Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls

31 pointsposted a month ago
by pjmlp
(windowscentral.com)

58 Comments

juujian

a month ago

> Linux slipped 0.01% month-on-month

That's just noise

Use habits in Dec diverge from the rest of the year because of the holidays. People are gifted new systems that come with windows 11 pre installed, and people who don't usually have time to game come online. I would not take this to mean that anything has stopped using Linux and is using windows 11 instead.

MegaDeKay

a month ago

Phoronix has a good take on it [0]. Michael reports the same tiny slip but also points out that Linux was at 2.29% at the end of 2024 and sub 2% at the end of 2023. Those are pretty decent increases considering the size of the installed base. Hopefully the new Valve hardware coming out soon gives Linux another good bump by the end of 2026.

[0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-December-2025-Survey

user

a month ago

[deleted]

NSUserDefaults

a month ago

Doesn't seem newsworthy, unless you are a Windows-centric news site trying too hard to dis Linux.

The slow but steady move to 6+ CPU core systems seems at least a bit more interesting.

the__alchemist

a month ago

Concur. Reads like financial news commenting on a stock going up or down.

rr808

a month ago

I've been a Windows user since 3.0 came out. Windows the last 5 years has been annoying the ** out of me, even more than normal. I'll see what 12 looks like, but looks like I'll be Linux user in the future.

inetknght

a month ago

I saw the writing on the wall back when Windows 7 went EOL. I'm now 100% Linux in my home, and insist on Linux with employers. I don't regret a thing; instead I laugh at people who have masochist tendencies with Microsoft.

Switch to Linux today. Unless you're working with a shit company, chances are pretty good that all of your software and workflows will work on Linux too, and possibly even work better. Plus, you'll be able to actually triage your own computer (if you want).

aleph_minus_one

a month ago

> Unless you're working with a shit company, chances are pretty good that all of your software and workflows will work on Linux too, and possibly even work better.

I wouldn't call the company where I work shit, but in Germany many big companies are deeply entrenched in the whole Microsoft ecosystem, and some sectors are even more entranched. So, I am very certain that a lot of insanely business-critical software at the company where I work at (which is about a market where easily billions of EUR/USD are moved) will not work in a GNU/Linux ecosystem.

Over many, many years, many parts of the (often custom-built) software was developed to work together with the existing big ecosystem of existing (also often custom-built) software. Some parts of the programs that I work on are deeply intertwined with various products from Microsoft - if they weren't, the users would not be able to work so productively with these programs (i.e. the workflows would take a lot more time for the (highly qualified) users, which would cost the company a big load of money).

cmrdporcupine

a month ago

I've had another annoying problem with some gigs recently where the employer insisted on MacOS for developer workstations.

While I (generally) like the hardware, I don't like the UX in MacOS but more than that I have a strong distaste for having my runtime deployment environment be entirely different from my working environment. I prefer to eat my own dogfood and have Linux all the way through, and I really like my own tooling and configuration I've set up over the years.

I had a job recently where the whole deployment stack was NixOS (to Aarch64) but the issued devices were Mac laptops, and you couldn't even build the software on MacOS (not even Nix Darwin) so had to do everything inside Parallells etc and it was a giant PITA.

I've never understood why .. if you're going to pay people six figure salaries for their time why would you slow them down with process and tooling that makes them less efficient...

patates

a month ago

In my personal bubble of power users, Windows' dominance in gaming and coding has been heavily eroded. Even I switched to a Mac (considering I can't even play Red Alert 2 on this machine, that's a huge deal)!

skywhopper

a month ago

Sounds more like: Windows users upgraded to 11 during the holiday season. If Windows 10 and 11 count separately vs “Linux”, then some of the “increase” is probably just double counting.

skywhopper

a month ago

Also, since these are expressed in percentages of the total install base, the presumed month to month growth in total Steam users means that a static Linux percentage is still a growing number. Add in the likely Win 10/11 double counting and the Linux proportion probably actually grew as well.

shrubble

a month ago

The way that Microsoft counts a Windows install is really the question, but they have never disclosed their methodology for exactly what constitutes an install.

If I have a laptop, it boots and contacts Microsoft, but I wipe it and install Linux, does that count? Microsoft doesn’t say.

comex

a month ago

Not relevant, since this article is about results from the Steam Hardware Survey.

CivBase

a month ago

Christmas happened. People got new PCs with Windows 11 preinstalled on them. This says nothing about the popularity of Windows itself.

speed_spread

a month ago

As long as PCs wont ship with Linux preinstalled, the number of Steam installs will correlate heavily with sales of new PCs. Most new PC users wont even know that switching the OS is an option, let alone what advantages could this give them.

I would guess the Steam switch to Linux is mostly driven by the adoption of the Steam Deck.

