I hear those beautiful lyrics too, but I swear it's actually in C#

Oddly enough, many people apparently don't even know of the SuSE songs, would you believe it?

Saw the data here, on Statcounter: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america. But now that I have searched it, it seems that maybe this spike is related to bots masquerading as Linux traffic https://www.pcworld.com/article/3204830/linux-didnt-actually-hit-10-percent-market-share-blame-bots.html.

Who knows, but indeniably, Linux is gaining attraction progressively.

People that can rub two neurons together have figured out they can get their 10yr old nephew to install something for them... so the included OS means nothing besides how it affects the final price. They'll buy a laptop with Windows/Linux/no OS or whatever on it. In markets that don't allow computing devices to be sold without an OS it doesn't even have to be Linux, the vendors and manufacturers will happily slap FreeDOS on it to bypass the regulation.

udev rules is a bit of a deep end dive tbf. There are enough Linux distros where you can stick to the desktop most of the time.

I'd suggest Bazzite instead, still gaming oriented but it's a lot more user friendly than SteamOS which is moreso designed with the steam deck and steam machine in mind.

SteamOS is not meant to be used on normal desktop/laptops. You're making things harder for yourself.

Personally, what I hate about Linux is terminals and having even less reliable information about what has gone wrong. I will revisit Club Penguin in a couple of years, provided that Valve has further expanded SteamOS to the desktop PC.

In the meantime, I am using Windows Enterprise via Masgravel activation, installed via RUFUS, and paired with ShutUp10 to improve privacy without having to be a guru. ShutUp10 also has a paid version that automatically reverts changes that Microsoft does to privacy settings.