The latest Steam Survey had a huge surge of Simplified Chinese

We did have a previous shonky month where you gave up waiting and put the data on your tracker as the best option, and Valve finally got round to publishing the correct data after something like three weeks.

My own participation got messed up by a bug triggered by whatever Steam uses to do a hardware survey - that bug causes a complete amdgpu reset (probably not on all GPUs, but at least a few).

I am unsure how common that bug is, but if a percentage of Linux users are affected, it could lead to some skewing as well.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9267

"Quite a stark drop, since Linux isn't particularly popular in Asia and again, "
or maybe it is popular on asia, but not on cybercafes?
by popular i mean as much as it is elsewhere, arround 1%...


anyway, where is the GPU data on the survey? to be more specific the model used on steamdeck...


Last edited by elmapul on 13 April 2023 at 2:17 pm UTC

Quoting: elmapulanyway, where is the GPU data on the survey? to be more specific the model used on steamdeck...

As expected, a drop as well:
AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405 0.18% -0.09%
It's not like the Chinese would install Windows 10 on their masses of new Steam Decks...

Given that Steam proper is blocked in mainland China, but AIUI many people there still use it because the local version of Steam has very few games, here's some hypotheses:

1. Steam proper got temporarily un-blocked by the Great Firewall for whatever reason, and all the people with Steam installed were able to connect for a short time.

2. Some very popular game was released/updated on Steam, so a lot of Chinese people risked using a VPN to connect and download it.

3. Some game was released on Steam which was interpreted to be critical of the CCP, so a bunch of fake accounts got created to review-bomb and report the game for "hate speech". (As has happened before)

4. Valve accidentally mixed in the stats from the PRC Steam version with the main Steam stats (again?)

I have some theories and opinions on why Linux isn't particular popular in non-English speaking countries.

It's because, in my opinion, the experience for Non-English speaking users on Linux isn't particularly great.

Aside from often lackluster translations available for software on Linux, and the OSes themselves, and even the distro websites, or OS manuals, the bigger issue is that the UX on Linux is still not quite at the point where someone could sit down at a Linux OS desktop PC and figure out every issue through navigating a GUI alone. It's not that completely self explanatory. It's still necessary to go online for help, and often the answers will be on Reddit, or Github, or some online forum, etc, and all of it in English.

And it's often the case that there's no where to go online to ask for help because most of the Linux communities are English-only. Either through enforced rules forbidding people from using languages other than English or simply because no one in the communities happens to speak a language other than English, or at least few enough speak non-English languages to make finding help online basically a non-starter.

I just don't think multilanguage support on Linux seems to be a particularly high priority and so it's not surprising to me at all that the userbase numbers in non-English speaking countries is so low.

English is spoken by less than 1 in 5 people on the planet, as long as multilanguage support on Linux remains lackluster, I think that's going to keep holding back growth in non-English markets.

Maybe we should stop using only percentage numbers as a measure for Linux adoption and also start using estimated absolute numbers (by multiplying the percentage of Linux users with the estimated total number of Steam accounts). It would be more inaccurate (since we are also using estimated numbers of the total number of Steam accounts), but it could give us a better understanding of speed of adoption (the percentage of the total might decline, but we still might get a higher increment of people using Linux in that month).

Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt's because, in my opinion, the experience for Non-English speaking users on Linux isn't particularly great.

That's definitely an issue that will never get resolved unless someone took a humongous amount of cash into their hands and just made it happen.

Even when restricting it to Latin alphabet languages, you can get distros themselves with pretty good language support in some languages (German for sure, probably French, not sure about Spanish) - but as you said, as soon as you leave the confines of the distro interface, it's English or bust.
There is no "Microsoft help"-equivalent that would offer support for basically every question in basically every language - yes, I know those pages are crap, but at least they exist.
Or an automatically translated StackOverflow (and likes) that would be search-indexed for helping non-English speakers.

In my own experience, support is especially terrible for Chinese.
For a while I tried learning it and the hoops I had to jump through just to get keyboard support for Pinyin was absolutely crazy. Meanwhile on Windows, you can just go to languages, install Simplified/Traditional Chinese and you're done.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 April 2023 at 2:43 pm UTC

Quoting: Guestand they have browsers (like Yandex Browser) that automatically translates all english text to Russian

Chromium can translate web pages as a whole. This is one of the reasons why I keep it around.

