Even with the Windows 10 problems, more and more people stick with Windows.
I know Steam survey have it's flaws but checking that 91.35% of surveyd computers use Windows 10 (me wants puke) and only 0.78% use Linux, not too long ago, like 2 years, Linux was more than 2% , rising consistently and Windows 10 like 30%. Even OSX seem to be dropping every month.
I don't know what account for this stat change, maybe a huge invasion of eastern players on the stats but the truth is that without Steam, desktop Linux "gaming" would be close to death.

Let me add my personal note regarding Steam Stats. No freaking way, there are more personal computers with a RTX 2070 Super than there are with Rx580. I don't know any sales numbers, or even how eastern market works, maybe most Rx580 computers don't even have Steam installed or don't participate on the survey (on Windows I never did and never got a chance on Linux).
I understand the GTX1060 being the most used card, since it probably also includes laptop 1060's.

All in all, Linux is a good alternative but is not going to dominate the market in 10 years.


Edit: From Steam Survey: "Steam users with VR Headsets 1.70%"

I also use Linux exclusively now and so I only play games on Linux too.

It took me a long time to get here despite being from a CS background. Finding a distribution that I liked a lot (Fedora) and the growing proportion of games that run on Linux helped a lot. I still have a considerable number of games that I would struggle to get running on Linux.

But I'm at the stage now where I choose the games to play based on whether they work on Linux, rather than choosing my operating system based on whether they run my games.

For me having a secure, independent OS, without telemetry and "features" trying to lock you into certain software is the most important thing right now, given the state of the Internet and ever-present security issues.

Maybe I live in a bubble but overall I see less and less console gamers around me and even on the business end in NYC and LA (I travel often btw both locations). I'm talking before the pandemic, many stores that catered to consoles are closing if not already closed. LAN events have been PACKED for the last 4 to 5 years which I've not seen since 2003 to 2004. Even fighting game local events were starting to play off of computers vs consoles.

HP did an OMEN event in NYC in 2019 and they were a console section that had less than 10 ppl in total. The LAN section was 180+ with lines for the next open station going outside and down the block.

Now with the pandemic even OLDER MP computer titles have a influx of players. Even now with the new hardware drought hitting, I have more and more younger family members jumping on the computer vs their consoles (if they are not selling them outright).

Most games I have tried run very well in Linux out of the box. Just recently, I have installed Batman: Arkham City, AvP Gold, Deponia, Temple of Elemental Evil. All ran extremely well with no tweaking necessary.

Two that I did have some issues with recently are Metal Gear Solid and Commandos. Metal Gear Solid is a fairly poor PC port in the first place and Windows users have had stability issues with it. Commandos is an old game that has also caused issues for many Windows users. Both now run fine for me after some initial mucking about.

So, let's not forget that getting games to run in Windows easily isn't always a given. Even for the games that didn't run out of the box, my experience in Linux doesn't seem to have been any worse than for many Windows users. Also, older Windows games can be expected to run better in Wine than in newer versions of Windows.

I've exclusively used and gamed on Linux for about a year now. Super happy with it. Its DXVK/Wine performance hit (pretty minor) might be countered by lower ram usage/faster IO and cpu scheduler optimisations. Most benchmarks put the performance at very similar to win10.

The advances/evolution and the strides they make, even monthly, mean that even newer games start working soon after release to varying degrees.

I can't wait to see how awesome Linux gaming will be in a year from now. I can see ray-tracing, dx12 support, dlss for nvidia and VR all performing near or equal to windows.

Some games require a lot of tinkering to get optimally running though. But that should be no issue for Linux users. Hell, I tinkered a lot on win10 to get stuff running well too.

Currently I'm running Epic games by not launching the client at all, but doing it from commandline completely with a tool called 'legendary'. All in a separate Xserver session with a minimal window manager i3 and custom tk-Glitch's kernel, wine, and dxvk. My idle ram usage is about 1 gb before I start gaming, and other resource usage is also very low with basically nothing running in the background. Smooth sailing.

Hopefully.
The more oprions the better.

I used some logic why i stated that follows.

