I’ve spent a considerable amount of this year with Linux under my thumbs, whether that’s putting CachyOS on my ROG Ally X and then benching handhelds like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ against it. I even put Proxmox on the ROG Ally X, because why not? And somewhere between installing my fourth Proton-GE build and watching SteamOS boot on Intel silicon, it hit me: the vendors have noticed too. For as long as I can remember, Linux gaming was a hobbyist project that hardware makers could politely wave at and then ignore, because the numbers gave them permission to. Those numbers don’t say that anymore.