A moment I’ve no doubt many Linux fans have been waiting to see. The Linux user share on Steam has smashed through the 2% barrier.
Not actually for the first time though, it did initially rise up above 2% in March 2013, shortly after the original Steam for Linux release when it left Beta. Part of the reason it had higher numbers at the start, was that Valve added a special Tux item into Team Fortress 2 only on Linux but it quickly dropped in the following months.
It’s nice to see Linux is doing well on Steam. It’s great that Steam Deck/OS is so successful. 👍
Also kudos to Arch, I must admit I’m surprised to see Arch as the most popular among other distros.
I only briefly dabbled with Arch >10 years ago. But it has always been evident that it is an incredibly powerful distro. The fact that its wiki is so extensive is a testament to how much people are using it. The problem it has always had is that most companies tend to support other ones (Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, Alpine), so it never really had any corporate love. With Valve’s backing, we can see just how widespread Arch could be if it had more money behind it.
Not that this is necessarily a good thing of course. Look at how money has corrupted Ubuntu and Red Hat. All I want to point out is that it can do anything that the most well-supported distros try to do. And the fact that it has done so without any corporate support is a true testament to how powerful it is.