The Steam Hardware & Software Survey is out for October 2024, and the Linux user share has gone back up again to exactly 2%.
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I gave Linux another shot this past month. It was a lot better than I remembered, but still not good enough, basically in the reliability areas. I wish the experience was “it all just works” like so many have said.

I may not mind giving it another try when Windows Recall goes live.

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Sounds like you’re willing to forgive a mountain of bullshit for windows but nothing for a non corporate os

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Priority one is having a working computer. Priority two is evading future spyware.

Priority three is using an OS where seeking support for issues doesn’t produce the reply “Sounds like you fucked something up, idiot, because it works perfectly for me!”

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I didn’t call you an idiot. I just implied you’re looking for reasons to avoid change. Which sounds doubly true after this comment.

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You’re saying this to someone who took the time to format a drive to install Linux, read up on recommended partition structure, and take the time tweaking desktop settings to my preference, in genuine hope it would become a daily driver so I could stop using Windows. All of that effort still wasn’t enough.

The quote wasn’t pointed to you, but it was a generalized view of how seeking help turns out. Your above comment, and this one, are showing the same thing: You, and Linux users in general, need only the tiniest justification to belittle someone for not being a 100% Linux devotee/apologist.

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I sounds like you suffer from internalized proprietary.

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The quote wasn’t pointed to you

It was a response to me. Yeah I don’t really understand people who claim to have put a lot of effort into using Linux and then had to switch back after truly giving it a shot. Because that describes my experience with it 15 years ago. The improvements since then are enormous, yet people always seem to expect me to believe that in fact no, it’s not just a handful of issues/adjustments. It’s actually still unusable. I’m sure writing this makes me a monstrous vitriolic asshole but whatever. It doesn’t. We both know windows has a fuckton of issues. Being used to them doesn’t erase them.

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“sounds like you’re biased against it”

“OMG how fucking insulting!”

Also people are switching to Linux so I’m not asking that incorrectly premised question

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yeah I decided I didn’t want to get involved in this and deleted that comment over an hour ago. idk why you can still see it but I’m out ✌️

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I’ve received that reply too many times and can understand why it turns people away. I got lucky and eventually got someone more willing to actually help and been dual booting since.

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“None of my stuff works but I least I don’t have to use WinBloWz$$$”

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The only thing I have that doesn’t work, actually smoother and faster than windows, is anti cheat in some games. But really that just makes me play less games with garbage business models. I can just reboot into windows any time but I do about once every 5 months because it’s a piece of shit

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Do you honestly think people who hate windows do it for no reason? I guarantee anyone who hates windows has used it for 10+ years and could easily list 20 legit complaints

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Do you honestly think that people who use Windows do it for no reason?

We’re not just using a browser over here. We have thousands of games we’d like to continue running, as well as thousands of dollars of business software. PC gaming is buggy enough as it is, without throwing one of a million distros of Linux into the mix.

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You’re not well informed on the topic, that much shows

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That’s me. Spent 20 years on windows and then decided to buy a Mac as an experiment. After about a month I was a lifetime convert

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Just randomly wondering, which distro did you use on what hardware?

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I used Linux Mint 21 first, which didn’t (correctly) support my ancient wi-fi card or graphics driver. I then tried 22, which was much better, but failed to run a number of games, exhibiting a variety of issues not listed on ProtonDB.

I then switched to Bazzite, which ran those same games correctly, but its OS-integrated file explorer was oversimplified far past what Windows does, it failed to install several Linux-native applications, alt-tab behavior was frequently glitchy around games, and often I would come back from sleep mode with bizarre graphical glitches forcing me to restart.

I’m not even highlighting the poor usability, or the stuff I might be able to reconfigure. I’m okay with taking time to tweak my OS how I want it, but not when that’s just a matter of having it work correctly.

Undearius
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That sucks it didn’t work well for you. Hopefully the useability is more improved the next time you may be willing to try again.

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I totally get it. in terms of ease of use and setup, if you ever do give it another go, try fedora. I had similar gaming issues with multiple Linux distros, gave fedora a go, and everything worked pretty much right out of the box, I was super impressed. ymmv ofc but keep it in mind for the future!

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Isn’t Bazzite just Fedora with more stuff baked in. If anything, Bazzite is supposed to be even easier and more compatible.

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it meant to be yes. unfortunately having more stuff baked in can lead to more issues than good on some systems. kde neon is meant to be kubuntu with more stuff baked in but ime it causes more issues than good.

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Coincidentally last month I got the survey for the first time since I switched to Linux a decade ago.

SkaveRat
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Converted one of my gaming PC SSDs to a Linux disk. and I’m so amazed how well it just works with proton.

When a have some time I’m going to fully convert it to Linux, with a small Windows VM for the 1-2 tools I sometimes need

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and I’m so amazed how well it just works with proton.

Yeah dude!

I’m relatively new to Linux, so I don’t really have any experience pre-proton. But I get the feeling that there are TONS of people who haven’t tried it in years, that truly do not understand how far it has come. I’m sure they’ve heard that before, etc., but I can say that it’s 100% true this time.

If you haven’t tried gaming on Linux since before the Steam Deck came out, I implore you to give it another shot. Even better if you use a gaming-oriented distro (I’m on Bazzite now, and it has been wonderful).

