Linux share on Steam hits highest peak in years thanks to Steam Deck

A lot of people are just waiting for the mere opportunity to pick up their Steam Deck. The platform's rolling out so slowly, though I'd prefer they do it this way over just bulk releasing them and have scalpers snatch em all up and run into the same problem anyway.

Still plenty of scalpers around, noticing Steam Decks for sale on Ebay at big mark-ups. Sure, you can only reserve one Deck per Steam account - but that doesn't stop you owning multiple accounts.

The glorious return of Windows 7
Windows 7 64 bit
3.01% +0.60%

Which is obviously caused by
Simplified Chinese
24.75% +2.50%

They can't get rid of the legacy
Also the increase of the Chinese hasn't stopped the increase of Linux gamers.

A lot of people are just waiting for the mere opportunity to pick up their Steam Deck. The platform's rolling out so slowly, though I'd prefer they do it this way over just bulk releasing them and have scalpers snatch em all up and run into the same problem anyway.

Still plenty of scalpers around, noticing Steam Decks for sale on Ebay at big mark-ups. Sure, you can only reserve one Deck per Steam account - but that doesn't stop you owning multiple accounts.

Though they'd have had to own those accounts for at least one month prior to the opening of pre-orders; accounts less than a month old weren't allowed to pre-order until after a three-day period. (For reference, I just got my order email June 30 after ordering ~1.25 hours after the window opened, so we're nowhere near that 3 day mark yet.) I'm sure there are some people who had accounts like that they could use, but I bet a lot of those scalpers only have a single unit to sell at this point.

I’m glad the Steam Flatpak is getting more traction. Native games on Linux sometimes required libraries outside of the Steam runtime, and developers don’t notice this and just say that it only supports ubuntu or fedora or some crap like that. Now with the Flatpak, it’ll be clear as day if the native game works or not.

Flatpak Steam has some issues but mostly with older native goldscr games and is easily fixable with a launch option. However I use it simply due to organization and the fact it limits read/write of all my other files on my desktop. 100% recommend the steam flatpak especially if you hate when native linux games just throw folders anywhere in /home/.

1.18% of the survey were GNU+Linux users, and 7.57% of those were Steam Deck owners, which means \~0.09% of Steam users have a Steam Deck (9 in 10,000).

Steam's last announced figure of 132 million monthly active users came at the beginning of 2022.
That comes out to a little over 100,000 Steam Decks in the wild (unless my maths is wrong). That seems reasonable, based on what I've heard about estimated numbers of shipped units (approx 6,000 per week).

Though not everyone with a Deck is getting opted-in to the survey, so it's more of a snapshot than definitive numbers.

Agreed, I think the 118k number is probably pretty accurate. It's also in Valve's interest to force a survey for every Deck, not only to show strong numbers, but to comparee purchase with usage. I wouldn't be surprised if it does a survey on first run (which is ancedotally consistent with my experience with Steam; survey on new installation.)

I’m glad the Steam Flatpak is getting more traction. Native games on Linux sometimes required libraries outside of the Steam runtime, and developers don’t notice this and just say that it only supports ubuntu or fedora or some crap like that. Now with the Flatpak, it’ll be clear as day if the native game works or not.

Flatpak Steam has some issues but mostly with older native goldscr games and is easily fixable with a launch option. However I use it simply due to organization and the fact it limits read/write of all my other files on my desktop. 100% recommend the steam flatpak especially if you hate when native linux games just throw folders anywhere in /home/.

Question, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

I’m glad the Steam Flatpak is getting more traction. Native games on Linux sometimes required libraries outside of the Steam runtime, and developers don’t notice this and just say that it only supports ubuntu or fedora or some crap like that. Now with the Flatpak, it’ll be clear as day if the native game works or not.

I'm not happy to see a patch getting more traction.
I would be happy if the patch wouldn't be needed because the cure gained the traction, instead.

Some fun math: if last month SD were at ~5% and this month it is at 7.5%, it means an increment of 2.5%/month ( I know I'm making a lot of inaccurate assumptions but for this back of the envelope calculations I think they are ok). However, Valve just said they are more than doubling production so I would expect an increase of ~5%, which would put the SD at 12.5% of Linux usage, close to doubling it's previous number.

Let's see but if this prediction happens, I think we may start seeing the SD noticeable overall soon.

According to the trend line in the plot, linux will hit 50% of the market share sometime in June of 2500. I need to make memo for my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand children to check this out :)

It's a shame that Valve hasn't released the SteamOS desktop distribution yet.
And even the new Big Picture is missing in the beta version of Steam.

The SteamOS is suited to SteamDeck's hardware. This makes the whole thing easier and cleaner. Desktop OSes must be ready for all kind of hardware, and not all combinations will work well. Although I would love to see the Steam OS on PCs, I don't think it would be a good thing after all:

- the SteamOS development team would have to deal with probably 1000% increase of bugs, issues and bad press, which is not going to help anyone
- users would be frustrated by various issues that don't exist on SteamDeck, so the experience hadn't been so smooth
- the bad press, experiences, would likely distract from the process of marketing SteamDeck, they already have their hands full, they should stay focused, they are already doing a lot

We already have community OSes like Chimera OS that is doing a similar thing, but is more open that SteamOS and suitable for PCs. Any issues with the system won't be credited back to Valve.

Said that, I don't think that releasing SteamOS for PCs will happen or if it happens, it may not be a good thing, unless Valve makes this an unofficial spin-off, run by and for the community - without any guaranties or official ties to Valve. If there would be some hidden, unofficial support of some Valve employees, it would be a nice touch thou.


