The new year is upon us and so is the latest survey. There were 787 respondents to the survey this time, 400 less than the record set last month, but still a healthy number nonetheless. Thanks to everyone who took the time to do it and please carry on filling it out.
You can find the new survey here .
The survey will have no changes made to it for the first time in preparation for the month-by-month comparisons which should begin next month. GOL reader Fedso is working on a program that takes the csv files from Google Forms and automatically creates graphs comparing previous results. Once this is done, we will be able to observe trends for the first time and things should get a lot more interesting!
Otherwise, despite being a new year, it’s going to be another fairly boring set of results, leaving analysis for next month when we have a clearer picture of how things have evolved since the survey started.
Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?
Did you use Wine to play games last month?
Did you use a Windows partition for gaming last month?
Did you delete your Windows partition or stop using it completely for gaming last month?
What distribution do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
What Desktop Environment do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Did you change your primary Linux gaming distribution last month?
What graphics card do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Which drivers do you use for that graphics card?
What CPU do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Did you exclusively buy Linux-supported games last month?
How many Linux games did you buy last month?
Which of these retailers did you use to buy your Linux games last month?
Unique Question - Do you use a gamepad/controller?
On to the unique question and I got a bit of flak for its question, with a perceived anti-gamepad “master race” bias. I just want to clarify that this was intended as a joke. The results showed that more than half of Linux gamers use gamepads, with less than 40% not using gamepads at all.
I use an unofficial Xbox 360 which works out of the box for everything with controller support, with one or two exceptions where I have had to unload xpad and use a series of cumbersome commands with the xboxdrv driver, then remap the whole thing on jstest which never saves the configuration. What are your gamepad experiences?
Conclusions
Normally there would have been a lot more analysis, but as a few people rightfully pointed out, if you comment month after month on incremental changes then you run out of things to say pretty quickly. The changes this month were all within 1-2% so this still applies and there is not much to say. However, next month expect to see a lot of analysis as we see all the results next to each other for the first time.
Please remember to fill out the new survey .
You can find the new survey here .
The survey will have no changes made to it for the first time in preparation for the month-by-month comparisons which should begin next month. GOL reader Fedso is working on a program that takes the csv files from Google Forms and automatically creates graphs comparing previous results. Once this is done, we will be able to observe trends for the first time and things should get a lot more interesting!
Otherwise, despite being a new year, it’s going to be another fairly boring set of results, leaving analysis for next month when we have a clearer picture of how things have evolved since the survey started.
Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?
Did you use Wine to play games last month?
Did you use a Windows partition for gaming last month?
Did you delete your Windows partition or stop using it completely for gaming last month?
What distribution do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
What Desktop Environment do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Did you change your primary Linux gaming distribution last month?
What graphics card do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Which drivers do you use for that graphics card?
What CPU do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
Did you exclusively buy Linux-supported games last month?
How many Linux games did you buy last month?
Which of these retailers did you use to buy your Linux games last month?
Unique Question - Do you use a gamepad/controller?
On to the unique question and I got a bit of flak for its question, with a perceived anti-gamepad “master race” bias. I just want to clarify that this was intended as a joke. The results showed that more than half of Linux gamers use gamepads, with less than 40% not using gamepads at all.
I use an unofficial Xbox 360 which works out of the box for everything with controller support, with one or two exceptions where I have had to unload xpad and use a series of cumbersome commands with the xboxdrv driver, then remap the whole thing on jstest which never saves the configuration. What are your gamepad experiences?
Conclusions
Normally there would have been a lot more analysis, but as a few people rightfully pointed out, if you comment month after month on incremental changes then you run out of things to say pretty quickly. The changes this month were all within 1-2% so this still applies and there is not much to say. However, next month expect to see a lot of analysis as we see all the results next to each other for the first time.
Please remember to fill out the new survey .
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The unique question is a hard one this month! Of course I want to be 100% optimistic for 2015 but I am also not delusional. Even IF SteamOS/machines finally comes out swinging and people buy them I still see the number of people who would switch to Linux for their main desktop to be very small. The plus side here is that they don't have to for it to matter. So long as people buy steam machines (WITH SteamOS) the studios/publishers still holding out will have no choice anymore if they want to remain relevant!
After the strong 2014 we had I am excited to see what 2015 holds for us. So long as we don't take a step backwards 2015 will be great as well! Hopefully we will get to see a finished UE4 game that pushes the limits of the engine come to Linux.. that is what I want to see the most. Well, and something truly beautiful using CryEngine3 to come to Linux.
EDIT* OH! AND my obligatory remark about Nvidia making multi monitor/multi GPU gaming a real thing on Linux! Maybe it will happen this year? ;)
I don't get the fuss over the question either. I only have a gamepad to use with racing games and flight games. For everything else KB+M reigns supreme!
(soggof is my steam name)
I have a unofficial PS3 pad (usb), and while there is support for it out of the box technically, it really isn't a smooth experience at all. There is no working standard config and most games do not work properly with it unless you spend a lot of time fiddling with the configuration.
The best experience I had was with the "xboxdrv", which basically fools the system into thinking the PS3 pad is a xbox360 pad. But if you buy a new pad get a xbox360 pad or something really compatible for sure!
Oh, btw. support for PS3 pads under Windows is even worse, so I guess one can say it works "well" under Linux ;)
I did it as a text submission so that I could link to both this article and the new survey. Sometimes I think that a straight link works better though. We'll see.
Changed! Sorry, crossed wires there!
Thanks!
Only a couple of games have any issue. With those that do I use a program called "antimicro" https://github.com/Ryochan7/antimicro wich allows you to bind your kb and mouse to your controller. It works insanely well. Here is a video showing it being used to play Left4Dead 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s59cL_Vvoo
I also agree that the link to do the survey has been too easy to miss if you didn't know to look for it. Maybe the survey itself deserves it's own post seperate from the results.
When the Steam Controller ships, I'll be using that.