Steam's Linux Marketshare For January Was 0.8%

[torsionbar28]

If we're talking home users, then you're probably right. But I know a lot of stores and companies here in the Netherlands who are still using XP as well. Even the City Council/City Hall of my city is still using XP for everything (except notetaking during debates, which are done on iPads).
So XP is still very much in use here. But for Steam that doesn't really matter in this case. As you said: it's probably largely made up of Chinese persons.

I don't understand the XP hysteria. It doesn't really matter that it's not supported by the vendor any more. As long as you can put it behind a firewall, and run antivirus with up-to-date definitions, there's no reason to not use it still. Plenty of 3rd party application developers still support XP too, so who really cares that Microsoft does not? I would even argue that with all the big brother crap that newer Windows OS's come with, sticking with XP may be the more secure option in certain cases. The tyrant Obama turned the US into a 1984 style surveillance state with all his bulk data collection and domestic surveillance programs, hopefully Trump can clean up the mess.

[torsionbar28]

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.

It's not that simple, Wine often needs very specific configuration and customization for specific games. This is the reason for the existence of great businesses like Codeweavers. They do the hard configuration work, build that into a library of known recipes, so that your Windows games "just work". It's a far superior experience to vanilla Wine. Now if Steam wanted to partner with Codeweavers, that could be very interesting indeed...

[gemiller]

The reason why Steam's Linux numbers are so bad is bacause their Linux support is awful. I, and others I know, have tried for years to get their junky Linux support to work.

[torsionbar28]

I'm pretty sure people won't switch to Linux because of a game sale and I don't think those receiving/buying new components will be switching to Linux because of those new parts either. When you switch from one OS to another the most important aspects are going to be that your current software and hardware works with the new OS. The only exception to this are people who switch to OSX, but they have to get a whole new machine to do so.

It would definitely be interesting to see some absolute numbers as the PC gaming market has as been growing as a whole over the last couple of years and the absolute numbers would show if Linux has stayed stale or if it just hasn't been able to keep up with the growth under Windows.

It's not about convincing anyone to switch OS. It's about having choice, so folks aren't forced to use a single OS. Remember how much everyone complained about Windows 10 and it's horrible UI? Contrary to popular believe, gamers don't love Microsoft. Steam Machines running Linux and gaming peecee's preloaded with Linux become a lot more attractive when they can run the latest AAA titles.

Remember, most gamers don't have any specific love for Microsoft - they just want whatever hardware and OS combination will let them play the latest games at the best performance. If Linux cannot play the games they want, it's not even an option. Valve has made *YUGE* strides in getting games on Linux, including some AAA titles, but the serious gamers want "all" they don't want "some" so we still have a ways to go before many will make the switch.

[theriddick]

Most the time, if someone acknowledges Linux exists for gaming, they load up a Linux distro to try their game on it to see if it gives better performance, but instead get half the performance, quickly jump back into Windows. For NVIDIA cards this generally isn't much of a issue, you get reasonably close performance in most cases, but for AMD, its literal minefield still (a slightly less deadlier one but still a minefield of performance/compatibility issues).

[dbpalan]

Well, Windows XP was the greatest horse they ever made, i mean last time I ran it, it had 1~2% CPU utilization. Now if you want that you have to run Linux with some basic WM.

+1

I am using Lubuntu for this reason. But still too heavy for me and considering to switch to Debian Stretch with LXDE and run all applications in various VM for protecting each environment clean.

[dbpalan]

The reason why Steam's Linux numbers are so bad is bacause their Linux support is awful. I, and others I know, have tried for years to get their junky Linux support to work.

Also +1

My Lubuntu used to add awful symlink to make it works, and now someone offered PPA should works better.

[dungeon]

Well, Windows XP was the greatest horse they ever made, i mean last time I ran it, it had 1~2% CPU utilization. Now if you want that you have to run Linux with some basic WM.

It was not greatest, just designed for the hardware available at the time... Windows XP required Penitium 1 @ 233 MHz to run and just 64 MB of RAM, and no sound card required and no internet required of course These people with i386/i486 hardware and 2D cards cried at the same moment, and OS was claimed to be too much fancy bloat

Top notch GPUs at that time had unbelieveble up to 64 MB of DDR1 VRAM while gaming mainstream had 8/16 MB and those lucky even 32 MB of SDR ... while majority of games were still at 16bit depth

Windows XP only invented photo wallpaper by default and more colorful themes over 95/98/Me/2000...

[uid313]

About other Stores, it is possible, a company can create his own Store inside the Windows Store.

If Microsoft allowed competing third-party stores inside their store.
Apple does not.

[L_A_G]

It's not about convincing anyone to switch OS. It's about having choice, so folks aren't forced to use a single OS. Remember how much everyone complained about Windows 10 and it's horrible UI? Contrary to popular believe, gamers don't love Microsoft. Steam Machines running Linux and gaming peecee's preloaded with Linux become a lot more attractive when they can run the latest AAA titles.

Gamers may not love Microsoft, but if you've dealt with PC gamers at length, you'll know that a lot of them will instinctively bash and dismiss all competitors. They're probably some of the most defensive people on the internet when it comes down to it. It doesn't matter if it's consoles, OSX or Linux/SteamOS, if it's got less games and less chances for modding it's worthless and the same flaws in Windows that may have driven them up the wall less than 5 minutes ago, are now minor annoyances.

The reality is that most consumers are very wary when it comes to big changes like going from one OS to another. The only company that has been genuinely successful at it over the last few years has been Apple and they've mostly done it trough marketing, which Linux sorely lacks. It doesn't really matter if Microsoft is alienating it's own customers when you don't have a way to tell these people about the alternatives en masse.