Once again, someone misreports the number. It’s not 6% of desktop OS market share. It’s 6% of all OS market share. There’s about 50-50 split between desktop and mobile OSes, which means the correct desktop market share of Linux, according to that site, is 12%.
If more people are using steam deck and ditch their windows PCs for it, it’s not an OS choice. It’s a choice to move to consoles.
They might have as well moved to Windows handheld or Nintendo Switch. They specifically chose the only Linux handheld on the market.
[Steam Deck] can be used by the same unskilled people who use android or iPhone. So, one core requirement I think people need to have to install any other os is not met or even trained, which is actual knowledge about computers.
Why is this a core requirement with Linux only? There are millions and millions of Windows users who have never installed an OS. Sounds gatekeeping to me.
The change is even more dramatic if you consider only those users who use English as their language in Steam. Also, Linux adoption rate has sped up this year. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ collects various data about Steam usage. One of the charts (screenshot below) show Linux market share among Linux/English users and overall Linux market share. I added the red line to demonstrate how I see the growth. There’s only few data points this side of the year, so my drawing is most likely wrong, but the growth starts around March. The green line is at 4.8% in January and February and 6.31% in July, so a nice 30% increase within about 6 months among Linux/English users.
EDIT: The post is now more in line with reality. Couple more data points:
Thanks for pointing that. For some reason, I thought CachyOS is immutable.
Bazzite and CachyOS are most often recommended gaming distros. Both are immutable Bazzite is immutable. Bazzite is based on Fedora and CachyOS is based on Arch.
Unreal Engine for Linux is a thing so that shouldn’t be a problem.
That site shows OS usage on all platforms, mobile and TV included. If you select “current calendar year” as the time frame (to smooth out short term changes), the total desktop OS (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS) usage is about 50%, Linux usage is about 6%. 6% out of 50% is 12%. So, according to that site, Linux usage is about 12% if you consider only desktop OSes.
And the easiest way to figure out the USB version is to look at the USB port and connector. If there is white or black plastic piece inside of them, it’s USB 1 and 2 respectively. If the plastic part is blue, red or some other color, it’s USB 3 or better.