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.
The council planted a new tree on my road, trees surged in population from 1 to 2 yesterday
100% surge is legit
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?
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It’s not just a percentage thing. 1 person yesterday to 2 people today is a 100% increase. Not much of a surge, at least in terms of news worthiness. Going from 6% to 10% sounds more news worthy than going from 1% to 2% despite the latter being a much larger percentage increase.
Considering the many millions of steam accounts. A 1% increase is nothing to sniff at.
Of course, percentage just help show relativity. It's why people can look at a 0.5% increase and dismiss it as not significant.
Would it help if I translated the percentage for you? Linux surged 600000 to 2.3 million.
It's not the percentage total but the speed of increase.
A delicious canned energy drink from the 90s.
Josta was better.
Click bait media
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
I'd say some of that drop was punters like me who were already gaming on Linux and have just moved over to the deck now.
I have a dock for mine and it's really the only thing I use for gaming now as my laptop is very old.
Linux Mint 0.08% Yay!
It's an excellent distro. My first, after a poor Ubuntu experience years prior. I'll always have good things to say.
LMDE is Mint without the Ubuntu. Don't mind me, just spreading the good word.
Oh yeah, LMDE is definitely the future of Mint. Good point.
I just removed Windows from my desktop and went straight Linux after seeing how well things ran on my Deck.
bill’s days are numbered
I mean, he's not exactly a spring chicken anymore.
My guess is that most gaming Linux users have a dual boot setup and play games on Windows.
If not for games like Destiny, I wouldn’t even need that. Literally everything else I play runs great on Linux now
I used to keep a windows drive to run steam. But it honestly sees very little use nowadays.
Mostly I boot it every few months to see what shenanigans Microsoft has pulled with windows. Other than that, it's just sitting there. Everything I play runs in Linux.
I run Tumbleweed btw.
Not anymore. I don't even bother to check steamdb, games run anyhow flawlessly under Proton experimental.
(OK, maybe check if the game runs well before buying it)
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