Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey

HOLD THE LINE LADS

Looks like the big rise as well as beating Mac could be real!

I was just selected for the survey yesterday. What an honor!
It's weird that Steam still puts OS X before Linux in the list even though Linux has a higher share:



Last edited by hagabaka on 6 September 2023 at 3:00 pm UTC

At this rate, Linux will beat Windows in about 10,000 years! \o/

At this rate, Linux will beat Windows in about 10,000 years! \o/

Well, by some readings the graph has an inflection point a while ago, and if you take the trend since then it would only be about 300 years!

No sign of FreeBSD ?

I saw someone who has a youtube channel showing games running on freeBSD under wine.

I might go to freebsd when valve finally release a native steam for freebsd, midnightbsd.

i'm being depressed on gentoo, i want to go back to arch but it's impossible >.<


Last edited by nenoro on 3 September 2023 at 12:45 am UTC

No sign of FreeBSD ?

I saw someone who has a youtube channel showing games running on freeBSD under wine.

I might go to freebsd when valve finally release a native steam for freebsd, midnightbsd.

i'm being depressed on gentoo, i want to go back to arch but it's impossible >.<

You can have steam on FreeBSD, i have it one of my laptops, it works well: https://github.com/shkhln/linuxulator-steam-utils

It does use the Linux emulation layer though and is detected as running on CentOS 7; so thats what it would show up in steam survey results as.

My laptop is old with an Nvidia Fermi GPU, so I'm stuck with nvidia 390 series drivers and no vulkan...that limits me to only OpenGL Linux native games and completely eliminates proton (which does work on more modern hardware).

My main desktop is Gentoo, I will never give it up. Yes, it takes time to compile, nothing works out of the box, but the flexibility you get with it is unmatched by any distro; if you have the patience (and interest/desire) to tweak...everything. Gentoo is the best, FreeBSD is close 2nd; no systemd on any them! (optional in Gentoo, but not rammed down your throat...yet?)

Good. I don't get why anyone would use macOS for gaming. Apple completely doesn't care about gamers and does the opposite from supporting them. From not supporting OpenGL and Vulkan to dropping 32-bit support and so on.


Last edited by Shmerl on 3 September 2023 at 2:25 am UTC

unlike the month where the marketshare was unusually low, this high marketshare seems to be correct, there is a little margin for error so it will change a bit of the months, but the massive bump we had seems to be here to stay.

No sign of FreeBSD ?

I saw someone who has a youtube channel showing games running on freeBSD under wine.

I might go to freebsd when valve finally release a native steam for freebsd, midnightbsd.

i'm being depressed on gentoo, i want to go back to arch but it's impossible >.<

when we reach the year of linux we can fight for the year of bsd, meanwhile shut up hipster! just kidding

do they make the datasets public? Would be fun data to play around with.

do they make the datasets public? Would be fun data to play around with.

Unfortunately, it seems these numbers are all we've got. Would be great if you found more.

Another question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D

Another question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D

Wayback Machine.

Well I dunno, my 2 cents:

I have a PC with RTX 4090, MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro (Apple Silicon) and Steam Deck.

The Steam Survey has popped two times on my PC, once on my Steam Deck but literally zero times on my MacBook Pro, which I own for almost 2 years now.

Also many "casual Mac gamers" (if they can be described this way) do not buy games on the Steam. They are just usually buying games on the Mac App Store. Sure, there are also some "serious Mac gamers" who do use Steam, they install Crossover or use Parallels Desktop. However they are minority.

And keep in mind one thing. Apple sponsored ports are usually Mac App Store exclusive like Resident Evil Village.

So... yeah.

Good. I don't get why anyone would use macOS for gaming.

The same reason people use Linux for gaming? It's their main system & they don't want to switch.

Apple completely doesn't care about gamers and does the opposite from supporting them.

Since Apple probably maintains the second biggest gaming platform, that's hard to believe. They obviously don't care about Steam gamers. But they seem interested to expand their gaming support & with a unified ARM platform they are in a really strong position.

From not supporting OpenGL and Vulkan to dropping 32-bit support and so on.

Consoles drop support for the previous generations all the time & people seldom care. Worst case scenario they just buy a remaster. Eventually there will be a community driven compatibility layer (if somebody cares).

Nice too see that Valve's strategy is paying off.
Back then, when we asked game devs about a Linux version the answer was always, not worth it, not enough users, not feasible. At the same time asking for a Mac version was no issue. Well... does that mean now we can as for Steam Deck support without issues? :)

For me it's also interesting to see, how well games are supported on Deck now, while I'm getting more and more issues on my nVidida and Ubuntu powered Linux desktop. nVidia driver version 535 has quite some issues, there are now library issues with native Linux games, e.g. I cannot run Insurgency (the old one) anymore without tinkering (solution here. GTA V doesn't run via Steam for me anymore, but I can play it via Heroic on Desktop or without issues on Deck... Pistol Whip VR stopped working due to an update for nVidia users. XRDesktop isn't poperly working anymore etc. etc.

I'm sure it'll get better again, it still feels like there are ups and downs regarding how good things run on Linux and currently it's more of a down, at least for me and my setup.

Consoles drop support for the previous generations all the time & people seldom care. Worst case scenario they just buy a remaster. Eventually there will be a community driven compatibility layer (if somebody cares).

I don't get any of your arguments. Apple is a PC vendor, so dropping 32-bit support and not supporting OpenGL / Vulkan directly harmed gaming on their own platform. It's glaringly obvious they don't care about this use case, Steam or not Steam. They deliberately make things worse, something Linux never has done for gamers.


Last edited by Shmerl on 3 September 2023 at 3:45 pm UTC

Nice too see that Valve's strategy is paying off.
Back then, when we asked game devs about a Linux version the answer was always, not worth it, not enough users, not feasible. At the same time asking for a Mac version was no issue. Well... does that mean now we can as for Steam Deck support without issues? :)

For me it's also interesting to see, how well games are supported on Deck now, while I'm getting more and more issues on my nVidida and Ubuntu powered Linux desktop. nVidia driver version 535 has quite some issues, there are now library issues with native Linux games, e.g. I cannot run Insurgency (the old one) anymore without tinkering (solution here. GTA V doesn't run via Steam for me anymore, but I can play it via Heroic on Desktop or without issues on Deck... Pistol Whip VR stopped working due to an update for nVidia users. XRDesktop isn't poperly working anymore etc. etc.

I'm sure it'll get better again, it still feels like there are ups and downs regarding how good things run on Linux and currently it's more of a down, at least for me and my setup.

I have to thank nvidia for enabling me to game on linux at a time when it was impossible otherwise many, many years ago when i had zero success on the terrible fglrx AMD. it's what kept me going until AMDGPU was up and running. Now however im on AMD and its amazing honestly in comparison how much better it is than nvidia, no contest. Your kneecapping yourself running nvidia on linux, it's like choosing to have a lower quality experience on purpose. Im not going back to nvidia ever again, id rather use intel ARC MESA even if it was twice as slow so long as it is just as fuss free and stable as it is on the FOSS driver.


Last edited by Lofty on 3 September 2023 at 4:38 pm UTC

I have to thank nvidia for enabling me to game on linux at a time when it was impossible otherwise many, many years ago when i had zero success on the terrible fglrx AMD. it's what kept me going until AMDGPU was up and running. Now however im on AMD and its amazing honestly in comparison how much better it is than nvidia, no contest. Your kneecapping yourself running nvidia on linux, it's like choosing to have a lower quality experience on purpose.

Why do you think so? I'm using Nvidia on Linux, and I don't see problems.