Steam's Linux Marketshare For January Was 0.8%

[Elinvention]

I think some more visibility of Linux is good, but not too much otherwise it will become like Windows .

[Passso]

A working installer for Ubuntu 64b and we could hit 1% with "testing" users.
Still dreaming/whining about that and removing/linking libs manually...

[kprkpr]

I think too that some peole (like me) use Steam with Wine to load some games, althought is Linux, it will be seen as Windows..
If games were ported to Linux, or can be installed in Steam for Linux but run with wine, it will be better numbers

[Nille]

Only UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps will run, not traditional Win32 software applications.

That is not correct. He has this in the past and is was a flop. And you can still use "traditional Win32" Application. As Example, Kodi is a Win32 Application and you can install them from the Store.

You can pack normal Application (ofc with some limitation, e.g. no admin right allowed or Drivers) and distribute them with the Store.

So, a locked version that only allow Software from the Store is not limited to UWP. About other Stores, it is possible, a company can create his own Store inside the Windows Store.

[schmidtbag]

Kinda makes me wonder how much the Linux percentage would go up if all of the top 10 games (throughout the year) were Linux compatible. I don't remember the entire list but from what I do recall, most of the games are not Linux compatible. Kind of hard to entice people to switch when the most popular titles don't work.

[idcboutu]

Always remember that percentages lie. Steam is a growing system, and every month there are more users than the month prior. The Steam survey indicates that the rate of growth of Linux based systems is roughly equivalent to the growth rate of Steam itself. That's impressive, though clearly there's more work to be done.

[Staffan]

If only they integrated Wine with Steam so you could launch Windows games on Linux with Steam. Most of my library is Windows-only so all I contribute with is Windows statistics despite being a Linux user in other respects.

[SaucyJack]

Steam on Linux is still a hot mess even after years. Flatpak may solve the library issue completely. Steam runtime 2017, 2018 etc in a nice neat package. The lack of a 64 bit client is still mind boggling though.

[schmidtbag]

If only they integrated Wine with Steam so you could launch Windows games on Linux with Steam. Most of my library is Windows-only so all I contribute with is Windows statistics despite being a Linux user in other respects.

There have been ways to do this but they break pretty easily and they're pretty inconvenient. I don't blame Valve for not allowing this though: it discourages native porting, and, wine isn't exactly stable or reliable, so people are going to complain about things not working "as advertised". In a business perspective, it's much better to claim to have no support than to offer a wider range of support while risking instability.

What I think would make everyone happy is if you ask Steam to download a game known to be incompatible with Linux, where it will warn you about this. Then, it is entirely up to the user to figure out how to run the game, but Valve themselves would offer no support of any kind.

I have a handful of games where they are actually Linux compatible but they don't show up in my list, such as Flash-based games (like Binding of Isaac) or games with Linux binaries but for whatever reason were not ported on Steam (such as Shadowgrounds). It's kind of irritating that I can't download these games, even though I could actually run them, even if that means I'd have to get a separate binary from a 3rd party source.

[schmidtbag]

Steam on Linux is still a hot mess even after years. Flatpak may solve the library issue completely. Steam runtime 2017, 2018 etc in a nice neat package. The lack of a 64 bit client is still mind boggling though.

I normally really dislike the idea of Flatpak (one of the fundamental reasons Windows is so bloated is because it takes a similar approach) but Steam is one of the rare cases where Flatpak makes a lot of sense. And yeah, a lack of 64 bit is ridiculous, but, they don't have one for Windows either.