Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

The first stable update for the Steam Client of 2020, pulling in all the recent changes from the Beta versions.

For Linux users, it's a good one. It fixes the Steam Library not working on some NFS mounts, fixes a crash while prepare the Hardware Survey and some tweaks to the Steam Runtime system info gathering to only run when needed.

Remote Play handles cursor scaling better on different resolutions and for Remote Play Valve added a client-side screen magnifier for the toggle magnification controller binding. Remote Play Together also saw some updates including: letting the host see all connected controllers, letting the host drag and drop controllers to change slots and an error message was added when trying to join a game that is unavailable due to country or Family View restrictions.

For the Steam Library you can now sort by Steam Review in shelves and app grids, there's an expanded What's New settings box to tweak what you see, improved Library performance and multiple bugs were fixed.

Full changelog can be seen here.


Weirdly, yesterday we were supposed to have a Steam sale with the wider release of the newer Steam Soundtrack system but it just didn't happen. Perhaps it was too close to the Lunar sale that should be going live on the 23rd? Maybe they will bundle the two together.

As mentioned at the bottom of a recent article about the Steam Client Beta (the changes which are live now see above!), we reached out to Valve about the oddness of the recent Steam Hardware Survey showing an increase in Windows 7/Simplified Chinese of around 14%—making Simplified Chinese the current most popular language on Steam. Our message was sent onto the people involved but we've had no reply since so we've updated our dedicated Steam page with the statistics for December 2019.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Steam, Update
20 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
13 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

Ehvis Jan 21, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
I'm still on the beta version and I still sometimes get library freezes. It's not as common as earlier, but it's still weird.
BielFPs Jan 21, 2020
QuoteSimplified Chinese the current most popular language on Steam.

I wonder how is the current status of Linux usage in the Asian market (Japan, China and South Korea). I think the Chinese one would be bigger if they had PUBG and LoL avaliable natively.
TheRiddick Jan 21, 2020
I wish they enable the ability to change the font size of the games list window, my font is tiny at 4k and the hiDPI mode is hilariously large.

I'm talking about -dev UI editor mode, there is no font css option for the list.
Linas Jan 21, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: BielFPs
QuoteSimplified Chinese the current most popular language on Steam.
I wonder how is the current status of Linux usage in the Asian market (Japan, China and South Korea). I think the Chinese one would be bigger if they had PUBG and LoL avaliable natively.
There is big potential for Linux in China. Due to the conflict between Trump and Huawei, the Chinese are threatening to drop Windows in all of the government offices. Also WPS Office, that is the standard office suite for at least some government branches, already supports Linux (and is really good actually). But until something more concrete happens, I don't think we will see a lot of Chinese Linux users.

Of course all of this is just conjecture. :S:
TheSHEEEP Jan 21, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Linas
Quoting: BielFPs
QuoteSimplified Chinese the current most popular language on Steam.
I wonder how is the current status of Linux usage in the Asian market (Japan, China and South Korea). I think the Chinese one would be bigger if they had PUBG and LoL avaliable natively.
There is big potential for Linux in China. Due to the conflict between Trump and Huawei, the Chinese are threatening to drop Windows in all of the government offices. Also WPS Office, that is the standard office suite for at least some government branches, already supports Linux (and is really good actually). But until something more concrete happens, I don't think we will see a lot of Chinese Linux users.

Of course all of this is just conjecture. :S:
Biggest point keeping Chinese people from using Linux is the ridiculously bad support of... Chinese.
In every single Distro, it is a maddeningly hard thing to get even some support for Chinese typing going. Digging through many menus, reading through many guides, getting many failures as things are done radically different everywhere (so the chance the guide you are reading will completely work for you is very low)...
And even when you do manage to set up something, it is not up to speed with Chinese implementations on Mac or Windows.
ibus, fcitx, they are honestly all not only user unfriendly, but actively hostile to beings who are not tech heads themselves. I'm definitely a techie, and this is consistently catastrophic across all distros I ever used.

It truly shows you the worst effects of Linux's fragmentation. A single useful ibus-variant would be 10x better than all the crappy substitutes.

I see no way for this to change without a significant monetary investment to get professionals working on it beyond hobbyism.
Bit of a hen/egg problem. No Chinese users -> bad pinyin -> no Chinese users.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 21 January 2020 at 1:19 pm UTC
BielFPs Jan 21, 2020
Quoting: LinasThere is big potential for Linux in China. Due to the conflict between Trump and Huawei.

I personally don't think the government can be a change factor for home users to switch to Linux, due to the fact that most of then are used to windows XP/7 (pirate copies of course) and even the companies are used to care only about windows and android (which are systems they can force arbitrary software to common users).

Quoting: TheSHEEEPBiggest point keeping Chinese people from using Linux is the ridiculously bad support of... Chinese.

It's probably way more difficult for then to support Linux, due to vasty majority of documents being in english (or another roman alphabet language) and the fact that they alone have 3 different languages I think. I already imagine how difficult can be for an english speaker to read anything in my language, so I imagine then :P

Ironically, I think Deepin DE has the potential to be the best DE due to how good they make it user friendly, yes the support is still bad due to many bugs, but still it's a very good software made by Chinese devs.
Koopacabras Jan 21, 2020
anyway...what happened to Red Flag Linux?? I think it was the first chinese distro on 2002. Don't know why but chinese distros never take off really.
Linas Jan 21, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: The_Aquabatanyway...what happened to Red Flag Linux??
There's also openEuler by Huawei.
Purple Library Guy Jan 22, 2020
Quoting: BielFPs
QuoteSimplified Chinese the current most popular language on Steam.

I wonder how is the current status of Linux usage in the Asian market (Japan, China and South Korea).
I believe it can currently be summed up as "pathetic". Frankly, I think they have lots of good reasons to use Linux, but it seems they have more reasons not to (not sure how good those reasons are though).
Purple Library Guy Jan 22, 2020
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: LinasThere is big potential for Linux in China. Due to the conflict between Trump and Huawei.

I personally don't think the government can be a change factor for home users to switch to Linux, due to the fact that most of then are used to windows XP/7 (pirate copies of course) and even the companies are used to care only about windows and android (which are systems they can force arbitrary software to common users).
I dunno. IBM (Windows) PCs became big at home because they were what people used at work. And the Chinese public sector is big. Even if it doesn't influence home use much, the Chinese government sector all by itself has to be bigger than most countries. If they really dump Windows off most government machines like that article claims, the flippin' Year of the Linux Desktop just arrived. Not much help for gaming, admittedly. Or not directly, not yet.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.