Can we talk about the definition of a "surge", please!
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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What percentage increase do you feel is required for surge to be a reasonable definition. A 35% increase feels surge-y me.
Small number random samples in big data sets have huge error margins. You need to smooth this over time to see the real trend.
The council planted a new tree on my road, trees surged in population from 1 to 2 yesterday
That's why we're talking about relative percentages.
In your example we would need to know how many trees existed on your road/city before. If there were less than 3 or 4 trees in your city before this, saying there was a surge is likely fine.
I gave you that information, I said "from 1 to 2" and added context of "a tree" (singular)
My terribly made point is that although technically correct when talking about relative increase it's dumb as fuck to say trees "surged in population" after adding just one more on one street. It's a drop on the ocean.
I feel like the term surge respects the final total relative to what its maximum could be as well as the relative increase. But obviously language is regional and up for interpretation
I'm super confused by your point.
In this case we're looking at Steam.
I have no clue how many people submit to the steam survey, but I'll assume it's representative.
A quick google suggests steam has about 120 million active users.
Linux went from about 1.4% to 1.9%.
Rough math says Linux went from 1.7 million to about 2.3 million.
Or an increase of 600 000.
That a lot, both in relative terms and in real terms.
Here's a counter example for you.
You own stock in banana company. Over one day the price increases 2x. All the news agency's are talking about how banana surged in price today. Will you then suggest that banana didn't surge in price because it only makes up 1% of the overall stock market?
I'm guessing this is because of more sales of the Steam Deck, haven't got myself one yet but I'd love to as everyone that has gotten ones has said it's worth the money as well as is a great way to get through your games on the go.
That, but also the splash buff of Proton making a lot of games work for Linux outside of Steam Decks has probably helped too.
Add the article says, the surge is entirely thanks to the Deck. There was a 35% surge in overall use but 43% of that use is the Deck so PC/laptop use has actually dropped.
You may be right in that people are seeing how viable Linux is for gaming due to the success of the Steam Deck.
I'm not sure if steam deck is counted under Arch, but it's definitely not Ubuntu, Mint, or Manjaro. It looks like the increase in Linux desktop is traditional desktop gaming.
I’m not sure if steam deck is counted under Arch
It must be, because there's no way vanilla Arch is the most-used Linux distro, even among gamers.
SteamOS is 42.99% of the Linux share on there, with the lion's share increase of 0.68%. This 'surge' is pretty much just from the Steam Deck.
id like to think this is because I alone decided to install opensuse (its been an awful experience)
Tell me why "market share" of commerical, proprietary games is important to Linux again?
Because of Valve, Linux is finally my main OS. I'm a PC gamer and it was a pain in the ass to dual-boot between Windows and Linux.
If you are a Linux user and like commercial games, you probably would prefer them to work on Linux.
“Market share” on Linux aligns the vested interest of game makers and Linux game players. If the company thinks it can make money, it will do more to allow games to run, or at least do less to stop them.
A lot of people only play games on their computer, hence running linux doesn't make sense if they can't play games on it
Yup, a big excuse I used to see a lot was
I would like to run Linux, but I want to game more so will stick to Windows
And this has changed a lot with what valve has done which opens Linux to a much larger market of people that can now use it for their usecases.
Steam market share is honestly probably a decent metric for adoption rate of Linux as a whole.
And that's important because?
Linux can be used to play commercial games > more people daily drive to linux > more companies port their software to linux > even more people switch to linux > Windows/macOS duopoly breaks, losing to open source alternatives
I'm not saying playing call of duty on the deck will make windows fall, but it's a start
daily drive to Linux
Since when have you needed to commute to use Linux? 🤣
Daily drive linux *
Lmao my bad
Linux Mint 0.08% Yay!