Steam Linux Usage Drops Below 1%

[madjr]

My brother just gave $1300 for a macbook pro, which comes ONLY with an intel 6000....

Now he is learning why lots of big titles are not coming to osx like dying light, since you just can't play it or there is not enough playable userbase...

I don't think Steam machines will destroy windows base, but am pretty sure they could make linux even more attractive in terms of a bigger gaming base.

Maybe not the first one, but The second gen of steam machines will probably nail it.

And everyone and their mom is probably ordering a $50 steam link, which if counted also runs linux/steamOS.


with SystemD Stateless systems, BTRFS, Wayland/Mir , Snappy packages, convergence, EGL, Vulkan, etc. Linux will surely become in the following years that SUPER DESKTOP and Gaming OS we always dreamed ! NO WONDER MSFT IS EVEN considering OPEN SOURCING WINDOWS, because linux/foss will just be a beast to reckon with..

[Detructor]

Steam is developed for 32-bit Ubuntu, but Ubuntu only supports UEFI on 64 bits. Just getting Steam to run on 64-bit Ubuntu is frustrating, and when you just resolved all the library conflicts, your work gets undone by the next Steam update.

Instead of dealing with it, I'm just waiting for the Steam Machines to arrive.

uh what? I've been running Steam on 64 bit since Ubuntu 14.10 beta. There are 0 problems. You just need to install the :i386 variants of some packages and that's it. At least on AMD drivers (radeon and fglrx).

[Passso]

uh what? I've been running Steam on 64 bit since Ubuntu 14.10 beta. There are 0 problems. You just need to install the :i386 variants of some packages and that's it. At least on AMD drivers (radeon and fglrx).

I agree for desktop (Nvidia here), no issue at all. Even upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04 needed no action, it worked out of the box.
The only difficulty for me was a few years ago; to use Primus on laptop and modify the launch options, but nowadays it is quite easy.

BTW games on other platforms are vastly 32bits too, and the few native 64bits showed no performance difference so no need to whine about it

[glxextxexlg]

I also agree that I don't expect Linux desktop/gaming to go mega big. I would like to have solid 5 - 8% base which would guarantee enough profit for devs to care about Linux.

+1 This is exactly what I'm thinking. Been playing portal 2 recently on steam and its a very innovative and well done game. I'd like to see more creative games like this on linux but I'm not super crazy about it. Even if no games exist on linux I'll dive deeper into opengl-vulkan programming, 3d modelling as a hobby. Just using blender for hobbyist 3d modelling and rendering to video from it is fun enough for me and its 100% free too. Games are not the only entertainment source in computing.

[AJSB]

Linux needs Steambox...but it also needs that there are sub-500$ SteamBox (maybe even at 390$) to catch the market.

For that it needs that AMD makes decent Catalyst drivers because only way to make sub-500$ machines is using a good APU ,OK, there a alternative using a relative cheap Intel LGA1150 CPU & a GTX750Ti, but with a APU you can make a very small machine.

Don't forget that anyway that majority of XBone AAA titles can't do 1080 resolution or 60Hz and even PS4 can't do it in many AAA tittles so a GTX750Ti might just be enough for a budget machine.


As for the GTAV, yes, it influenced "a bit" and to add insult to injury this weekend we had also the Activision promo that included free weekend play of Call of Duty : Advanced Warfighter.

Imagine all those kids pre-loading CoDAW possibly counting for Windows activity in days before.

I said "add insult to injury" because Activision used distributed what is, arguably, from my PoV one of the best FPS ever, ET:QW, witch have a Linux client....and game was not included in Activision promo and in fact, even the windows client was removed from Steam time ago.

This from a company that (allowed to be) ported CoDBO to OSX.

Just to piss of Valve and Activision , i now linked as non-Steam game ET:QW in my Steam account, in fact, didn't buy anything from Activision promo and i'm linking to Steam all my Activision DVD games as non-Steam games

[blackiwid]

Why would anybody think that the userbase would be change drasticly before steammachines do come out?

Of course you could think some more % of the current linux users would use steam more, but they build no gaming machines mostly for Linux, I have a seperate windows gaming machine and use here a x220 thikpad with intel graphics for linux of course I dont play with that except maybe 1 time a year a round xonotic.

So now why would I now switch a current windows 8 machine to linux just to have access to less games? If I have to change the os anyway some day, because maybe a dx10 and mantle game comes out I want I will not install windows 10 then but change to linux. So there would be a change that then it would change from 1.0 to 1.5%

But of course the big junk of users will come from people that buy pre-installed systems.

Even the userbase of Cyanogenmod which has only advantages for the user over a locked down unrooted normal android, has what 2%? 90+x% of people will never install a different OS even if it is 1000 times better. they buy it in the shops if its there. I dont say that linux is 1000x better (that depends on whats important for you), but on the other side they will switch also the OS when they dont even care about the OS, how many switched from sybian OS to Android because it was linux?

So of course if that machines are in the store it will raise, its also not all such rational choices some of you make it, how many bought the wrong console or sell it after a year. because there was only one game they wanted to play and found out that they have no time or dont have fun on it... even pure mispurchases that people regret after it will bring linux 2-3% alone. At least after some months or 1 2 years.

No preinstalled hardware was always the problem of linux. whenever that happend linux got huge successrates, and if its only because of the price who cares. Netbooks were sold very well with linux on it. yes not 100% of them did keep it and switched to windows but many did use it. And that was with pretty bad linux versions, and the hole Netbook would have become more or less linux-only if Microsoft would have not agreed to give away windows for this machines for free.

Or Android, yes its no GNU/Linux but it was a new opensource OS with the Linux kernel, why did it succeed not because its much better than IOS ( I would even say the complete oposite, because of this java garbage you need double so powerful hardware to get same results especialy ram) even this windows smartphone OS is more efficient and eats less hardware, but it was even with better hardware cheaper... And there was also even today I think IOS has better apps maybe not in numbers but most of them is adware and spyware garbage for android.

So numbers now says nothing about the numbers in 1 2 years, because if it will succedd then from people that buy steammachines and that will if it succeds be many that dont have Linux installed on their PC today.

[AJSB]

Another problem is attention to detail of the games...example:

Bu end of last year i bought the trio of Wargame games by 20? in a promo...only now i decided to install and play them and 1st installed was the 1st, WARGAME: European Escalation.

No matter there was info that game would have problems with Catalyst, i solved all problems easely (main problem is that you have to disable Catalyst A.I. or you have a lot of problems with many games).

Anyway, i noticed a strange thing...the Desktop launcher was incorrect ! W:EE had...the icon of W:RD !
No way in the game folders or any place was the correct icon !

I had to install game again in Windows , where, surprise, surprise, the correct icon was put in desktop...and then extract icon with BeCyIconGrabber to use in Linux installations !

This was a error from who ported game to Linux and this kind of small details piss people of.

[snarfies]

Phoronix: Steam Linux Usage Drops Below 1%

While we didn't expect any big gains for the Linux gaming market-share over the past month, it does come as a surprise there's a significant drop...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...il-2015-1-Drop

I don't install DRM on my systems. Period.

[mmstick]

Steam is constantly growing with more and more users every day so that's hardly surprising. The rate of increase in the number of Linux converts is small in comparison to the rate of increase in PC gamers overall.

I also think it's silly that a large number of the commentors here apparently don't use Linux at all. Steam doesn't work on 64-bit? Dependency problems? Really? sudo apt-get install steam and done.

[Azrael5]

This was a error from who ported game to Linux and this kind of small details piss people of.

I agree... small details piss... are important.