The experience on random hardware in 2025 is nowhere close to what is was in 2015. Have you tried it recently? In 2025 I can install pretty much any game from Steam on my Linux desktop with an nvidia gpu and it just works. The experience is identical to Windows.

The 2015 experience was nothing like this, you'd be lucky to get a game running crash-free after lots of manual setup and tweaking. Getting similar performance as Windows was just impossible.

> But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?

Far from it... the only area you tend to see much issue with a current Linux distro is a few wifi/bt and ethernet chips that don't have good Linux support. Most hardware works just fine. I've installed Pop on a number of laptops and desktops this past year and only had a couple issues (wifi/bt, and ethernet) in those cases it's either installing a proprietary driver or swapping the card with one that works.

Steam has been pretty great this past year as well, especially since Kernel 6.16, it's just been solid AF. I know people with similar experience with Fedora variants.

I think the Steam Deck's success with Proton and what that means for Linux all around is probably responsible for at least half of those who have tried/converted to Linux the past couple years. By some metrics as much as 3-5% in some markets, which small is still a massive number of people. 3-5 Million regular users of Desktop Linux in the US alone. That's massive potential. And with the groundwork for Flatpak and Proton that has been taken, there's definitely some opportunity for early movers in more productivity software groups, not just open-source.

The difference from 2015 to 2025 is enormous.

Gaming on linux in 2015 was a giant pita and most recent games didn't work properly or didn't work at all through wine.

In 2025 I just buy games on steam blindly because I know they'll work, except for a handful of multiplayer titles that use unsupported kernel level anticheat.

>And yet, not much has changed in that decade, right?

the performance difference between SteamOS and Windows did

>Well, other than the Steam Deck, which is a well-defined set of hardware for a specific purpose, and which is the main driver for Linux game compatibility... >And that's great! But for a random owner of random hardware. the experience is, well... same as it ever was?

the 2025 ars technica benchmark was performed on a Legion Go S, not on a steam deck