SkaveRat
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yeah, proton is amazing.

I’m using linux for 17 years or so, and just kept my gaming rig as my only windows machine.

Gaming on linux was super hit or miss. Sometimes wine (at its forks) worked nicely, sometime it was unusable.

It got a LOT better when everyone started using unity and unreal, as they have native linux compatibility, but proton now closed the gap nicely

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I got rid of my dual boot arch/windows, and installed single boot draugerOS this week end.

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Caveman
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YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

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How do I take the survey? I never seem to get the popup.

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Random users are asked each month. If you get chosen you’ll get a popup in the Steam client asking if you’d like to participate.

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Weird that it’d be random when they could just ask every user. Would give a more accurate breakdown on certain categories.

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That might bias the results towards gaming cafes and people building test machines. Cases where an account is used but a single snapshot doesn’t necessarily reflect what they normally use or that would capture the same machine multiple times.

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Yep! And it’s per account. Both of my Linux machines are in this months data!

Yi K
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I think Steam automatically uploads your hardware and software spec

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(Only certain users, and only if you consent)

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Ok, so a blue username normally means OP, a green one means mod. What the heck is a red username?

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Instance admin.

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Year of the Linux desktop is nigh.

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Well I finally move to a full time Linux desktop on my PC this year

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Ditto. Windows is now impossible to decrapify. Have dipped my toe in Linux gaming about a half dozen times starting in 2004 but it never felt ready til now. Proton, nvidia drivers and distros like Nobara making it not just possible but a better experience.

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Year of the ReactOS Desktop!

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We did it!

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Especially since Windows 10 starts retirement in a year, and a lot of PC’s aren’t compatible with Windows 11

Echo Dot
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I have two computers that I attempt to install Windows 11 on just out of curiosity. My old gaming rig which has a motherboard from I would think 2016 (technically the entire computer is from 2010 but other than the case I don’t think any component is that old) can install Windows 11. A laptop I got in 2019 can’t install it. How does that work?

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Surprised it’s not higher. I would have thought more than 2% of people on Steam were using Steam Deck.

Tux
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Well maybe Linux most likely to hit ~7% global OS market share and total 5%+ Steam Survey user share next 10 years (its just prediction)

KITA
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Keep dreaming. Not that I hope Linux doesn’t do well. But I can’t imagine it’ll continue to grow into the future.

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Over 15% marketshare in India

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thats amazing, why is that?

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Dunno. I don’t live there.

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Deck sold well but there are billions of Steam users.

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~35 million concurrent active users.

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I could swear it was higher earlier this year/last year but looking at the survey results, Linux climbed to 2% this survey. I think maybe that half remembered headline was something like “Linux is higher than MacOS at 1.5% market share” or something like that instead?

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I don’t think the 2% figure includes the steam deck, but I might be wrong

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It does include it. The article list it in detail: 36.79% of the Linux users use the steam deck. And the number is falling, which means there are more users also using Linux on desktop PC (or other gaming handhelds)

But that may also just be statistical noise.

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thought more than 2%

What confuses me is a survey earlier this year was 2.32%, so why the actual regression?

I’d have expected it to go up with more time to sell steam decks and whatnot, not regress by 15%.

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It goes up and down as people accept to fill the survey or don’t

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I got the hardware survey on my Windows PC, but not on my Steamdeck. So I wonder if there is only 1 survey per user, and most people don’t use a steamdeck exclusively?

Davel23
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I got asked about the survey on both my desktop and Steam Deck.

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Curious did you get the survey popup in desktop mode on the deck? Or does it work in “big picture”?

Davel23
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It was in desktop mode, so maybe that makes a difference.

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Steam is a massive worldwide market, and the Steam Deck isn’t offered everywhere. Chinese users for example have to import it, so not many are used there.

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I just converted my other brother the other day. atomic distros are great when you are the family tech support guy. Made an ssh only user on all the family computers so I can remotely deal with most of their problems without having to actually touch it or remember their login details.

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Oh, that was me. I installed it on my desktop Linux computer the other day.

You’re welcome.

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I got rid of my dual boot arch/windows, and installed single boot draugerOS this week end.

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Ty

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Installed Pop!_OS from Windows 11 two weeks ago myself.

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Linux always had software that has anti-cheat. First one I can think off that is both a native Linux application and has anti-cheat is Tibia. Aside from that are Valve games. I am sure there are plenty of others too aside from those that opened up through Proton/Wine.

What we don’t have is kernel level anti-cheat and honestly I would rather stay away from games that deploy it than allow such software running in my computer.

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And just to let people know, you are not limited to Linux games only. You can play windows games on Linux. Took me a while to figure this out.

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Just wanted to add to this for those who don’t know, windows games work through a comparability later called Proton, it usually works great, but some games don’t work well with it. (Mostly anticheat and stuff like that causing issues IIRC) I would always recommend checking ProtonDB before purchasing any game without explicit Linux support

downhomechunk
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Valve needs to enable Proton by default.

Synapse
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Didn’t they make the change recently?

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I just installed Bazzite, it’s all baked in.

downhomechunk
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I have bazzite on my daughter’s machine. I still had to enable compatibility for other titles. It’s not a huge deal if you know it’s there, but it can be a stumbling block for someone testing the waters.

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Proton for the win. (dows)

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