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The latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey is out for June 2023, and it shows just how much the Linux share is now influenced by the Steam Deck.

Overall the Steam Deck has kind of taken over Linux gaming and June 2023's statistic are pretty striking. For the last few months SteamOS was sitting in the low to mid 20% but it seems there's been a big uptick over the last month because it's jumped rather a lot.

According to Valve's stats:

  • SteamOS Holo 64 bit 39.33% +14.01%
  • Arch Linux 64 bit 8.33% -1.66%
  • Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS 64 bit 7.87% -1.85%
  • Freedesktop.org SDK 22.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 6.02% -1.25%
  • Linux Mint 21.1 64 bit 4.55% -0.91%
  • "Manjaro Linux" 64 bit 4.37% -1.42%
  • Other 29.54% -3.38% 

We can expect that SteamOS Holo count to increase again, considering how well the Steam Deck is selling during the Steam Summer Sale 2023. Something to keep in mind though, is that for a lot of people the Steam Deck will be an additional system, not their only one used by Steam but you usually only get the survey on one machine.

The overall stats are:

  • Windows 96.77% +0.63%
  • OSX 1.79% -0.60%
  • Linux 1.44% -0.03%

Going by what Valve list that puts Linux use almost as high as the remaining Windows 7 and 8 machines noted in the survey results. 

Latest details of the Linux user share over time can be seen on our dedicated Steam Tracker page.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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37 comments
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TheRiddick Jul 4, 2023
Scaling is hard to get right when everyone uses a completely different window backend. In saying that they should get it right for each of the major desktop engines like XFCE/GNOME/PLASMA/CINAMON etc... It's important to keep in mind that Linux desktop is going through a revolution phase atm so things are changing so old was stop working.
Scaling is hard to get right when everyone uses a completely different window backend. In saying that they should get it right for each of the major desktop engines like XFCE/GNOME/PLASMA/CINAMON etc... It's important to keep in mind that Linux desktop is going through a revolution phase atm so things are changing so old was stop working.
The old client worked perfectly well. It didn't have hardware acceleration, but at least the overlay worked back then. It was broken months ago in Beta, and now it's broken in Stable, so I have to assume this is very low priority for them. I wouldn't harp on about this except it makes partying up with friends much more annoying.

At a minimum, they should get it right for GNOME and KDE. The other desktop environments use either GTK or Qt, so it's unlikely for compatibility to be perfect in GNOME but absolutely broken in XFCE and Cinnamon, for example. Each has their own Wayland compositor, of course, so that makes things a bit trickier.

Presumably. I don't pretend to know much about the graphical side. Or much of anything, really.
Bogomips Jul 4, 2023
Scaling is hard to get right when everyone uses a completely different window backend. In saying that they should get it right for each of the major desktop engines like XFCE/GNOME/PLASMA/CINAMON etc... It's important to keep in mind that Linux desktop is going through a revolution phase atm so things are changing so old was stop working.
The old client worked perfectly well. It didn't have hardware acceleration, but at least the overlay worked back then. It was broken months ago in Beta, and now it's broken in Stable, so I have to assume this is very low priority for them. I wouldn't harp on about this except it makes partying up with friends much more annoying.

At a minimum, they should get it right for GNOME and KDE. The other desktop environments use either GTK or Qt, so it's unlikely for compatibility to be perfect in GNOME but absolutely broken in XFCE and Cinnamon, for example. Each has their own Wayland compositor, of course, so that makes things a bit trickier.

Presumably. I don't pretend to know much about the graphical side. Or much of anything, really.
+ Click to view long quote

Yep, the new client is a pain in the ***, not faster for me, full black screen on first load of every window (friends, store, etc.) CS:GO overlay crash (indeed -vulkan parameter is the only way to fix it permanently but it is unplayable because of the stuttering) is a problem from the beta https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3172
The loss of real estate and flimsiness selection on contextual menu (right-click) is annoying AF.

And if you force the old client (-vgui) the friends network doesn't work anymore.
fabertawe Jul 4, 2023
I'm always amazed at people getting the survey regularly... I just had it on my desktop for the first time in living memory (admittedly mine's not that great!), at least ten years I reckon. During that time my desktop's changed MB's, drives, GPUs, CPUs at least three times. And I ran Steam most days for the whole period.
Pengling Jul 4, 2023
Yep, the new client is a pain in the ***, not faster for me, full black screen on first load of every window (friends, store, etc.)
I randomly had weird issues of this type for the first day. I cleared the Steam client cache after that and haven't had any more of them crop up since.

The only one still hanging around for me is notifications stealing focus, which was apparently reported during the beta.


Last edited by Pengling on 4 July 2023 at 10:07 am UTC
Bogomips Jul 4, 2023
Yep, the new client is a pain in the ***, not faster for me, full black screen on first load of every window (friends, store, etc.)
I randomly had weird issues of this type for the first day. I cleared the Steam client cache after that and haven't had any more of them crop up since.

The only one still hanging around for me is notifications stealing focus, which was apparently reported during the beta.

