Steam Survey Updated For February 2020 With Latest Linux Figures

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Survey Updated For February 2020 With Latest Linux Figures

After hitting 0.9% in January for the Steam on Linux marketshare that was a high for at least the past year, the Linux gaming percentage dropped slightly for February...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Survey-Feb-2020

[skeevy420]

Ubuntu 19.10 64 bit 11.68% [B]+1.20%[/B]

"Arch Linux" 64 bit 11.06% -0.06%

"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit 10.98% +0.99%

Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS 64 bit 10.67% [B]+10.67%[/B]

Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS 64 bit 10.40% [B]-11.48%[/B]

Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia 64 bit 6.86% +1.01%

Other 38.35% -2.32%

So did anyone else notice that Steam noticed that Ubuntu 18.04.3 users either upgraded or dist-upgraded? I thought those numbers were funny.

I'm in the Other category this month. Technically, I only opened up Steam in the past week so I might not even be contributing there. It occurred to me last week that I haven't installed ZFS on my system to mount my game drives so a few days ago my lazy ass finally got around to installing ZFS on Silverblue....long story short, looks like I'm gonna have to reference (blatantly rip-off) atomic-wireguard and come up with a way to build the ZFS modules for me...only problem is I've never really gotten into containers and docker whatnot so it's just terrific figuring out a new OS along with new tools and new methods. It's my way of learning toolbox and dockerfiles.

[ptyerman]

Whatever, yada, yada, yada!
I dunno why Valve keeps publishing this Linux doomsday crap. In the best case, it's totally meaningless garbage, most people I've heard from or spoken with, still haven't even had the survey while running Linux!
In the worst case, it's all just lies and made up crap by Valve! To what end is anybody's guess.
If things were this bad for Linux gaming, then why is Valve still supporting it and even pushing it?
Gotta be some agenda being pushed here!

[discordian]

If things were this bad for Linux gaming, then why is Valve still supporting it and even pushing it?
Gotta be some agenda being pushed here!

Simple: Investing pennies for free advertising, their support aint even half-assed. Linux Market share is likely even less than reported, who in their right mind actually fills out surveys?

[ptyerman]

Simple: Investing pennies for free advertising, their support aint even half-assed. Linux Market share is likely even less than reported, who in their right mind actually fills out surveys?

People who care about such things fill them in! Reading these forums alone shows a lot of people whom filled in the survey.
Just because you don't care doesn't mean nobody does!!

[johnp]

I wonder why they don't make the Steam client report the OS info automatically?

[discordian]

People who care about such things fill them in! Reading these forums alone shows a lot of people whom filled in the survey.
Just because you don't care doesn't mean nobody does!!

Yeah, exactly, who cares for pushing their OS in some useless statistic?

[vb_linux]

Whatever, yada, yada, yada!
most people I've heard from or spoken with, still haven't even had the survey while running Linux!
In the worst case, it's all just lies and made up crap by Valve!

It is amazing this comes every time. I mean most of us programmers. This is probability 101, unbiased random sampling.

No, paranoid bro, Valve has nothing against you or linux. If you take average of a past all random surveys, then actual population percentage of linux users will be very close to sample percentage. Education is the enemy of BS. So, if next time paranoia occupies your mind, maybe pickup a book next time before insane rant on the internet.

[vb_linux]

Simple: Investing pennies for free advertising, their support aint even half-assed. Linux Market share is likely even less than reported, who in their right mind actually fills out surveys?

You don't need to fill this survey, just click a button and they take your system configuration.

[Raka555]

The same 2 issues every year:

• Not every game will play reliably on linux, so Windows (dual boot/VM) or Wine/wine-lookalikes etc have to stick around so you can play the games you've paid for.

So much amazing progress has been made towards vulkan adoption and getting games to play on free operating systems but it keeps getting held back by DRM like denuvo. You can get 99% of the way to full compatibility and hit a wall like that.
Also, Indie games and decent devs will have their game support every platform from the getgo (more people playing = more revenue, you would think). There is less and less of an excuse for other developers not to make the effort when vulkan is right there...free, multiplatform and offers great performance even on limited hardware.

• Valve still still still in 2020 doesn't care about making their client 64bit.

It's just impossible. There is simply no possible way in human history to make a program run native 64bit, when oh when will this concept ever be realised? macOS? no problem, but on linux (wildly different I'm sure) you HAVE to install dozens of i386 libraries...and woe betide you if you complain about it because 'steam doesn't need to be 64 bit, it only launches games'. They jump right on it if you're having a driver issue conflicting with their 32bit museum but ask why they can't change the compile flag? SACRILEGE!

How many people use a 32bit operating system for gaming? Valve really can't release BOTH a 32bit and a 64bit version? Too much effort? Almost every other program in existence can somehow manage lol

Steam's (still) not worth the hassle on linux atm, so of course the user % is (still) low

Edit: and the distribution of a survey. Can't get counted for if they don't ask you!

You might want to look at posts in this thread for possible reasons why games are still 32bit ...

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/processors-memory/1158587-cpus-from-2004-against-amd-s-new-64-core-threadripper-3990x-tests-against-fx-9590?p=1159013#post1159013