Linux is free Linux is full of free loaders.

I think we've run out of things to actually discuss about now and are delving into the realm of value systems.

Clearly, your values are different from mine in this regard. I wish you luck with your life philosophy. I hope it brings you prosperity and happiness.

The patience of a saint.

Well, running a Windows game via wine will always be unofficial, while running a packaged game (with wine) warrants requesting support in case of technical problems. Of course, in practice it's not always that simple (some games with linux support on GOG are broken etc.) but that's the idea.

So all those gaming focused distros and spins, just the idle lies of the userbase?

It's funny how comments like this get neg'd. I mean yes, I get it, in some sense every Windows game is DRM'd because Windows is DRM'd. However it's just a true fact that Linux is such a super tiny part of the market that stores don't feel a need to cater to it outside of virtue signaling.

Want Linux to be a bigger deal? Get more people to leave Windows. Good luck.

Would it count as DRM'd if the person plays the Windows game on Wine or one of its forks?

Wine & its forks help with compatibility when the devs don't make native builds, and it tends to be stable enough most of the time, at least from my tests.
There's also distros for all flavors, including the ones for computers that would struggle at best when running newer Windows versions.
And if Microsoft keeps shooting themselves in the foot like when they announced Win11, people will likely be more interested in looking for alternatives.

People have been saying this with every new Windows release, especially bad ones like ME and Vista, and yet here were many years later without its market dominance budging an inch.

Not my current mission unfortunately (at least, not for the desktop). You got to pick your battles. Its more a game for big-time entrepreneurs to play.

However, we might not need to do much.

The desktop is waning in favor of cell phones and the cloud (and most of that migration is happening with more casual Windows users, people invested enough to run a Linux box tend to be in the desktop game for the long haul either for professional or hobbyist reasons).

Microsoft is not as invested in Windows as it once was as it is more interested in catching up in the lucrative cloud arena (gaming is practically a secondary concern at this point).

Meanwhile, giants like Steam, who seek a certain degree of autonomy from Microsoft, are developing their own solutions, usually running on top of Linux (which is great because if nothing else, it means the underlying Linux OS will get better service from both hardware manufacturers and game developers).

Lets see what the next decade will bring.

Oh yeah gaming is a secondary concern to MicroSoft that they are releasing all of their video games for sale on Steam as well besides their crappy garbage MicroSoft Windows store.

Also the fact that MicroSoft has released modding tools for Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo 4, and Halo Reach for the PC version of The Master Chief Collection on Steam.

Oh yeah video games are a secondary concern to MicroSoft.

Get back to the real world go seek a professional therapist you need help. Linux people like you really need to see a doctor.

I think Johnathanamz and Crosmando's answers are accurate despite being downvoted. (I don't know that "unfriendly" is really the accurate term, perhaps "ignoring".) I'd say because they have such limited resources compared to Steam they're focused on the main platforms. And I understand Linux users sticking with Steam because of Valve is apparently so Linux-friendly.

Things are relative. We're still talking about Microsoft scale here. Even a secondary push can feel significant.

But yes, compared to their cloud and apps as service offerings, Windows has been a secondary decreasing concern.

If they had put most of their focus on it, Windows would be a lot sexier than it is right now.

Desktop is just not as big a thing now as it was in the early 2000s.

A lot of things have moved online and can now simply run in a browser or on almost any device with a thin client, plus a lot of people with simple needs just have a phone and/or a tablet now (markets that Microsoft did not manage to penetrate with Windows).

Valve doesn't really care about Linux. They just don't want to be dependant on Microsoft.

Its fine. Whatever works.

In the end, whatever they are doing with the kernel will be open-sourced and most likely merged back too (I doubt very much they'll want to maintain a separate fork of Linux that diverges too much from the main repo, that would be major work in reconciliation whenever they want to rebase kernel updates).

Yes, I don't think GOG has a strong incentive to go out of their way to support Linux now. We'll see how that evolves over time.

It doesn't matter how many billions, trillions or quadrillions uses Linux on their router, fridge or toaster, what is important is how many of them purchase games for their PCs. And despite all Valve efforts this number stay mostly insignificant. Gog tried selling Linux hopping it would be profitable but they apparently were disappointed by the sales result given how little priority it seems to be given nowadays.

WSL is just a toy, the real "Linux side" of Microsoft is on Azure. They are already making billions and billions for years selling Linux or other open source solutions, on top of what they makes with Windows and their own products. Nowadays Microsoft is more an infrastructure provider rather than a software company.

The issue of Linux/Unix (and most open source technologies) is that it often needs a multi-billion corporation for it to become "mainstream", nobody gaved a damn about Unix on personal computer until Apple based OSx on it (and let's not talk about Webkit), nobody gaved a damn about Linux on smartphones until Google came and, again, hid all the nasty stuff under the hood and released Android.

I would say for Linux to ever become a replacement of Windows it would need something similar, a big multi-national making a desktop environment with a unified way to install proprietary software and drivers and totally hide all the "Linux stuff" as much as possible. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this company was even Microsoft in the future.


And Amazon has 30%, the interesting part is that in the last five years Microsoft doubled its market share while Amazon remain constant.

Yeah but it also represent the main market for video games, if users leave desktop then game devs will follow them, they are not really going to invest in another platform to please a bunch of professional or hobbyist. Honestly I think that if/when Microsoft drops the desktop market it will mean either death or a major setback for PC gaming and not some sort of major "chance" for Linux.

If a major player like Microsoft decide to drop the ball it would mean that the market is "dead" and the majority of main published and devs will also drop it no matter how much gesticulations Gabe might doing.