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You've heard the "prophecy": next year is going to be the year of the Linux desktop, right? Linux is no longer the niche hobby of bearded sysadmins and free software evangelists that it was a decade ago! Modern distributions like Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Linux Mint are sleek, accessible, and — dare I say it — mainstream-adjacent.
Linux is ready for professional work, including video editing, and it even manages to maintain a slight market share advantage over macOS among gamers, according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey.
However, it's not ready to dethrone Windows. At least, not yet!
Three years ago, Valve made a promise to ship a general installer for SteamOS, enabling any PC to take advantage of all of its features. But that didn't happen. And, let's be real, it's not going to happen in the next couple of years either.
Hardware Support
Easily one of the most significant hurdles for Linux right now is hardware compatibility. Although Linux thrives on servers and embedded systems, it often lags behind Windows when it comes to supporting newly released hardware on desktops.
Manufacturers often prioritise Windows when it comes to driver releases due to its dominant market share. As a result, high-end graphics cards, printers, and specialised peripherals often lack proper Linux support. And even if drivers do exist, they may not include the extra software that comes bundled with drivers on Windows. The most obvious example is NVIDIA GeForce Experience suite.
According to Pierre-Loup Griffais, a developer of SteamOS, the widespread release of SteamOS is also being held back by NVIDIA and Intel drivers.
One issue is that support is still basic on some platforms. We've made progress with Intel, and our teams are working together to improve it. However, NVIDIA's open-source driver integration is still in its early stages, and there's still a lot of work to be done on that side.
- Pierre-Loup Griffais at CES 2025 via Frandroid
Let's not forget about Wi-Fi cards and custom accessories, which often require users to dig into forums to get them working on Linux. This can significantly raise the perceived cost of switching for a regular user.
Another problem is the current state of display protocols. X11 is already showing its age: it's bloated, inefficient, and basically a walking security vulnerability. Modern PC standards, such as HDR support, high refresh rates, and scaling, are also not properly supported on X11.
Wayland, on the other hand, still lacks some functionalities crucial for power users and niche applications. Graphics drivers, especially proprietary ones (I'm looking at you, NVIDIA) have more mature support for X11. Which brings us to the software compatibility.
Software Compatibility
Software support is also far from being perfect. Crucial tools for professionals like Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and specialised industry software like CAD applications are not available on Linux either. You can technically use open-source alternatives, but they can't compete feature-to-feature with popular commercial applications, often required by industry pros.
Yes, compatibility tools like Bottles exist, but they don't guarantee full functionality across all software, and switching from Adobe Lightroom to RawTherapee may require you to rethink and reinvent your entire photo editing pipeline.
The same applies to gaming. Over the past decade, Linux has become a viable alternative to Windows for PC gamers, thanks to the Proton compatibility layer, developed and maintained by Valve. According to ProtonDB, the number of Steam Deck-verified and playable titles is getting close to 19,500!
Valve has also announced new SteamOS compatibility rating system. It is designed to cover any device running SteamOS that is not a Steam Deck. The game will be marked as compatible only if all of its middleware, including launchers and anti-cheat engines, are supported on SteamOS.
These ratings do not include testing results for performance, though, and, according to Valve, a number of SteamOS Compatible games will have results that are the same as or slightly higher than Steam Deck Verified results.
However, despite Proton's success, it doesn't guarantee perfect compatibility. Some games suffer from visual and audio glitches, while others may not even launch. And of course, anti-cheat support remains one of the most prominent problems.
These issues also raise the perceived cost of switching for a regular consumer. If you can't play a game you bought just a week ago, you're likely to decide not to switch, at least until you've finished it. And if you have a multiplayer game that you play every week with your friend, you're likely won't switch at all.
The anti-cheat situation is pretty serious: if we were to take a look at the top ten most popular video games on PS 5, which generate more than 50% of all PlayStation Store revenue, you'd notice that most of them are deployed on PC with anti-cheat engines that are not configured to support Linux.
Biggest franchises from Call of Duty to Battlefield, battle royale games from Fornite to PUBG, live-service titles from Destiny to Rainbow Six Siege are not available on Linux today and probably won't be available in the next few years.
What we can learn from Steam Deck
As you've may already noticed, the main cost of switching for a regular user isn't about software licenses, as the prospective costs of switching to Linux are almost zero. Instead, it's about the irretrievable, sunken costs associated with a loss of incompatible software and hardware that the person would no longer be able to use after switching to Linux.
It might not be such a big deal particularly for you. If you're reading this article, the chances are high that you are already a Linux enthusiast. You are probably using Linux as your primary operating system and know your way around obstacles that you face every day.
But the idea of winning market share from Windows will not materialise wthout regular consumers – the mainstream audience, normies, average users, regular folks, or whatever people prefer to call them. After all, without them, Linux will never be able to reach even 10% market share on desktops.
Imagine yourself as a company that has invested a significant amount of money in developing a product, only to realise later that the product is not viable in the market. The expenses related to research, development, and marketing will be considered "sunk costs".
Of course, rational decision-making implies that the company must not allow these irreversible expenditures to dictate whether it should discontinue the product or not. But real people are not fully rational beings: we are driven by our emotions and habits.
People have already spent their money on hardware and poured hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into getting used to the software they use every day. Until we can balance the costs of switching to Linux with its future benefits, the Linux market share will remain the same.
This is exactly what Valve did with the Steam Deck, by providing users with an enormous amount of value. They gave people the groundbreaking, cutting-edge portable gaming device running Linux.
Steam Deck provides PC-like performance at affordable price point. And SteamOS provides a better framerate and battery life then Windows. The fact that this thing is portable and allows users to access almost their entire Steam library on the go, makes switch to Linux so effortless. And is the lesson that we all need to learn.
People are going to make a switch only if the benefits of using Linux outweigh the costs. So Valve also did their best to minimise the switching costs by improving software compatibility and releasing Proton compatibility layer.
The success story of Steam Deck also helped to raise awareness about Linux. Windows benefits heavily from pre-installation deals with OEMs, whereas Linux, often promoted only by tech enthusiasts, and therefore lacks mainstream visibility. Most people don't even know what Linux is because they've never seen it pre-installed on a laptop in a store. But I digress.
The Upshot
The upshot is fairly simple: Linux is going to keep its current market share on desktops for quite a long time until big companies like Valve finally hit the PC market with their user-focused distros made for regular consumers.
Valve is not ready to relaease SteamOS publicly and probably won't be ready in a few years until they figure out hardware support. Other user-friendly Linux distros are also not ready to go big due to unpolished state of FOSS software including display protocols.
The year of the Linux desktop won't come until we, the Linux community, find a way to balance the cost of switching with the future benefits of daily driving Linux from the perspective of an average user. Until then, Linux will remain more like a niche thing, made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