Quoting: GuestAnd let's admit it for once, it is a bit easier to use

Nah, I don't feel like admitting that for once.
Seriously, I use Linux at home, Windows at work, and recently tried briefly to use Windows for a very simple little box that was just for my wife to watch "TV" on, so all it had to do was run a browser. And my considered opinion is that Windows is a pain in the ass. It's just, because it's been so dominant for so long, Windows pain points, people have long learned to ignore and take for granted. Which means when Linux doesn't do those annoying things, that isn't seen as an actual improvement. But it is.
Windows is nagware. Even with just one program installed, it was constantly bitching at me. Do the updates, now! You should really make Edge your default browser! Your choice not to let us phone home with all your data was a bad one, don't you want to reconsider? This, that or the other completely irrelevant thing may be wrong somehow and you should acknowledge this even though we offer you no course of action to deal with it in any way! Popups, popups, popups, blah, blah, blah.
At work the Systems people keep most of this crap out of my way, bless 'em. Most, not all. On the other hand, we have Microsoft Fucking Teams, which ever since I was fooled into opening the application once now automatically opens every morning when I log in, and again any time I log in somewhere else, and last time I forgot to get rid of it I found everything crashing after a while.

With Linux (Mint, in my case) I can do something or watch something without constant BS. I like the Mint file manager better than the Windows one, too. Except changing file names, Windows does that well.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 13 April 2023 at 7:18 pm UTC

Quoting: gradyvuckovicI have some theories and opinions on why Linux isn't particular popular in non-English speaking countries.

It's because, in my opinion, the experience for Non-English speaking users on Linux isn't particularly great.

Aside from often lackluster translations available for software on Linux, and the OSes themselves, and even the distro websites, or OS manuals, the bigger issue is that the UX on Linux is still not quite at the point where someone could sit down at a Linux OS desktop PC and figure out every issue through navigating a GUI alone. It's not that completely self explanatory. It's still necessary to go online for help, and often the answers will be on Reddit, or Github, or some online forum, etc, and all of it in English.

And it's often the case that there's no where to go online to ask for help because most of the Linux communities are English-only. Either through enforced rules forbidding people from using languages other than English or simply because no one in the communities happens to speak a language other than English, or at least few enough speak non-English languages to make finding help online basically a non-starter.

I just don't think multilanguage support on Linux seems to be a particularly high priority and so it's not surprising to me at all that the userbase numbers in non-English speaking countries is so low.

English is spoken by less than 1 in 5 people on the planet, as long as multilanguage support on Linux remains lackluster, I think that's going to keep holding back growth in non-English markets.

Microsoft is not really better at translating things either, the main 3 causes seem to be:
- Automatic translations (AI based).
- Out of context translations (Strings are just provided in a plain document).
- Translators don't understand a technical thing that they translate (Not in the computer science field).

(I have translated a few projects myself so I know a little bit how it works and yes the main culprit is cost reduction).

The second point is also true, it is way easier to find help online in English depending on the community behind it especially for uncommon tricky situations.

All this pains me so much that all my systems/games/software in general are in English but of course using local units and layouts.

Quoting: gradyvuckovicI have some theories and opinions on why Linux isn't particular popular in non-English speaking countries.

Which isn't what was said. Linux is quite popular in many countries where English isn't the primary language.

Quote...the bigger issue is that the UX on Linux is still not quite at the point where someone could sit down at a Linux OS desktop PC and figure out every issue through navigating a GUI alone. It's not that completely self explanatory. It's still necessary to go online for help, and often the answers will be on Reddit, or Github, or some online forum, etc, and all of it in English.

And you just described the exact same situation for Windows. And most major software projects, in fact. This isn't the reason, either.

Quoting: GuestTo be fair Linux is rather popular in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia and Ukraine. There's a fairly large community in those countries that use Linux, they even have their own distros optimized for their language. I think this stems from the "hacker culture" from the early 2000's and the pirated games you could get in flea markets at the time. As far as I'm aware, asia never had that to the same extent and was more console focused in general, hence why no interest in linux there.

Many Eastern European distros have patched language support (for example Ark on KDE does not show proper cyrillic names) and they have browsers (like Yandex Browser) that automatically translates all english text to Russian/translates english videos to Russian in realtime. Until this happens for Chinese language, it likely won't pickup popularity.

Can't really speak for Russia, but I'm from Ukraine and (I think) the biggest reason for higher adoption of Linux is that Ukraine supplies a lot of programmers to the world. The economy (buying power) in Ukraine is the weakest compared with other European countries, that going into IT can land you a really good salary compared with the rest of professions. Thus Ukraine is pretty ahead of other countries with digital innovation - we have Diia, which is an app that has all of your IDs, court summons, social support, and like half a year ago they added the ability to get married in the app. You just pick the date of your wedding and you're set.