Last edited by michaldybczak on 3 July 2022 at 11:12 am UTC

Question, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

For Flatpak, indeed, it will protect your /home from Steam reading and writing anywhere it wants. You can of course add supplementary paths, notably with "flatseal" app, that's what I do with my library being on another drive than my /home. You can also add paths as read only, as an example for music access.

For snaps, depending on what the application packager does (enable full home access by default or not), it should also protect your /home. I also remember that snap has no support for fine grained permissions (allowing one specific folder). At least from the last time I used it. And there is no "flatseal" equivalent for easy management of permissions.

According to the trend line in the plot, linux will hit 50% of the market share sometime in June of 2500. I need to make memo for my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand children to check this out :)

Heh. I did a similar calculation a year or two ago, regarding the length of time before the Earth became completely broken and not habitable and it is shorter than that, i.e. 300 years.

I'm guessing your calculation is based on linear growth, rather than exponential (or other) mathematical model?

According to the trend line in the plot, linux will hit 50% of the market share sometime in June of 2500. I need to make memo for my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand children to check this out :)

Heh. I did a similar calculation a year or two ago, regarding the length of time before the Earth became completely broken and not habitable and it is shorter than that, i.e. 300 years.

I'm guessing your calculation is based on linear growth, rather than exponential (or other) mathematical model?

We have to ask liam how is the trend.

Great for Valve and the Steam Deck, but what does it really mean for Linux? It reminds me of the Android situation, where everybody who has an Android phone in their pocket is technically using Linux, but that in and of itself does nothing to advance the cause for Linux.

According to the trend line in the plot, linux will hit 50% of the market share sometime in June of 2500. I need to make memo for my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand children to check this out :)

Well, yes, but now that Valve have "more than doubled" production of Steam Decks, the trend line should improve; we could hit 50% by only around 2260!

Great for Valve and the Steam Deck, but what does it really mean for Linux? It reminds me of the Android situation, where everybody who has an Android phone in their pocket is technically using Linux, but that in and of itself does nothing to advance the cause for Linux.

I think there is a pretty simple, key distinction here: Programs written to run on Android will not run on desktop Linux. But programs written to run on SteamOS, or for that matter programs SteamOS arranges to run even though they were written for Windows, do.
So. Improving the software ecosystem for Android does not improve it for Linux, but improving the software ecosystem for SteamOS does.

It's a shame that Valve hasn't released the SteamOS desktop distribution yet.
And even the new Big Picture is missing in the beta version of Steam.

We need a Steam Controller 2 to properly use the Deck's UI on the desktop... we are missing, at the very least, tge Steam button and the one that brings up tge overlay.

There is a way to use the DeckUI on the desktop now, with just normal Steam.

I wouldn't be surprised if it does a survey on first run (which is ancedotally consistent with my experience with Steam; survey on new installation.)

Man, that's so weird to me - I've got Steam installed on three machines, and I've never had the survey at all! I'm a relatively recent Steam user though (my account's not even a year old yet), having returned to PC-gaming after an extremely long absence (I left it behind when you could still buy big-box games from Toys 'R' Us and Woolworths, and when Electronics Boutique UK still existed), so I wonder if that's a factor?


Last edited by Pengling on 3 July 2022 at 3:35 pm UTC

Question, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

Yes. Although different applications have different permissions by default, I would recommend installing flatseal to a get a good GUI for permissions of each application including Steam. Steam's flatpak default permission cannot see anything other than ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/. You can give it an additional permission to see a 'steamlibrary' folder on a secondary hard drive as well. Flatpak has room for improvement but I generally prefer it for closed source applications if it works okay with it.


Last edited by udekmp69 on 3 July 2022 at 5:02 pm UTC

Man, that's so weird to me - I've got Steam installed on three machines, and I've never had the survey at all! I'm a relatively recent Steam user though (my account's not even a year old yet)

I also didn't have the survey for a few months and the got it literally every time in a short period. I am one of the few who got the survey on a non-Deck device running SteamOS (winesapOS to be exact) which are %0.01 of Linux users.

I wouldn't be surprised if it does a survey on first run (which is ancedotally consistent with my experience with Steam; survey on new installation.)

Man, that's so weird to me - I've got Steam installed on three machines, and I've never had the survey at all! I'm a relatively recent Steam user though (my account's not even a year old yet), having returned to PC-gaming after an extremely long absence (I left it behind when you could still buy big-box games from Toys 'R' Us and Woolworths, and when Electronics Boutique UK still existed), so I wonder if that's a factor?

That's so odd. Well I stand corrected. I will say, everytime I've distro hoped, the first time I've run steam, I got the survey. Most recently a few months ago, when I switched to Manjaro on my desktop and laptop. I just assumed it was a first run thing on a new install.

I guess, with the Decks, it could just be harvesting it all in the background anyway. Not like steam doesn't phone home, I think it would be silly to think it doesn't send the same user data along with it.

Question, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

Yes. Although different applications have different permissions by default, I would recommend installing flatseal to a get a good GUI for permissions of each application including Steam. Steam's flatpak default permission cannot see anything other than ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/. You can give it an additional permission to see a 'steamlibrary' folder on a secondary hard drive as well. Flatpak has room for improvement but I generally prefer it for closed source applications if it works okay with it.

Thanks! I'll have to check it out. Steam lost a little bit of it's luster for me recently when it wouldn't allow me to start a game unless I let it upload the contents on the game directory to Valve (I had installed some mods manually). Kinda made me wonder what else it uploads and goes through.