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Steam Survey: Linux Hits 2.69% Gamer Market Share in May

AleksandarK

AleksandarK

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Valve released its latest May 2025 Steam Survey results, and Linux gaming is on the rise. According to Valve, the usage of Linux kernel-based operating systems among Steam users increased by 0.42% to reach 2.69%, marking one of the highest levels the platform has seen. Windows remains the dominant operating system, at 95.45%, with macOS holding 1.85%. However, Linux's growth is significant for open-source enthusiasts. Given the continued expansion of Steam's user base, the absolute number of Linux gamers is likely at an all-time high now, with hopes of continued growth. The infamous year of Linux on the desktop is actually this year's Linux on handheld. In May 2023, Linux accounted for just 1.47 percent of Steam users, rising to 2.32 percent in May 2024 before this latest increase.

This upward trend has been driven in large part by Valve's SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and powers the popular Steam Deck handheld console. As more people adopt the Steam Deck and install SteamOS on desktop machines, the Linux gaming community on Steam continues to grow steadily. SteamOS is also expanding to more handheld devices, and more companies are launching and experimenting with handhelds using other Linux distributions. Improvements at the kernel level and enhanced driver support from AMD and Intel have also contributed to this surge. Besides more driver optimization, the Wine-based compatibility layer, Proton, has undergone numerous updates to enhance performance and stability, often achieving comparability with and sometimes outperforming Windows.



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Win 10 declining, but still pretty strong.
 
It's mostly because people are slowly realizing Linux is viable for home use and you really don't need Windows just to browse web, watch movies and listen to some music or edit a text document every other full moon. With Steam having native Linux client and also offering Proton within it, Linux is certainly a compelling option.

I know I'm not exactly a casual user, but I moved all my non gaming systems to Linux years ago when I got fed up with Microsoft's dumb restrictions and requirements for "old" systems that suddenly couldn't use Windows 11 anymore without using bunch of time wasting hacks that keep changing every few months. I just slapped Linux on those laptops and they just work. And I've grown to like GNOME to a point I think it looks better than Windows 11. It's clean and sleek and reminds me of MacOS with its dock and consistent aesthetics without Apple's BS. I'm not quite ready yet to go with that for gaming, but you never know if Microsoft pushes me in that direction with more dumb restrictions and requirements...
 
Well, for me I always was curious about it, and the experience under linux for me is worse than Windows over all, more stutters or less frames, but not too much (AMD GPU User here) as I had with my Nvidia (big losses).

Still keeping my Windows in Dual Boot because of content creation, which the VA-API is also much more slower than on Windows.

As for my parents that only use the PC for some online bills and financial stuff and a text here and there, Windows 10 was getting to the end of the road and couldn't upgrade to W11 (Pentium G 3000 series), I have migrated them to Linux Mint and they had no trouble to adapt to it, despite they are VERY VERY bad with PCs, they have been using it for more than 1 year now without any issue far.

It's a
 
Meanwhile in that imaginary world where RDN4 doesnt exist:

amd.png


ngreedia.png
 
The Steam Survey doesn't always correctly detect when the system has a secondary discrete GPU (or at least, it never did in my case), which can affect GPU usage statistics.
 
My problem with Linux is consistency.

Download latest beta branch of Ubuntu, download steam, download Limbo a Linux verified game, game launches, game won't run right and is stuck at 5 fps...

uninstall Linux, that was my most recent experience, all other games worked fine, but yeah, I dunno it just is frustrating
 
Space Lynx said:
My problem with Linux is consistency.

Download latest beta branch of Ubuntu, download steam, download Limbo a Linux verified game, game launches, game won't run right and is stuck at 5 fps...

uninstall Linux, that was my most recent experience, all other games worked fine, but yeah, I dunno it just is frustrating
Click to expand...
Did you tried different versions of Proton?

I have a silly game that I like that its not supposed to run and with some version of Proton-GE it did, but not perfectly.
 
Last edited:
Space Lynx said:
My problem with Linux is consistency.

Download latest beta branch of Ubuntu, download steam, download Limbo a Linux verified game, game launches, game won't run right and is stuck at 5 fps...

uninstall Linux, that was my most recent experience, all other games worked fine, but yeah, I dunno it just is frustrating
Click to expand...
Yeah, something like that was my first experience with Linux too. When I was 12.
 
Nonsense.

Recently I got once the Steam survey on my laptop, first time in 43 years. That laptop I had only used to download games for my desktop. I never played on my laptop.
Desktop -> nope. Nope many years with the linux kernel and gnu userspace where i spend hours playing free space fight games - open world games. Nope on my desktop when i played the last of us part 1.

Space Lynx said:
uninstall Linux, that was my most recent experience, all other games worked fine, but yeah, I dunno it just is frustrating
Click to expand...
I have that experience with windows 11 pro. Games are not optimised or made for the linux kernel and the gnu userspace. Fact.
I highly doubt I will reinstall any windows operating system here after these two windows 11 pro installation. Too much simple things do not work out of the box. updates are broken. too timeconsuming to keep windows installed.
linux need thinking and patience. I had data corruption which caused slowdown and read only file system because i added new file system option for the file system called btrfs. Although wikipedia claims that file system is very old, autodefrag and asynchronous trim feature caused issues. It's not something for the masses. It needs knowledge and how to deal with it.

