The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows Linux market-share has increased, slightly

Interesting that Windows actually DROPPED 0.07% last month, while Linux GREW 0.05%. Small numbers, but I like the trend here :P

Linux has more than 3500 games in steam + more than 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine + more than 1000 native games on sites/apps like Lutris, ONEPLAY, LinAPP, HOLARSE, itch.io, GOG, Penguspy, LGDB, GAMEJOLT, and independent sites

= more than 7000 games

If I finish a game completely every 5 days, it would still take me 5 years to play 365 games. So why is only 1% using Linux?

Because all that games run better on Consoles and Windows, they have less bugs on Consoles and Windows, drivers are better on Windows, there is bunch of third party tools, mods, utility for gaming on Windows that does not exist on Linux; also bunch of "AAA" titles that does not exist on Linux. In other words, that are closer to reality, games on Linux are of the lower quality than on Console or Windows counterparts. Is it that hard to figure it out?

In reality games are terible, they all are unoptimized buggy piece of shits, but because Linux ports are lazy translated/mapped ports from Windows and Windows versions are lazy ports from Consoles, Linux versions are biggest shit of them all.

Wasn't everyone saying that Steam Machines don't get counted in the survey?

In my opinion that is a HUGE factor. Because without counting steam machines you're basically completely ignoring the entire audience behind steam supporting Linux in the first place, and all you're left with is mostly just Linux users who'd probably be using Linux on their desktops even if there was no steam Linux client.

Until we know steam machines are being counted and/or steam adds the survey to steam machines if it's not already, then I personally think this statistic is utterly meaningless.

steam machines were an flop.
we didnt had any news about the sales of the machines, but we had about the controller.
500.000
https://www.destructoid.com/valve-has-sold-over-500k-steam-controllers-365274.phtml
2016-06-01 2
steam machines where relased at: Nov 10, 2015.

7 months to sell 500k controllers, the 2 first months tend to be the ones where most of the sells are done.

you dont need an Steam Machine to have one controller, but all Steam machines come with one controller and supports at least 4.

valve didnt say anything about the numbers after that, if they were any good they would.

in other words, even assuming that everyone who purchased one controller had one machine, that would mean an number between 125K and 500K machines sold during that period.
that is very low for an console, they are pretty much floped at this time.

"Linux has more than 3500 games in steam + more than 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine + more than 1000 native games on sites/apps like Lutris, ONEPLAY, LinAPP, HOLARSE, itch.io, GOG, Penguspy, LGDB, GAMEJOLT, and independent sites

= more than 7000 games"
your math dont take into account Intersection.
just a quick visit to winehq and you see that a lot of the platinum games are also on steam for linux (3 on the top 10 list, you cant be that blind)
lutris is not an store, its just an mannager for your librarie.
i didn't even heard of linAPP, ONEPLAY,HOLARSE,Penguspy,LGDB much less an windows user or console player, i dont know even if the keys are legit or are like the g2a keys.

there is no origin or uplay for linux.

plus wine maybe a pain in the ass to configure, no one want configure something when they have time to play, all they want is sit and play.
combine that with what GoLBuzzkill said, and you will realize that from the point of view of an gamer, there is no sense in switching for linux, no advantages only disadvantages, is from the point of view of linux users that what you said matters.

plus wine maybe a pain in the ass to configure, no one want configure something when they have time to play, all they want is sit and play.
combine that with what GoLBuzzkill said, and you will realize that from the point of view of an gamer, there is no sense in switching for linux, no advantages only disadvantages, is from the point of view of linux users that what you said matters.

Not to mention WINE/PoL shit all over your file system. Last I tried, they added unremovable context menus and entries all over my home folder. It's bad enough that some games do that ...but a translation layer? The only games worthy of my time are those that had the effort to support my platform.

*Disclaimer: yeah, yeah.. you can clean out WINE's trash when you're finished but only once you have the knowledge beyond some novice Mint/*buntu user (which I was at the time). Not a good first impression.

