Worse - Distrowatch at least calls it “Page Hit Ranking”, and on their details page says in bold " They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions". Knowingly using flawed statistics to make factually unsupported conclusions and then present them in the most drama-inducing manner possible is worse than doing nothing - it actively distracts time and attention from the overall FOSS mission.
@luisalvarado Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense a desire for competition among distributions here - why do those stats matter other than general awareness of the largest userbases? Is where “Ubuntu” ranks on that page compared to “Arch” or “SteamOS”, or anything else, going to drive any action that changes how well Ubuntu works for gaming? If not, then that data is ultimately noise and IMO time spent worrying about it is time that could be spent either doing practical things to make the product better, or simply enjoying the product that we have and sharing that enjoyment with others.
Got nothing to correct. Everything that you just said is spot on. I am actually doing a video about this. The initial links that I started this conversation with came from 2 students that I have (Linux users, one arch, one ubuntu).
But today it got to a point about how information is shown, misused, altered or what the term so crazy people say about “alternative truth” that I had to do a video. At least to more or less clarify how to read certain things.
Those sites might not do that on purpose (or they might), and they could put a note saying what the data represents or how it is collected, but even then, other sites will grab the data and use it in a completely different way.
For example seaching for the most popular linux distribution will most of the time use the distrowatch list. Basically MX Linux is the best of all distros 
and the most popular one.
This also came to be with a conversation I had with my students and how easily they got to MX Linux because distrowatch said so. The same way other sites falsely declare or not even do a minimum of investigated journalism to determine if someone is currently true and holds its ground or not.
So everything you said is to the point and correct. It is the way it is used, or manipulates the linux community or even newcomers to it that is creating a big issue about confusion.
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Here is my approach to the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpGOCEYMlN8
This is the video in a nutshell
ProtonDB is fairly consistent with Steam, though
I think there are some big differences though. For example if you look at the graph on your site from protonDB, you will see it does not match the ones in Steam exactly:
Steam also has several issues as mentioned here. Including one I learned today about the “Other” seciton which includes, not only snap users from ubuntu, but also the rest of the versioning of Ubuntu.
For example it added on other the 22.04.2 users, the 22.04.1 users, the 22.04 users, the 23.04, the 23.10 (which I am one), this is because Arch, Majaro and any other rolling release model, simply shows to Steam as a unique name, whereas, Ubuntu supports a 6 month version model, but steam does not group all Ubuntu versions into a single Ubuntu, meaning it lost a big chunk of ubuntu users right there by the way that it shows the data (Really lazy and bad programming at this point from their end of a so called survey).
Same problem applies for Linux Mint, Pop Os and any other that uses a versioning naming convention.
Also, looking at the graph from protonDB, that could be interpreted as multiple things, to give you one, it could mean that the distros that show less, have less issues than the ones that show more, for example.
The type of users that typically go to ProtonDB are users that normally want to post an issue, not a success story with the game. Hence why most reports are bugs. Which promotes the idea above even more, about that less percent means less bugs, not just less users.
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While I understand that a lot of gamers want Windows games; however, personally, I don’t have this need… and there are many open source 3D games that work awesomely (especially browser based). However, I remember back in the 90s when so many people were complaining that you couldn’t run Windows apps on a Mac… then there was the PowerPC/PowerMac that allowed the apps to work, but not as good.
So, once again, we’re talking about what we can currently do with the native software – which is pretty darn significant.
Hello there,
Just fyi, i made with the french community Gaming Linux Fr a comparison between each Linux distribution with a focus on gaming, accessibility and video editing.
The objectives is to guide new linux comers on the best choice at this time.
Today, ubuntu & kubuntu, are clearly the best choice.
But ubuntu don’t tick all the boxes of our Spec.
Our objectives is to open requests like this one : Bug #2057792 “Some Games are crashing linked to a vm_max_map_cou...” : Bugs : Ubuntu
for improving ubuntu for a gaming aspects.
In this bugs, we treat about vm_max_map_count which is too low by default (65530) and we need an other value >200k to mainly reduce our bugs in some games like Hogwarts Legacy or StarCitizen.
We have a plan for other improvements, like the compatibility of xbox joypad or about the snap steam compatibility with a google form.
Below you can see the specs sharing with Gaming Linux Fr community (2.5 k subscribes on discord & 5k on youtube)
Maybe you are interested about the project and have some recommendations for us, to be more efficient to improve our initiatives.
Have a nice day !
Vinceff
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The biggest problem on Ubuntu today for a beginner is that the snap version launches fewer games than the .deb version of Steam.
Canonical’s Steam Snap is Causing Headaches for Valve - OMG! Ubuntu (omgubuntu.co.uk)
It would be necessary to fix the snap or at least keep the .deb version as default until the snap is up to par. Because if a beginner arrives on Ubuntu, they have the snap by default, and today it’s not at the level of the native steam package.
I think we should also speed up the Nvidia drivers a bit, we’re still on 535 on Ubuntu while the 550 are in the production branch and already in their second iteration, which means someone with a 4070 super, for example, won’t be detected. You can add the PPA, but for a beginner, there should be zero fuss.
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I agree that the snap isn’t ready and shouldn’t have been pushed to stable.
There is work being done to fix that. The Steam Snap Github actually has some interesting discussions on why the snap doens’t work well compared to other formats.
https://github.com/canonical/steam-snap/issues/365
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