Linux usage on Steam is better than people think

The latest Steam Hardware Survey is out, and as usual some websites are claiming the death of SteamOS. We are here with a better outlook.

February 2016
Linux: 0.91% - 0.04%

If you only take the latest stats at face value alone, you are of course going to see articles containing things like this:

PC WorldValve's considerable efforts on behalf of Linux-based gaming just aren't paying off.

Source - I actually like a lot of PC World's stuff, but this article needed a little more research which I hope they do in future.

There's some key things here that people just aren't covering (or they just aren't aware which is possible).
- The first and most important thing is that SteamOS and Steam Big Picture just don't show a survey, and that's a fact we actually covered.

- Linking into that above fact, for all we know a bunch of people are now using a SteamOS machine rather than their desktop for gaming (or the PC linked to their TV now uses SteamOS rather than another distribution which is what I did), so they aren't tracked at all by this survey. I might have even been one of them, since I use mine regularly.

- The third important thing to remember is that the Steam user-base is constantly growing, and at a rather decent pace too. This growth in general means that even if the Linux percentage on Steam is shown as slightly lower it's actually bigger overall. It's just that Steam's growth is outpacing Linux growth by itself to show a positive uptake on the Steam Hardware Survey.

I would also like to just point out in general, that the percentages we are talking about here are so low it could even be put down to statistical anomalies. We're not only talking below 1% here, we're talking a 0.04% drop over last month, that's a tiny percentage.

Honestly, I think Valve are starting to do more damage month after month having the Operating System (software) in a Hardware survey. I wish they would do something to fix this. It's a hardware survey after all, and you can trigger it easily with a change of hardware or operating system so it's not a great measure to use. How many of you have said about seeing it in Wine, or booting into Windows to see it pop up? I see lots of comments on that.

Linux is actually doing quite well overall looking at the games we have gained, and the games we will be getting. We also have Vulkan coming along which could offer a performance boost for the heavier games.

We also now have well over 1900 games available on Steam for Linux and that number is growing at a great pace. We have Feral Interactive about to announce what looks like two titles too, here and here.

You can also see on SteamDB how many games are likely to come to Linux in future too (quite a lot), and that's only games that have bits stored on Steam. Plenty of games still manage to hide from it before release.

So remember to stay strong, and keep buying those Linux games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.