecture (for the young'ns, that is the ATX and subsequent *TX form factor standard layouts) is still in use today. The IBM open PC architecture, devised in the 80s! Still in use in 2025! That is incredible staying power.

If you'd asked me whether *TX desktops would still be popular in the 2020s, even as recent as 2015, I would probably have pessimistically thought "no way!". My reasoning would have been the relative surging popularity of mobile phones as primary devices. But here we are. I can drive to a store and purchase *TX standards compliant parts of just about any variety.

With that in mind, I'd say let's not be so pessimistic. May the open PC architecture stick around for another 3-4 decades yet.

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Not too unlike Nvidia and their efforts with their kernel driver / Nova. Baby steps are being taken and it will take a long time yet for them to earn my trust.

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I hope the RISC-V and HomeLab/Modders are paying attention, because compute is about to be dramatically reduced due to the strangulation on price of electricity, and economic warfare against the peasants.

The direction that RISC-V and ARM seem to be moving in also support the notion that locked-down systems will be replacing today's PCs. Both of those platforms appear to require a ton of proprietary extensions to be able to serve as the CPU of a PC. That doesn't bode well at all for the (farther) future of desktop Linux, needless to say.

The relative 'openness' of the x86 PC platform really was a historical accident, the result of IBM scrambling to make a late entry to the 'micro market'; and they did try to take some measures against it, but failed ultimately.

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Damn. The two 16GB kits of DDR5 RAM in my PC that I built back in 2023 are Crucial; they've been unavailable for months, I noticed. Between that, and the two 2TB SATA SSDs from Crucial I've bought in the past two years, I really lucked out not needing to buy any components this year.

Crucial was a good brand. This is absolutely a shitty situation for consumers.

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Quoting: mr-victoryThey believed they were doing HDD optimizations, but they figured out the optimizations had no effect because loading speed was not I/O bottlenecked. So they chopped off all duplications. A lot of them apparently.

The age-old mistake of premature optimisation...

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@Eike

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ElectricPrismIn the near future, possibly the year 2030, you will not be allowed to own a modular computer as we know it now.

That's nonsense.
I offer a bet for 100€ to be paid on 1.1.2031.

"as we know it now."

2005 is unlike 2025

Gone:
☑ Removable Batteries on Laptops and Phones
☑ Optical CD/DVD/HD/BluRay Drive on Laptops
☑ Ethernet Port in many cases gone necessitating USB-C Hub
☑ Anything outside a single USB-C
☑ Removable MicroSD Storage on Phones
☑ Ability to open devices with a screwdriver, Screens are glued.
☑ Increasing un-affordability of Modular PC Parts eg: after 29 years in business, this article: "The RAM price and availability situation is going to worsen as Micron pull their Crucial consumer business"
☑ RAM Soldered to Silicon
☑ Phones, Tablets, and Laptops as SBC where no parts are removable or replaceable, or difficult to repair

Some tech people have "Stockholm Syndrome" for Big G, Big A, or Big M.

If we don't demand moldularity, consumers will no longer able to mix and match hardware outside of niche hobbyist markets.

Now if you'd like to move the goal post, go ahead. The facts are the facts regardless of arguments, opinions and speculations -- things are not getting better, they're getting worse, again the compute world especially with regard to modularity in 2030 will not be "as we know it now."

The RAM situation is bad enough, just imagine what your power bill will look like as AI eats needs double the power output we currently have now and everyone got the genius idea to shut down their nuclear and coal.

The West is cooked.

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This has actually the potential to be the best news ever for Steam gaming - depending on what Valve has negotiated with their distributors.

Nobody is able to buy PCs & RAM usage of games must be frozen at status quo - the Steam machine suddenly looks interesting.

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Quoting: TightRope

Quoting: ChuckaluphagusI've bought Crucial RAM for decades, and quite a few Crucial SSDs over the past fifteen years. A shame to see it go.

I have bought Crucial products for decades and they were always reliable. Too bad I will have to switch to another brand.
How many people will go back to Crucial when the bubble finally bursts and they need real customers? This is probably a bad long term business decision.

Yeah I was thinking how I've always liked their products, I have a few crucial ssd

But when/if they come back into consumer market it will make me think twice about my purchase

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@Pyrate

Black Mesa is for fans who have already experienced the games for what they are.

Yes and no. I agree Black Mesa is definitely for fans of the series and IMO the superior way to play the OG campaign. I'd argue if someone had a mild interest in playing HL1 (they want to experience the story because they've always heard so much about it or they're new to gaming), advise they play Black Mesa. If they're the type of gamer who enjoys or tolerates older games, play HL1.

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strategic customers in faster-growing segments

So, try to make a quick buck and when these "strategic customers" stop buying, or outright won't honor existing orders/payments, blame whatever and disappear. Gotcha. Sounds like a great plan for a business.

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Quoting: ChuckaluphagusI've bought Crucial RAM for decades, and quite a few Crucial SSDs over the past fifteen years. A shame to see it go.

