Another month goes by and Valve have released their Steam Hardware Survey. It shows a drop in Linux marketshare, but it's not as bad as people claim.
I actually stopped talking about this for a while until recently as not much changes. When I see people linking to articles with a title like this:
"Steam Linux Usage Saw A Notable Decline For June 2017"
I can't help but attempt to clear it up.
To be clear, there is no feud between GOL and Phoronix, but I do take issue with, to be blunt, clickbait headlines like that. A large amount of his reporting is generally quite accurate. However, headlines like that and the text of the article too saying it's a "relatively large decline" just aren't right.
Linux marketshare on Steam dropped by 0.09% for last month. That is not a notable decline, it's so low it could be within the margin of error. We don't know what their sample size is though, so the error margin is not clear. It might look like more than it is because our overall share is obviously a lot lower than where Windows is currently. This could also be from variations in the sampling each month.
The main thing: We're talking sub-1% changes here. If there was a notable decrease in Linux gamers on Steam, the decrease in the overall percentage would be a lot sharper.
It can be a simple case of Windows growth in certain markets outpacing Linux growth. That doesn't suddenly mean Linux has any kind of notable decline in use. Linux is likely growing too, just not as fast.
You can claim the Linux survey doesn't come up often enough, but that's just how sampling works.
You can argue booting into your Windows dual-boot partition suddenly makes it appear and claim it's wrong. Of course it would pop up then though, that's it seeing a change in your system. So you are likely to see a survey.
The numbers in the Valve survey are very close to what I constantly see from developers when talking in public (and more often in private) about their sales numbers.
We're strong enough for hundreds of indie titles each month, Feral Interactive, Aspyr Media & Virtual Programming all still port some of the bigger titles to Linux. It's going well all things considered.
Everything's fine. Keep calm and carry on, basically. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I actually stopped talking about this for a while until recently as not much changes. When I see people linking to articles with a title like this:
"Steam Linux Usage Saw A Notable Decline For June 2017"
I can't help but attempt to clear it up.
To be clear, there is no feud between GOL and Phoronix, but I do take issue with, to be blunt, clickbait headlines like that. A large amount of his reporting is generally quite accurate. However, headlines like that and the text of the article too saying it's a "relatively large decline" just aren't right.
Linux marketshare on Steam dropped by 0.09% for last month. That is not a notable decline, it's so low it could be within the margin of error. We don't know what their sample size is though, so the error margin is not clear. It might look like more than it is because our overall share is obviously a lot lower than where Windows is currently. This could also be from variations in the sampling each month.
The main thing: We're talking sub-1% changes here. If there was a notable decrease in Linux gamers on Steam, the decrease in the overall percentage would be a lot sharper.
It can be a simple case of Windows growth in certain markets outpacing Linux growth. That doesn't suddenly mean Linux has any kind of notable decline in use. Linux is likely growing too, just not as fast.
You can claim the Linux survey doesn't come up often enough, but that's just how sampling works.
You can argue booting into your Windows dual-boot partition suddenly makes it appear and claim it's wrong. Of course it would pop up then though, that's it seeing a change in your system. So you are likely to see a survey.
The numbers in the Valve survey are very close to what I constantly see from developers when talking in public (and more often in private) about their sales numbers.
We're strong enough for hundreds of indie titles each month, Feral Interactive, Aspyr Media & Virtual Programming all still port some of the bigger titles to Linux. It's going well all things considered.
Everything's fine. Keep calm and carry on, basically. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: Vash63The benefits I get from an OSS like Linux are added security with my private data and the ability to submit my own patches if there's a bug that impacts me.
Apply that to the client which performs software installation on your system, and you'll answer your own question.
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So basically ...
Last edited by razing32 on 3 July 2017 at 12:27 am UTC
Last edited by razing32 on 3 July 2017 at 12:27 am UTC
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GustyGhost Jul 3, 2017
Quoting: marcusYou do know that you can disable these, right?
Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> "Notify me about [...]"
Heh thanks. Though this still feels a lot like "tweaking privacy settings in windows"... that is, sure you've changed some settings, but you're still using windows.
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This open source vs closed source, drm on/off debate gets really old and annoying. If you don't like something, don't use it, if you do, do use it, just don't claim moral high ground because of your choice (one way or the other). I, though an open source fan, am grateful to Valve for what they've been doing past few years probably because i still remember the good, old times when we had something like 5 games on linux (hyperbole).
