Oh man, if only we had statistics from countries where porn is banned, or some sort of scientific study from multiple countries where porn was banned and then unbanned to see what the change was…
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm
Spoiler: They’ll probably go up slightly.
Totally agreed. I’m just seeing far too many people here and elsewhere hailing this as some kind of massive win “FOR LINUX” when in reality it’s a massive win for “THE STEAM DECK.”
No, they’re not. Not anymore than someone using Android is “using Linux” or you’re “using OS/2” when you find an ancient ATM. This is just more goalpost moving by Linux apologists to make themselves feel better about the “year of the Linux desktop” still being at least 6-8 months away.
For anyone that doesn’t see my post lower down: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-June-2023-Statistics
Steam breaks down OS user numbers by distro. This information is out there.
Valve is not about to start lying about numbers and it’s utterly baffling that anyone would think they would. They rely 100% on the trust of publishers and developers. If they lied about their numbers, which these companies use to generate sales projections and make seriously massive financial decisions off of, they would be immediately dumped by everyone and subject to massive antritrust lawsuits.
Valve has done little to upset the games industry, because they understand their position is actually quite precarious.
The point is that the Steam Deck is as “Linux” as ChromeOS or Android are.
In other words, Linux means absolutely nothing to the end user on these systems because they’re so clamped down as to be useless beyond the provided playground. The Steam Deck is a bit different but even then what percentage of users actually use Linux directly rather than the provided Deck interface?
What do you think mobile games run on?