Finding it hard to care about a tiny fluctuation in a statistic I don't trust at all. Even if it's an upward fluctuation, on a meaningless stat that's still meaningless.

The conversation about Linux as a gaming platform: It certainly would still be pretty unreasonable to switch to Linux in order to game. The best that can be said is that, unlike in the past, for most casual gamers, gaming is no longer a barrier to switching if you wanted to for other reasons. This is important; there are lots of reasons to switch to Linux, and one common thing that used to hold people back was "Can I play games?" "Well, um, basically no." Now it's "Can I play games?" "Ehh, about as well as on a Mac." To the extent Vulkan takes hold, within a year I suggest the answer will be, "Better than on a Mac."

Somebody mentioned Asia as a potential reason behind shrinking Linux percentages on Steam. I still have this pipedream where either China gets serious about security from US government hacking or Microsoft makes a big push to stop Windows being pirated in Asia. In either case, we'd see some sudden, massive Linux adoption spikes.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 June 2017 at 11:46 pm UTC

they got me on my mac... well at least it's not windoze lol...

I still have this pipedream where either China gets serious about security from US government hacking or Microsoft makes a big push to stop Windows being pirated in Asia. In either case, we'd see some sudden, massive Linux adoption spikes.

that is why microsoft will never fight piracy, it makes more sense to then to have their product pirated than to have an competition for it.

Why do you assume that I didn't take this into account?

because this is a common mistake, and this "So why is only 1% using Linux?" shows that you are not taking the things from the point of view of an windows users.
why would anyone want to be limited to an subset of the games he own/want if he can have then all with an better performance, less bugs and less headache to install then?

If they have intersection then they are counted only one time in one category.
I said that you will easily find 2500 games with platinum compatibility in Wine and I was talking about games that don't have any kind of native port in Linux of course.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iItemsPerPage=25&iPage=1&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true
2595 games, counting intersections.
i did that before a couple of times so i had an idea of the numbers.

It's also obvious that you din't think about the fact that less than 40% of the Windows games is listed in the WineHQ database.
And yes, a significant percentage of these not-listed games also have platinum compatibility in Wine and don't have native ports.
So the real number can be above 3000 games without native ports and with platinum compatibility.

can be is not is, i dont like being a beta tester and i'm pretty sure most of people dont wan't it either.

they just want sit and play and not having their experience destroyed by an glith at its best moment.
just imagine you were watching your favorite movie, then an random image glitch comes in and spoil the experience, would you chose that videoplayer again when you can use something else and be sure that the movie will run flawless?
if it where windows being the Problematic OS and linux being the flawless, i'm pretty sure you wouldnt be deffending windows.

Windows vs Linux benchmarks in "the most popular online game ever": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM8qXbJqMvs

that was not for me, but i will reply anyway.
Dota2 is the most popular online game evar? are you fucking kidding me?
dota 1 was quite popular, but it was an custom map for warcraft, you need warcraft to play dota1, so the popularity of dota1 never had surpassed the popularity of warcraft.

dota2 may be more or less popular than dota1, but its not even close of league of legends.
dota2 cant even run on my computer natively, and i can run league of legends using wine (i could even on my previous machine) being able to run in an weak computer is very important for an online game, but even ignoring this, no, dota where never was as popular as LOL is.
also, not everyone looks for benchmarks of windows vs linux all the time, only a few linux users do so, and if you see other benchmarks you will see different results on other games (due to being bad ports).

Yesterday a friend came and we played Left 4 Dead 2 (I was on Linux, he on Windows) He suddenly got stuck somewhere, he couldn't move in any direction. I had 0 issues on Linux and I had to finish the level for him before he could play again.

you logged out on his account?
because there are countless of un catched bugs on different games, that dont means one operating system is better than another.
there are bugs that are quite rare to occur, otherwise they would have being fixed already, valve is quite infamous for fixing bugs that affect almost no one and almost never.
i dont think they left less bugs open on the linux version of l4d2 than in the windows version, especialy considering i cant even play it at a good frame rate at this computer, and i could at an weaker one.
if they didnt fix the performance issues, why the hell did you think they fixed more bugs?