After the update I installed the new client from scratch (without any cache/config files) to try to solve the issues. And when I tried to set the default proton version in the settings all the non native games files needed to be reloaded, it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…
Eike Jul 4, 2023
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Looking at those numbers: bets on whether Linux exceeds MacOS in Steam share by the end of the year?

Wow, this is hefty!

Linux 1.44% -0.03%
OSX 1.79% -0.60%

So it's 2.39 => 1.79 in a single month, and this cannot be due to China, or Linux would have seen a similar drop!
Actually, I think it could be due to China.

I should have mentioned the China numbers in my post.
Chinese grew from 25.54% to 27.59%.
So there might be a little change in Mac explained by this, like 3% - but it's a staggering 25% less (1.79/2.39)!

I don't think even ARM can explain this, there couldn't be 1/4 of Mac users changing there hardware in a single month. So, I'd expect this to be something jumping back next month.


Last edited by Eike on 4 July 2023 at 10:34 am UTC
Pengling Jul 4, 2023
After the update I installed the new client from scratch (without any cache/config files) to try to solve the issues. And when I tried to set the default proton version in the settings all the non native games files needed to be reloaded, it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…
Oh yikes, that's really not cool!

Maybe I was lucky to have had very few problems?
sddt Jul 5, 2023
it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…

That's rough, no fibre available where you are?

We may not be able to buy the Steam Deck here but at least the vast majority of the country has gigabit fibre available.
Purple Library Guy Jul 5, 2023
it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…

That's rough, no fibre available where you are?
What does diet have to do with it?
Bogomips Jul 6, 2023
it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…

That's rough, no fibre available where you are?

We may not be able to buy the Steam Deck here but at least the vast majority of the country has gigabit fibre available.

Well, the worst part is that the optical junction box is 1 meter away from the pavement in front of the house but the "pipe" leading to the house is crushed somewhere and was not well build 40 years ago so everything is cast in concrete.
sddt Jul 6, 2023
Well, the worst part is that the optical junction box is 1 meter away from the pavement in front of the house but the "pipe" leading to the house is crushed somewhere and was not well build 40 years ago so everything is cast in concrete.

Common problem, easy solution. Cut a narrow trench in the footpath, fill it in after installation. :)
Bogomips Jul 7, 2023
Well, the worst part is that the optical junction box is 1 meter away from the pavement in front of the house but the "pipe" leading to the house is crushed somewhere and was not well build 40 years ago so everything is cast in concrete.

Common problem, easy solution. Cut a narrow trench in the footpath, fill it in after installation. :)

Well, basically yes but before "cutting" 30 m in length of concrete in a non flat area and be sure that the main electrical lines are not in the way (nothing is aerial where I live) I will try to pull cables from the middle section of the line (buried 1.5 m in the ground and yes I used a professional line detection system to follow the network underground) and see if I can spare some trenches ^^.
STiAT Jul 7, 2023
> you usually only get the survey on one machine.
Not in my experience. I had it on two different desktops one week apart just last spring and I've had it on my laptop as well.

Got it on my Steam Deck, my laptop and my PC, this month. I decided to distro hop on my PCs and it triggered the survey for each fresh install (wasn't a fresh install for my Steam Deck).

Lucky. I had a survey once. And I have Steam open almost every day since it was released for Linux.
slaapliedje Jul 7, 2023
it took me a week to rebuild my library downloading more than 200 GB of data with my poor bandwidth…

That's rough, no fibre available where you are?
What does diet have to do with it?
Ha, that put a smile on my face. Close to 6 years after I moved out of my old house, and 12 years after someone told me there would be fiber available there... a different company now has fiber there! Isn't that almost always the case? Seriously wish there were more competition in the ISP space...
sddt Jul 8, 2023
Close to 6 years after I moved out of my old house, and 12 years after someone told me there would be fiber available there... a different company now has fiber there! Isn't that almost always the case? Seriously wish there were more competition in the ISP space...

That's one thing some countries have managed better than others... here one company operates the infrastructure (but aren't allowed to run an ISP) and has to offer ISPs the same connection prices (set by an independent analysis of a fair return on investment). As a result, almost everyone (except for farms) has a choice of dozens of ISPs who compete on price, features, and service, but with the same underlying technology.
slaapliedje Jul 8, 2023
Close to 6 years after I moved out of my old house, and 12 years after someone told me there would be fiber available there... a different company now has fiber there! Isn't that almost always the case? Seriously wish there were more competition in the ISP space...

That's one thing some countries have managed better than others... here one company operates the infrastructure (but aren't allowed to run an ISP) and has to offer ISPs the same connection prices (set by an independent analysis of a fair return on investment). As a result, almost everyone (except for farms) has a choice of dozens of ISPs who compete on price, features, and service, but with the same underlying technology.
+ Click to view long quote
Dial-up used to be that way... these days the majority of people in the USA are stuck with either Comcast, AT&T, their local Telco, or Google... and most of those choices really dependent on area... comcast is just evil shit... thanks to lack of Net Neutrality...
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