As for Yandex browser, that is only really in Russia. Their government is trying to copy China, and so they their own website ssl certificates, that come preinstalled with Yandex, which makes is the easiest browser to use in Russia. They also have packet sniffing countrywide. All of this after a law passed in 2016.

As for translation, Chrome does literally the same thing, with addon equivalents in Firefox.

Quoting: gradyvuckovicI have some theories and opinions on why Linux isn't particular popular in non-English speaking countries.
.

as someone who the main language inst english , i can tell you why, at least one of the main reasons.

as you said, the documentation for us is lackuster, but there is something even worse.
i have an good english, im good at reading, writing, listening , the only issue i have is speaking, even then, i prefer to use an system on my native language, its more confortable.

if you try to use linux in an non english lang, and got any error message, you cant find almost any help online.

just think about it:
what distro are you using? ubuntu, fine, what version of it? 20.04, fine that is still quite popular, what hardware do you have? x cpu, y gpu, z ram etc... fine, that became quite nicher if its a problem specific to this hardware config, but someone else might have the same problem and posted the solution online, google search the error message in english on google and you will find tons of ansewers online, now, put you system in portuguese and wait for the error message to appear again, control c, control v the error message on google... you will find almost no result! or maybe you find someone that solved it in 2014 in another distro, you try their solution and it may seem to fix the issue but cause another one, and now your system is in an strange niche configuration that its unlikely that anyone else have it.
like you have an ubuntu 20.04 with an package intended for fedora from 2014 installed on it.

honestly,i think we need error codes in our system.
with an message like:
"error code 01 package not found"
you have 2 ways to search for the solution, try to google "package not found" and try to google "ubuntu error code 01"
if its in portuguese, you just have to know that the translation for "código de erro 01" is "error code 01". and you can find results even if they are in english.

if you had to translate "package not found" or any other specific term, then the different ways that an phrase can be translated could result in you searching for an error message that dont exist in english.

for example, recently firefox changed the way he calls the term "save file as" from "salvar arquivo como" to "guardar arquivo como" different translations like that may confuse people who cant find the error message in portuguese and manually try to translate it to english.

(btw: this guardar como is inconsistente, i tried now and it says "salvar" again for some reason)

Quoting: elmapulif you try to use linux in an non english lang, and got any error message, you cant find almost any help online.

For command line tools, there's an easy workaround, from the top of my head:

LANG=C apt install nonsense

Quoting: RomlokGiven that Steam proper is blocked in mainland China, but AIUI many people there still use it because the local version of Steam has very few games, here's some hypotheses:

1. Steam proper got temporarily un-blocked by the Great Firewall for whatever reason, and all the people with Steam installed were able to connect for a short time.

2. Some very popular game was released/updated on Steam, so a lot of Chinese people risked using a VPN to connect and download it.

3. Some game was released on Steam which was interpreted to be critical of the CCP, so a bunch of fake accounts got created to review-bomb and report the game for "hate speech". (As has happened before)

4. Valve accidentally mixed in the stats from the PRC Steam version with the main Steam stats (again?)

The main issue with this theory is that the survey isn't automatic, you have to agree to send it to Valve once it pops up and I have a hard time seeing anyone performing either of your points as thinking "yeah lets have Valve receive some telemetry".

Quoting: F.Ultrayou have to agree to send it to Valve once it pops up and I have a hard time seeing anyone performing either of your points as thinking "yeah lets have Valve receive some telemetry".

You seriously think 99% of people care about their data being used?


You start Steam.
The popup about the survey comes up.
You click through it half-blind like you click through most popups of that style.
Done.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 14 April 2023 at 11:50 am UTC

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: gradyvuckovicI have some theories and opinions on why Linux isn't particular popular in non-English speaking countries.
.

as someone who the main language inst english , i can tell you why, at least one of the main reasons.

as you said, the documentation for us is lackuster, but there is something even worse.
i have an good english, im good at reading, writing, listening , the only issue i have is speaking, even then, i prefer to use an system on my native language, its more confortable.

if you try to use linux in an non english lang, and got any error message, you cant find almost any help online.