--

I refused those surveys. So data is just nonsense. If you ever get that dialog for the survey
 
Neo_Morpheus said:
Did you tried different versions of Proton?

I have a silly game that I like that its not supposed to run and with some version of Proton-GE it did, but not perfectly.
Click to expand...

it's a linux native game, you shouldn't need proton, that's my point.
 
igormp said:
But it's listed right in there:
View attachment 402248
Click to expand...
I'm not sure where you got that image, but I got mine from here:


Also, on that page, doing ctrl+f "9070" provides zero results.


Space Lynx said:
it's a linux native game, you shouldn't need proton, that's my point.
Click to expand...
Sorry, missed that.

But on the same boat, I have experienced exactly that on windows.

One big sample that happened recently (to me) is Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 1

Another one that I can never finish in Windows, due to crashes on several spots, including a showstopper at the last boss: Strider.

The point is, there are buggy games on all platforms.

That doesnt mean its ok though.

Links provided as proof, since everything in here needs to be doubted.

steamcommunity.com

Game crashing on startup :: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 General Discussions

I have launched the game before, I've played through the intro section, but now whenever I launch the game it freezes at the seizure warning and then crashes, this issue has persisted through: 1) Restarting the game 2) Restarting my PC 3) uninstalling and reinstalling the game (it was originally...
steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com

steamcommunity.com

Game keeps crashing. :: Strider General Discussions

I've turned all post-proc effects off, running it full screen at my native resolution, 60hz. WTH Capcom?
steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com
 
Neo_Morpheus said:
I'm not sure where you got that image, but I got mine from here:


Also, on that page, doing ctrl+f "9070" provides zero results.



Sorry, missed that.

But on the same boat, I have experienced exactly that on windows.

One big sample that happened recently (to me) is Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 1

Another one that I can never finish in Windows, due to crashes on several spots, including a showstopper at the last boss: Strider.

The point is, there are buggy games on all platforms.

That doesnt mean its ok though.

Links provided as proof, since everything in here needs to be doubted.

steamcommunity.com

Game crashing on startup :: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 General Discussions

I have launched the game before, I've played through the intro section, but now whenever I launch the game it freezes at the seizure warning and then crashes, this issue has persisted through: 1) Restarting the game 2) Restarting my PC 3) uninstalling and reinstalling the game (it was originally...
steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com

steamcommunity.com

Game keeps crashing. :: Strider General Discussions

I've turned all post-proc effects off, running it full screen at my native resolution, 60hz. WTH Capcom?
steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com
Click to expand...

true, and good point. I actually use Prototype as a game for this exact example, sucks ass on Windows, but on steam deck it runs flawless. so yes, Linux and Windows compliment each other it is true. I will always have to run dual boot I think, which is fine
 
Neo_Morpheus said:
Interesting.

And its weird that it doesnt show at all when looking at the all platforms or Windows only.
Click to expand...
Maybe a matter of volume, it might have not enough samples to be its own entry outside of "others" in the Windows world.
 
igormp said:
Maybe a matter of volume, it might have not enough samples to be its own entry outside of "others" in the Windows world.
Click to expand...
Thats possible, but given all the numbers in Linux, I find it really strange that its not showing at all in Windows.

I really doubt that almost everyone that got a RDNA4 gpu went Linux.
 
Neo_Morpheus said:
Thats possible, but given all the numbers in Linux, I find it really strange that its not showing at all in Windows.

I really doubt that almost everyone that got a RDNA4 gpu went Linux.
Click to expand...
I think that the proportions are not directly related between Windows and Linux.
As an example, the 1070ti has 0.16% share in Linux, vs 0.29% in Windows. The RX 6800 has a 1.58% share in Linux vs 0.20% in Windows.
So Linux users are way more skewed towards AMD in general.
Also we can infer that a product has to have at least 0.15% share so it can leave the "Others" status. Given that the 5060ti has just appeared on the Windows list this month at 0.21%, and is not on the Linux list, I assume it may take another month or two for the 9070 to appear in the Windows side.
 
igormp said:
I think that the proportions are not directly related between Windows and Linux.
As an example, the 1070ti has 0.16% share in Linux, vs 0.29% in Windows. The RX 6800 has a 1.58% share in Linux vs 0.20% in Windows.
So Linux users are way more skewed towards AMD in general.
Also we can infer that a product has to have at least 0.15% share so it can leave the "Others" status. Given that the 5060ti has just appeared on the Windows list this month at 0.21%, and is not on the Linux list, I assume it may take another month or two for the 9070 to appear in the Windows side.
Click to expand...
Again, good points.

I now wonder why listing all GPUs by all OS doesnt show them at all, unless the survey groups GPUs as "Other" after a very low threshold.

Anyways, the joke is on us, since Valve knows exactly how many people are on Steam and what hardware they have, since its a basic polling that the Steam client does.

They can simply post that number and be done with.
 
Neo_Morpheus said:
Again, good points.

I now wonder why listing all GPUs by all OS doesnt show them at all, unless the survey groups GPUs as "Other" after a very low threshold.

Anyways, the joke is on us, since Valve knows exactly how many people are on Steam and what hardware they have, since its a basic polling that the Steam client does.

They can simply post that number and be done with.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it'd be nice if steam provided all of that data without such groupings as an option.
 
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