And we have finally reached December! Here’s our final look in this year at the ProtonDB data that we use to track the waves and tides happening in the world of Linux distros.

Before we move to numbers, I don’t want to bore you with the usual disclaimer, but the following needs to be said nonetheless:

• This may not be representative of all types of Linux users. I’m sure this is not what your AWS architect uses on EC2.
• This may not be completely representative of all Linux gamers either. But I’d wage this is actually a good predictor where the market is going to shift. We saw first that Manjaro was getting the boot here first, before going under pretty much everywhere.
• There may be some additional biases, due to whoever used ProtonDB.
• Flatpak is NOT a distro, but that’s what Steam reports when it’s running on Flatpak, and Flatpak being distro independent we report it as a separate environment, if that makes sense. Feel free to ignore it if you wish.
• Arch Linux is Arch Linux on the desktop. The Steam Deck’s OS is reported as HoloISO, not Arch Linux, so stop trying to claim that Arch is first because of the Steam Deck! This is mainly data reported from desktop PCs, so no, SteamOS is not a thing at the moment on such machines. This may change as Valve starts providing official support beyond the Steam Deck. There are Steam Deck-only reports on ProtonDB, but we don’t use them here in this chart.
• We have no relationship whatsoever with any the devs who develop the distros mentioned in the list.

Now on to the results. You might want to click on the picture to enlarge it, because it’s small.

CachyOS is cannibalizing Arch

After the ongoing ascent of CachyOS, the next obvious step was direct competition to vanilla Arch Linux. I was kind of wondering if that would occur or not, since the Arch Linux folks have no direct reason to switch and use CachyOS. Under the hood there are not a huge amount of differences, while you will have access to more hardware-optimized kernels, and a friendly approach to a proper desktop install. But if you were already using Arch Linux for years, you’d be already settled right? So that was the counter argument I had in mind. But now the results are in, and for the first time we see CachyOS eating some of Arch Linux’s share.

It is the first time since 2021 that Arch Linux’ share goes under 19%. So this is some kind of milestone in itself. Now the question is where CachyOS will stop. Just like Software is eating the world, will CachyOS eat the Linux distro world? Hard to say, but so far the trend is nothing like we have ever seen before, and recently we have seen some big names recognizing CachyOS, such as Framework Computers sponsoring them. Note that Framework also sponsors Debian and Bazzite, so CachyOS is not unique in that position.

Still, it certainly must be a huge motivator to get that kind of recognition.

Other Changes

There’s not a lot of other news in the chart. With one exception: Bazzite is growing. It was kind of stuck for a while under 5% and since then it’s unlocked the 6% and 7% share and is now just behind Ubuntu. I have had some personal experience with Bazzite recently as I was using it on the Xbox Ally X and Non-X handhelds. It works very well for that kind of use case.

Bazzite will certain beat Windows in most games in performance, and since it boots directly into the Steam Big Picture interface, it’s as close to SteamOS as you are going to get, with a Fedora base instead of Arch Linux.

What to expect for 2026

Things may change in 2026 as we will get SteamOS coming on desktop machines for good, with the introduction of Valve’s New Steam Machine. So I would expect to see some amount of hardware working with SteamOS showing up on ProtonDB’s data. Right now I have no idea how popular that kind of hardware will be, since it will surely depend on the actual price point, and whatever Valve can sell in terms of benefits of having one vs a regular PC. With the RAM prices flying high right now, pricing things well is not going to be an easy task.

And that’s mostly it for this time. TLDR CachyOS looks unstoppable. We will see each other a few months later, after some well deserved holidays (I hope you guys also take some time off) for an update on this distro situation.