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Oh Snap! Canonical now doing manual reviews for new packages due to scam apps
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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This thread is a good example of just how circlejerky and bubble like lemmy has become.
You are correct. Outside of the hard-core users and tech nerds, Ubuntu is massively popular. But you listen to this community, and you'd think the opposite.
Most of us do live in bubbles (not exclusive to lemmy or tech nerds). I first picked up Ubuntu in 2004. It was a massive leap forward at the time as Gnome was moving a lot faster than Debian stable and I was running Sid to keep up. I am genuinely surprised everytime I learn Ubuntu is still "popular" as they have made so many NIH misteps over the years (mir,upstart,unity,snap) and frustrated their users. I moved back to Debian years ago for server/dev as Ubuntu re-packaging wasn't adding any value and once I was on another distro for desktop I lost all interest.
Ubuntu started off with some amazing community building. It felt more like a peoples distro than Canonicals for a time. I felt more invested in it in those days so I can relate to Ubuntu users but I also understand some of the criticism aimed at Canonical and their choices.
So which part of the internet is Steam Hardware & Software Survey then?
The most popular Ubuntu version is at a whopping 5% of all Linux users.
Ubuntu went from the most popular desktop distribution to the most or at least one of the most popular container distributions, ie. for hard-core users and tech nerds. Meanwhile Steam Deck sold millions and I'm confident to say that a good chunk of the users have no idea what Steam Deck runs, let alone SteamOS being an Arch Linux derivative.
That's not a meaningful comparison because it splits Ubuntu by version but all of Arch is a single category. We'd need to roll up the Ubuntu users for it to be apples to apples.
Very few linux installs include steam and this survey only represents a few thousand gamers. The only thing it shows is that steam users like steam os.
Millions of sold Steam Deck units run Linux and default to Steam. It's easily the most popular personal computing device running GNU/Linux out there.
So regular users, "outside of the hard-core users and tech nerds".
I think you’re forgetting about AWS, GCP, Azure.
No, I'm not. Had you read my comments correctly, you'd know that I was stating repeatedly that Ubuntu is popular for containers but that's is a completely different topic.
i wonder how many old thinkpads are still running linux... Honestly, it's possible some arbitrary single model may still outnumber steam decks.
True. I've always felt more at home in Ubuntu and its derivatives. Debian is quite nice too.