Valve's Steam Numbers For February Show A Small Dip In Linux Gaming Percentage

[Dedale]

I just got my survey twice. On my laptop and desktop. On the same day.

In the gaming world, we are a small demographics. No point in beating around the bush. When i go on retrocomputing gaming sites the Linux proportion of users looks more natural to me: Around 10-20%. But these are the niche i dwell into. Well served in Linux software by the way. I cannot complain.

/me Returns playing dawn of war 2.

[xiando]

Before we declare that it's over and that GNU/Linux is bankrupt and finished: 0.05% is almost what you'd call a rounding error. It probably doesn't mean anything. Of course, it doesn't help GNU/Linux gaming that The Popular Game of the Month's always lacking. That used to be Fortnite and now it's Apex Legends. No idea what will be the next trendy game but I doubt it'll run on GNU/Linux. More disturbing, it's worth paying attention to how these are not Steam games. Steam isn't doing very well these days and that is not good since Valve has invested heavily in GNU/Linux and have somewhat improved things for everyone.

[cj.wijtmans]

Before we declare that it's over and that GNU/Linux is bankrupt and finished: 0.05% is almost what you'd call a rounding error. It probably doesn't mean anything. Of course, it doesn't help GNU/Linux gaming that The Popular Game of the Month's always lacking. That used to be Fortnite and now it's Apex Legends. No idea what will be the next trendy game but I doubt it'll run on GNU/Linux. More disturbing, it's worth paying attention to how these are not Steam games. Steam isn't doing very well these days and that is not good since Valve has invested heavily in GNU/Linux and have somewhat improved things for everyone.

FYI apex is anything but trendy.

[Buntolo]

The whole proton stuff and running Windows platform games using various methods with wine I think is a huge waste of time and a bit daft in my opinion, just buy Windows 10 if you really want to play windows games. The only games that run somewhat reliably with any of the wine stuff is id Tech engine shit.

Thing is, W10 sucks deep. I'm rushing to the end all my Windows-only games now that I'm on W7, because after January 2020 It will be wither 8.1 (supported until 2023 but only on older AMD/Intel platforms) or W10.

And I hate the clusterfuck that W10 is, oh boy if I hate it.

Keep in mind that I'm not ranting against Microsoft or Windows, I'm ranting against the poor additions made for W10; because under the bonnet it's a better OS than the previous Windows and the proof is W10 LTSB edition.

In fact I think I'll put my hand on W10 LTSB and say goodbye to the crappy addons for Home/Pro editions.

Of course they count, but there is lower than average amount of Linux users there... Which explains why percentage goes lower, once survey is more there

Per continents, only in most countries of Europe and Asia are above average, or better to say India mostly as else in Asia is flop too Worldwide, but per countries number of LInux fluctuate greatly as that even goes as 1:10 ratio Unlike Windows, Linux as Desktop really fluctuate greatly per countries

So, if you do survey in targeted sweet spots where Linux is known to be used a lot, i wouldn't be surprised if Linux goes even to 5% on average with peaks at maybe 7% or more

I haven't understood what you wrote.

[Buntolo]

If you own a business or are an employee of a business that provides LTSB than power to you, from what I understand it is not easy to come by and a volume licensing agreement which starts out lowest somewhere around $105 or more a year. Microsoft does not want desktop home users running LTSB.

Luckily the company I work for allow its employees to use 1 Windows licence for personal use, between the available ones. W10 LTSB is one of those. Personally I've an OEM W10 Pro which probably I'll never use and I'll put on a secondary gaming PC for a relative of mine.

Windows 10 has it downfalls for sure but if you are using it for strictly gaming, honestly I have not had truly terrible experience with it other than doing a fresh install more than once a year YMMV on how often you have to install it. I have a tendency to fiddle with stuff too much. On Linux that is not such a big deal cause I can fix it relatively easy. I don't mind doing fresh installs anyway be it Linux or Windows.
I tend to be obsessive compulsive pertaining to certain things.

I had that tendency, my OSes where also a stockpile of software, now I run as vanilla as possible, fine tuning the least I can for performance and UI. I find archlinux way easier than any other distro, especially debian, and Windows. It's easier to install archlinux from 0 than to make W10 like W7/W8.1 in terms of "simplicity" (I'm NOT speaking about UI for Windows).

Just to remove all the useless preinstalled games and crap I'd to create a script, because messing with PowerShell was too slow, which worked only partially, as with every update W10 kept downloading Candy Crush Whatever & its amazing friends. 3+ GB of crap. Unacceptable. The problem I see with W10 is a design issue, not a programming one. It's about Microsoft choices for mass users: LTSB is for serious stuff and business, they won't make crap with it, but the version for the tons of normal people will be fiddled with crap, ads, useless stuff, telemetry and so on BY DEFAULT! I see no escape from this and W10 is 4 years old now.

I just know if there are certain games you want to play with all the bells and whistles enabled there is a certain amount of junk you have to deal with.

I don't find this acceptable if there's no strict reasons like hard and real requirements. I can accept having latest version/hardware/whatever to run a game/program, but I can't accept a fake requirement just for the sake of forcing people doing what you want, i.e.: DX12, W10 for using last AMD/Intel CPU, etc.

[dungeon]

I haven't understood what you wrote.

China (0.73%) is not India (4.43%)::

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/china

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india

Greece (4.9%) is not Portugal (0.92%):

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/greece

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/portugal

and so on... capisco?

[KuJo]

It´s true that the Steam-share decreased ... but in absolute numbers the User-count grewth.

See what Valve employee Pierre-Loup Griffais said about it a few weeks ago:

"The overall percentage still has a lot of ground to make up, but the number of Linux gamers on Steam continues to grow at a similar rate as those playing on Windows," Steam developer Pierre-Loup Griffais told Engadget. "It looks like there might actually be an increase trend in Linux gamers starting from October when we released the new Steam Play [Proton] beta, but it's too early to tell if it's had a real lasting impact.”

-> https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...to-valve.13604

Additional we have actually an increase of chinese gamers (caused by the launch of Apex Legends). We see here a similar high impact like with PUBG from the chinese Gamers (traditonally highly tagged to Windwos) to the Linux Share:
-> https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...e-market.10651

Numbers of the survey regarding the used Language:
English: - 2,41%
Simplified Chinese: +3,54%
Traditional Chinese: + 0,17%