this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The critical mass needed to tip the scales is not high. Once Linux has enough market share to matter as a customer base, game studios will switch to developing as cross-platform for it by default, so that they don't lose launch sales. Once this happens, a lot of people won't have any reason to stay on windows anymore as gaming was the only thing holding them back. This will then create a virtuous cycle of users migrating and games (and then apps) switching to it. Along then come hardware vendor supporty and then pre-built PCs and laptops. If the tipping point is reach, the rate of market share gain will be exponential.
The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6
The only thing that can stop this is outside pressure from software giants like Microsoft through lobbying the Governments, buying out game studios or buying exclusivity, or strong-arming hardware vendors.
steam deck is helping a lot on that front.
MacOS holds a nearly 30% market share and few game developers give a shit about publishing their games on Mac. Why would Linux be any different?
Apple is notorios about being anti-gaming, yet many games support it while not supporting linux. Don't know the actual stats though.
If you throw proton and wine into the mix, Linux is almost as good as Windows in game support
Because linux doesn't have deprecated opengl, doesn't run their own proprietary api for gpu instead of implementing vulkan and last but not least because linux does still have support for 32bit application.
Are you including iPhones in this market share?
Gamers only seem to think that the only reason people have a computer is to game.
You can’t build a gaming mac. Or a mac at all. Apple does seem to have better gaming support than Linux does though. The majority of my steam library has macOS support. Only a couple support Linux.
30%? Wtf is the source
Other than gamers, there's a huge share of enterprise Windows users. And they're not likely to shift OS, because of IT admin issues. Others in this thread have commented on how Apple is struggling to get devs to build native games compared to Windows.
Sure the number of home PC users might decline, one can always hope.
I can actually imagine a scenario where MS actually wants that to happen. They don't really make money on windows sales anymore (comparatively to their other products). So this could free up quite a lot of resources and reallocate them elsewhere.
The majority of home consumers basically just use browser services anyways.