Sunday, November 2nd 2025

3% of Steam Users Play on Linux, a Third of Them on SteamOS

by
btarunr
 Discuss (37 Comments)
Steam is by far the most popular game distribution platform for the PC platform, and its hardware and software surveys provide a pulse of the PC gaming market. The platform's latest monthly snapshot shows Steam on Linux exceeding 3% of all Steam sessions. What's more, one-third of these Linux users play on Valve's own SteamOS platform, which is a specialized PC Linux distribution for gaming. 3.05% of all active Steam users are playing on Linux with Steam for Linux as the DRM platform.

This is a 33% year-on-year growth from October 2024, when Linux made up 2% of all active Steam users. With this, Steam on Linux has surpassed Steam on macOS, which held 2.11% of the active users. Windows continues to be the dominant OS for PC gaming, with a 94.84% stranglehold. Within Windows, the latest Windows 11 gained 3% market share at the expense of Windows 10. Windows 11 holds 63.57% of the market, compared to 31.14% held by Windows 10.
Source: VideoCardz

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37 Comments on 3% of Steam Users Play on Linux, a Third of Them on SteamOS

#1
tpa-pr
I think the catalyst for a big shift in Linux's favor will be the general release of SteamOS. I know a lot of people are champing at the bit to jump off Windows 11 and while SteamOS is just Arch with a Valve coat of paint, it has the benefit of support from a large, trusted corporation, so people are willing to wait.

Of course, we're kind of stuck waiting for Intel and Nvidia to get their driver stacks in order according to Valve's own devs, so general release may not be for a while. But if they do release it in the future I think we will see a BIG uptick in Linux users (at least initially until some people find it's not a good fit and switch back to 11).

If anyone is interested in jumping off Windows 11 beforehand: I recommend Fedora for a good general purpose distro that does gaming well. For a pure gaming focused distro I have heard good things about CachyOS.
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#2
Darmok N Jalad
I’ve had a lot of success with Manjaro, which is Arch and really stable, even on cheap Chinese x79/x99 rehash motherboards. Trying Bazzite, currently, and it’s also really good.
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#3
tpa-pr
Darmok N JaladI’ve had a lot of success with Manjaro, which is Arch and really stable, even on cheap Chinese x79/x99 rehash motherboards. Trying Bazzite, currently, and it’s also really good.
I have qualms with recommending Bazzite purely because they seem to be a small team entirely at the mercy of the upstream project (Fedora). There was a recent controversy where a proposal was put forward for Fedora to drop 32-bit application support and the Bazzite team responded "if this happens, we are shutting the project down" (since Steam is 32 bit).

CachyOS is ALSO a small team downstream from a larger project, but CachyOS is also a far more traditional distro (compared to Bazzite's immutable design). So if the project goes belly up you should be able to convert it to pure Arch with a few config changes and continue on as you were.
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#4
Darmok N Jalad
tpa-prI have qualms with recommending Bazzite purely because they seem to be a small team entirely at the mercy of the upstream project (Fedora). There was a recent controversy where a proposal was put forward for Fedora to drop 32-bit application support and the Bazzite team responded "if this happens, we are shutting the project down" (since Steam is 32 bit).

CachyOS is ALSO a small team downstream from a larger project, but CachyOS is also a far more traditional distro (compared to Bazzite's immutable design). So if the project goes belly up you should be able to convert it to pure Arch with a few config changes and continue on as you were.
Yeah, I'm surprised the Bazzite team went with Fedora for the base, and not just start with Arch, if that's what Valve uses. I guess in the end, I can't really tell the performance difference between the Manjaro and Bazzite in a handful of benches.
Posted on Reply
#5
tpa-pr
Darmok N JaladYeah, I'm surprised the Bazzite team went with Fedora for the base, and not just start with Arch, if that's what Valve uses.
The idea behind it is they want to be an immutable base OS like SteamOS, but Valve have basically taken an Arch base and reworked it to be immutable which would be a lot of work for a small team. So Bazzite took an off-the-shelf immutable distro (Fedora Silverblue) and built off that instead. Same design principle for a lot less work.
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#6
DaemonForce
You don't always have to put in the heavy lifting to get things done but Valve operates like this is a MAJOR project.
Being thorough is the name of that game and it pays to be more than a little autistic over every minute detail.
I personally want to see a proper SteamOS as maybe a successor to the Steam Machine. It won't happen but still...
It would be real nice to have a portable SteamOS environment that I can just plug into a PC and run my library.
The idea here isn't the portability of the Steam Deck but more like a proctoring kit for benchmarks and streaming.
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#7
TheinsanegamerN
Love me some Manjaro and the more MS mucks with 11 the more I like it.

Win11 LTSC was a breath of fresh air, like "oh, this is what windows used to be".
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#8
user556
It's 50% year-on-year growth, not 33%.
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#9
phints
tpa-prI think the catalyst for a big shift in Linux's favor will be the general release of SteamOS. I know a lot of people are champing at the bit to jump off Windows 11 and while SteamOS is just Arch with a Valve coat of paint, it has the benefit of support from a large, trusted corporation, so people are willing to wait.

Of course, we're kind of stuck waiting for Intel and Nvidia to get their driver stacks in order according to Valve's own devs, so general release may not be for a while. But if they do release it in the future I think we will see a BIG uptick in Linux users (at least initially until some people find it's not a good fit and switch back to 11).

If anyone is interested in jumping off Windows 11 beforehand: I recommend Fedora for a good general purpose distro that does gaming well. For a pure gaming focused distro I have heard good things about CachyOS.
Yes that 3% might hit 4%. Windows 11 will be 70% by then.
Posted on Reply
#10
Hecate91
Windows marketshare has been going down, not up, and it's 63.57% according to Steam. Then again, I could really care less about marketshare, use what you want, not what the masses think is the only option available.
I agree if Valve would launch SteamOS as a full general release that would be the factor which may get a larger amount of people to switch away from Windows for gaming. Windows has only been getting worse as MS can't be bothered to QA test their updates, and the constant doubling down on forced online accounts.
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#11
AusWolf
Good. MS should learn what people want and make a good, minimalistic and usable OS like they used to. Although, I'm not sure even that would be enough to bring me back from enjoying my freedom with Linux.
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#12
tpa-pr
phintsYes that 3% might hit 4%. Windows 11 will be 70% by then.
I'd honestly suspect a bigger jump than that. There's quite a few mainstream forums/sites where people are absolutely frothing-at-the-mouth ready to leave Windows for SteamOS. I doubt we'll be talking Windows levels of marketshare but we might even make it to double-digits!
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#13
katzi
It's Me - I'm one of them

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#14
Vayra86
tpa-prI'd honestly suspect a bigger jump than that. There's quite a few mainstream forums/sites where people are absolutely frothing-at-the-mouth ready to leave Windows for SteamOS. I doubt we'll be talking Windows levels of marketshare but we might even make it to double-digits!
Yeah, this is like most things that reach mass adoption, it tends to just accelerate beyond control all of a sudden. Its how the crowd works.

But Linux gaming is still quite a ways off. I don't disagree that it will take a complete user friendly, easy to migrate to OS with substantial trust to get there. SteamOS is indeed the prime candidate. But it won't take the market by storm when it releases, I'm quite sure it will need a few more years in the wild. And then a killer app... HL3 confirmed - just look at the topic title.
Posted on Reply
#15
_roman_
I wonder how many fake linux handhelds are in there. Linux is jsut the kernel. And a systemd arch has nothing to do with my openrc gentoo. Nothing. Even the graphical X-Server is not the same anymore with arch and systemd. It is wayland now.

Not everything runs out of the box wiht Windows 11 pro. E.g. the game mount and blade in windows 11 pro from gog.com

Last time i installed the unsupported steam stuff it pulled in full ubuntu binaries. Would you call it than gentoo or ubuntu? When the host is gentoo ~amd64 with x64 cpu and gfx1101? I would put it in the ubuntu box.
Posted on Reply
#16
dia6olo
Reality is that in time Linux is going to be the dominant OS for pretty much everything computing. I'm aware that technically it already is but I am talking about desktop and even gaming use.
It's not about if it will but when...
Posted on Reply
#17
SomeOne99h
tpa-prI have qualms with recommending Bazzite purely because they seem to be a small team entirely at the mercy of the upstream project (Fedora). There was a recent controversy where a proposal was put forward for Fedora to drop 32-bit application support and the Bazzite team responded "if this happens, we are shutting the project down" (since Steam is 32 bit).
I have watched the interview with the main dev of Bazzite and read his blog. They dicussed this topic with Fedora. The conclusion if I remember correctly, that Fedora will keep the 32bit of Steam related in a a separate maintained repository. In Fedora wants to get rid of 32bit packages because of much extra work to maintain them while many of them aren't used for long time.

EDIT: Searching for the interview. This is it:

The whole truth about Fedora's 32-bit proposal w/ Kyle from Bazzite

tpa-prIf anyone is interested in jumping off Windows 11 beforehand: I recommend Fedora for a good general purpose distro that does gaming well. For a pure gaming focused distro I have heard good things about CachyOS.
As for using Fedora. One has to make sure to search about installing multimedia codecs otherwise no videos playing while browsing the internet (Using the flatpack version of the browser has the codes bundled). And more importantly,enable third party repository RPM Fusion from the GUI. The proprietary nvidia driver is hiding behind it.
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#18
Nostras
I'm actually surprised the market share of non-steamos linux gamers is that high.
But methinks that a rather large amount only has steam installed and running in the background, not actually using it (in contrast to steamos users).
tpa-prI think the catalyst for a big shift in Linux's favor will be the general release of SteamOS. I know a lot of people are champing at the bit to jump off Windows 11 and while SteamOS is just Arch with a Valve coat of paint, it has the benefit of support from a large, trusted corporation, so people are willing to wait.

Of course, we're kind of stuck waiting for Intel and Nvidia to get their driver stacks in order according to Valve's own devs, so general release may not be for a while. But if they do release it in the future I think we will see a BIG uptick in Linux users (at least initially until some people find it's not a good fit and switch back to 11).

If anyone is interested in jumping off Windows 11 beforehand: I recommend Fedora for a good general purpose distro that does gaming well. For a pure gaming focused distro I have heard good things about CachyOS.
I'm not really a fan of denoting cachyos a gaming focused distro. Under the hood it's just arch with some sensible (but opinionated) defaults and where developers make sure that gaming works as well as is reasonably possible. Bazzite has some important caveats that some windows users may encounter, cachyos is a lot more of a "yet-another-distro".
When I think of gaming distro's I think of bazzite and garuda primarily. If you ask me for a linux distro that doesn't deviate too far from the windows philosophy yet tries to make your life easier for gaming I think of endeavouros, cachyos and pop os. Been a while since I checked pop os though.
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#19
Imouto
What's really impressive is Linux being able to capture market share when Steam is growing steadily. Just how much does Windows suck for that to happen?
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#20
vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR
Mere Mortal
Percentagea are cool but putting a number onto it helps with perspective. That now puts over a million people gaming on Linux. that's pretty cool.
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#21
AusWolf
ImoutoWhat's really impressive is Linux being able to capture market share when Steam is growing steadily.
SteamOS is Linux (Arch).
ImoutoJust how much does Windows suck for that to happen?
A lot. Not to mention, Linux is free.

Also:
AleksandarK in Almost 90% of Windows Games Run on Linux, Notes ReportLinux gaming has quietly reached a new inflection point. A recent Boiling Steam summary of crowd-sourced ProtonDB compatibility reports shows that about 89.7% of Windows titles now at least launch on…
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#22
Armalito
I will play on whatever gives me the most fps to win over others.
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#24
DAPUNISHER
katziIt's Me - I'm one of them

I play on Bazzite.

Posted on Reply
#25
Darmok N Jalad
ImoutoWhat's really impressive is Linux being able to capture market share when Steam is growing steadily. Just how much does Windows suck for that to happen?
Well, MS shot themselves in the foot when they dumped old hardware that can not only run many games just fine, but it can also run W11 just fine, too. Once you cast users aside for the sake of easing support, you end up forcing people’s hands. The ironic part is W11 should be leaner and less buggy by dropping old hardware, yet seemingly every week there’s a story of MS bungling something after a round of updates.
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