@neolith, I regret not having added some emoticons, but the spirit in which I said that was a bit subtle for the kind of flavouring they can give. I was intending a certain sarcastic levity, a mild hyperbole meant to convey my withering contempt. If I actually banned such a thing, it would not be for stupidity. Rather, it would be because I don't buy into the paradox of tolerance. The one group one need not tolerate is the intolerant, because they would break the whole tolerance system. There's a certain irony in your objecting to banning a mod that's not to my taste, which mod in turn is conveying the desire to ban things that are not to someone's taste. And let's not forget that if I were someone running a mod manager I would not be the government--I would have no responsibility to host a mod I don't like. If people want an obnoxious mod they can host it at obnoxiousmods.com, it's not my problem.

(Incidentally, what makes it stupid rather than merely intolerant is that apparently, the game by default sets the pronoun based on the body type you choose. So you don't even have to pay attention to its ability to set pronouns--you just ignore it if you're already doing the default. So the idea is that you go to the trouble of acquiring and activating this mod, just so you can be secure in the knowledge that you can no longer possibly do what you would never normally even notice you could do. The insecurity level this implies to me is staggering)

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Starfield's pronoun-removal mod

I looked it up. Has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of, and these days the competition is fierce. I'd be fine with banning that for the moronicness level alone.

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I've been reading through the comments, leaning one way, leaning another. I dunno.
On one hand, this is certainly intended to be a threat to the Steam Deck and a counterattack to block any rise of Linux at Windows' expense. And, Microsoft has certainly had quite a bit of success in that department in the past. And, it has the money and the power that should make its actions important and dangerous. There are so many reasons to see this as big news.

But somehow, I feel like Microsoft does not have the organizational and programming mojo any more to pull this off. The killer grifter instinct is diluted through departments and meetings and focus groups and hack marketers. I'm less disturbed than I perhaps should be. I feel like this is Darth Vader planning the pre-meeting meeting to determine the agenda for the future meeting to decide whether and potentially on what timeline to use the Deathstar to destroy Alderaan. The meeting won't decide anything, but Vader will force-choke the guy who forgot to bring doughnuts.

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Well, it seems like teasing the date is getting them lots of publicity. Why would they want to undermine that?

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So the key question--will people give an f?

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. . . What do vegan zombies do? Break into your house and eat all your hummus and pita?

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After an article about this being upcoming, and a couple enthusiastic comments, I went and bought the first one. I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Will definitely get the second at some point.

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This actually looks pretty cool. I should grab the demo and see.

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@benstor214 Hrm, let's see. So, from Feb 2022 (introduction of the Steam Deck) to Nov 2023, which I make 21 months, we've got 0.89%. From Nov 2023 to Apr 2025, 17 months, we've got 0.78%. On a per-month basis, the second period is very slightly faster but I wouldn't want to make much of it--the increase is slight and the data is noisy.

Still, we're looking at about half a percent per year. Which doesn't sound like much, but at that rate in about 4-5 more years we're hitting 5%. And if more devices start coming out with SteamOS on them, we could see a further acceleration. These are not, by historical standards, bad times to be into Linux.

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So if I not-quite-arbitrarily divide that graph into before Steam Deck and after Steam Deck, from Sep-2018 to Mar 2022 (when Steam Deck came out) we have growth of 0.24%. From Mar 2022 to Mar 2025, a slightly shorter time, we have growth of 1.67%.

I'd say growth has accelerated.

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