(Image credit: Jim Sugar via Getty Images)

I’m all-in, baby. I’m committed. If upgrading any distinct component of my PC didn’t require me taking out a loan right now, I’d be seriously considering switching my GPU over to some kind of AMD thing just to make my life slightly, slightly easier.

I’ve had it with Windows and ascended to the sunlit uplands of Linux, where the trees heave with open-source fruits and men with large beards grep things with their minds.

It’s really hard to find interesting screenshots that represent Linux, okay? (Image credit: Bazzite)

I’m not alone. In last month’s Steam hardware survey, the number of Linux users hit a new all-time high for the second month running, reaching the heady summit of a whopping, ah, 3.2% of overall Steam users. Hey, we’re beating Mac players.

I think that number will only grow as the new year goes by. More and more of us are getting sick of Windows, sure—the AI guff, the constant upselling on Office subs, the middle taskbar*—but also, all my experience goofing about with Linux this year has dispelled a lot of the, frankly, erroneous ideas I had about it. It’s really not hard! Really! I know Linux guys have been saying this for three decades, but it’s true now!

Goated with the open source (sorry)

As I’ve already written about, the bulk of my Linux-futzing time this year has been spent in Bazzite, a distro tailor-made for gaming and also tailor-made to stop idiots (me) from doing something likely to detonate their boot drive.

Hunt: Showdown running on Bazzite. (Image credit: Crytek)

I grew up thinking of Linux as ‘the command-line OS that lets you delete your bootloader’ and, well, I suppose that’s not untrue, but I’ve been consistently impressed at how simple Bazzite has been to run on my PC, even with my persnickety Nvidia GPU.

Everything I’ve played this year has been as easy—if not easier—to run on a free OS put together by a gaggle of passionate nerds as it is on Windows, the OS made by one of the most valuable corporations on planet Earth. I’ve never had to dip into the command line (which is, to be frank, a shame, as the command line is objectively cool).

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But to be honest, it’s not as if the Bazzite team has miraculously made Linux pleasant to use after decades of it seeming difficult and esoteric to normie computer users. I think mainstream Linux distros are just, well, sort of good now. Apart from my gaming PC, I also have an old laptop converted into a media server that lives underneath my television. It runs Debian 13 (which I updated to from Debian 12 earlier in the year) and requires essentially zero input from me at all.

What’s more, the only software I have on there is software I actually *want *on there. Oh for a version of Windows that let me do something as zany as, I don’t know, uninstall Edge.

Hell yeah.

That’s the true nub of it, I think. The stats can say what they like (and they do! We’ve all heard tales of Windows games actually running better on Linux via Valve’s Proton compatibility layer), but the heart of my fatigue with Windows is that, for every new worthless AI gadget Microsoft crams into it and for every time the OS inexplicably boots to a white screen and implores me to "finish setting up" my PC with an Office 365 subscription, the real problem is a feeling that my computer isn’t mine, that I am somehow renting this thing I put together with my own two hands from an AI corporation in Redmond.

That’s fine for consoles. Indeed, part of the whole pitch of an Xbox or PlayStation is the notion that you are handing off a lot of responsibility for your device to Sony and Microsoft’s teams of techs, but my PC? That I built? Get your grubby mitts off it.

BG3 running in Bazzite. (Image credit: Larian)

Are there issues? Sure. HDR’s still a crapshoot (plus ça change) and, as you’ve no doubt heard, a lot of live-service games have anticheat software that won’t play with Linux. But I think both of these issues are gradually ticking toward their solutions, particularly with Valve making its own push into the living room.

So I say make 2026 the year you give Linux a try, if you haven’t already. At the very least, you can stick it on a separate boot drive and have a noodle about with it. I suspect you’ll find the open (source) water is a lot more hospitable than you might think.

*I’m actually fine with the middle taskbar. I’m sorry.

One of Josh’s first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he’s been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He’ll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin’s Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you’re all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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