Your sarcasm is misplaced because you didn't pay attention to the growth of the Linux gaming market. Check contributions to Mesa by Valve, Feral and others.
But more to the point - sure, Linux gamers are quite excited about all the work that's going now into the open graphics stack.
Amusing that you call it sarcasm. Linux gaming has flatlined at 1% or so for years without any noticeable changes.
I just checked the last steam hardware survey, linux is at 0.60%.
The linux steam hardware has pretty much been a flop. Ubuntu is ditching unity.
I sit in front of linux desktops at home and work. I do occasionally game some under linux. I have a linux phone (which has a linux kernel). But I fully realize it's a niche and feel lucky when any game comes to linux. I don't really see any reason for any real optimism.
It's much more a sign of their failed mobile strategy, which hinged on UI convergence between the desktop and mobile versions of Ubuntu. With all that gone, pooling their efforts with the rest of the Gnome-using world only makes sense (much of the Unity desktop also consisted of appropriated Gnome components).
I think your conclusion falls under the term non sequitur. It does not show anything about Canonical's financial incentives or their strategy, your statement is basically stating an assumption what the reason is.
Further I would argue it is irrelevant to the initial argument.
What has Canonical to do with it? Neither "Linux", "Linux Desktop", "Linux Gaming" or "AMD graphics under Linux" are in any way tied solely to Canonical or what Canonical does. Again, am I missing something?
> It does not show anything about Canonical's financial incentives or their strategy, your statement is basically stating an assumption what the reason is.
Fair point.
> What has Canonical to do with it? Neither "Linux", "Linux Desktop", "Linux Gaming" or "AMD graphics under Linux" are in any way tied solely to Canonical or what Canonical does. Again, am I missing something?
Ubuntu is the only official supported distribution by Steam and GOG (they also support Linux Mint, but it's based on Ubuntu).
That actually says (if you follow the links to try to find the actual claims): The Linux Market share on Steam is about 1%, Mac is about 4%. They are relatively stable around that. But obviously more people join Steam every day.[1]
So... about 1%, using Steam to estimate (not steam hardware though).
There is no evidence presented anywhere which disproves that. Your claim was that it showed evidence of growth, but if you read it then it turns out it is using the steam survey, and shows no growth in percentage terms at all.
But more to the point - sure, Linux gamers are quite excited about all the work that's going now into the open graphics stack.