Steam Linux Usage Put At 0.6% For September, Contrary To Other Inflated Numbers

[Schugy]

I like to play the real life game on a model airfield (a reason why I don't have much time for PC gaming). But I refuse to buy a charger/psu combo because I can't upgrade the firmware or do some data live logging. It's all encapsulated in a windows update tool and an Android app. My linux PCs don't count without Steam but this situation lowers the turnover like ~20 AAA games not being purchased.

[Adarion]

It's the same uncertain numbers again. There are not waterproof, bulltproof or anything-else-proof.
The steam survey hit me once or twice yet in my lifetime on Linux. But by far more often on W32. It sucks. Moreover Valve should really fix their client SW, not everyone runs an ancient Ubuntu 14.04 or something. While I always say that x86_32 backward compatibility is okay, they should really release a native amd64 build and also get their bundled libs un-messed. You can hardly have a recent mesa/... stack (but you want if you're on freedom AMD graphics) with Steam as it seems. And then you start checking suggestions and tutorials which libs are located where in this messy tree of subdirectories they have. And delete them. Try again. Give up and wait a few months until you can access you stuff again... goddamit! No surprise numbers aren't shiny and golden, even though they're likely bogus anyway.

[devius]

...Or did I miss something and is every Linux user a gamer now?

Not only that but apparently Steam is the only way to play games on linux distros.

/sarcasm

[oooverclocker]

I think 4.83% are pretty reasonable. When you look at StatCounter, and you sum up Unknown, Linux and ChromeOS you get about 4.5%.
So what do you think StatCounter doesn't recognize? I have reasonable doubt that there are many Windows or OS X - Machines in "Unknown" so only Linux Distributions they aren't aware of should be in "Unknown".

So when I look at both statistics, Windows ~85,5%, OS X ~10% and Linux and other Unix-like ~4.5% seem to be reasonable.

Edit: You can smoke Steam Survey in a pipe as Linux is firstly adopted by professionals who need to protect their intellectual property and integrity of production centers and not gamers.

[mitch074]

It's the same uncertain numbers again. There are not waterproof, bulltproof or anything-else-proof.
The steam survey hit me once or twice yet in my lifetime on Linux. But by far more often on W32. It sucks. Moreover Valve should really fix their client SW, not everyone runs an ancient Ubuntu 14.04 or something. While I always say that x86_32 backward compatibility is okay, they should really release a native amd64 build and also get their bundled libs un-messed. You can hardly have a recent mesa/... stack (but you want if you're on freedom AMD graphics) with Steam as it seems. And then you start checking suggestions and tutorials which libs are located where in this messy tree of subdirectories they have. And delete them. Try again. Give up and wait a few months until you can access you stuff again... goddamit! No surprise numbers aren't shiny and golden, even though they're likely bogus anyway.

I must admit I was similarly miffed - last month was the first time in quite a while I got a survey on Linux (I play almost daily ever since the client came out), while I already got it 3-4 times on Windows eventhough I must play a Windows game every 4 months. That's for the last 4 years on average.
However, I also have the latest Padoka PPA Mesa builds installed on 16.04 LTS with a very recent mainline kernel build, and since a recent Steam client update the "DLL hell" that their bundled libs are is pretty much gone - even stuff like Portal 2 runs happily without having to tinker with .so files anymore.

Not only that but apparently Steam is the only way to play games on linux distros./sarcasm

Unfair, but true: it's pretty much the only way to play recent commercial AAA games natively on Linux (good luck running Uplay or Origin on Linux). Maybe GOG would count, too.

[Brisse]

Bogus reports or not, I don't see how declining Steam figures represent Linux market share? Or did I miss something and is every Linux user a gamer now?

A lot of people in this comment section seem to make this mistake, but it was never implied that Steam Linux market share is the same thing as general Linux desktop market share. Use some common sense and take the numbers for what they are. They are never going to be equal, because they are apples and oranges, and they are both interesting, but they are not the same.

[L_A_G]

Why are we assuming that all Linux users play games? I use Linux and never had any desire to use Steam, and could not care less about its existence ans bogus statistics.

I think the assumption is that the same percentage of Linux users play games as Windows and OSX users.

This is something you should have a handle on before you start to draw any wider implications based on the Steam user survey data. There's also the fact that we have dual booters (like myself) who boot into Windows to play games that don't have Linux versions or don't run particularly well in Wine.

[JPFSanders]

My two cents.

I have 4 Linux computers at home, two laptops and two workstations, one is hooked to the TV to play games and to play movies.

The other is my personal workstation.

All computers run Ubuntu 16.04.x.

The biggest issues I have always experienced have been mesa/graphics related, then controllers.

With mesa the problems have been: low performance, glitches or complete desktop hangs (black screen of death).

With controllers some games work with wired controllers only and it is annoying as hell as I have 4 xbox360 wireless controllers. Some times player one can see the controller and player two doesn't, sometimes player one can use wireless and player two wired, it is a hit/miss mess for me the most annoying issue so far and pushed me to buy a steam controller as it always work.

I have solved the majority of the problems by updating the xboxdr driver manually compiling it myself, or as stated above by using a steam controller, I have dealt with problems in mesa by using mesa-git, other problems by running the latest kernel (4.13.4) ATM.

And while things keep improving at a fantastic pace, this is a system I can't recommend to the normies.

Normies can't deal with this level of complexity/tinkery nor will accept mesa git breaking their set-up when they run "apt-get dist-upgrade"

I have high hopes once new versions of distros start being rolled out with modern kernels and newer mesas like 17.2.x / 17.3.x specially Ubuntu as it is the most popular among normies. Also once DC lands on the kernel and AMD cards are proper supported it will make a huge difference.

"Just works" is a very powerful thing much more than more or less fps, the fps is not such a big issue if performance is adequate (It is a question of time until something is optimized), but a black screen of death in the middle of a game is a big issue and a deal breaker.

[Guest]

I got tired of dealing with video drivers causing Xserver to hardlock and freeze my system on a nearly daily basis when gaming and doing other things. Furthermore, alot of native Linux ports have issues, run slower FPS, and/or buggy (such as Ark Survival)...

Me too. But, AMD publishes lots of documentation, which makes development of opensource drivers possible, compared to nvidia, which doesn't publish anything, ans makes their cards and drivers hard to reverse engineer.

Things went much better with AMD contributing to opensource, by development of amdgpu driver.

[HenryM]

In the last 18 months on Steam, I just now got the survey for the second time.