Linux user share on Steam breaks 2% thanks to Steam Deck

It's all nice and good but far from the tipping point.

Does anyone have some kind of research/analisys that tries to identify the % at which point the "network effect" will trigger?

Quoting: MalIt's all nice and good but far from the tipping point.

Does anyone have some kind of research/analisys that tries to identify the % at which point the "network effect" will trigger?

https://web.archive.org/web/20230204153910if_/https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.2202/1446-9022.1256/html
This paper answers your question for a simplified model, but it's complex enough that I can't do the math.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYes and no. The difference, sure, at any particular snapshot in time. But that's not what I was wondering about. Linux's 4% on the web was 2% not so long ago--the Linux desktop web share has apparently doubled, while its Steam share has inched upwards, I dunno, maybe 10%. This during a time when using the Linux desktop to game has rapidly gotten more workable, so if anything I would have expected the ratio to shrink, not grow. Still seems odd to me.

Since September 2018 (the start of the GOL data) Linux in the web browser has grown from 1.68% to 3.77%, while Linux on Steam has grown from 0.78% to 2.32%.

Yesyes, but most of the Linux on Steam growth has been on the Deck, which is probably not used to browse the web very much. Desktop Linux growth on Steam has been much lower, although I'd forgotten we were ever quite as low as 0.78%.

Let's see, desktop Linux, based on the "SteamOS" distro being at 45% of the total, would now be at 1.25%. Well, that's not as out of line as I was thinking; let's see, 1.25/0.78 = Desktop Linux on Steam has grown to 1.6 times its 2018 level, while the "on the web" share has grown to 2.25 times its 2018 level. It's not an exact match, but that's not really a surprise; I was thinking in terms of the web share more than doubling while desktop on Steam went from around 1 to around 1.2, so this is not nearly as big a discrepancy. I mostly withdraw my point. I still would have figured that the rise of Proton would have seen growth in Linux used for gaming happen faster than growth in Linux used for other things, not slower.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 June 2024 at 2:48 pm UTC

Here's hoping for 50% in 2025!

Seriously though, the tomfoolery that Windows 11 gets up to may just force a bunch of folks to say "Screw it!".

I mean, they're having to jump through more hoops to get older programs working than I had to with WINE on Maverick Meerkat circa 2010! (If you're wondering, Civ4 was the first game I ever installed via WINE; it was relatively painless, even back then.)

Including using WINE's own libraries compiled for Win32/Wow64! I ran afoul of this very thing when I had to replace my sister's dead laptop hybrid HDD and decided to upgrade it to something reasonably modern from Windows 8.1. (She's decidedly anti-Linux.)

I haven't even used Windows since 7 in 2016. Nice to know I have absolutely nothing to regret about that.

Quoting: MalIt's all nice and good but far from the tipping point.

Does anyone have some kind of research/analisys that tries to identify the % at which point the "network effect" will trigger?

So it's not a scientific analysis, but we were chatting about it on the Discord this morning.

and we got to

QuoteThinking about the dynamics of that bump in the Steam Machines era, Mac was ~3.5% and Liam says Linux was briefly ~2% because of the Tux giveaway, so let's say ~5% combined. Avoiding single-platform traps and having an OpenGL render path got you both, essentially (with it actually being harder then than now), and Steam Machines meant that multiplatform was The Future.
Mac no longer uses the same rendering API as Linux, and its gaming market share has collapsed, so we'd need to be able to do it solo for Linux/Vulkan. So ~5% with publicly-known scope for big future growth seems like it might capture that similar ~40% motivation.
If Sony and/or Nintendo also embraced the use of Vulkan, that would increase the size of the target relative to the work done.

I am about to try POP OS
But when STEAM HOLO will be available for regular PC's?

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI am about to try POP OS
But when STEAM HOLO will be available for regular PC's?

Don't wait for it.

Quoting: preludelinuxWell with Recall im sure that will increase quickly. Its interesting that devs still make mac ports before linux native ports though and says they make more money on mac when there are more gamers on linux.

To Mac users it makes sense to spend 10$ on an emulator and 200$ on a set of headphones and they let apple manage their system settings.

Quoting: Pikolo`Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit` is probably the snap version of Steam - is the the default packaging on Ubuntu 24.04?
Ah, Ubuntu changed the default package type found in software centre to be snap, and Steam snap is out of beta.

A bit late on this, but it is indeed the Snap package confirmed by Canonical.

Thats clearly in the emergence stage of a sigmoid...
is the RAW data somewhere... I use to keep up but forgot...