https://www.makeuseof.com/microsofts...than-expected/
A surprisingly positive evaluation of Linux, especially as a gaming platform. When I started with Linux, everyone said: "It's stable, logically constructed, well-documented and safe on the Internet, but if you want to play games, you will need to keep Windows on as well." Wine already existed then but it wasn't anything like as good as having Windows.

The author's verdict:

there is some games that needs windows. like some online games are build that way that those games use anti-cheat systems and that (anti-cheat) program is made for windows.

no anti-cheat - no working game.

but lots of single player games work even better than in windows.
gaming is (close to) easy these days with Linux.

1 members found this post helpful.

Generally speaking, "games" are high-performance systems, which are often built for a particular hardware/software platform that is specifically optimized for what they need. It really shouldn't surprise you that this platform might be "Windows." (I actually know someone who has worked for many years in this rarefied area of Microsoft Corporation ...)

If you are addicted to a particular game it's perfectly okay to invest in a machine that runs it well. And, the (one ...) operating system that your game requires. In fact, I really don't see a point in trying to run it someplace else. Or, to ask the manufacturers of the game to try to support more than one environment (just to please you).

The operating system is the horse. The game you want to play is the cart. A Microsoft Windows license does not add much to the cost of the platform.

- - -

But, I would also add that the topic title, "Linux Desktop," is in a sense misleading. If you are an ordinary office user, Linux works extremely well today in supporting your "desktop" needs. (In fact, it offers several different ways to do so.)

1 members found this post helpful.

Linux has been the year of the desktop around here for many years. Everything runs Linux from RPI SBCs to Workstations. Games aren't an issue here. But I can see where if one 'wants' to run win games on Linux, he/she has more of a change today to run favorite game(s) on Linux. Only will get better. Now if just Windows would 'base' their OS on Linux (a start with WSL) and signal they are moving away from Windoze OS on a time-line.... and with their 'push' of web based apps, it actually seems more than possible (like Office365) as desktops just become clients for M$ stuff.

My year of the Linux desktop was 1997. What do YOU mean by "the year of the Linux desktop"?

While I started with Slack when I downloaded to a stack of floppies (early 90s) and have ran Linux ever since, I didn't go Windows free until all the kids left the nest which was around 2010, give or take a year...

I ran my first linux desktop sometime around 2000. I soon realized that the supposed 'privacy' and independence facets simply didn't mean that much to me but I continued to run some version of it ever since, mostly for the novelty of it. For the last several years I have settled on Win 10 and WSL for my needs. When MS finally kills off win10 I will probably go to a full linux distro. I don't game but I do have some Adobe and old cad software that I will run on off 'net' boxes.

Amalgamated Gemini and Grok ai stats:
"Steam Hardware Survey (June 2026)
This is one of the better indicators for active personal desktop use (gaming and general PCs). It surveys real machines running Steam:
Windows 94.1%
Linux 3.7% Includes SteamOS (~0.8% of all systems)
macOS 2.2%"


[Closed source - 70+%, approx.]
Amalgamated Gemini and Grok ai stats:
"Raw June 2026 figures:
Windows: 56.6%
Unknown: ~21.5%
OS X + macOS (Apple combined): ~16.4%
Linux: 4.4%
Chrome OS: 1.2%
StatCounter measures browser hits and has a large recent “Unknown” category (roughly 18–21%). This is widely attributed to privacy tools, user-agent masking, and changes after Windows 10 end-of-support rather than a true collapse in Windows usage."

With the recent hike in prices lately owing to ram shortages, (caused by AI), & MS Windows continual need for more & more resources, many more people are realising that Linux is the way forward....

(I've been full time Linux, & occasional BSD user, since 1999.)

These days, many people are realizing that their "desktop" needs actually consist of: superficial spreadsheets and word processing, and access to internal corporate applications which these days are usually "web driven." These strategies were intended to minimize the amount of business-specific software that had to reside on an individual computer. And, they were successful.