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Update: 04/01/17 21:55 UTC
Doesn't really warrant a new article, but some trending graphs are now available.
New links on the page "Sections: Monthly | Trends" to switch between them.
Not all questions are included, as tweaks need to be done for each one of them to have it automated properly.
This is using the new Chart.js library.
Original article
It's always interesting to see what Linux gamers are running on their main gaming computers, so it's fun to see our statistics grow each month. The latest data is now available.
You can view the statistics at any time here.
If you want to be included, you need to fill out the "PC Info" section of your "User CP".
Quick thoughts
We have nearly a thousand people who have answered the question about their main gamepad, and it's clear that the Steam Controller is an absolute winner for Linux gamers. I'm not surprised, as I personally think it's mostly brilliant with a few edge cases in certain games.
The vast majority of people with an AMD GPU are using the open source driver, which isn't surprising. Considering how far Mesa has come in the past year, it's only going to increase the use of the open source driver.
It's also not really surprising that nearly everyone is using the closed source driver for their NVIDIA GPU. The open source driver doesn't really work for newer cards and will be a long time before it performs well with them.
The chart I am really going to be keeping an eye on over the next year or two, is what vendor people choose for their graphics card. Currently 74% of people use an NVIDIA GPU, but with Mesa coming along and new AMD cards on the horizon, it could change in AMD's favour.
Same for the CPU vendor chart, as I imagine Ryzen will shake things up rather nicely.
Updates
I have changed the charts to be based on percentage, rather than the number of responses. Everything now fits correctly, which looks a lot better. If you hover over a bar, it will tell you the exact amount of responses for that question. You can also hit the "Click for full statistics" to get the full information.
As requested, Deepin Desktop Environment is now an option and I will look to add others as requested. If you have requests for distributions and desktop environments to be added let me know in the comments.
Distributions take longer to put in, as I need an icon created for each of them. What I may look to do is just add-in a fallback Tux icon for distributions where we don't have a unique icon, so that I can add them as and when I get the icons.
I think the next thing I will work on is charts showing the difference over time, as it was requested and it would be interesting to see. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Doesn't really warrant a new article, but some trending graphs are now available.
New links on the page "Sections: Monthly | Trends" to switch between them.
Not all questions are included, as tweaks need to be done for each one of them to have it automated properly.
This is using the new Chart.js library.
Original article
It's always interesting to see what Linux gamers are running on their main gaming computers, so it's fun to see our statistics grow each month. The latest data is now available.
You can view the statistics at any time here.
If you want to be included, you need to fill out the "PC Info" section of your "User CP".
Quick thoughts
We have nearly a thousand people who have answered the question about their main gamepad, and it's clear that the Steam Controller is an absolute winner for Linux gamers. I'm not surprised, as I personally think it's mostly brilliant with a few edge cases in certain games.
The vast majority of people with an AMD GPU are using the open source driver, which isn't surprising. Considering how far Mesa has come in the past year, it's only going to increase the use of the open source driver.
It's also not really surprising that nearly everyone is using the closed source driver for their NVIDIA GPU. The open source driver doesn't really work for newer cards and will be a long time before it performs well with them.
The chart I am really going to be keeping an eye on over the next year or two, is what vendor people choose for their graphics card. Currently 74% of people use an NVIDIA GPU, but with Mesa coming along and new AMD cards on the horizon, it could change in AMD's favour.
Same for the CPU vendor chart, as I imagine Ryzen will shake things up rather nicely.
Updates
I have changed the charts to be based on percentage, rather than the number of responses. Everything now fits correctly, which looks a lot better. If you hover over a bar, it will tell you the exact amount of responses for that question. You can also hit the "Click for full statistics" to get the full information.
As requested, Deepin Desktop Environment is now an option and I will look to add others as requested. If you have requests for distributions and desktop environments to be added let me know in the comments.
Distributions take longer to put in, as I need an icon created for each of them. What I may look to do is just add-in a fallback Tux icon for distributions where we don't have a unique icon, so that I can add them as and when I get the icons.
I think the next thing I will work on is charts showing the difference over time, as it was requested and it would be interesting to see. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
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hardpenguin Jan 3, 2017
Although the sample is still pretty small, I'm very glad this survey exists and provides quite a lot of useful information!
1 Likes, Who?
Although the sample is still pretty small, I'm very glad this survey exists and provides quite a lot of useful information!I am hoping it grows as more people learn GOL exists. Even so, with some questions having nearly 2K people answering, it does at least now give us a good indicator. I mean, it is a survey after all, it's to show the general trend from Linux gamers.
It's a fun distraction for me too.
1 Likes, Who?
Hi Sir Liam,
I don't know if it's just me but I'm curios how Linux gamers are scattered around the world. Are you open to the idea of adding the continent where a GOL member resides?
