Steam's Linux Marketshare Ticks Up Ever So Slightly For May

[ColdDistance]

RX580 is reported as RX480. Seriously, this is the same card. Slightly overclocked, with more aggressive boost reclocking, but still same thing. 570/470 variants are also likely reported as RX480

Steam client shows my RX 580 as a RX 580, so I don't understand what is happening.

[skeevy420]

RX580 is reported as RX480. Seriously, this is the same card. Slightly overclocked, with more aggressive boost reclocking, but still same thing. 570/470 variants are also likely reported as RX480

I know. The 5XX's show up as 4XX's. If you have a 570, linux will call it a 470.

Still, you'd think Steam or the drivers, especially the drivers, would have some method to separate the two if Wine + VKD3D can manage it.

[skeevy420]

M$ might be taking the embrace, extend, extinguish approach, because they know that they're driving their users away with Windows 10. In fact, that operating system made me drop them completely, even though I've been dual-booting for over a decade at that point. Have you ever read leaked documents from them? (look up "evangelism is war")

Same here. From 2005 until 2016 I had always dual booted some version of Windows and some version of Linux. Windows 10 came out, got 2 FUBAR updates, haven't had Windows installed since early 2018.

I'm contemplating installing a copy of 10 LTSC so I'll have a Windows comparison when testing games on Linux. I actually own a 10 Pro key, but gods-damn 10 Pro has too much crap I do not want...it's like comparing Ubuntu to ArchBang.

Not to mention that I simply don't trust 10 Pro at all since on any update it would reset file associations, it didn't respect telemetry settings, it didn't respect updating settings like the limited bandwidth setting...pretty bad on Micrsoft's part that I'll seriously consider pirating Windows for their long-term Enterprise edition when I own 10 Pro because 10 Pro sucks that much ass.

Plus I just don't want to risk being a guinea pig and get hit by some dumbass data-eating bug because MS decided I needed to be a beta tester since I did my usual "check for updates manually because it's Sunday and I don't have shit going on". If y'all don't know, manually checking for updates in 10 will set it up so you get beta updates...seriously...they assume that if you manually check for updates then you have to be a bleeding-edge fucktard versus a person who wants to check for updates at a time when they know their system can have downtime.

[khnazile]

There's clearly a GPU reporting error on the Linux side -- Not a single RX 580? Really? Not one single Linux user with Steam has an RX 580? Well, I'm calling shenanigans on those results.

RX580 is reported as RX480. Seriously, this is the same card. Slightly overclocked, with more aggressive boost reclocking, but still same thing. 570/470 variants are also likely reported as RX480

- Microsoft is actually adopting Linux.
- NVIDIA... I might agree but actually the issue (all of that lock-in) is not Linux-only.

M$ might be taking the embrace, extend, extinguish approach, because they know that they're driving their users away with Windows 10. In fact, that operating system made me drop them completely, even though I've been dual-booting for over a decade at that point. Have you ever read leaked documents from them? (look up "evangelism is war")

As for NVIDIA… Their drivers are simply awful, the way they handle relations with the community is arogant, and they actively make things worse for themselves. My GPU in my old computer didn't get KMS in their proprietary drivers, and they were falling behind X.org releases. Add the fact that some game developers officially say they only support their shitty GPUs (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...vilization_VI/, look at system requirements for GNU/Linux), and you have a recipe for a disaster. All of these things and Turing made me outright boycott them. I don't see myself buying from them for the rest of my life, and it would take a LOT for things to change.

[skeevy420]

Phoronix and several users have written proofs already. Open your bubble and read them and do not focus on typos and your narrow view of the world.

No, they were writing on 80 proof.

Yup I agree.

But also for Linux gaming on Steam to see a big uptick in market share we need the Linux desktop in general to see a big uptick in usage converting lots of Windows and Mac OSX users. One of the big distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Manjaro etc) needs to hit it big and make all the right industry partnerships to make sure PCs ship with well configured user friendly Linux and of course address any remaining non-gaming concerns in the way that Valve is addressing the gaming eco system. Both Microsoft and Apple aggressively push their products through the entire supply chain and make sure it ends up in the right places, to compete with that it's not enough to merely be a good product.

