Initially Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey for December 2025 showed Linux at 3.19%, but they appear to have amended it with a nice boost for Linux.
This great and I hope to make it as a statistic in the round 😉
A friend I didn’t expect said he was interested, but idk how willing he is to break free of Windows-brain. I am most certainly am willing to learn (just check out my comments history).
if your friend is already a basic knowledgeable user and can partition their drives, tell them to just go install xubuntu and try it out. no need to worry about the multiple partition options during install, just do a basic single partition install and try to do a few common tasks. see how it goes and then wipe it and reinstall later.
edit: it took me maybe 3 hours total to install Linux on two computers, including downloading and creating the installation media and waiting for it to finish running the installation etc. and the installs themselves were problem-free, all of my issues were related to other things like trying to sort out SSH and remote desktop viewing access.
Hmm, yeah I think they can handle it. I’ve showed them massgrave to not pay microslop for Office and they seemed fine*. It’s really not too different than that. And besides, as windows users, they have to had reinstall windows cleanly at least once in their lifetime. Personally I found installing linux distros a lot easier, so they might think that way too.
It’s just which distro. and it’s mainly for gaming first. So maybe bazzite because it’s atomic? But it’s relatively new and maybe the community and docs aren’t as many as say fedora or ubuntu. as far as I understand it despite bazzite is atomic fedora, there’s still some quirks that’s not fully applicable fully? So maybe just vanilla fedora? I kind of don’t want to suggest ubuntu even if that’s what they might have heard of before.
*I know, I know, libre office suites are out there and I personally already use them. But it’s being used to it is the thing.
see this is what I mean, stop thinking about it and just tell them to go install xubuntu with the knowledge that they’re going to wipe it in a few days anyways
Maybe something other than Ubuntu? Ubuntu is past its prime, it used to be good, but as other distros got better, it didn’t, leaving it outcompeted. I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, Fedora, or PopOS, but that’s just the sentiment I’m getting from the community; I myself have only used Ubuntu and openSUSE on desktop, and have used Debian in VMs for stuff.
Currently I use openSUSE, which I like, but it’s not a beginner distro. It’s quite universal, but that means not targeting beginners nor advanced users specifically. Debian is also like that (Maybe I’d use Debian if it had a good rolling release, but Debian Unstable is for testing and not meant to be stable, as opposed to openSUSE Tumbleweed which is probably the stablest rolling release out there, with a good QA system, because it’s meant for daily use.). I’ve also heard that Fedora is universal like this. So why is it regarded as so good for beginners? Maybe openSUSE is actually fine for beginner usage? I don’t know. The install would probably require the guidance of a Linux user though.
I would suggest separate partitions for data/game installs if you want to try multiple distros without needing to reinstall your games. Just need to mount the partition in the new distro, maybe have steam scan it (or just set it as your game install location) and you’re good to go. Encryption might complicate the steps, but I don’t see much point in encrypting a game install partition in the first place.
Edit: Meant this comment to add on to your reply and address the “just set up a single partition”, since you addressed the distro. On that note, I’ve been happy enough with Fedora KDE that I haven’t even gotten around to trying a new distro (took me almost a year to try KDE and realize I liked it better than cinnamon in practically every way).
This great and I hope to make it as a statistic in the round 😉
A friend I didn’t expect said he was interested, but idk how willing he is to break free of Windows-brain. I am most certainly am willing to learn (just check out my comments history).
if your friend is already a basic knowledgeable user and can partition their drives, tell them to just go install xubuntu and try it out. no need to worry about the multiple partition options during install, just do a basic single partition install and try to do a few common tasks. see how it goes and then wipe it and reinstall later.
edit: it took me maybe 3 hours total to install Linux on two computers, including downloading and creating the installation media and waiting for it to finish running the installation etc. and the installs themselves were problem-free, all of my issues were related to other things like trying to sort out SSH and remote desktop viewing access.
Hmm, yeah I think they can handle it. I’ve showed them massgrave to not pay microslop for Office and they seemed fine*. It’s really not too different than that. And besides, as windows users, they have to had reinstall windows cleanly at least once in their lifetime. Personally I found installing linux distros a lot easier, so they might think that way too.
It’s just which distro. and it’s mainly for gaming first. So maybe bazzite because it’s atomic? But it’s relatively new and maybe the community and docs aren’t as many as say fedora or ubuntu. as far as I understand it despite bazzite is atomic fedora, there’s still some quirks that’s not fully applicable fully? So maybe just vanilla fedora? I kind of don’t want to suggest ubuntu even if that’s what they might have heard of before.
*I know, I know, libre office suites are out there and I personally already use them. But it’s being used to it is the thing.
see this is what I mean, stop thinking about it and just tell them to go install xubuntu with the knowledge that they’re going to wipe it in a few days anyways
Maybe something other than Ubuntu? Ubuntu is past its prime, it used to be good, but as other distros got better, it didn’t, leaving it outcompeted. I’d recommend Mint, Bazzite, Fedora, or PopOS, but that’s just the sentiment I’m getting from the community; I myself have only used Ubuntu and openSUSE on desktop, and have used Debian in VMs for stuff.
Currently I use openSUSE, which I like, but it’s not a beginner distro. It’s quite universal, but that means not targeting beginners nor advanced users specifically. Debian is also like that (Maybe I’d use Debian if it had a good rolling release, but Debian Unstable is for testing and not meant to be stable, as opposed to openSUSE Tumbleweed which is probably the stablest rolling release out there, with a good QA system, because it’s meant for daily use.). I’ve also heard that Fedora is universal like this. So why is it regarded as so good for beginners? Maybe openSUSE is actually fine for beginner usage? I don’t know. The install would probably require the guidance of a Linux user though.
I would suggest separate partitions for data/game installs if you want to try multiple distros without needing to reinstall your games. Just need to mount the partition in the new distro, maybe have steam scan it (or just set it as your game install location) and you’re good to go. Encryption might complicate the steps, but I don’t see much point in encrypting a game install partition in the first place.
Edit: Meant this comment to add on to your reply and address the “just set up a single partition”, since you addressed the distro. On that note, I’ve been happy enough with Fedora KDE that I haven’t even gotten around to trying a new distro (took me almost a year to try KDE and realize I liked it better than cinnamon in practically every way).