North America
South America
Europe
Asia
Africa
Australia
Antarctica
I live in the Philippines (Asia) and we do have a Linux community here but it is not focused on gaming.
Thanks :)
I like this idea. Mainly because I want to see if there are any Linux gamers in Antarctica. I bet they get much better internet speeds than here in Manchester.
I looked over the Linux distro breakdown with interest because I was wondering if anyone was using Solus. I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. Has anyone used it? Is it good/bad?
0 Likes
I looked over the Linux distro breakdown with interest because I was wondering if anyone was using Solus. I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. Has anyone used it? Is it good/bad?
It's very good. Just a shame the Roccat driver software isn't available through their software channel, like quite a few other things.
1 Likes, Who?
Philadelphus Jan 4, 2017
Huh! My desktop resolution (1920×1200) is actually the second-most common. I totally would not have guessed that. (Though I kinda regret going for it now, as it makes it troublesome to record full-screen videos for YouTube.)
Also, are the graphs truncating things to show only ten options? In the first graph of Linux Distributions (Combined) things like SteamOS and Slackware show up, but are absent from the Linux Distributions (Split) graph. I can see this being a stylistic choice (for instance if there are several dozen distributions with only a few users each), I'm just curious if it's intentional.
Also, are the graphs truncating things to show only ten options? In the first graph of Linux Distributions (Combined) things like SteamOS and Slackware show up, but are absent from the Linux Distributions (Split) graph. I can see this being a stylistic choice (for instance if there are several dozen distributions with only a few users each), I'm just curious if it's intentional.
1 Likes, Who?
Also, are the graphs truncating things to show only ten options? In the first graph of Linux Distributions (Combined) things like SteamOS and Slackware show up, but are absent from the Linux Distributions (Split) graph. I can see this being a stylistic choice (for instance if there are several dozen distributions with only a few users each), I'm just curious if it's intentional.I think there used to be a combined "others" entry in these cases, or was this only discussed in comments somewhere? Anyway, under the graphs there's a "Click for full statistics" thingy you can click to see the rest.
0 Likes
Also, are the graphs truncating things to show only ten options? In the first graph of Linux Distributions (Combined) things like SteamOS and Slackware show up, but are absent from the Linux Distributions (Split) graph. I can see this being a stylistic choice (for instance if there are several dozen distributions with only a few users each), I'm just curious if it's intentional.Those two graphs are quite different. All graphs show a max of 10 items.
The combined graph has SteamOS (for example) as the others are combined, so Xubuntu, Kubuntu and so on go under "Ubuntu-based" which frees up space for more. Even though SteamOS is technically just Debian-based (unless it has a lot of divergence?), it's useful to show it by itself anyway.
All graphs allow you to view the full statistics of each in the dropdown below them.
0 Likes
I was going to say I'm missing the special questions we used to have in the monthly surveys, but I couldn't come up with somethin interesting to ask. Maybe the following could the be a one-time question (instead of adding to the user data survey)?
I don't know if it's just me but I'm curios how Linux gamers are scattered around the world. Are you open to the idea of adding the continent where a GOL member resides?
0 Likes
Doc Angelo Jan 4, 2017
I have to say that I wouldn't have thought that 67% are not dual booting - not even another Linux distro. Is it really that common for Linux gamers to not have a Windows partition ready for the case a game will not have Linux support - or just older Games which do not work well with Wine?
0 Likes
I have to say that I wouldn't have thought that 67% are not dual booting - not even another Linux distro. Is it really that common for Linux gamers to not have a Windows partition ready for the case a game will not have Linux support - or just older Games which do not work well with Wine?Well, I for one don't have the patience to run Windows on anything plus I believe the only way to ensure the growth of Linux as a gaming platform is to buy and support games on that platform. So, no Windows games for me.
2 Likes, Who?
I have to say that I wouldn't have thought that 67% are not dual booting - not even another Linux distro. Is it really that common for Linux gamers to not have a Windows partition ready for the case a game will not have Linux support - or just older Games which do not work well with Wine?
I guess GoL readers are a bit more hardcore than the average also-on-Linux gamer. I dual booted for over a decade for gaming and stopped in April 2014, when I felt there's enough to play on Linux. I tend to play through games and not revisit them, so no need to run older games.
0 Likes
Doc Angelo Jan 4, 2017
I also buy Linux games. If there's an kinda interesting game, but it doesn't support Linux, it will fall off my radar more easily. But if there is a game I really want to play because I know other games from the developer or it's a successor of a game I loved, I will still buy it. Even if the developers state that they will never support Linux just because they don't have any experience nor interest in that. That's OK for me. I still like to give them money for a good game that is fun to play.