1.
anyone that follows a bit of news knows Microsoft stated that windows 10 is their final product they will not make a new windows in the future.

2.
the eco system of computers are changing Microsoft is pushing hard on cloud and (this ain't set in stone we customers choose how this will play out)

3.
software need ground work to innovate if Microsoft no longer remake windows it means Linux will overtake the market share do to simple innovation. you cant keep adding software on software this is not how it works.

4.
you already see Linux catching up on Microsoft their is almost zero reason to not use Linux over windows

5.
Linux is market leader on servers, you think what have this got anything to do with us customers
well if advanced AI Super sampling ever become a thing Linux would profit most of it.

6.
game devs are try to target the most market share so vulkan will be dominating in the future.
after all those on iOS are also targeted.

this is what i based it on.

Linux fans have been saying this for decades, not realizing how widespread Windows actually is. One look at market share is enough to see that it will probably be decades more before it even becomes competitive with it. If anything, they might be able to compete with OS X in the future.

Linux is my goto OS for anything that really matters.

I think it will always have a place among the IT crowd (it pretty much dominates the market, except for end-user devices) and among DIYers.

That being said, a couple things to keep in mind:

- Driver support for peripherals (especially the non-standard variety) occasionally lag behind, sometimes a lot, compared to Windows (because device manufacturers target Windows and the Linux community has to play catchup). For example, controllers tend to break with a lot of games on Linux. I don't see manufacturers fixing that until Linux become mainstream and I don't see Linux becoming mainstream until manufacturers fix that.

- Many people are already very familiar with the Windows way of doing things.

- You can do most things on Linux without the command line now, but not everything.
For example, when I download the GOG linux installer, I have to:

- chmod +x <the installer>
- ./<the installer>

If you are a techie or a DIYer, its not a problem, but if you are a casual user, this will lead to a major WTF moment (a friend was looking over my should at some point as I was typing those two basic commands to install my GOG game on my laptop and he thought I was doing some crazy out-there ultra technical stuff)

Furthermore, you might have troubleshoot missing dependencies sometimes in installers and find the right package for it.

Essentially, the problem with the Linux community is that the user base is very autonomous (at the very least, they can google stuff, parse out things that are dated and will no longer work, and type whatever answer they find on the command prompt)

What Linux would need at this point to become attractive to the mainstream for end-user devices would be:
- Having a small army of paid user-experience people getting seriously involved making built-in GUI tools for ANYTHING you may possibly want to do
- Having a small army of people paid to create and maintain drivers for all remotely popular non-standard kinds of hardware out there (until manufacturers pick up the slack, whenever that would be)

The closest we had to that was when Canonical was putting a lot of money in their Ubuntu desktop offering. Pretty much all other players sinking money into Linux cater to the software developer/server market.

1. yep it became a rolling release , that means it is constantly developed and changing , the only need for a new win if they want to change a lot in one go and updating slowly is costly
2. cloud yup thats the future , monthly subs and constant Internet
3. as in 1. linux wont overtake as ms can implement new things into win10 anyway and i bet there wont be many new things, maybe more cloud integration what else do you think an os should have in the future?
4. 0 reasons? nope there are plenty of apps/games which don't run well on linux
5. servers if thats true doesn't matter , our pc-s are mostly not servers , isnt that AI SS is already part of nvidia cards?
6. yep , hopefully as vulkan is better than dx12 at least thats what i heard

I think most file managers can do this already.

Dude, without servers, we'd be back into the stone ages. What you could do with your device without an internet connection is pretty limited.

The internet (and the servers running everything on it) adds tremendous value to your end-user experience.

Like it or not, Linux servers running stuff on the internet add tons of value to your Windows/MacOS/Android device.

If there is one OS that the world simply can't do without (whose loss would be the most catastrophic if it happened tomorrow), its Linux. Its just an unsung hero to a lot of people.

so is your linux running a server or not?
where did i say linux servers are wrong? it just doesn't matter for us end users if our os is the same as the servers os

btw half of the servers use win :P

Linux has been a better platform than Windows to run games on for more than 10 years already ;P
But sadly this is not how you become the dominant actor on a market.