SteamOS only being 28% is very interesting. Means that market share is not just being carried by the Steam Deck but instead more people are interested in trying a large variety of distros.

Also a full percent growth over 18 months if we reach 3% by the end of the year. Not too shabby.

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Over the last 1-2 years I've seen many larger games either launch with Linux/Steam Deck support or added support in retrospect. Including ones with competitive aspects like Marvel Rivals or Fragpunk. Or decently large games like Hell Let Loose.
Others only supported the Steam Deck through hardware checks. This is annoying but it's at least a sign they are willing to support other PC platforms that are not Windows.
Even xDefiant from Ubisoft worked for it's short life.

It's easy to get frustrated about things like this but it's important to remember the progress that happened so far.
I think Linux gaming is winning here, even if only slowly. Especially since it's pushed mainly by a handheld that can even barely handle those games.
It's gonna be interesting if we get in the territory of a Steam console or a Steam Deck 2 (with either eGPU support or enough power to at least push HD gaming with FSR 4).

In the end it's a matter of market share. And if we already got so much support with only a few million sold Steam Decks, I can only wonder what's gonna happen with 10 or even 20 million devices.

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There's been some interesting developments going on with making FSR 4 work on RDNA 3 hardware. Obviously it requires quite a bit of performance tradeoffs compared to RDNA 4 but it's getting to a point where it seems to produce better results than XeSS.

Once everything is merged and easily available, it might be a good time for me to replay the game and tackle the DLC.

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I consider Limbo one of the major games during the fairly early indie game times. One of the games that really showcased that we don't need to rely on massive companies to create iconic and memorable videogames.
It's sad to see it disappear (at least in the legal realm).

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Are you just being a cautious pessimist

I guess I kinda am in that regard. Maybe I'll be proven wrong here.

That being said, I think it would be a bit of a unique situation. Since it's a proprietary application, it should ideally be Open Source so it can seamlessly be integrated into other projects like Gamescope and so that Valve has the ability to have more control over it instead of just paying for a license. (After all, that's kinda the situation with the Nvidia drivers right now)
But has Valve ever done something like that? They usually integrate projects that are already Open Source (MangoHud/FSR 1) but would they approach a commercial tool and propose something like that?

I think it would be a great idea. But over the last few years, it doesn't feel like that Valve is really pushing to close the gap in regards to features. Improvements, yes. But not really new features. HDR felt like the last big one. Maybe they're trying to convince AMD to port some stuff over. Maybe they're preparing all of that for the Steam Deck 2 as it would probably have much better hardware to fully utilize those features.

But we'll see eventually.

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Doubt it would ever happen but it would be awesome if Valve paid both of them to make it Open Source (as far as legally possible) and maintain it. Then framegen (and maybe even some of the other upscaler options) could officially be integrated into gamescope.

Again, doubt it would happen. But it would be a nice addition I've seen plenty people ask about. Linux in general seems to lack some of those niche/more advanced features you can get on Windows. And unless AMD starts porting those features to Linux, Valve would probably be in the best position to push for feature parity themselves.

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Been using Bazzite for over two years now. It's been a very stable experience so far. A nice combination of a rock solid immutable foundation while still providing the option to install system packages if needed. The only problem I remember was that there was a bit of a performance regression at one point that caused some noticeable stutter. I could've tried to rollback but it was resolved in a few weeks anyway.

Other than that, it really feels like a great distro for most people unless you want to really dig deep into configurations. Then the immutability will be a huge issue. But for most users? Works well. I was even able to setup up some coding stuff on it without issues.

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I mainly used FreeTube or a browser so far but this seems like a very clean solution.
Will give it a shot.

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It's not the full trilogy, what a shame. But at least it probably implies that the other games might finally follow at some point. Also it's finally on Steam. The releases have been all over the place for this series.
And I'm not worried about Anti-Cheat. They usually activate Proton support for their own games, even for older titles.

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With a Windows handheld you need to develop some frontend/overlay to make the experience bearable.
While the likes of Asus already had a codebase to develop this interface from, not every company is willing to invest that much money into it. Especially since the handheld market is already fairly crowded with competitors.

SteamOS does have the advantage here that it's pretty much ready to go, allowing companies to focus on hardware. Will be interesting to see if more companies that don't develop their own in-house gaming software will release SteamOS based devices as a result.

Also I wonder if Valve will promote those devices on Steam. Would be an easy way to further incentivize SteamOS adoption.

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