Last edited by elmapul on 4 June 2017 at 9:57 pm UTC

And Linux (e.g. Debian) is also a more stable system than Windows 10.

Probably not when it comes to issues relating to games, to be honest. Linux graphics stuff is under fairly heavy development these days (Wayland and such, drivers) and Linux sound seems to be complicated, finicky, and a source of frustration for many. Now on the plus side, I think by the time the graphics side has settled down it's gonna be pretty good, but for now . . .

You don't make the nuance that a large amount of windows games actually have worse performance. (e.g. most OpenGL games) When the windows games do have better performance, most of the times the difference will be insignificant.(even less than 8FPS)

i dont know how many windows games are opengl based considering windows have an bad perfomance for openGL.
but in my experience, its not 8fps only, its the "playable vs unplayable state"
i dont care if the game will be 30 or 60fps, i just want something playable, with stable framerates, not being 60 at one moment then droping to 10 the next.
i need to test more games trough, i'm spending more time trying to make one than playing, and more time doing anything else too.

i'm not saying you are "wrong" different hardwares have different performance issues, so you need to do the benchmark on more than one machine and game, and in my experience i never got an better perfomance for an game on linux.
i got it while i was trying to decode an fullHD video though.
linux running flawless and windows struggling to decode it. (vlc on both)

So it's a lot less black/white than how you describe it. GOG games are easier to install on Linux. Steam is the same as on Windows,

did you know what? i know how to install gog games but i have no idea on how to uninstall.
also, i dont like large .sh files, if they pack it into debs, at least i can open it on other package managers to try to figure out what went wrong (eg: the file roller)

so this is again not a real argument.

ok, first off, i'm clearly not talking about native games here but games that run on wine but arent distributed on gog/steam as "linux compatibles" following instructions on winehq is not always pain free.
i had trouble figuring out WTF is an wine preffix or the syntax of some commands, that because i'm a programmer and have i good english reading skills.
an "end user" may not fit any of those 2 descriptions and even if you do everything right, the person who managed to run an game may be using an different distro where the same tutorial works. (i will not install one distro per game, much less an end user)

if i'm saying that i had problems, that means i had problems and other people will too, your personal
experience do not reflect everyone else experience of gaming on linux.

about the native games, hell!
i started using linux at ubuntu 8.10
i had trouble figuring out how to solve the dependence hell to build step mania years ago.
i dont know how to install open mortal on debian systems or if it still run on modern systems. (its not distributed as .deb and pretty much an dead project nowadays)
i couldnt play yo frankie on linux (too slow) and could on windows on the same fucking computer.
i have no idea of how to uninstall installers.sh
for .debs, i had enough trouble when numpty physics game break my package manager (an game on the repos!) i had to manually uninstall it.

you can update any package but its a pain in the ass to downgrade, and if you need 2 versions of the same lib, you're pretty much screwed.

we had problems due to different packages systems (rpm, deb etc) but fourtunately snaps will solve the problem!
or... flat packs! or...app images... hell ¬¬ at least those dindt cause me any problem yet.

maybe all the problems i quoted above where solved by now, but where were the linux fanboys to tell me about then when i had then? i know a lot of people who tried linux a few years ago, got burned and dont want to try again, maybe if people told then they might have problems instead of pretending those dont exist they wouldnt burn their own credibility.

And the fact that you will have more games also doesn't mean that you will have a better gaming experience.

anything is better than dealing with wine.

It's not so long ago that Windows had exactly the same amount of games that Linux has now.

bullshit.
steam didnt had all the games before, that is what changed, it dont have all the games even now, just look at pretty much any doujin or niche japanese indie tittle to figure it out.
also, if you count flash games (that also run on linux with an horrible perfomance, stability issues or security issues) there are tons of good games that definitely were avaliable before, some of then are just being repackaged for steam.

