I want to see Linux and macOS chip away at Windows as much as the next guy but calling a rise to 2% a “surge” seems laughable
it is when you are consistently below 1%
thats like almost twice as much and millions of users in absolute numbers
I don’t think it’s necessarily about beating Windows. What is significant is that Linux use is slowly growing to a point where it shouldn’t be ignored. Those of us firmly in the Linux camp benefit from that and it makes it easier for newcomers to kick the tires.
Frankly, I don’t care whether people use Windows or not. Not my business, not my problem. Use what works. I’m just happy my own shit works, whether it’s 2% or 80% market share. Linux gaming has been a breeze lately - easier than I remember Windows being - and it’s awesome. We are in a really good place and I hope it keeps getting better.
2% is more than double the usual share prior to the steam decks release.
It’s honestly more laughable when the entire “surge” increase comes from steam decks. Everyone knows Linux thrives in a locked-down environment that is created specifically for the hardware it’s shipped with. It’s why Android works so well. Linux PC Desktop is where things still need to be proven to work with any configuration, with all the applications, and user needs.
Which is why it’s so awesome that most of Steam Deck is actually fairly open, or at least as open as running steam on desktop Linux anyway.
The Steam Deck is a locked down environment?
Yes, it’s encapsulated. You have to explicitly go into desktop mode to even install stuff. When you do install stuff from the repos it goes away next update to ensure a sane environment. You have to install stuff from flatpack to keep it. There are ways around it but there are also ways to root your Android phone. It’s about equal in usage.
Fair point, I hadn’t even considered that. I wonder what percentage of these Linux users are in fact Steam Decks.
From the article: 42.99%. So almost half of the Linux users are steam decks. This means Linux Desktop numbers are shrinking, not growing. It would put Linux Desktops at 0.8%.
Any surge also has more to do what China did or did not do that month than how many Steam Decks they sold.
Yeah, that’s a good point. The steam survey for OSes has always been relatively poor quality and untrackable. Ideally, they’d either put the resources into making it transparent and clear or stop it to not spread false data.
GamingOnLinux does a good job of tracking the data separated to just the English language, which shows how much effect China has on the survey as well as a decent approximation of the rest of the audience’s Linux usage, which is closer to 4% these days, post-Steam-Deck.
Steam Decks would still be at least 42% of Linux users though, it just depends on scale. I don’t understand why the Linux community wants to cut out Chinese users just because they are from China.
They’re good outliers to cut out from a sample set. If you want to use the survey as a developer to determine what your audience looks like, how much merit is there in factoring in a player base that mostly only plays Dota 2 and PUBG for major patches or something? And don’t forget that the other way to look at that sample set is that for every Steam Deck customer out in the wild, you can double it to find how many Linux users there are, which is a number in the millions.
I don’t feel like it’s reasonable to say Chinese players only play dota 2 or pubg. My games have been bought in China without localization. The real way to look at it is that Linux users are 2.4 million users and users in China are 30 million users. Both you can likely equally tap into but localization typically costs a bit more than Linux porting. But you really should do both for maximum reach.
Overall just because there are 2.4 million users who can buy your game doesn’t mean there will be even 1% of those actually buying your game. Marketing funnel and etc. the bigger number at the start of the funnel the better but you also have to keep that conversation percentage up.
So overall as a game developer it’s more useful for me to look at the unedited stats for hardware choices. Editing them to make 2.4 million seem like a larger percentage doesn’t help and isn’t meaningful when you break the percentages to raw numbers.
I think we’ll continue to see an uptick. Speaking specifically of Linux it’ll probably be mostly from the steam deck, but I believe we’ll see an increase in PC gaming as well. As Linux game support and ease of use increases, and Windows becomes increasingly user hostile. I’m not talking about a mass exodus or anything. Most people don’t know, won’t care, or dislike Linux. But maybe we can tack several more percentage points on there in the next few years.
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I’m doing MY part!
Just switched from Windows 10 to Nobara this morning!
Interesting, it’s just the steam deck increase.
More Linux than MacOS users, that’s pretty cool.
Some of that may as well be considered active sabotage on Apple’s part.
Yeah, their gaming strategy is laughably hilarious: forcing a new graphics API on developers, going through the trouble of copying Proton into their Game Porting Toolkit, but then not allowing devs to actually ship games with it, etc.