NDizzle

a month ago

The only thing holding me back is nvidia drivers. I want people talking about how good they are before I switch over my gaming laptop.

A company that bet the farm on gamers back in the '90s needs to embrace their bread and butter. AI is cool, but don't forget what got you here.

the_hoser

a month ago

NVIDIA is more than happy to forget about gaming.

user

a month ago

[deleted]

t1234s

a month ago

Is there a specific Win 11 setup that gamers prefer? The non-IoT versions seem to be bloatware.

cleaning

a month ago

It's trivial to debloat with an unattend.xml during install or the various debloat tools.

op7

a month ago

LTSC

user

a month ago

[deleted]

peter-m80

a month ago

Lets wait for the steam box, steam deck 2...

Forgeties79

a month ago

> That increase is likely being driven by users migrating away from Windows 10 as its end-of-life occurs, but could also be a surge of new users from devices like the Xbox Ally or other Windows handhelds.

My kneejerk says it is more likely the first explanation as it’s either leave windows (unlikely) or finally go to 11 whereas the latter is about making a deliberate, pricey purchase. But I don’t have a lick of data to support that of course ha

loganc2342

a month ago

The last reported monthly active user count for Steam by Valve puts it at 132 million users per month. Since this was in 2021, it’s a conservative estimate now. But based on that conservative figure and if my numbers are correct, Steam added roughly 7 million Windows 11 users in December 2025.

Meanwhile, the most recent estimates show the Steam Deck, the most popular handheld gaming PC by far, having sold around 4 million units, while every other handheld gaming PC (including the Asus ROG Ally, the predecessor to the ROG Xbox Ally) having sold around 2 million units combined. While the Xbox name carries some weight, I highly doubt the Xbox Ally has sold significantly in the two months since its launch.

TLDR: You’re likely correct that numbers from Windows handhelds did not contribute significantly to the added Windows 11 users in December.

Forgeties79

a month ago

You did my homework just to bolster my point! Much obliged

nkrisc

a month ago

Now subtract the Windows 10/11 delta from the growth rate.

andrewstuart

a month ago

Windows is doing great!

Says “Windows Central”.

Numerlor

a month ago

Most articles I've seen from them on here have been negative enough that I'd assume bias the other way

DoctorOW

a month ago

2026 is the year of the Windows desktop! :)

jrm4

a month ago

This is what the kids call "cope."

Measuring growth along a tiny time frame; nice try.

1970-01-01

a month ago

Wild how less than 24h ago we were told to assume Linux was finally a hardened contender for gaming OS. The facts are the facts, and they're yet again trending opposite of journalism's opinions. The users have chosen Windows. Again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770

loganc2342

a month ago

The author of the PC Gamer article acknowledged that the install base for Linux among gamers was dwarfed by the install base for Windows. All they were arguing is that Linux is the better platform for gaming, not that it’s more popular.

chrsw

a month ago

Users are using Windows, not choosing it.

Bjartr

a month ago

These are not contradictory statements. Linux can be a contender and not currently be in the lead.

1970-01-01

a month ago

Using this definition means Firefox is a contender in the browser wars, an independent will be a contender in the next Presidential election, and a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is a contender for your next car. Can we just leave out this contender nonsense and replace it with exotic choice?

realusername

a month ago

It's clear that on the long term trends, Linux is rising. From 1.2% in 2022 from 3.2% now. It just didn't rise in December.

From the chart, it looks that Windows took some small share to some older OSX in December and Linux stayed mostly the same.

oreally

a month ago

Keep widening the context. Last thing we need is a developer with rent on their minds, influenced by internet comments, developing on linux and being ignorant of the realities there.

jamespo

a month ago

No, that was a single journalist's article on how Linux is working for him gaming-wise.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

Slop content is still slop... especially when saying things people want to hear.

Fact is most modern Linux Kernels >6.8.x don't support the legacy nvidia driver 470. Thus, on modern OS distros a lot of legacy video cards and laptops running Linux >6.18.x just isn't practical without a GPU upgrade.

The situation will probably get worse in the next few years as perpetual permutation kernel culture hits unmaintainable EOL hardware driver Blobs.

Most dual boot a Windows 10/11 ssd, as it still sort of works. YMMV =3

formerly_proven

a month ago

470 is for GTX 700 series and older - these are ~13 year old GPUs.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

note 580 is now also EOL, and a rack of hardware video encoders is less demanding than gaming. =3

formerly_proven

a month ago

No, 580 is the new legacy driver branch, it's still supported for a couple years. Just not optimized for new titles iirc.

I'm not sure what the state of the open-source drivers is for the really old nvidia GPUs, but for Pascal and such it's pretty decent. No video hwaccel though. However, for hardware encoding, NVENC has improved a lot over the generations. So the old chunkers are probably beat on every metric by e.g. a T400 card. Or Intel Arc (business model: "Quick sync for AMD").

