It finally happened. Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark.

Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.

  • sabertooth36@startrek.websiteEnglish
    52·
    12 hours ago

    I’ve tried playing Steam games, but my hard drives are all NTFS and the Linux (Mint) partition is exFat, and it seems like they don’t play nicely together. Since i don’t want to move all my steam games to an exFat partition, I’m holding off on switching. But until I get around to overhauling my storage and go single drive, I’m gonna stick with Windows using as many FOSS apps as possible.

    • anugeshtu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      10 hours ago

      I feel you. I have my old PC with quiet an “ancient” chipset. Installed an NVMe and installed Linux on it… Just to find out that my AHCI controller isn’t supported by it with all my Windows hard drives. It’s either booting that NVMe with the Linux one or booting the deprecated Windows ones from BIOS. 12-13 years of reliable hardware… :/ Hope there is a kernel patch supporting it again

    • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      11 hours ago

      They can play nicely, it just requires some work. The NTFS-3G driver can map Windows users to Linux users and translate the permissions so that it basically Just Works™️ under both operating systems.

      Here’s some documentation. There are also tools you can use under both Windows and Linux to generate UserMapping files. I wish I could help more, but I did this a couple years ago and have forgotten the details since then

      • kadu@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
        4·
        11 hours ago

        It causes a bunch of frequent issues though. I strongly encourage users to select exFAT rather than NTFS for sharing a drive between Windows and Linux.

    • Zink@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      11 hours ago

      When I switched over my home desktop to Mint, it was a very short time before I looked at Windows and said “I’m too old for this shit.” I mean, the reason I am a Mint fan in the first place is that I am a FOSS loving nerd but with a family and pets and hobbies and a career and a middle aged energy level. The decades I’ve spent fixing Windows based PCs is enough for a lifetime, thx.

      I say consolidate old files you want to keep. Shuffle them between drives as necessary to be able to format everything. Go all ext4 on the drives you already have. (once you’re ready)

      This is the way.