And if you would have asked a Windows user then the question 'Do you have more than enough great games for a perfect gaming experience?' More than 90% would have said yes at the moment where Windows had exaclty as many games as Linux now.

if you ask any gamer if he wants to play the games he WANT to play or the games that he can play on linux, guess what he will ansewer?
people play what they want, they purchase an machine just to play a few exclusives, why the hell they will change their OS to limit then selfs? if they would do that, linux wouldnt have 1% marketshare dammit!

It's not really beta testing for the many games older than 6 years. You have a huge chance that they will work perfectly fine in Wine.

and you have the chance it will not, it will break or have all kind of glitches.

I ment the most popular game with decent graphics of course. 'LOL' looks graphically like something from the 90s or worse. Dota 2 had 4x the prize pool of LOL in 2016.

ok, graphics are what matter said no gamer evar.
i will not win the championiship so i couldnt care less about the prize pool.
at least in dota you have less people to compete against despite the bigger prize pool, that is how much it matter for the avarage gamer.

It surprises me that you have a prize pool for LOL because that game doesn't really
reward higher skill levels. Dota 2 dominates eSports completely with 10 entries in the top 11. So yeah, it's just a fact that Dota 2 is the most popular game with decent graphics. Largest Overall Prize Pools in eSports: https://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments

i dont know, maybe people have social life and want to play with/agains their friends who play LOL and dont play dota?
since 99% of then will not get this prizes anyway.
or maybe they cant play dota because it dont have potato graphics, you need an good machine to play it?
as i said LOL run on pretty much everything.

And Linux (e.g. Debian) is also a more stable system than Windows 10."

maybe if you're running it on an critical mission, but i didnt saw windows crash lately.

This is important because many stability issues are not related to the code of the game.

i agree with that.

For stability I'm also concerned about all the malware that goes into the browser cache after every internet session.

i dont know what browsers has to do, if you said that they break the browser sandbox i could understand, but people are using firefox and chrome on windows nowadays.

Or things like WannaCry and other ransomware attacks from hacker groups.

this was an virus that used an security failure that MS knew about, but didnt fix to help nsa, it was on windows code for years, and when it got found by crackers it was fixed due to the consequences, this didnt caused any stability issues for games until then AFAIK.[/quote]

Viruses and worms often spread by convincing computer users to do something they shouldn't, like open attachments that carry viruses and worms. This is called social engineering, and it's all too easy on Windows systems.

this has nothing to do with being easier to maintain the code.

Windows is essentially a monoculture, which is no better in technology than it is in the natural world. Diversity minimizes the deleterious effects of a deadly virus, so a diversity of computing environments helps protect users.

diversity also makes it harder to find all the bugs, its harder to maintain in an system like this, that is why gamers target the runtime provided by valve to make sure their games run on all linux systems, that is, again, monoculture.
also, you can ship your own libs if you dont trust windows libs to do the job for you.

The majority of viruses target Windows because millions of people all using the same software make an attractive target for malicious attacks.

agree, but we arent talking about security here, unless you wanna imply some virus is causing the bugs on the windows side?

With Windows, it's a limited set of paid developers who are trying to find problems in the code. In the Linux world, on the other hand, countless users can see the code at any time, making it more likely that someone will find a flaw sooner rather than later.

sorry but there are countless of projects on github, many of then dont have 1 single active maintainer because people arent paid to maitain it.
the fact that it is open source, dont mean a countless number of volunteers will apear and help fixing all the issues.
it ifs a common piece of software, that everyone uses, its more likely someone will, but we need to better track if anyone is doing it or assuming someone else will do/have done.
dirtycow, heartbleed for example are bugs that took to many time to be fixed.

Not only that, but users can even fix problems themselves.

now THAT is a good point.
fixing the bug your self if you report it to the original developer and they didnt fix it (like it would be expected by an system with paid employees to do this job)

None of this is to say that Linux is impervious; no operating system is. But when it comes to security, there's no doubt that Linux users have a lot less to worry about. And I think that everyone can understand that better security improves stability during games.

not all bugs are security bugs, so, no.

