Linux has now seen 4 months of being above 1% on the Steam Hardware Survey

So since February we've gone from the doldrums of 0.8% to the not-quite-so-doldrums of, looks like over 1.1%, which is, what, something like a 37% increase. Not too shabby.

OK, the total's still tiny. I'll definitely be interested to see what happens when Steam Decks start to sell.

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo since February we've gone from the doldrums of 0.8% to the not-quite-so-doldrums of, looks like over 1.1%, which is, what, something like a 37% increase. Not too shabby.

OK, the total's still tiny. I'll definitely be interested to see what happens when Steam Decks start to sell.

Definitely tiny in relative terms, but it still blows my mind to think that there are potentially well over a million active monthly users on Steam that run Linux. It's pretty incredible given the choke hold MS has on the vast majority of the population.

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo since February we've gone from the doldrums of 0.8% to the not-quite-so-doldrums of, looks like over 1.1%, which is, what, something like a 37% increase. Not too shabby.

OK, the total's still tiny. I'll definitely be interested to see what happens when Steam Decks start to sell.

Me too.The future is full of promise. We can expect Steam Deck, sea level rise, global warming and universal starvation! Aaah That's bad. Maybe I should think positively. Anyways Steam Deck is worth waiting for in my opinion.

Incidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months!

For the record, I said that the Steam Deck and SteamOS 3.0 could help Linux gain a foothold, not overthrow MS Windows.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 2 November 2021 at 5:40 pm UTC

Quoting: lucinosI would guess a big part of the flatpak is fedora, if I am not mistaken they push it more than other distros.

If you take Steam from RPM Fusion, Fedora is not correctly identified by the Steam client. You have to install the 'redhat-lsb-core' package if you want to see Fedora well identified by the Steam Client. If you don't do that, Fedora Workstation is identified as a generic Linux system by the Steam Client.

Quoting: scaineDefinitely tiny in relative terms, but it still blows my mind to think that there are potentially well over a million active monthly users on Steam that run Linux. It's pretty incredible given the choke hold MS has on the vast majority of the population.

Here's a thing. When Valve first made their Linux gaming push, Gabe Newell said, "we want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well." The entire Steam catalogue then, which no one would have said was small, was 2,500 games. Today there are 8,000 Linux-native games on Steam. The Linux gaming market is big, only looking small compared to PC gaming as a whole, and the over a million monthly active Linux gaming user base is already big enough for the developers of 15% of the games on Steam to say, "yes, I'd like a piece of that." We need growth, sure, but we don't really need to get that much bigger for more developers to take note, and for us to get onto the virtuous cycle side of the chicken and the egg. Bigger than Mac (historically maybe ~5%, now only ~3%, with nearly 14,000 games) yes, but maybe 10% could get us to the point that more games are released on Linux than not? 15%? It's clearly not too expensive a venture, or the developers of those 15% of games wouldn't have been doing it already.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIncidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months!

And here's me, who would be over the moon happy with reaching 5%. Because 5% would mean there are about 6m Linux gamers out there. Which would be more than sufficient marketshare to ensure the PC gaming industry (hardware makers, game developers, middleware developers, etc) give us at least some degree of meaningful support.

Quoting: gradyvuckovic

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIncidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months!

And here's me, who would be over the moon happy with reaching 5%. Because 5% would mean there are about 6m Linux gamers out there. Which would be more than sufficient marketshare to ensure the PC gaming industry (hardware makers, game developers, middleware developers, etc) give us at least some degree of meaningful support.

It's true. But in a sense the first few percentage points are the hard part. If we get to that level where vendors, hardware and software, give Linux support . . . then the big chicken/egg problems blocking growth are gone. That doesn't mean automatic further growth, but certainly some doors we've been experiencing as wedged shut would suddenly be ajar.

I would say at heart of this push is Proton. Consider this, without Proton both gaming on Deck (using SteamOS) and Linux desktop PCs would fail to meet people's expectations, even those who are willing to make a small to moderate compromise. Deck existing has made more people aware of Proton and Linux. With new hardware alot news are thrown around, people read and watch these news.

It keeps people talking about Linux, Deck and Proton. Content creators, who aren't familiar faces in Linux space, are making content about Linux and Proton. Marketing something helps but if what you are marketing isn't good then people will not bother. Linux gaming is marketable to a degree it has not been before. Lots games play fine and the platform isn't missing as much features as before. DLSS, FSR, RT and more is available.

LTT's video "Install Linux instead of Windows 11" has been viewed 1.7M times. Other videos about Linux they have made has also gotten million views or more. How can more people use Linux if they haven't heard of it? With Deck so many people know of it, and Proton is making Linux viable for gaming.