I'm guessing this is because of more sales of the Steam Deck, haven't got myself one yet but I'd love to as everyone that has gotten ones has said it's worth the money as well as is a great way to get through your games on the go.
You may be right in that people are seeing how viable Linux is for gaming due to the success of the Steam Deck.
I'm not sure if steam deck is counted under Arch, but it's definitely not Ubuntu, Mint, or Manjaro. It looks like the increase in Linux desktop is traditional desktop gaming.
SteamOS is 42.99% of the Linux share on there, with the lion's share increase of 0.68%. This 'surge' is pretty much just from the Steam Deck.
I’m not sure if steam deck is counted under Arch
It must be, because there's no way vanilla Arch is the most-used Linux distro, even among gamers.
That, but also the splash buff of Proton making a lot of games work for Linux outside of Steam Decks has probably helped too.
Add the article says, the surge is entirely thanks to the Deck. There was a 35% surge in overall use but 43% of that use is the Deck so PC/laptop use has actually dropped.
I'd say some of that drop was punters like me who were already gaming on Linux and have just moved over to the deck now.
I have a dock for mine and it's really the only thing I use for gaming now as my laptop is very old.
It’s been pretty good. So long as you stick to verified and playable games your experience is going to be pretty solid.
That and Emudeck.
The most seamless retro gaming setup I've used yet.
TBH I've yet to come across any game I haven't been able to play (aside from the obvious VR/occasional anti-cheat), most unsupported games just haven't been tested for most cases
Edit: out of curiosity I actually went through my library to see just how many unsupported games I could download and try (again, not the VR ones lol).
I ended up getting caught up playing Revita all day and it says unsupported but it definitely works! For anyone else interested in that game, it is having some development quirks but there's a public beta branch of it that seems to be the "definitive" version of the game.
Uploaded a control scheme template for the beta since there wasn't one I liked :D
Then I tried an old DOS game Litil Divil which also worked just fine. I'd have tried some others but like I said, addicting game be addicting
Same, I’m not a big multiplayer person so most of the time it works out. My latest has been Lethal Company, my first new multiplayer game this year 😂. Been a blast.
How many are there? I always see more games getting added
6 of the top 10 are verified or playable or 43% of the top 1000 games. But verified and playable is only a subset of the games that work, quite a few unsupported games do as well. If you go by medals the 7 of the top 10 are silver ranked or better (minor issues but generally playable) and 88% of the top 1000. So there are a lot of games that are playable that are still listed as unsupported on the deck.
You can see the numbers for various different things at https://www.protondb.com/ as well as different reports for all the games (including some tips on how to get things to work or work better).
I'm guessing this is because of more sales of the Steam Deck, haven't got myself one yet but I'd love to as everyone that has gotten ones has said it's worth the money as well as is a great way to get through your games on the go.
You may be right in that people are seeing how viable Linux is for gaming due to the success of the Steam Deck.
I'm not sure if steam deck is counted under Arch, but it's definitely not Ubuntu, Mint, or Manjaro. It looks like the increase in Linux desktop is traditional desktop gaming.
SteamOS is 42.99% of the Linux share on there, with the lion's share increase of 0.68%. This 'surge' is pretty much just from the Steam Deck.
It must be, because there's no way vanilla Arch is the most-used Linux distro, even among gamers.
That, but also the splash buff of Proton making a lot of games work for Linux outside of Steam Decks has probably helped too.
Add the article says, the surge is entirely thanks to the Deck. There was a 35% surge in overall use but 43% of that use is the Deck so PC/laptop use has actually dropped.
I'd say some of that drop was punters like me who were already gaming on Linux and have just moved over to the deck now.
I have a dock for mine and it's really the only thing I use for gaming now as my laptop is very old.
It’s been pretty good. So long as you stick to verified and playable games your experience is going to be pretty solid.
That and Emudeck.
The most seamless retro gaming setup I've used yet.
TBH I've yet to come across any game I haven't been able to play (aside from the obvious VR/occasional anti-cheat), most unsupported games just haven't been tested for most cases
Edit: out of curiosity I actually went through my library to see just how many unsupported games I could download and try (again, not the VR ones lol).
I ended up getting caught up playing Revita all day and it says unsupported but it definitely works! For anyone else interested in that game, it is having some development quirks but there's a public beta branch of it that seems to be the "definitive" version of the game.
Uploaded a control scheme template for the beta since there wasn't one I liked :D
Then I tried an old DOS game Litil Divil which also worked just fine. I'd have tried some others but like I said, addicting game be addicting
Same, I’m not a big multiplayer person so most of the time it works out. My latest has been Lethal Company, my first new multiplayer game this year 😂. Been a blast.
How many are there? I always see more games getting added
6 of the top 10 are verified or playable or 43% of the top 1000 games. But verified and playable is only a subset of the games that work, quite a few unsupported games do as well. If you go by medals the 7 of the top 10 are silver ranked or better (minor issues but generally playable) and 88% of the top 1000. So there are a lot of games that are playable that are still listed as unsupported on the deck.
You can see the numbers for various different things at https://www.protondb.com/ as well as different reports for all the games (including some tips on how to get things to work or work better).