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

I have yet to see a fully working nouveau based system, as most people are just looking to blacklist the mod given the collateral problems.

Depends on the hardware codecs use case, as some legacy cards are valuable to people that own legacy workflows.

Without CUDA + hardware-encoders a GPU is just a paperweight regardless of age for some use-cases. =3

bigyabai

a month ago

I don't know why you're making this distinction. Windows has the same issue unless you're content using a depreciated OS; Linux has the same solution, in the form of LTS kernels that do not break DKMS modules. It's been like this for decades.

You've repeated this FUD about DKMS breaking, but it's exclusively a rolling-release issue. And even then you can still fix it, tons of places will containerize their workload and dump it into a proxmox:latest instance.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

Some communities tried to keep EOL legacy nvidia drivers viable on newer OS kernels, but it is a poor allocation of resources prone to failure.

It is not FUD, but rather the consequences of out-of-band proprietary mystery blobs, dependency injection, and major structural changes within the kernel or user space programs. Many legacy dkms simply don't survive the code permutations over the long term (usually Wifi cards, equipment, and GPUs.) Thus, projects relying on such drivers break eventually as people start to abandon the legacy platforms.

Linux is good at many things, but LTS only slows the compatibility decay cycle to years instead of weeks. The several thousand tonnes of waste hardware it turns into garbage, and locked offline Application licenses do matter to some folks. It is the hidden Spiral development liability in most FOSS projects. =3

bigyabai

a month ago

> LTS only slows the compatibility decay cycle to years instead of weeks.

Windows Service Packs do the same thing. Install Windows 10 software on a Windows 7 machine and you'll end up with a similarly-bricked system.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

Back-porting modern drivers/security patches is another issue, but most static-linked applications tended to work fine up until Windows 11. If you wanted to play legacy games in old Windows environments it usually works up to the final patch level of the product. Note active Windows Service Packs meant the release was still supported, and most companies would maintain driver compatibility if and only if they were still in business.

Abandonware popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon, as hardware became cheap enough to be disposable... and SaaS/DRM hit the entertainment industry.

Most people are not going to port AAA title dependencies to ancient hardware, but the "Doom will run" on just about anything meme is usually still true. =3

bigyabai

a month ago

> Back-porting modern drivers/security patches is another issue

That is goalpost-shifting. You started this by critiquing Linux' drivers and security patches, you don't get to carve out excuses for Windows.

> but most static-linked applications tended to work fine

Sure. Most static-linked applications tend to work fine on Linux and macOS with a modern Wine environment. It's a moot point.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

Another straw man fallacy is silly. And "all software is terrible, but some of it is useful."

NVIDIA abandoning legacy drivers had to happen eventually, but it isn't an excuse for Linux bricking the hardware. The vestigial deprecated areas of the kernel is covered in foundation courses to help explain what mess to avoid, as the rule to never break user space hid a lot of the uglier bodges. In terms of code volume, linux source has been mostly driver code for quite a few years.

Trying to mix commercial blob binaries in a FOSS project is rarely stable over the long term (hence why recent RTX and AMD open drivers is very important.) Yet how many android devices are in garbage or recycling heaps? Answer, _all_ of them eventually, and usually in less than 3 years on average.

Linux will also soon no longer include 32bit x86 support if upstream planning goes as planned. It also had to happen eventually.

It should be noted the CUDA enabled drivers on windows is quite a bit more complex than the windows kernel itself. Yes it is still an awful adware OS, but it will still let you run 10 year old titles mostly without an issue. YMMV =3

bigyabai

a month ago

Your definition of "bricked" is not congruent with any industry-spanning consensus that I am aware of. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you fundamentally misunderstand how software is deployed to these legacy systems and I cannot help you beyond what I've already explained.

Joel_Mckay

a month ago

From the Linux users choice of:

1. outdated legacy OS that has to rely on a limited subset of flatpack, snap, containerization, and CVEs...

2. modern OS with unfix-able driver issues, NVIDIA wanting people to buy a new GPU, and broken abandonware drivers

I'd say a bricked GPU is appropriate terminology, as your screen will be forced into 800x600 by the hardware recovery mode and be functionally useless. For Linux users the only solution is to buy a compatible GPU, and or throw away the laptop/tablet/phone devices that can't run legacy Windows drivers.

When the collapse cycle of spiral development happens: a lot of Applications are also lost in the process, as the original publishers may not be maintaining an application a decade later. dkms with mystery Blobs would fall into the same out-of-band classification.

It is funnier people are upset about slop articles nonsense assertions.

The question about whether something is qualitatively "good" is meaningless if its demonstrably broken. =3

Sweepi

a month ago

ah yes - "we were told" and "journalism's opinions"