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Linux Exceeds 3% Marketshare on Steam Hardware Survey for First Time
- Thread starter The Mad Draklor
- Start date
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
PlayStaytion
Member
Haven't seen him that happy before but I'm sure he do it behind the scenes.
pudel
Member
Unfortunately he isnt Thanos. He is just doing a lot of things right (even if he is doing just nothing) and creating win/win situations. The real Thanos is this guy imho:
deriks
4-Time GIF/Meme God
But for real, I hope it grows enough to be a substantial thing, and with better performance - I know it's not that big, but it has it
I don't believe Valve's Steam Box will be the key, but this shows the community itself is shaking things. If the mindset of PC gamer forgets Windows and focus on gaming, Linux will be on top
Donald mac Ronald
Member
I know we've seen real world better performance on handhelds but is there big performance uplift in real gaming PCs that have been benchmarked.
pudel
Member
Its not about performance uplifts imho. This would be really weird, because proton just really only translate windows games to be playable on linux. I would always expect some kind of "translation loss". The fact that some games running better on linux is already quite strange to me. I would be happy with stable 85%-90% performance (compared to windows) and more feature parity (this seems to be important for many people).
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PlayStaytion
Member
I learned from One Piece to judge villains from the way they laugh.Unfortunately he isnt Thanos. He is just doing a lot of things right (even if he is doing just nothing) and creating win/win situations. The real Thanos is this guy imho:
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Magic Carpet
Gold Member
Crayon
Member
But for real, I hope it grows enough to be a substantial thing, and with better performance - I know it's not that big, but it has it
I don't believe Valve's Steam Box will be the key, but this shows the community itself is shaking things. If the mindset of PC gamer forgets Windows and focus on gaming, Linux will be on top
Depends on what you mean by "on top". I was thinking about it the other night and with the way things are now, I think there might be 10% of steam users who might find it pretty much painless. ie, get a real replacement for what they use their computer for. And if linux can get to 10%, I'd see that as a huge win. I don't see any path to actually surpassing windows on desktop and laptops. Alternative form factors like handhelds, steam machine(s), headsets or whatever, I can see it having a much higher share than 10%.
PlayStaytion
Member
Fill those stones in the blank but I'll do it for you
1)Microsoft
2)PlayStation
3)Nintendo (The big one cause it'd be dramatic if it happened)
4)Mobile
5)Other PC launchers
The Mad Draklor
Member
When taking into account only Steam accounts using English, the Linux marketshare is at 7.09%. I think this is significant since the US is the biggest and therefore, the most important market to gain a foothold.
CrimsonTide
Banned
I understand 0 about Linux, or is it pronounced Linux? Well, I say Linux, anyhow until Steam Deck never once remotely considered it. But that said, bring on the Gabecube, assuming it's not $1,000!
One of my predictions for Microsoft's "success" was that while they were shoving 100 billion dollars up Phil's ass to make him delirious enough to buy Nintendo, Valve would come along with Linux on PC and shove it up Microsoft's ass.
It's quite possible that this will happen again:
Just like Microsoft spent money on the first Xbox because Sony was going to "steal the living room," then iOS and Android came along and put a cell phone in the hand of every person in the house, and nobody cares anymore about the "PC in the living room" because everyone already has a PC in their pocket.
It's great to see this disgusting company, Microsoft, getting screwed.
It's quite possible that this will happen again:
Just like Microsoft spent money on the first Xbox because Sony was going to "steal the living room," then iOS and Android came along and put a cell phone in the hand of every person in the house, and nobody cares anymore about the "PC in the living room" because everyone already has a PC in their pocket.
It's great to see this disgusting company, Microsoft, getting screwed.
Guilty_AI
Member
The correct pronunciation is Linux
CrimsonTide
Banned
I was correct, good! thought I was, but I never really hear anyone say it aloud very much.
Guilty_AI
Member
7% for english speaking accounts, which is around 40% of the total Steam userbase
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pudel
Member
Its really interesting. I would have thought that the chinese, russian and southamerican comrades would be more into it.
Guilty_AI
Member
i think pirated windows still dominates in such places
Crayon
Member
Oh shit. It's still 3% worldwide, and we are talking about a worldwide business, but that is some significant context. Thanks!
pudel
Member
Yeah, of course...but linux doesnt cost anything as well.
Guilty_AI
Member
more name recognition, the average person would just think of "windows!" and dowload a pirated copy for free. Seems some countries even use pirated copies within the governments.
And undeniably, a pirated copy of an older windows version that doesn't force updates down our throats is still a pretty viable system to use at the moment. Using a PC with windows 10 is perfectly fine in a home enviroment.
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pudel
Member
Its literally the best windows version.
CandyCrushSagat
Neo Member
Linux Bros. 10% by the end of the year.
Crayon
Member
The Mad Draklor
Member
It'd be nice to see a more comprehensive analysis on DX11 games vs DX12 games. The DXVK translation layer is pretty much very mature, but VKD3D-Proton still has room for improvement.
