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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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SteamOS is also linux desktop, so I'd expect it to be included.
Don’t Steam Decks get counted as SteamOS?
Right and so is Android but we don’t consider people with an Android phone to be “Linux users” even though they’re technically using Linux.
I'd argue that Android is not a desktop OS, but SteamOS is.
That doesn’t really matter to the point I’m making. Some Android users do things like install AOSP after building it themselves from source or install one of many custom open source Android distributions such as LineageOS or YAAP. I would consider this type of person much more of a Linux user than a person who buys a SteamDeck and just plays games on it.
The key difference for me is that a Linux user is aware of the open source movement around Linux and at least engages in some aspect of the open source community. They don’t have to become a software developer or a contributor or even a hacker. They just have to be aware of the fact that they’re using Linux (regardless of the name of the distribution they’re using), that Linux is open source, and that they can (and do, at least in some small way) exercise some of the freedoms of open source that are afforded to them.
A person who buys a SteamDeck and merely plays games on it might be aware that it’s running Linux (they might’ve heard it from someone else) but if they don’t care about that and don’t engage with any of the things that make it Linux then they might as well be using a proprietary OS (or even using a dishwasher with Linux on it for that matter).
We're talking about the 6% market share Linux holds in >desktop< usage. Not about how somebody is aware of what OS they are using.
It doesn't matter if people who buy a steam deck is not aware he's using a linux desktop OS...
A lot of appliances use a linux kernel (I would assume), but that does not make it a desktop OS.
If someone buys a Steam Deck and uses it only to play games then would you say they’re acting as a desktop computer user?
Again. We're classifying an OS, not how it's used. You can make the same remark about an asus ally, which runs windows, and will count towards windows desktop market share.
My argument isn’t about how we’re classifying and counting desktop operating system installs. I know how we’re doing that. I’m saying it’s stupid and doesn’t make any sense to count that way if your goal is to grow this community of Linux users.
Most desktop Windows users don’t belong to a community of enthusiasts. For them, Windows is just a tool they use at work and in many cases hate using. Microsoft doesn’t care about community-building at all.
For Linux it’s different. Linux has both a community of enthusiast users and a number of large companies who use and package Linux as part of a product and service offering. Valve and Google are 2 such companies. Neither of them care about the broader Linux community. Their goal is to make money using SteamOS and Android respectively. For them, Linux is just a tool to save them money on development costs: an off-the-shelf, royalty-free operating system to build on. The vast majority of Android and SteamOS users will never interact with the Linux underpinnings of their respective OSes, never mind coming to participate in this community!
The fact that SteamOS users count as desktop market share and Android users don’t (also: what about Chromebooks running ChromeOS?) should not matter at all to us, just as I don’t care that one of the printers at work runs Windows on its print queue server and the other runs Linux.
SteamOS is straight up x86 gnu/Linux (immutable arch based)
Android while still Linux based has many differences
Yes but what I’m getting at here is much more cultural than technical. While we all applaud the growth of Linux that doesn’t necessarily translate into more people who are actually “Linux users” like the type of folks who would join this community.
Someone who simply runs SteamOS on a computer or handheld just so they can play games (basically a game console) doesn’t actually care that they’re running Linux and doesn’t actually learn anything about Linux, so I wouldn’t consider them a Linux user anymore than I would for an Android user.
By your logic people who only use Windows to game aren't Windows users.
This is a stupid purity test you're running on.
No, I’m making a distinction between “Linux market share” and growing the Linux community. Nothing to do with purity and everything to do with what’s really important here.