just think about it:
what distro are you using? ubuntu, fine, what version of it? 20.04, fine that is still quite popular, what hardware do you have? x cpu, y gpu, z ram etc... fine, that became quite nicher if its a problem specific to this hardware config, but someone else might have the same problem and posted the solution online, google search the error message in english on google and you will find tons of ansewers online, now, put you system in portuguese and wait for the error message to appear again, control c, control v the error message on google... you will find almost no result! or maybe you find someone that solved it in 2014 in another distro, you try their solution and it may seem to fix the issue but cause another one, and now your system is in an strange niche configuration that its unlikely that anyone else have it.
like you have an ubuntu 20.04 with an package intended for fedora from 2014 installed on it.

honestly,i think we need error codes in our system.
with an message like:
"error code 01 package not found"
you have 2 ways to search for the solution, try to google "package not found" and try to google "ubuntu error code 01"
if its in portuguese, you just have to know that the translation for "código de erro 01" is "error code 01". and you can find results even if they are in english.

if you had to translate "package not found" or any other specific term, then the different ways that an phrase can be translated could result in you searching for an error message that dont exist in english.

for example, recently firefox changed the way he calls the term "save file as" from "salvar arquivo como" to "guardar arquivo como" different translations like that may confuse people who cant find the error message in portuguese and manually try to translate it to english.

(btw: this guardar como is inconsistente, i tried now and it says "salvar" again for some reason)

Something that is of course a problem in any OS and/or application completely dependent upon the size of the community. I mean neither Windows nor macOS have any edge here other than a larger community and thus larger chance of some one else having written about the very same error in your language.

Thankfully it's possible in Linux to change the language temporarily in the console to English by "LANG=C command" and the GUI part can by switched by having English installed as a secondary locale and then at least in Gnome you got that language switcher on the right side of the menu bar.

edit: at least we don't have the same problem as Windows used to have back before Windows 7 (I think it was in 7 they fixed it) where you had C:\Program Files if you had an English locale and e.g C:\Program if you used say the Swedish locale.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 14 April 2023 at 11:54 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: F.Ultrayou have to agree to send it to Valve once it pops up and I have a hard time seeing anyone performing either of your points as thinking "yeah lets have Valve receive some telemetry".

You seriously think 99% of people care about their data being used?


You start Steam.
The popup about the survey comes up.
You click through it half-blind like you click through most popups of that style.
Done.

Ok so let's go over his 4 points:

#1: Steam proper got temporarily un-blocked by the Great Firewall for whatever reason, and all the people with Steam installed were able to connect for a short time. -- Since the survey have to be sent manually it would not be triggered by their computers accidentally being able to connect to steam for a few seconds.

#2: Some very popular game was released/updated on Steam, so a lot of Chinese people risked using a VPN to connect and download it. -- So people trying to fly under the radar of the Chinese Gouvernment would be perfectly fine with sending telemetry to a western company? and also not being 100% vigilant on what they click and agree to?

#3: Some game was released on Steam which was interpreted to be critical of the CCP, so a bunch of fake accounts got created to review-bomb and report the game for "hate speech". (As has happened before) -- Why would these people (who most likely are bots anyway) bother by also agreeing to the survey? AFAIK new accounts also don't get sent the survey in the first place.

4. Valve accidentally mixed in the stats from the PRC Steam version with the main Steam stats (again?) -- Ok so this one might be true since I don't even know what it would mean, to be completely fair I missed to read this one before my first comment.

Quoting: F.UltraSince the survey have to be sent manually it would not be triggered by their computers accidentally being able to connect to steam for a few seconds.

You are just making stuff up here.
"For a few seconds"? Why would you assume that? Could easily be a lot longer.
I have no clue what time frame is needed for Steam to trigger that popup on your end, or under what conditions it fires, or if it is just random, or...

Could just be a "user X who was selected for survey has come online" trigger, which would be fine with even just some seconds...

Quoting: F.UltraSo people trying to fly under the radar of the Chinese Gouvernment would be perfectly fine with sending telemetry to a western company? and also not being 100% vigilant on what they click and agree to?

Yes, absolutely.
You radically overestimate how much people care about stuff like that.
We are not talking about some (rightfully) paranoid dissenters, but just a gamer who wants to play a game.

Quoting: F.UltraWhy would these people (who most likely are bots anyway) bother by also agreeing to the survey? AFAIK new accounts also don't get sent the survey in the first place.

I don't know. Seems the most unlikely to me as well.

Quoting: F.UltraOk so this one might be true since I don't even know what it would mean, to be completely fair I missed to read this one before my first comment.

Also seems the most likely to me.
It has to be either a mess up or a very, very specific reason.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 14 April 2023 at 1:00 pm UTC