I think this difference is driven by hardware more than anything. In english speaking countries steam is significantly smaller and steamdeck a larger proportion of that smaller figure. so "linux" has a higher percentage with that language. In places like China (chinese language) where 33% of the overall steam users are, the steamdeck percentage is near non-existent and with it so is the linux percentage.
vaibhavpisal
Member
Android also is based on linux.
Linux has highest marketshare of all OS.
Linux has highest marketshare of all OS.
The Mad Draklor
Member
End of 2025 update:
It looks like Linux has stabilized above 3% marketshare. It fell from its ATH by 0.01 points to 3.19%, so virtually nothing changed from November through December.
Meanwhile, "SteamOS Holo" has continued its downward trend (amongst Linux users) while other distros particularly CachyOS, Linux Mint, Arch, and Bazzite are picking up.
It looks like Linux has stabilized above 3% marketshare. It fell from its ATH by 0.01 points to 3.19%, so virtually nothing changed from November through December.
Meanwhile, "SteamOS Holo" has continued its downward trend (amongst Linux users) while other distros particularly CachyOS, Linux Mint, Arch, and Bazzite are picking up.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
On older NVidia cards Linux performance seems to be even worse vs newer ones
. Really hope next year will bring more improvement.
Trogdor1123
Member
Crayon
Member
On older NVidia cards Linux performance seems to be even worse vs newer ones
Really hope next year will bring more improvement.
If windows 11 bullshit and the coverage on youtube has made a little leap that flattened out. The next ones could be Win11 getting even worse (as sure as the sun will rise), anti-cheat (tough one), and nvidia happiness (supposedly making progress).
Steam machine could give a boost too. Less from dales and more from spotlighting steamos derivatives for htpc.
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GudOlRub
Member
You don't need anything other than Microsoft itself to know how big Linux is, Windows is a relatively tiny percentage of their modern-day business model, the big bucks are on cloud services, what do you think Azure servers run on for the most part?
crazyriddler
Member
I just checked, and Edge's market share is 4.96%, so Edge is closer to dominating the browser market than Linux is to dominating the gaming market. So yeah... good luck with that linuxbros.
Rubik8
Member
I wiped my last windows device (a 5 year old Thinkpad) and installed Ubuntu on it. I'm primarily a console gamer and a Mac computer user. I've dabbled with Steam on it, and it's shocking how good the Linux gaming experience has gotten. It paired with my (free) Stadia controller and every game I have tried has worked perfectly, even though my Steam library is small and doesn't have many newer games.
I have always been interested in Linux; I used to dual boot Windows 2k and Redhat back in the day when KDE was just getting going. It wasn't a daily OS then, but now Linux is fantastic. I think Valve's involvement is finally going to push Linux into the mainstream. I don't know how much gaming I'll so on this Thinkpad, but it has become my daily companion. When (or if) hardware prices come back down, I plan to build a monster PC, and it will never have Windows on it.
I have always been interested in Linux; I used to dual boot Windows 2k and Redhat back in the day when KDE was just getting going. It wasn't a daily OS then, but now Linux is fantastic. I think Valve's involvement is finally going to push Linux into the mainstream. I don't know how much gaming I'll so on this Thinkpad, but it has become my daily companion. When (or if) hardware prices come back down, I plan to build a monster PC, and it will never have Windows on it.
Crayon
Member
That's a pretty wack comparison when edge is default and shoved in a billion faces daily. Meanwhile good luck finding consumer devices that ship with Linux. Almost every install is voluntary and much bigger proposition than trying out a browser.
nemiroff
Gold Member
Hey you updated Linux guys (I've used Linux for decades, but for work), I asked AI about which distro I should use for the smoothest gaming experience.
It told me pop!_OS is the best option for me, especially since it has a Nvidia distro, and supposedly it recently had an important big update.
Agree / Disagree? Other options?
It told me pop!_OS is the best option for me, especially since it has a Nvidia distro, and supposedly it recently had an important big update.
Agree / Disagree? Other options?
Crayon
Member
Bazzite is just so good. I like pop but for a machine focused on gaming, bazzite is amazing and has an Nvidia roll.
I think it's great for a desktop, too. Just learn to use distro box so you have a big selection of rerepos for system installs.
It's also great for retro gaming. I'm playing Front Mission 5 with my PS5 controller using PCSX2 on Bazzite.
kevboard
Member
edge is not the default, it's the default on Windows.
on android, a far more widespread OS, the default is either chrome or something like the Samsung browser.
Crayon
Member
Ah yea that's true. Safari and chrome would dilute that hugely.
The Mad Draklor
Member
So interesting update, Valve revised the Steam hardware survey numbers for last month. Originally, Linux dropped by 0.01 points to 3.19% (see post #183). The revised numbers show that Linux gained 0.38 points to a marketshare of 3.58%, which effectively makes it a new ATH for the 3rd straight month.
It seemed like the survey undercounted the Steam Deck, so instead of "SteamOS Holo" falling by 6 percentage points, it only went down by 0.1 points. This implies that the growth is driven by both the Steam Deck and new desktop Linux users.
It seemed like the survey undercounted the Steam Deck, so instead of "SteamOS Holo" falling by 6 percentage points, it only went down by 0.1 points. This implies that the growth is driven by both the Steam Deck and new desktop Linux users.