Linux desktop has to grow in sync with Linux gaming and feed off each other's success. Valve has turned out to be a great ally on the gaming front. But we need a similar push to happen in the the general desktop.

Good luck with getting manufacturers to ship computers without Windows, the way M$ handles OEM licensing makes it extremely cumbersome to ship computers with something else if you have deals set up with them.

[skeevy420]

Heh. Got my first survey in a year 12 hours ago...which was 2nd survey since 2013...Yeah, it took 5 whole years before I got my first Steam Survey. Kinda funny that Phoronix has a survey article on the same day.

There's clearly a GPU reporting error on the Linux side -- Not a single RX 580? Really? Not one single Linux user with Steam has an RX 580? Well, I'm calling shenanigans on those results.

That said, the only way to get my 580 to report as a 580 is to use Wine with VKD3D...outside of that one scenario, using AMDVLK or Pro makes programs report it as an RX 480 and RADV gets programs to call it a Polaris10 LLVM 8.0.0.

These numbers are consistent from other sources as well (e.g. XPlane11). The Linux gaming market share is sub 1% overall.

This will not change significantly even if ALL the games are ported to Linux. Ask yourself: Why wasn't there a surge in this percentage after Proton was released by valve? It suddenly made thousands of games readily available yet the Linux market share didn't budge. The reality is most users could care less about the OS and they will most likely stick to whatever that came preinstalled with their PC.

Now if you ship a successful console with Linux, this would change the % significantly. Otherwise, we'd always be in the sub 1% (or 2% at best) market share.

SteamPlay hasn't made these games suddenly work. They did for a long time, if you were to put in the effort to set up a wine prefix for them. It only made it slightly easier (you still need to click around to enable a beta channel and enable SteamPlay for unapproved games).

[Bobby Bob]

It would be easy to dismiss these numbers and say 'boo hoo, it's not working, Linux isn't growing fast enough!', but when you're starting from 0.81% (check last months stats, it wasn't 0.82, Steam Stats are glitchy), increasing to 0.84% in a month is pretty darn good! That's an increase of the number of Linux gamers by 3.7%!

If we maintained a 3.7%/month rate of growth for 6 months, in 6 months we'd be up to 1.04% marketshare. Another 6 months later we'd be up to 1.3% marketshare and another 6 months after that we'd be up to 1.6% marketshare.

But alas, sadly Steam stats don't flow that way, they bounce ^up and _down, but importantly the trend since Proton released has been one of growth, when you smooth out the data points. When Proton launched, Linux was only at 0.78%, the number of Linux gamers has increased by 7.7% in just 9 months.

That's 7.7% growth in overall global stats, despite the fact that Steam has become much more popular in China, where Linux marketshare is significantly lower than in western countries stats are much lower. If Steam was strictly based in the US, Linux user stats would be even higher and almost at 2% already.

The most important take away from all of this is: Linux IS growth.

Which means time is on our side, what we're doing is working. It shouldn't be surprising that Linux growth is slow, at the moment, while there are still so many roadblocks to Linux usage. Software compatibility and gamer UX is still a massive issue, Proton has significantly improved the situation but we are still only hovering at roughly 60% of PC games being playable on Linux, with the bulk majority of those which are unplayable, being AAA and multiplayer PvP games, aka the real money makers of the industry.

But we know EAC has confirmed that Proton compatibility is at "beta" stage, and we now have confirmation that BattlEye is also working with Valve on Proton compatibility. Both would provide another surge in increased number of games available, which would mean more users on top of the steady growth we already have. And the end of life of Windows 7 is approaching next year, and we know lots of gamers are not terribly happy with the idea of using Windows 10. So we know lots of gamers are in the market for a new OS.

Never forget, every time Linux marketshare grows, even just a tiny little bit, the amount of support Linux gets also increases, which makes it even easier for future gamers to switch to Linux, which means more users, more growth, and more support.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, time is on our side, and we are gaining on the competition. We just have to keep at it!