Every year, someone on the internet declares that this is finally the year of the Linux desktop. For me, that moment already came and went when I made the switch for gaming.

But the number one question I still get is simple: what percentage of games actually run on Linux? The answer is more complicated than a single number, and it is worth walking through properly.

Linux gaming almost made it in 2015… and failed

Steam Machines were the right idea at the wrong time

Back in 2015, Valve made a pretty bold bet. It launched Steam Machines, a lineup of living room PCs running SteamOS, their own Linux-based operating system. To understand why, you have to look at what Microsoft was doing at the time.

Windows 8 was a disaster from a PR standpoint, but the bigger concern for Valve was not the missing Start menu. Microsoft was pushing the Windows Store hard, and Gabe Newell was vocal about seeing it as a direct threat to Steam. The fear was that Microsoft wanted to turn Windows into a closed platform. If that happened, Steam could find itself locked on its own home turf.

So Valve built an exit strategy, which was SteamOS. The idea was to create a platform that it controlled, and the OG Steam Machines were supposed to bring it into the living room. The biggest problem was compatibility. A handful of developers ported their games to Linux (including Valve, obviously), but the problem is that “handful” amount never grew.

The fundamental problem was always the game library. Native Linux ports were rare, and still are. Outside a small selection of titles, your existing Steam library simply did not work. Most PC gamers had hundreds of Windows games they had built up over the years, and asking them to walk away from all of that was a tough ask.

By 2018, the Steam Machine experiment was essentially over. Valve stopped pushing it, and the partner manufacturers moved on. Linux gaming went back to being something only a certain type of person bothered with, the kind who actually enjoyed spending an afternoon getting a game to launch through WINE.

In 2026, most games simply run on Linux

Proton changed everything

But the good thing is Valve never gave up. The story changed completely when Valve introduced Proton in 2018. Proton is a compatibility layer built on top of WINE, which is a project that had been trying to get Windows software running on Linux for decades.

The results speak for themselves. A huge portion of the Steam library now runs on Linux without you needing to touch a single setting. You just hit play. ProtonDB is a great resource if you want to check how a specific game runs before committing to anything. It is a community-driven site where players log their own experiences with individual titles, and it gives you a clear picture of what to expect going in.

I have spent time with a lot of gaming Linux distros, and some of them run games better than Windows does. Distros like CachyOS ship with kernels specifically tuned for your hardware, and the performance difference in some titles is pretty noticeable. It is not always the case, but it happens more often than you would think.

Beyond Steam, you are not stuck either. Apps like Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher make it straightforward to run games from Epic, GOG, and other platforms.

A big part of why Linux gaming has grown so much in popularity is the Steam Deck. Valve released a handheld gaming PC running SteamOS, and it sold incredibly well. What is interesting is that a lot of Steam Deck owners have no idea they are running Linux.

They pick it up, play their games, and love it. That kind of invisible adoption is exactly what Linux gaming needed, and it brought in a wave of users who never would have gone near Linux on their own.

Looking ahead, Linux could become the go-to platform for ARM gaming. Valve is working on the Steam Frame, an upcoming device built around an ARM chip, and they have been investing heavily in FEX, a translation layer designed to run x86 games on ARM hardware.

Linux is no longer the barrier, the corporations are

Punishing the wrong people

I showed you the benchmarks above, and as I said, pretty much every game I play regularly runs just fine on Linux. So what is actually stopping Linux gaming from being a complete recommendation for everyone?

Go to Twitch right now and look at the top 15 most popular games. I can almost guarantee that close to half of them will not run on Linux. And the frustrating part is that this has nothing to do with any technical limitations. The entire problem, in almost every case, comes down to one thing: anti-cheat software.

The example that bothers me the most is Fortnite. Before I get into that, I want you to read this tweet from Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games.

That is a completely reasonable thing to say, and I agree with it. The problem is, it is very hard to take considering the person it’s coming from. Fortnite uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which powers dozens of other games that run perfectly on Linux via Proton. Epic Games knows this, and it has deliberately made a decision to block Linux players from playing Fortnite.

That’s a pretty difficult position to defend when the same person spends their time criticizing Apple for not embracing open platforms.

The broader, more complex problem is kernel-level anti-cheat. Valorant is the most well-known example. Riot’s Vanguard runs deep inside the operating system, and getting that working reliably under a translation layer like Proton is tricky.

Kernel-level anti-cheats are more effective at catching cheaters, but the way they are designed essentially punishes an entire group of legitimate players just for choosing a different operating system.

The technology to run these games on Linux is either already there or within reach. The gap is not technical anymore. It is a series of business decisions made by companies that have simply chosen not to prioritize Linux users, and in some cases actively work against them.

It’s frustrating, but it’s getting better

So what percentage would I actually put on Linux game compatibility? If you strip away everything else and just look at the games themselves, I would say we are at 100%. The technology is there. The only thing standing in the way now is anti-cheat software, and that is entirely a people problem, not a technical one.

With more Valve hardware on the way and the momentum behind projects like FEX, I am excited to see where this goes. At some point, the audience gets big enough that ignoring Linux users stops making business sense. So consider this a gentle nudge, Epic Games. The switch is right there.