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Quoting: manus76This open source vs closed source, drm on/off debate gets really old and annoying.
Some people here had problems with those who said they prefer open clients. Ask them what problems they had, and why they are bothered by it. I agree it gets old, to explain the same thing multiple times.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2017 at 5:05 am UTC
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Quoting: TheinsanegamerNAs for using linux, I use linux not because it is open sourced, but because I simply do not like windows in general.The same for me. I would not abandon Linux if Windows suddenly goes open source.
Linux is about 2% on desktops but only 0.72% on gaming computers. Why so? Because Linux gamers refuse to buy games if they:
1. have worse performance than on Windows, no matter how much;
2. don't work on their weird Gentoo or Slackware distros;
3. don't work on open source Nvidia/Intel drivers;
4. are ports by Feral/Aspyr/VP, which are not "true" ports;
5. are not day-1 releases;
6. are on Steam (where would be Linux gaming without Steam, by the way?);
7. are not open source;
8. are not free.
No surprise there are so few AAA games on Linux. Look at recent years, when Gaben started to advertize Linux gaming, Linux got many games, but what now? 2k Games stopped paying attention to Linux, except for Civ6 (after continual blandishind Aspyr, and we don't know if they even got profit from porting Civ6). We got The Witcher 2, but no The Witcher 3. Shadow Warrior 1, but no Shadow Warrior 2. The only team who still do Linux port actively is Feral. I'm afraid, Linux gaming is going to die soon, except for indie games, if this trend continues. We need to support Linux games, there are not enough of them for us to be picky. If Linux market share gets, say, 10%, then Linux gamers can do the next step, but not today. Buy something of the summer sale to support Linux gaming. I even bought F1 2015 despite I suck at racing games and its negative reviews.
5 Likes, Who?
For driver openness:
I do care for driver openness. The graphics drivers are part of my core system, Games are not.
If I have a choice to decide between a company opening up and supporting open source drivers over a company who does not, I'll prefer the one supporting open source development. In this case AMD.
What I like as well, AMD certainly isn't where NVidia is yet, but we do see game developers actually helping with issues they find, fixing issues they have with Mesa (Feral as example), making their games work improving the drivers. We've seen some games having issues with NVidia driver not getting a fix for a certain issue they encounter. They'd have the option to fix it themselves in Mesa, they don't for NVidia.
I still have a NVidia card, and ye, I have issues with quite some games on AMDGPU/Mesa still. Some run great, some have performance issues and some don't at all. I'm willing to take that and still use AMD. I will buy a AMD card next time as well, and just hope for Mesa to become better - and it does become better each release.
I do care for driver openness. The graphics drivers are part of my core system, Games are not.
If I have a choice to decide between a company opening up and supporting open source drivers over a company who does not, I'll prefer the one supporting open source development. In this case AMD.
What I like as well, AMD certainly isn't where NVidia is yet, but we do see game developers actually helping with issues they find, fixing issues they have with Mesa (Feral as example), making their games work improving the drivers. We've seen some games having issues with NVidia driver not getting a fix for a certain issue they encounter. They'd have the option to fix it themselves in Mesa, they don't for NVidia.
I still have a NVidia card, and ye, I have issues with quite some games on AMDGPU/Mesa still. Some run great, some have performance issues and some don't at all. I'm willing to take that and still use AMD. I will buy a AMD card next time as well, and just hope for Mesa to become better - and it does become better each release.
3 Likes, Who?
pentarctagon Jul 3, 2017
So... what even are people are using? The three ones specifically named are Ubuntu(16.04.2, 17.04) and Mint 18.1 - all 64-bit. Then there's "Linux 64-bit". All of these come out to 0.47 out of 0.72, and in the previous month it was 0.49 out of 0.81. Are there really that many Steam linux users still on 32-bit OSes?
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Steam does not work well on Fedora and OpenSUSE. We need to apply a specific command to make the games working. The support just does not give a shit and tell us to switch to Ubuntu. That does not help
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Quoting: pentarctagonSo... what even are people are using? The three ones specifically named are Ubuntu(16.04.2, 17.04) and Mint 18.1 - all 64-bit. Then there's "Linux 64-bit". All of these come out to 0.47 out of 0.72, and in the previous month it was 0.49 out of 0.81. Are there really that many Steam linux users still on 32-bit OSes?You can get a good idea of what people use here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics
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