It Was Only 4 Years Ago That Many Thought Steam On Linux Was An April Fools' Day Joke

[justmy2cents]

Yeah it pretty much is a joke, there might be millions of users using steam on linux, sure, but we're only a shadow, a 1-2% of the entire steam userbase...

They made SteamOS, as a push to drive people towards linux, and look where that got us: Nowhere.

It got us nowhere because SteamOS was not marketed properly, and Steam Machines were not marketed properly.

the fact they made SteamOS is bringing number down. there is no survey there or in big screen. if you run that, it simply won't work

and there is a fact that i'm yet to see one survey on Linux with thousands of playable hours and neither has any of my friends. survey on linux and yeti have a lot in common.

on Wine i saw 6 in about 50. people claim that it only shows up on reinstall and such... not true. i have a static install of Wine and reinstalled fair share of native boxes. funny fact is that friend got 3 on windows and he has 7 hours trough 6 months

I can also attest that Linux definitely is a bigger joke here out of the two (just look at the bad printer and peripheral support, and most of the other items listed here that nobody has fixed for the past 20 years!) and also as a recent adopter of Linux, this is kinda what is the most appalling to me. E.g. that the linux community is loaded to the brim with two faced assholes and people actualyl try to sell linux with "The Linux community is awesome!" well I learned extremely fast that this was a flat out lie, I never felt particularly welcomed on any linux related community. Some are better than others though.

there are plenty of reasons why linux on desktop sucks (same as any other, no OS is ready for desktop, they just have good and bad points), but that article is just too full of mistakes. some border on complete insanity and lack of understanding... like bitching about lack of remote OpenGL. who in the right mind would even do that? it is not 90s with 50 draw calls. now, it is astronomically cheaper to just send final render pixbuf

as far as communities go, it also depends what/how/where you ask. same as any other, people are different. if you go on linux gaming reddit and ask for the state of AMD, be sure to be flamed. there are at least 2-3 posts per week with same question like search does not exist. and even more so, it is annoying to explain, not to mention it is sore topic for AMD users since it is more or less sticking needles in their eyes. AMD is improving with big steps, but it is just not there yet. and waiting for that is even harder when you get reminded each day

[c117152]

Guess what: it still is a joke.

While I admit I laughed a little, it's not being very fair now is it? SteamOS is Valve's backup plan in case Microsoft keeps locking up Windows. You can't go around calling the fire escape a useless waste of space just because a fire hasn't started.

[CrystalGamma]

as far as communities go, it also depends what/how/where you ask. same as any other, people are different. if you go on linux gaming reddit and ask for the state of AMD, be sure to be flamed. there are at least 2-3 posts per week with same question like search does not exist. and even more so, it is annoying to explain, not to mention it is sore topic for AMD users since it is more or less sticking needles in their eyes. AMD is improving with big steps, but it is just not there yet. and waiting for that is even harder when you get reminded each day

The solution is probably not to go to that subreddit then.

[bridgman]

Although... are we still just a 1-2% because these numbers aren't including SteamOS users.... Another one of valves mistakes, and a testament to their inaptitude when it comes to all things code related.

... or maybe we shouldn't be getting so excited about these numbers if we know they don't reflect SteamOS users ?

Is it possible that Valve is simply less obsessed with numbers than we are while they are still building the ecosystem ? Most projects look like they are failing ("OMG all this work and all it does is THAT ?") until they are finished...

[kalgregor]

With the introduction of Vulkan, recent driver improvements, steam's increasing catalogue of linux games, and the way Windows 10 want's to lock down gaming to the windows store, I suspect more people will be looking to switch in the near future.

[humbug]

The improvement in the Linux gaming ecosystem in the last few years has been faster than ever before. So much has improved and we now finally have lots of high quality games to play.

Going forward it's also upto canonical and everyone else to take advantage of these improvements to push Linux desktop/laptop adoption, that obviously entails a lot of other non-gaming related (which valve will not get involved in). There is no sense in looking at steam Linux adoption and pointing fingers at valve alone. Valve only focuses on the gaming ecosystem, and they are doing a lot there. At the same time for overall numbers to increase guys like Mint, debian, Ubuntu etc have to make inroads into windows market share.

Regarding the hardware survey I hear people complaining that they don't get it. Me personally I have got it many times in the last two years over a variety of debian and Ubuntu based distros. Usually soon after a fresh install. I understand that steamOS users don't get it, but I don't think there are much numbers there.

[theriddick]

Until all hardware vendors can get SOLID drivers out without all these mini patching needed, then it will be a joke for most people still. NVIDIAs closed driver is practically the only performance/stable option we have.

My 390x HATES AMD drivers (under linux), all the open-source ones cause crashing in most games but I haven't tried the new hybrid, HOWEVER that is still under testing and requires a fair bit of messing around to get installed (compared to windows single click and reboot methods of installing drivers)....

[randomizer]

Seems it started at 1% and stayed there.

Considering that the total Steam user base is increasing, either the number of Linux users is also increasing, or the number of people getting the survey in Linux is increasing. Otherwise we'd be seeing a steady fall in that percentage.

[Sethox]

This is the problem about people in the Linux Community, the reply of facts is always cold. But numbers are numbers, and can be manipulated into different meanings. I am not saying people are wrong here. But let's get down to the facts here.

So the Steam usage on Linux is lingering around 1%, but the usage of Steam (no matter what platform) has always been growing (counting inactive accounts, etc) so this automatically means that Steam on Linux is growing. What people want to see is a big boom, not going to happen. As long as a Linux distribution not giving the user a GUI option on all the settings needed for gaming (this includes a lot of things such as mouse acceleration, FPS counter, broadcast gameplay, etc).

But if you've seen "Linux Sucks" by Bryan Lunduke you'll see he has a point. And that is, Linux does not has to be the best because it will always improve thanks to the community. Windows is the most used OS but it's not "Awesome", it's generic. We all know the sh*t we can do in Linux is awesome and how a Linux distribution is constantly evolving (for better or worse).

[Pecisk]

Wow, I could easily predict some of replies by not even reading comment section. So much positivity, much wow.

Survey has been already discussed to death, and most obvious thing is - if survey is trusted, Linux player base is increasing, considerably. SteamOS have launched, and so far while considering regular moans about how it is not Windows it has served it's purpose very well.