https://github.com/ublue-os/countme/blob/main/growth_global.svg
Graphs can be found here on their github. Since around mid November the active user count for Bazzite has gone up by around 16k active users.
Personally, my only wish for Bazzite is a Cosmic version 👼 I tried it out recently and it seems fairly impressive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
It's not so much that people are focused on gaming distros, it's more that gaming distros historically haven't been much of a thing, and gamers generally had to use windows for their gaming, because the linux experience was limited and sub-optimal. Even dedicated linux users would keep a windows partition/machine that they used for gaming.
That's not true anymore, as basically anything without kernel level anti cheat works on linux, which means that a huge amount of folk that would have moved to linux earlier, but couldn't, are now coming over.
Which is to say, it's not so much that there is "so many of them", it's more that, they're coming over in a big wave, because they've been there for years, but haven't been able to move until recently, and now, they know that there are distros out there that look and feel like something they're familiar with.
I guess we have different use cases is all. People who primarily use their computers for gaming.
My PC is:
(In no particular order.)
I think a lot of people are basically looking for "Windows but not Microsoft/Windows". So it's their gaming PC where they also browse the internet/social media and watch YouTube or Twitch (sometimes at the same time that they're gaming), and maybe do some other ancillary stuff like art (digital art, 3d rendering, music, video or photo editing, etc.) or some other hobby related stuff.
So Bazzite is kinda at the center of this perfect storm where plenty of PC gamers have seen the SteamOS/Big Picture mode and gone, "If I could use SteamOS as a traditional desktop, I would in a heartbeat" while Microsoft is also fumbling harder than they ever have - which is saying a lot - and Linux is the easiest to get up and running that it's ever been - to the point where immutable distros are as plug and play as Windows. Then Bazzite comes along and says, "Hey, SteamOS isn't desktop comparable yet, so we went and made it ourselves (with blackjack, and hookers)."
Just an fyi, Bazzite does all of that as well. It's not just gaming, it's a fully functional OS
So you can install packages? It's not a fully immutable system?
You install the package and it adds it to your OS image (that re-initializes every time you boot).
They say you should try to avoid it if you can, so if there's a flatpak use that, if not, then a distrobox with Fedora toolbox for .RPMs or Arch (for AUR and yay) or whatever other distro you choose, then shortcutting it right to your host OS. By this point, you've probably already found a way (or three) to get it to work.
If all that doesn't work, then you can layer packages onto your image by installing the local .RPM using rpm-ostree then rebooting. I've only had to do this with my VPN client so far. Only annoyance is that you have to update it manually.
Ooh, okay, definitely sounds cumbersome at first glance.