Although this article is more than a week old now, and the results that were mentioned seem to have been somewhat flawed - It would seem that talking about Linux usage statistics and whether they are rising or falling is a very popular subject on this Linux-oriented website.

I was captivated by the Humble Bundle statistics about an hour ago. Every bundle (once you buy it) shows a statistic page of bundles purchased and the ratio of Mac, Windows, Linux purchasers. This made me think - Wouldn't it be great if we could access ALL the bundle statistics going back for the past X months (e.g. Oct 2017 --> Jan 2010, month by month) and analyse the data statistically and get insights into Linux usage.

I notice that Cheeseness has already been doing this and publishing data on his website:
http://cheesetalks.net/humble/

But, Cheese's data is from early 2016, and doesn't show the progress over the past 1.5 years.

So, I have contributed some effort into examining this (not a great deal, but it is fairly promising):

I took a not entirely random selection of Humble Bundles which I purchased during Aug 2017 and Sep 2017, and put the purchase data into a spreadsheet. Noting that my selection of 7 bundles - 3 bundles had 50% or more Linux games, 3 bundles had less than 50% Linux games, and 1 bundle (Stardock) had 0 Linux games.

A bit surprisingly, the Stardock bundle still had 2% purchasing by Linux people.

Then what I did to get an overall percentage of Linux gamers in the gaming population (thanks to sampling):

Each bundle, take the proportion of Linux buyers (e.g. 0.02) and multiply by the count of buyers (46250 people).
Then sum up the Linux buyers versus the Total buyers across all those bundles. Simply divide Linux buyer total by (sum of total buyers) and multiply by 100 to give percentage:

Here are my figures (for a snapshot in time of those 7 bundles):

Linux buyer count 30007.61 / Total buyer count 799985 * 100 = 3.751%

Those are recent bundles (Aug - Sep 2017) and we are getting 3.75% Linux gamer buyer purchases.

For me, a statistic like THIS ^ is much more representative of the Linux gamer community than the other mechanisms being mentioned.

It would be great to perform the same operation on a monthly basis, and also see the effect of percentage Linux games per bundle (on the Linux proportion of buyers).

EDIT:

There are flaws with any mechanism of sampling. But I feel this Humble method combines the willingness of Linux people to purchase games, with the amount of people in the Linux community who still dual-boot and play their games on a different platform (because the specific game they want isn't on their platform).

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Ooo ooo ooo FPS deal alert....

Humble has released the Endless RPG Lands bundle today, which includes a couple of these FPS games - The BTA bundle gets you Borderlands 2 + DLC and the Full bundle gets you Borderlands: The Pre-sequel. Also Wurm Unlimited (for Linux) is in the lowest bundle, plus there are some tasty Windows games too (if you are so inclined).

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What no.....

Xonotic

or its prequel...

Nexuiz

(you haven't lived)

;)

Admittedly the online player community has dipped over the years.

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I've got more games installed than I should need, probably about 30 at this instant.

My most recently played games include:

Rust - It is playing nice and smoothly for me in 4K; looks lovely. I'm on the GOL Rust server. It does a good job of keeping me interested. Latest version has updated blue-print and workbench mechanics, so it takes longer to get to higher equipment level.

Dungeon Warfare - Very good and very addictive tower-defence style game. Good for a short session.

Tomb Raider (2013) - Finished off the main story (and most of the side quests, but not all) in 18 hours of play. Thinking to complete more content before uninstalling. Very happy with the game, graphics, story, and controls.

Ziggurat - This is a Heretic / Hexen style FPS with procedurally generated levels, a range of weapons and abilities. Good for short intense sessions. If you're a fan of Doom, Quake, Serious Sam 3 BFE, then you'll probably like this. Nice and smooth in 4K.

7 Days To Die - I've played "so much" of this! For the price I paid ($8 on sale) I've got lots of enjoyment playing this in single player mode. Never before have I been so immersed in a game where it felt like me surviving in an apocalyptic setting. Had lots of fun experimenting: If I design a base like "this", will it keep the zombies at bay. Feral night is very tense.

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I got it a few months back, as a freebie on Chrono.gg - Now that it has come of age, certainly interested to give it a go.

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Added it to my Steam Wish List. Long ago, I used to play Star Control and Star Control 2 where you fly a selection of spaceships around the screen against a friend (both using the same keyboard). Fun times. Good to see that this is almost a spiritual successor.

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Just found this in my Steam games list. Wasn't sure how it got there (I don't remember buying it). Turns out I got it in the Humble Freedom Bundle (approx 50 games) from back in February this year. NICE!

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Quoting: stretch611Humble Store also has a lot more on sale...

Project Highrise (runs on linux, no official support) is 75% off.

Interesting, good to know about that. There's a few games like that which run on Linux but don't show a SteamOS/Linux icon ( Arma III springs to mind ). And while bringing it up, I get irritated when key-resellers (Humble, BundleStars, etc) report incorrect operating system support on advertised games.

For example, I'm scanning through the games on sale at Humble, there'll be a game which does work on Linux but Humble has incorrectly reported it as not running on Linux, and so I ignore it and move onto the next title (unless I already know about it - 'prior knowledge' - and realise the mistake).

EDIT:

Cool. I just found Project Highrise in my Humblebundle Library. I hadn't activated it because it was a Windows game. Now I know it also has a Linux port, I have activated it and added it to my Steam library. Yeah!

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Groupees.com has the Artifex Mundi Mega Bundle of Hidden Object Adventure games. They all support Linux and you can grab up to 30 of them, for as little as $1 for 2.

(I did misread this bundle myself, assuming that I could pick up 26 games for $1, but it actually works out as ~ $0.50 per game. You choose the games you want from a big list.)

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Some similarities to Windward (a sailing game, also on Linux), but this game looks better and has more content. I'm quite interested in this.

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