I have bought Crucial products for decades and they were always reliable. Too bad I will have to switch to another brand.
How many people will go back to Crucial when the bubble finally bursts and they need real customers? This is probably a bad long term business decision.

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Quoting: 3zekiel

Quoting: ExplosiveDiarrheaGood, x86 has to go away.

I know not many of us have to go that low, but for those who have to, x86 is nice.

Thanks for your interesting write up. From what I heard I always thought x86 asm is a mess. Nice to hear other opinions.

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Quoting: hardpenguin

Steam Phone? You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, Steam Tablet or Steam Car.

Or even a Steam Locomotive!

Steam Yacht!

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I just pulled the trigger last week on the back of this news and spent £2k on a full new build before all hardware prices inevitably skyrocket. I managed to get a corsair 32GB (2X16) DDR5 CL30 kit for £200. This same kit was only £100 a week or so earlier and is now retailing for £389 as of this evening.

That reminds me, I need to update my system info. The system specs I built are below for those that are interested.

HVN HS 420 case
Artic Freezer 3 420 AIO with a set of Be Quiet Case fans.
9950X3D
ASUS Hero X870E
Corsair 32GB Ram kit.
1200w Power Supply
I migrated my current 7900XTX GPU to my new system

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Once games didn't need to come on disks developers basically stopped caring.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismIn the near future, possibly the year 2030, you will not be allowed to own a modular computer as we know it now.

That's nonsense.
I offer a bet for 100€ to be paid on 1.1.2031.

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I did hear criticism that you need MS Visual C++ Studio to build the binaries and that there is no guarantee pull requests are granted that allow you to build outside of Windows, fair argument. We'll see.

I try to be fair, credit where credit due, they seem to be pivoting to a direction via the MIT license that makes them grow into something valuable.

At this point my reaction isn't pessimistic, but not really more than mildly optimistic. If they get a good track record for a few years I will expect great things to come from this.

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"But I mean do we really need memory?"

In the near future, possibly the year 2030, you will not be allowed to own a modular computer as we know it now.

All data & compute will be centralized in the Mega Centers under central control and your device will only be a low powered screen you use for content consumption.

They will say it's for the environment, they will say it's for the children, they will say it's because scarcity and ewaste, but really it will be because centralized control means power, and is a means to an end.

I hope the RISC-V and HomeLab/Modders are paying attention, because compute is about to be dramatically reduced due to the strangulation on price of electricity, and economic warfare against the peasants.

I hope people have enough GOG, education materials & offline content stockpiled and are pushing the hardware frontiers that mean tech freedom for humanity.

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The Memory Mafia (Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology) are behind this. In February of this year they were on the news saying they will reduce production, because there was oversupply and market prices were too low. So they created this scarcity to make prices go up. I hope they rot in hell.


https://www.techspot.com/news/106815-nand-flash-weak-demand-oversupply.html

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This crappy news makes me consider buying RAM "just in case!" 🙄

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Knowing my luck my ram next year will fail and I'll be unable to replace it :-/

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Quoting: XpanderWLets hope everyone who has their current PCs, don't run into any issues that they need to buy new SSDs/nvmes or RAM before the prices will get back to normal levels.

Yeah, that's the main thing that worries me. My PC's pretty ancient by now, and I've been thinking about doing some upgrades over the past few years, but I've had a string of family emergencies which have prevented me from even really having the brainspace to consider it. Now that things are stabilized the prices are just awful. Fortunately there's really not much that I'm even interested in which would necessitate PC upgrades, but eventually a component's gonna go. Ah well, c'est la vie! I suppose when we're all jockeying for a position in the water riots, system upgrades will be the last thing on our minds. :D

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I've bought Crucial RAM for decades, and quite a few Crucial SSDs over the past fifteen years. A shame to see it go.

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Quoting: AndrewWI was really hoping this year to get a ten-year gaming PC that can carry me happily through my backlog. Guess that's not happening.

Same, but I decided to just bite the bullet and get a new machine before RAM prices get insane (I'm actually getting 'high-performance' RAM with a discount compared to regular RAM for whatever reason, so I'm getting in while the getting's good).

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From their press release "Thanks to a passionate community of consumers, the Crucial brand has become synonymous with technical leadership, quality and reliability of leading-edge memory and storage products. We would like to thank our millions of customers, hundreds of partners and all of the Micron team members who have supported the Crucial journey for the last 29 years.”

As a thanks to their passionate community of consumers they're giving us the middle finger. Difficult decision my arse, they're simply focusing on securing AI deals before others. I'm aware it's just good business for them, I'm disappointed because I bought several crucial ram over other brands.

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Wonderful news... Thanks AI /s

Hope this bubble will burst soon enough and things can return to normal.
Lets hope everyone who has their current PCs, don't run into any issues that they need to buy new SSDs/nvmes or RAM before the prices will get back to normal levels.

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As a consumer, not only did I not notice getting chopped, I hadn't even realized I was made of liver!

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