This has been an absolutely HUGE week for Linux gaming. We've got new devices, new distros, and records being broken! Plus, what's going on with my new game? All this and more today! It's time for some Linux gaming news!

Retroid Pocket 5 supports Linux

So, this is awesome: Retroid has announced via their Twitter account that their new Retroid Pocket has full Linux support!

The image here shows that Batocera and ARMbian will be the official distros with, quote "open Linux kernel for community developers." Uh yeah. I sure hope it does! Whatever that means.

They also have an email address listed so developers can request a unit for testing. This is absolutely terrific to see! I'm curious if they mean distro developers or game developers. I've emailed them for comment but haven't heard back!

According to another post, the RP5 will have a 5.5" 1080P AMOLED screen, DisplayPort 1080p60, 5000mAh battery, it will weigh 280 grams, and it will clock in at 19.9cm wide by 7.8 cm tall and 1.56cm thick. It will also have a Snapdragon 865.

Anyway, this is big news as this is one of the few mass market Linux-powered handheld ARM devices. I find this quite exciting and I'll be sure to talk more about this as more news drops!

So yeah, you could say I'm quite curious about this. I'm hoping that they release more details like pricing and release date soon as—besides these posts to Twitter—it doesn't appear like this thing has been properly announced.

Acer's Nitro Blaze 7

So Acer is now getting into the YAUWHPC that's (Yet Another Uninspired Windows Handheld PC). This one looks like they went back in time about 15 years and ripped the decals off one of their "gaming laptops."

I mean, yikes.

The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 ships with a Ryzen 7 8840HS with AI support—because that's what this world needs more of. It's got the Radeon 780M GPU with 12 RDNA 3 compute units, a 7" touch screen at 1080P (IPS) which clocks at 144Hz, and it includes AMD FreeSync Premium. Which is nice. 16 GB of RAM, and a 2TB NVMe drive.

It also includes 2 USB 4 Type-C connectors at 40Gbps, Windows 11 Home and PC Game Pass for 3 months.

SteamFork aims for SteamOS

So, SteamFork is a new Linux gaming distro.

So with SteamFork, that brings the number of Linux Gaming-specific distros to 4? RIght? We've already got Bazzite, Chimera, and HoloISO… and then there's Batocera…. so I guess it depends on what you consider a "Linux Gaming distro." (There's also Playtron, but we'll get to that in a second…)

Now, I've always been a bit critical of new disros and forks that don't offer anything new or interesting. So what does SteamFork do differently? Quote:

SteamFork is a project to create an immutable Linux distribution that is as SteamOS like as possible without sacrificing device compatibility.

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* Full SteamOS UI/UX, including desktop mode.
* Minimal changes to SteamOS to preserve upstream compatibility.
* Power management optimizations ported from JustEnoughLinuxOS.
* Improved fan curves on supported devices.
* RGB off by default, will flash on low battery (on supported devices).
* Supports booting from removable media such as usb drives and micro sd cards (64GB minimum).

Okay, admirable goals. They're basically trying to make a more widely compatible (and, importantly, available) SteamOS. I like that. So this is interesting, but I'd love your take. Sound off in the comments below!

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PlaytronOS Alpha

Next up, let's talk about PlaytronOS. Remember them? Playtron are the ones trying to take on Valve in the Linux gaming space. They have the backing of gaming industry and tech veterans. People from Google and Meta, CyanogenMod, Atari, and others. Not to mention, they brag about all the venture capital investments they've received on their website.

One of the most recent investments came from SquareEnix. Quote:

"Square Enix's investment in Playtron underscores its commitment to driving innovation and enhancing player experiences and access," said Hideaki Uehara, General Manager, Investment & Business Development of Square Enix. "This collaboration aims to leverage Playtron's "GameOS" to expand distribution of Square Enix's portfolio of beloved franchises and explore new creative possibilities that are only possible when harnessing the full power of an operating system"

That all seems like corporate jargon if you ask me.

Also, it's interesting to note that there seems to be a few typeos in this press release. Little things like extra (or missing) spaces littered about.

We are excited to announce [two spaces for some reason] Square Enix… has made a strategic investment in Playtron. [two more spaces] Playtron…

Also, in the news: they just released an alpha for PlaytronOS and it looks… interesting. Let me know if you wanna see me do a deep dive into this distro by leaving a 🎮 game pad emoji in the comments.

Given that they are using VC and the first Playtron device is some weird web3 crypto thing—I'm skeptical of this. But I hope things are on the up-and-up and I'd, if they are, I'd love to see them succeed!

Linux Market Share reaches another all-time high!

This week we got our monthly metrics from StatsCounter—one of the largest surveys of operating system market share in the world. August saw Linux market share increase again over previous months—this time hitting an all-time high!

Linux market share was up one tenth of a percent, rising from 4.45% in July to 4.55% in August.

This is the aggregate percentage of web traffic across over 1.5 million websites and it's impressive to see the hocky-sticking of Linux market share. Especially since—besides the Steam Deck and Chromebooks—most pre-installed Linux machines come from boutique vendors.

Now, does this mean that folks are more likely than ever to install Linux on their PC? I think so. But let me know your thoughts below.

Steam Metrics

Now that we're talking about numbers, let's talk about Steam's Hardware Survey. Now, every month I collect this data and add it to my spreadsheet that attempts to approximate an absolute number of Steam Deck users for the month.

This month, Linux percentage fell by over a tenth of a percent. The question is why? Well, Black Myth: Wukong launched this year—made by a Chinese studio. If we look at Chinese language growth, we'll see that it hit 35.03%. And with Chinese usership comes Windows growth.

Another Steam Update

So Valve continues their work on Steam Store Pages, giving developers more control over which other titles from a given franchise or creator are promoted on a game's store page. This is really great as I've already got my game Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball on Steam. As you can see, I've se this up for the Dudelings store page since I'm trying to build hype for my upcoming puzzle game Chess Mess.

Chess Mess is a highly addictive, puzzling twist on a classic game of Chess! The goal is to beat the par score by capturing the random assortment of pieces on the board. Once you've cleared the par score, the Gray King will be summoned.

The strategy is to score the points you need while leaving yourself enough material to capture the gray king!

Chess Mess has been in development since last summer and I'm super stoked about it. It's available to wishlist now on Steam. So if you're interested in it, head over there and add it to your wishlist!

-- Chapters --
00:00 Introduction
00:16 Retroid Pocket 5 Supports Linux
02:31 Acer Nitro Blaze 7
03:53 SteamFork is a new Linux Gaming Distro
05:42 Playtron gets alpha, investment from SquareEnix
07:31 Linux sets new all-time high market share
08:21 Steam Hardware Survey August 2024
09:21 Steam Store Page Update