Steam Linux Usage Still On The Decline

[talvik]

Having terrible performance/stability/consistency with AMD drivers. TF2 and other games are running much better on embedded Intel graphics.
To raise the numbers we need more games that are played frequently like DOTA2, CS:GO, Left4Dead.

[archibald]

There are no 64-bit Steam client, so you have to run the 32-bit Steam client on 64-bit Ubuntu which is annoying.

Agreed, but the package management sorts it all out, and all the games are 32-bit anyway, so a 64-bit steam client wouldn't change much.

Also, there are no good games, there are around 50 games only, and most of them you have never heard of.

There are actually over 100 games, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Killing Floor, Psychonauts and Trine 2. There are numerous other well-known games as well. It's rather like the Windows/OSX sections, but smaller.

Also, you have to pay for the games, there are no free or free-to-play games.

Team Fortress 2, Dwarfs?! and Champion of Regnum are all Free to Play, I found that just be searching "linux" and selecting free to play, results are here

[Phobos]

Having terrible performance/stability/consistency with AMD drivers. TF2 and other games are running much better on embedded Intel graphics.
To raise the numbers we need more games that are played frequently like DOTA2, CS:GO, Left4Dead.

The performance is terrible, but the games are playable. I hate the GPU fan noise when i use the open source radeon driver in mid and high profile.

[fernandoc1]

In my opinion, what is making Linux drop in usage, is the fact that Valve is detecting many Linux distribuitions and since their use is too low, they appear as 0.00%.
Thus when you simple sum these values, you can't get any improvement.
What would be a good thing to suggest Valve, is to merge it's platform survey, in a way that only appears: Linux, MacOS and Windows, without creating any difference between versions and distribution names.
Their data is too messily displayed and we can't get good analysis from that.

[Gps4l]

huh, strange...did anyone get that survey at all? Ever since I started using Steam on Linux, I never got that survey window I know from WINE usage.

I today, got that survey for the first time . Thank god I was on Linux.

[yourfriendarmando]

Steam on Wine numbers?

For those who have Steam running under Wine, what does that count? Running as Windows (convinced Steam) or running on Linux (aware it's still on Linux).

[dh04000]

I would play tf2 on linux, if tf2 hasn't competely broken for me months ago. It worked until right after the beta ended and then never again....

[gamerk2]

Its your fault.

Great way to welcome new users.

You probably have the wrong hardware,

There shouldn't be any "right" or "wrong" hardware; it should all work.

and picked the wrong desktop/distro.

He chose the most popular one, which is what 99% of all non-Linux users are going to do.

For the last time, for Windows users: Ubuntu = Linux. You can complain about it all you want, but the only way Linux ever gets big is if Ubuntu gets big. Canonical is the primary driver of the development of Linux now, not the devs, certainly not Linus, but Ubuntu.

First, use nvidia, else stay away.

So basically, don't bother using the second largest GPU manufacturer on the OS...

Second, you don't need compositing to play games. I have zero tearing, and i use vsync with triple buffer just fine in all games i have tried.

Good for you. Apparently, the user doesn't agree.


Your post, basically, highlights why most devs like me don't bother with Linux. Compared to Windows, its still a toy.

[johnc]

Its your fault. You probably have the wrong hardware, and picked the wrong desktop/distro. First, use nvidia, else stay away. Second, you don't need compositing to play games. I have zero tearing, and i use vsync with triple buffer just fine in all games i have tried.

Next time go with something like lubuntu and nvidia for zero gaming issues. And uninstall apport.

Maybe it's my fault. And don't worry, I buy NVIDIA. And I've never had NVIDIA problems on Linux.

But stuff that was near flawless on Ubuntu 10.10 / 11.04 (say, Doom 3, Quake 4... XBMC) is really bad on 12.04.2. The performance problems are not in NVIDIA's lap, that's for sure. Now maybe I don't have some configuration set right or whatever. But I just don't have the patience to deal with some of that stuff anymore. If I boot to Windows 7 my games run fine out of the box.

[vyrgozunqk]

Well i i'm using linux for more than 7 years, but i still dualboot and i wont use steam for linux, because linux GPU drivers for ATI Suck, they just don't exist...

All open source drivers are total crap and useless, and proprietary blob is just far behind windows! ( thanks kernel devs, gpl fanatics...) Anyway, i won't buy hardware for the software, i preffer to buy software for the hardware i have !

The decline comes from the initial boom, which was too early, but then everybody who tryed linux, saw just how behind it is in terms of drivers, and desktop crashes...

So it's normal to stay for gaming on windows...

Even the wi-fi drivers are bad, and can often drop your network, add more lag and etc.