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

Quoting: nocriAccording 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?

Quoting: g000h

Quoting: nocriAccording 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.

Quoting: nocriAccording 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!

Quoting: Mountain ManGreat 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.

Quoting: mphuZIt'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.

Quoting: denyasisI 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

Quoting: denyasisQuestion, 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

Quoting: PenglingMan, 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.

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: denyasisI 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.

Quoting: udekmp69

Quoting: denyasisQuestion, 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.