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Linux Distros (Gaming) From 2018 to 2025 - OMG the Change!
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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Linux Gaming
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Is this just based on protondb user reporting/comment data? because I doubt the sample size tells you anything other than these are the builds most used by users willing to contribute to protondb.
Yes. However, it's still very notable that distros like Ubuntu have gone from 40+% to under 10%.
Ubuntu is the distro that people hate on the most, which is ironic given how easy it is to use.
Pop_OS hit 12.3% in Feb 2021 and completely fell off the chart in May of this year before coming back for September. I'm one of those users.
Oh, and i'm pretty sure I know where flatpak is from. The instructions to input your system data in ProtonDB relies on steam's system information. My OS shows as flatpak by default because I installed a flatpak version of steam from the pop shop. If someone doesn't manipulate it themselves, it shows as "OS: Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime)" - The most recent data shows flatpak as 4.5%. So who knows where those users really are coming from. Cachyos ships with steam, so it won't ever show up as flatpak for that OS unless someone does something really funky.
It's easy to use unless you NEED the non-snap version of a package.
So I wanted to install GrapheneOS on my pixel. I booted into Ubuntu and the USB connecting to my pixel just didn't work
Turns out, snap is at fault. Guess what, there's no easy way to just say "give me the non-snap package"
Same experience for me.
Recently I booted the Live CD to test something, downloaded Steam via the Ubuntu App Store and that Snap garbage wouldn't even launch, meanwhile the Steam.deb worked perfectly fine on the same environment. Imagine getting that as your first experience with Linux.....
S76 has been focusing heavily on Cosmic, so Pop as a whole has fallen behind. The new Beta is very promising, but not something I would daily drive. I love a lot about Cosmic, but it has a long way to go before it’s as polished and functional as Plasma.
Yeah, I didn't do a whole lot of research before moving to Pop but i'm sticking with one distro for a while just so I get fluent in something. I hate the out of the box DE experience but with a little tweaking it's usable.
Gaming is so easy to figure out. I've gotten FSR4 to work and I don't notice much in the way of a performance delta with windows. Plus if you run into any issues there's solutions to practically everything with ProtonDB, reddit and the archwiki.
So far my biggest gripe so far is zero HDR support which is hardly a dealbreaker.
Cosmic started as a fork of GNOME. They worked on that for a long, long time before deciding to start over.
I think it’s the right call. I can see myself using it once it’s matured some more. The ability to seamlessly switch between floating and tiled modes is wonderful. The simplicity and intuitiveness of the UI and settings. They take all the right features and ideas from GNOME, KDE, MacOS, and Windows and made something that could be better than all of them. All they need is time and polish, and they seem dedicated to doing it right.
I am looking forward to seeing it evolve and am cheering for them.
Ubuntu isn't easy. Not when the context is gaming as is this video's.
Since Steam Deck all interesting developments (emulators, source ports of commercial games) happen on Flathub.
Canonical banned Flatpak from the default installation of all official Ubuntu variants (so Kubuntu, Lubuntu,...), therefore it is required to type shell commands to get stuff off Flathub, therefore it's now among the least easy to use distributions.
This is why I always end up back at Ubuntu. Shit just works 95% of the time. Sure, it's a skill issue that I can't make a lot of other distros work for me but I don't want to close a skill gap every time I need to use my computer
That’s what kept me on Fedora. It just works. When Ubuntu went all-in on Snaps and ignored every bit of criticism about it, that was the end of my love and support for Ubuntu or Canonical.
I recently set up a PC for a pensioner who can't or does not want to afford a Windows 11 PC. I used AlmaLinux (community RHEL). I'm not the biggest fan of some Gnome defaults, so I installed Dash To Panel from the official repositories and enabled traditional window buttons to make the experience closer to Windows. That's it.
The Fedora developers laid excellent ground work.
Ubuntu is falling behind in official Steam hardware & Software Survey as well. Of course the sample size is much larger, so the specific percentages don't match but the trend is identical.
I took this screenshot of the Steam survey site for September 2025: