Thursday, April 2nd 2026
Steam on Linux Surpasses 5% Market Share in the Latest Survey Update
As we enter a new month, Steam's Hardware and Software Survey data has been processed, providing us with a clearer view of the overall gaming market that uses Steam platform. Today, the most notable change in the Steam Survey is the increase in Linux gamers, who have moved from their historically low single-digit market share to mid-single digits. As of March, Linux-based operating systems were running Steam on 5.33% of all polled systems. This represents an impressive 3.10% increase over February's data, which showed a dip in Linux market share from January's 3.5%. Fortunately, the numbers have now been revised upwards, marking a significant improvement for the community that has been steadily implementing improvements and making Linux-based gaming more accessible to everyone.
What might not be surprising is that a large portion of those 5.33% Linux installations run on Valve's customized SteamOS operating system. With a 24.48% share, the use of SteamOS grew by 0.65% last month alone, while other Linux distributions also contributed significantly. Other Windows alternatives like macOS are gaining momentum as well, with Apple seeing a 1.19% month-over-month increase to 2.35%. Although Linux now holds more than twice the market share of macOS, its growth within the Steam install base is a significant change, nearly doubling in just a month. Perhaps these alternative operating systems are now attracting enough attention from big game studios to encourage them to release native ports instead of relying on translation tools like Wine/Proton.
Interestingly, the Windows family of operating systems still holds a large majority at 92.33%. However, this is a 4.28% reduction from February, indicating that many users have become frustrated enough with Microsoft's updates and functional issues to consider alternatives. An interesting case is Windows 7, which now holds 0.08% of Windows OS installations but saw a 0.03% increase in market share among Windows OSes. Windows 11 experienced a massive increase of 10.57%, pushing its share to 66.85%. This growth has come at the expense of Windows 10, which lost 14.89% and now holds 25.36%. Since the change is not simply a uniform upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, it suggests that a significant number of gamers have switched to Linux and, surprisingly, macOS for their basic gaming needs.
Sources:
Steam, via Phoronix
What might not be surprising is that a large portion of those 5.33% Linux installations run on Valve's customized SteamOS operating system. With a 24.48% share, the use of SteamOS grew by 0.65% last month alone, while other Linux distributions also contributed significantly. Other Windows alternatives like macOS are gaining momentum as well, with Apple seeing a 1.19% month-over-month increase to 2.35%. Although Linux now holds more than twice the market share of macOS, its growth within the Steam install base is a significant change, nearly doubling in just a month. Perhaps these alternative operating systems are now attracting enough attention from big game studios to encourage them to release native ports instead of relying on translation tools like Wine/Proton.
50 Comments on Steam on Linux Surpasses 5% Market Share in the Latest Survey Update
What he mentioned is that each time Steam HW survey is run it will pick 1M users to survey. Then for the next month, those 1M users from the previous month are still in the pool and are eligible for survey again. One would think they should be excluded as it is unlikely they have changed their HW. Also, Valve adding an option to auto submit you system spec should not be that big of a problem.
Of course, this disregards the temporal aspect of this problem. But then again the rationale you've given is biased: you are looking for ways to specifically emphasise change. You don't know a priori that the population has changed by a specific magnitude (and if you do, the survey would be pointless).
Random polling works if it's truly random. See: Every statistical study ever, basically.Of course... moon emails are confusing tech man! It probably needs one Outlook for earth and one for the Moon! /s
In fact smartphones and internet change how people use the PC. It got more simplify. PC for them is just YT, social media and gaming. A lot of services like banking, email and other things is on the internet that I don't need a lot of software on the OS anymore.
You just check the Linux board here. I post what I do on my PC to stay off Windows for 4+ years. Everything I do fits but keep in mind I did transit off a lot of Microsoft/Google products and recently close my Windows account.
Keep in mind there is a community that helps like Reddit and chat like Discord or Fluxer.
Note: The SteamOS and Linux (I use CachyOS and Mint on other PCs) is the same but Steam EOY review counts both. If you use Windows or Linux only this wouldn't show up.
I really don't intend to come back any time soon. I had a Windows 10 on a seperate 1TB SSD but I erase it for more storage.
I run Steam on my desktop Linux Cinnamon Mint machine and am very happy.
Games run fine, even Fallout 3.
Whatever overhead the Proton layer adds is not noticeable to me; although I admit that I have not benchmarked any games between Windows and Linux.
Consider the overhead Windows adds to anything by just being Windows. It may be soon that games run faster in Linux.
It's also nice to have full control over things like updates and what features I wish to use. No forced AI here guys lol.
Anyways, Hello everyone. Feel free to add me on Steam if you want. I'm PlumdBob.
"Exclude". You gotta laugh your ass off.
Combine that with voluntary participation - imagine if a number gets a choice not to participate in the game. What if 50% of red, but only 20% of black numbers opt out?
This is why I don't believe in random polling. It's like playing roulette for only 10 spins (which already isn't representative of anything) with an unknown ratio red and black numbers opting out of the game.
Edit: Steam HW survey is not the best data possible, but it is the best we got for the global gaming-centric population and reliable enough to draw conclusions from.
No conspiracy or fuckup here. Just do a bit of research next time you see something so clearly.
Those formulas say that with a population of 42 million, a random sample size of a few 10s of thousands is enough.
There is never any guarantee of anything.
Even if the population had a binary opinion about something and let's say 99% would opt for opinion #1 and the 1% for opinion #2, if you polled randomly 1000 people, the odds of all the 1000 people supporting only the opinion #1 would be like 1 in 20k~.
and the more fragmented the surveyed population is, the closer the odds get to zero, we are talking about the probabilities of 10^−1500
You would need more trials for that to occur once than there are atoms in the entire universe.
Taking the Steam HW survey for example, I can't definitively say that the most common/average PC is one running Windows 11, with 16GB of RAM, with a 6-core CPU at 2.3-2.69 GHz with an RTX 3060 8GB and a 1080p monitor etc etc. What I can say is that if I pick any random computer running steam, there is a 66.85% chance that it run Windows 11, regardless of any other spec.