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

[_roman_]

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.

No. I may repeat myself. I am sorry.

I bought a refurbished notebook with ryzen 4650 up pro a few months ago., Why do i get taht valve data mining dialog i windws 11 pro? Although I only use it to download games. I never played a single minute on that laptop.

I also got the dialog on my desktop platform, but I did not play that month. Invalid DATA.

People are happy to see some data, that's it. In my point of view the data is not valid.

Not all installed instances were taken in my point of view which really played on that platform.

Taking the wrong data, samples, data points, make the hole statistics nonsense

-- i doubt valve knows it. I usually refuse any data mining. Else i would still use or windows 95 version Q = w11 pro for my daily usage and daily work.

 

[Wasteland]

it's a linux native game, you shouldn't need proton, that's my point.

Proton frequently works better even for Linux native games. Linux is a low priority for game developers, so it's easy for them to fall behind on support for it. Every so often, just for kicks, I fire up the Linux native version of Stellaris, for example. It has never worked, lol. Proton to the rescue.

I'm not suggesting that your reasoning is wrong. What you say makes perfect sense, and your testimony speaks to the occasionally janky user experience on Linux. But it is also isn't hard to toggle Proton on and give it a whirl.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

No. I may repeat myself. I am sorry.

I bought a refurbished notebook with ryzen 4650 up pro a few months ago., Why do i get taht valve data mining dialog i windws 11 pro? Although I only use it to download games. I never played a single minute on that laptop.

I also got the dialog on my desktop platform, but I did not play that month. Invalid DATA.

People are happy to see some data, that's it. In my point of view the data is not valid.

Not all installed instances were taken in my point of view which really played on that platform.

Taking the wrong data, samples, data points, make the hole statistics nonsense

-- i doubt valve knows it. I usually refuse any data mining. Else i would still use or windows 95 version Q = w11 pro for my daily usage and daily work.

I agree with many of your points.

I have seen and read the same issues from many others.

Many have complained and there was even reports on this, that it looked like only certain group of people were the ones receiving the survey.

The common denominator was curiously a Ngreedia GPU.

Feel free to search and you will see for how long this has been going on.

About Valve knowing which hardware we have, sadly, I dont see how they dont know.

As mentioned, the Steam client has to scan your hardware to know what works and what not.

So they do have that data.

 

[Stuttergame]

Proton frequently works better even for Linux native games. Linux is a low priority for game developers, so it's easy for them to fall behind on support for it. Every so often, just for kicks, I fire up the Linux native version of Stellaris, for example. It has never worked, lol. Proton to the rescue.

Stellaris was actually the first "native" game i ever tried on Linux. I used the GOG Version and it worked without any issues for me. Same goes for Limbo. Switching to Linux has been a great experience for me. Personally i don't have any issues nor any game that gave me problems in the 3 years since i haved switched.

Btw you people should keep in mind that steam provided a Linux Runtime as well. To really test "native" you might switch and try "legacy runtime" which is no container (i think the way Steam handled it before - meaning native). The change has been made a few months ago. That also gave me issues on certain games while "true native" still works. See here

Native titles will execute in 'Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)' by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment.
This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions.
Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with "-compat-force-slr off" on the Steam client command line.

 

[PixelTech]

Valve release SteamOS Desktop = switch from W10 Pro to SteamOS instantly for me.

 

[LordTwoBee]

Meanwhile in that imaginary world where RDN4 doesn't exist:

Waiting for waterblock to install mine

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Valve release SteamOS Desktop = switch from W10 Pro to SteamOS instantly for me.

To be honest, you can do it right now if you want to.

I personally had a great experience with ChimeraOS.

Others express the same thing with Bazzite.

 

[Kyan]

To be honest, you can do it right now if you want to.

I personally had a great experience with ChimeraOS.

Others express the same thing with Bazzite.

To add another one, I've seen on the bazzite subreddit people saying that catchyOS is a good option too.

 

[leonavis]

To add another one, I've seen on the bazzite subreddit people saying that catchyOS is a good option too.

Garuda or CachyOS, both fine options for gamers.

 

[NoneRain]

In parallel, outside of steam: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Site is broken rn, but the numbers are still there lol

 

[qlum]

Just glad linux is slowly carving out a bigger niche, hope this continues. As a linux user.

 

[Wasteland]

Stellaris was actually the first "native" game i ever tried on Linux. I used the GOG Version and it worked without any issues for me. Same goes for Limbo. Switching to Linux has been a great experience for me. Personally i don't have any issues nor any game that gave me problems in the 3 years since i haved switched.

Btw you people should keep in mind that steam provided a Linux Runtime as well. To really test "native" you might switch and try "legacy runtime" which is no container (i think the way Steam handled it before - meaning native). The change has been made a few months ago. That also gave me issues on certain games while "true native" still works. See here

Yeah, I have the Steam version of Stellaris, and admittedly I didn't try it until 2-3 years after the game came out. It's possible it worked better before. Stellaris is just an example.

To your point about the steam runtime, there are also examples like the GoG version of Baldur's Gate, for which, conversely, the Steam runtime is the easiest fix to get the Linux version running at all. But there again, the Linux version is a trap--if you want access to the best mods for the game, and you want the easiest time installing them, your best bet is to install it as a Windows game and use Wine to run the game and install the mods. Just double click them as if you were on a Windows machine and Wine will take care of the rest. Ignore all of the byzantine modding guides for the Linux version of BG1; they were ok in their day, but now they're obsolete.

What I'm getting at here is that Proton/Wine may not always be the best option, but it's probably the best default option if you want to minimize headaches. I'd say 90% of the time, if you toggle on Proton-GE, the game will just work. Of the remaining ~10%, the vast majority will be fixed after 5 minutes of browsing ProtonDB. Once you know these things, gaming on Linux really isn't much more obvious trouble than it is on Windows, which occasionally has its own headaches. There are caveats, of course--competitive multiplayer doesn't work, for example, and performance isn't always on par versus Windows, though this is a bigger issue for Nvidia owners, and the newest shiniest features may need a extra time to percolate--but for the most part, I think the average Windows gamer would be shocked at how smooth the experience is on Linux in 2025.

And we largely have Valve to thank for that welcome development. See? I'm on topic after all, lol. Sort of.