I still have my old windows partition, and I have to actively delete it to get rid of the option to play such games. I'm glad I did not, because playing Abzû was really a brilliant and otherworldly experience!
I still have my old windows partition, and I have to actively delete it to get rid of the option to play such games. I'm glad I did not, because playing Abzû was really a brilliant and otherworldly experience!
2 Likes, Who?
I also buy Linux games. If there's an kinda interesting game, but it doesn't support Linux, it will fall off my radar more easily. But if there is a game I really want to play because I know other games from the developer or it's a successor of a game I loved, I will still buy it. Even if the developers state that they will never support Linux just because they don't have any experience nor interest in that. That's OK for me. I still like to give them money for a good game that is fun to play.
I totally understand that. It's hard for me to turn a blind eye to Fallout and Elder Scrolls...
3 Likes, Who?
I'm surprised the Steam Controller is the most used. I've never used it but I thought people wouldn't want to risk it and the xbox360 is proven to be good already.
I'll keep an eye on it next time I have to buy one, but I'm using a xbo360 at the moment and I have a thrustmaster gpx still in reserve
I'll keep an eye on it next time I have to buy one, but I'm using a xbo360 at the moment and I have a thrustmaster gpx still in reserve
0 Likes
I have almost finished the first trends graph and it's looking slick as hell.
I've switched to chart.js, an MIT licensed JavaScript graph library and damn, it's so much nicer to work with! For now only the first trend graph is using it, but I may switch over all the others to it as it's not only nicer to work with, but better to look at and you can interact with it to turn off different labels and so on.
Here's a preview:
free image upload
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 4 January 2017 at 1:52 pm UTC
I've switched to chart.js, an MIT licensed JavaScript graph library and damn, it's so much nicer to work with! For now only the first trend graph is using it, but I may switch over all the others to it as it's not only nicer to work with, but better to look at and you can interact with it to turn off different labels and so on.
Here's a preview:
free image upload
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 4 January 2017 at 1:52 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
And yet no Steam BPM/steamcompmgr as an option for the desktop environment.
Sure, I'm using KDE or XFCE on my main purpose PC, so I could put it in the PC info, but this would suggest I tweaked SteamOS. It's already misleading I stated I dual boot. Yes, I do, but on the old PC which I use to play Windows-only legacy games, not on the Steam Machine.
Perhaps the question should be "Do you use another operating system to play games unavailable under Linux?"
Last edited by skinnyraf on 4 January 2017 at 1:58 pm UTC
Sure, I'm using KDE or XFCE on my main purpose PC, so I could put it in the PC info, but this would suggest I tweaked SteamOS. It's already misleading I stated I dual boot. Yes, I do, but on the old PC which I use to play Windows-only legacy games, not on the Steam Machine.
Perhaps the question should be "Do you use another operating system to play games unavailable under Linux?"
Last edited by skinnyraf on 4 January 2017 at 1:58 pm UTC
0 Likes
I'm surprised the Steam Controller is the most used. I've never used it but I thought people wouldn't want to risk it and the xbox360 is proven to be good already.I have to admit that XBox 360 controller is a more comfortable controller as far as contollers go. But Steam Controller has completely replaced all other input devices for me, and I have not touched a keyboard and mouse ever since I got it. Granted it's not really for competitive play, but I can do ok against bots in CS:GO on easy to medium difficulty with a Steam Controller. I also completed Postal 2 with a Steam Controller. I still struggle with RTS games where you have to click all over the screen, but it's doable. All without lifting by butt from the sofa. :)
I'll keep an eye on it next time I have to buy one, but I'm using a xbo360 at the moment and I have a thrustmaster gpx still in reserve
1 Likes, Who?
And yet no Steam BPM/steamcompmgr as an option for the desktop environment.The whole point of this is about your main gaming PC, it is not to encompass every single PC you use in your house.
Sure, I'm using KDE or XFCE on my main purpose PC, so I could put it in the PC info, but this would suggest I tweaked SteamOS. It's already misleading I stated I dual boot. Yes, I do, but on the old PC which I use to play Windows-only legacy games, not on the Steam Machine.
Perhaps the question should be "Do you use another operating system to play games unavailable under Linux?"
0 Likes
The question for me is not IF I will pick a AMD card, only WHEN I'll pick one.
I still don't consider AMD to be seriously competitive to NVidia when it comes to linux gaming. But I have high hopes that this will change in the forseeable future especially since they seem to have full-time devs working on the open source AMD drivers now, and that will be when I pick up a AMD card.
I still don't consider AMD to be seriously competitive to NVidia when it comes to linux gaming. But I have high hopes that this will change in the forseeable future especially since they seem to have full-time devs working on the open source AMD drivers now, and that will be when I pick up a AMD card.
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