"The stability of the core system is also important during games and Debian wins in this. And I think that you(and almost everyone) overestimate any kind of stability in Windows"
i had to use windows for over an year and had no issue whats-so-ever, so i know what i'm talking about.
windows is not as instable as at it was in the 7, vista, xp,98 or 95 era anymore.


" This means that Vulkan will be as fast as DX11 and extremely close to DX12. In 2018 Linux will become a serious gaming OS, here's why: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/6dhuzk/in_2018_linux_will_become_a_serious_gaming_os/";
i dont doubt vulkan will be faster there is nothing that microsoft can do to lock the games to windows without increassing overhead.
for the developers/engines, i think most of then will target vulkan, since Dx12 is Windows 10 only, some may use Dx12 due to xbox though.
but future is future, if you tell someone today that "linux is an better option" and that is a lie today, dont matter if tomorrow it will be true, the person may try, get burned, and never want to use it again, you will only destroy your credibility.
but if people wait until linux got better for gaming to use it, we will always have the chicken and egg problem.

"The gog installation creates a file with the name uninstall.sh You only have to run this file and it will do a very clean uninstall.
cd "/path/to/map/""
thank you, now how to uninstall netbeans.sh?

"A default repo or one that you manually added? How can a game install break the package manager? "
Default repos, but non lts (i didnt knew what lts means)

"This isn't correct. They play what their platform has available."
that is why they purchase consoles, if they go as fair as spending money for an dedicated machine to play a few exclusives, i dont see why they would install another OS to limit then selfes.


"How are you going to game on a system where a virus takes 100% CPU all the time. "
that is an "Straw man" argument, no virus will do it because the user will notice and format the computer.
most of the virus try to be Unsuspicious.

that is my problem with people like you, you speak as if the Acpocalypse would be tomorrow and do so everyday.
while in the real world, people didnt dump windows even after the wannacry issue.


"I was talking about the most used Linux software. "
i've seen this Speech over and over again, but the theory dont match the reality.
gimp had only 2 active maintainers the last time i checked.

in theory Free software would be faster, safer and more stable, in pratice, you cant charge for then because anyone can create an free fork, and that would limit the contributions.
in some cases like firefox, it is indead faster,safer and more stable (and evolve faster) in other cases, the software has a lot of users but its left for dust because almost none of then donate for it, and there is an limit for what people can do in their spare time.

"This was on almost every news site recently and it affected .. more than 250 million Windows computers."
it affect 250 million of windows computers, but we didnt saw 250 million computers crashing due to it, an website would need to create such a file and spread it to crash those computers, and there is no monetary gain in doing so.
different from the wanna cry, its not a security hole but an stability issue, in the worst case scenario someone would use this to prank their friends then they will have to reboot the computer and get mad at it.

dirtcow also afect all android devices until android 7, and we didnt saw the android-pocalypse yet.
(this bug also affected the desktop linux, but at least its easier to update on desktop)


Last edited by elmapul on 6 June 2017 at 9:21 pm UTC

"If you think that Microsoft isn't that bad"
i didnt said that, the issue is, the average people dont see then as bad


"Not significantly. Most linux games are only designed/tested for Ubuntu. And the amazing thing is that it usually works just as great in Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora, .."
that because they target the steam runtime that valve made to make sure the games would run on any distro.
as i said, monoculture again.

"2)for taking minimum 14x longer than usual to fix things."
there are security failures both on windows and on linux that took 10 years or more to be found and fixed.
i dont think MS is alive for 140 years to have 14x the time to find something.

" They play what their platform has available. "
i forgot to mention that the number of exclusives is quickly droping
emulators make the old console games avaliable and they are getting ported.
sony made an service to stream playstation games to pc, and microsoft has the "play anywhere" feature.

also, they took more than 8 years to fix this stupid bug:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/02/nautilus-3-20-zoom-level-options

where are all those eyeballs?