Steam Survey Points To Tiny Uptick In Linux Percentage For March

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Survey Points To Tiny Uptick In Linux Percentage For March

With Steam and other online gaming platforms seeing record usage in recent weeks as a result of home isolation around the world as a result of the coronavirus, one of the matters of curiosity has been how this will impact the Linux gaming percentage...

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

[JMB9]

Linux is still more common for professionals. So they will play games, but a higher percentage of those than under Windows is to be expected to consider DRM a very bad thing and that personal information (when, how long, which game, with which achievements are played) should stay a secret.
So Steam is no target for these people - maybe rather itch.io or GOG, ... and maybe even free software to create a game themselves to be creative in isolation.
Extremely good free games are not on Steam ... and many of those using Linux do know this fact.
I think I am not the only one who still consider free software superior to open software of cause proprietary software as inferior - while i would never use a proprietary SW for real work, I do play proprietary games from time to time - but without DRM.
Maybe Valve may make a service sometimes to also get those people who see an extreme value in freedom ... but non free people are easier to be used as cash cows.
That's the world we life in. A slave has no privacy - a master has.

[ix900]

The majority of the world could care less about open source vs proprietary.

Linux can't grow unless its found everywhere like Android. Most people will just ignore it otherwise and Steam will just get almost no growth. Its not proprietary stuff or drm that's doing it other than in some vocal Linux user's minds. People just don't want to use it :-)

To add to that, I'm beginning to use Lutris with Epic Game Store to play on Linux. So there's one less Steam count for the month. The game I'm playing works just the same with Lutris/Wine as it would with Steam/Proton (Proton is technically Wine so). So Steam isn't the only one it town anymore.

[Tuxee]

Linux is still more common for professionals. So they will play games, but a higher percentage of those than under Windows is to be expected to consider DRM a very bad thing and that personal information (when, how long, which game, with which achievements are played) should stay a secret.
So Steam is no target for these people - maybe rather itch.io or GOG, ... and maybe even free software to create a game themselves to be creative in isolation.
Extremely good free games are not on Steam ... and many of those using Linux do know this fact.

Kudos for this creative "explanation". I do have another one. One I consider more reasonable: Linux desktops have a world-wide market share of - depending on whatever source you consult - around 1% to 2%. Make it 3% at most.
Maybe not too reliable one, but still...

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201903-202003

Starting from this figure a 1% market share makes perfect sense - after all Mac don't see 10+% market share on Steam either. Quite a few Linux users keep Windows for gaming - after all this means any game available, no hassles whatsoever (at least when compared to the situation on Linux).

Why we have a 2% market share is a different topic alltogether (I'd say it's the lack of hardware coming pre-installed with Linux).

I think I am not the only one who still consider free software superior to open software of cause proprietary software as inferior - while i would never use a proprietary SW for real work

Care to elaborate which open source alternative can replace my IntelliJ/PHPStorm? And yes, I had used Eclipse before and Geany and VSCode. Or which database tool I should pick instead of my beloved Navicat? And so far Sublime Merge is my favourite git GUI client...

I do play proprietary games from time to time - but without DRM.
Maybe Valve may make a service sometimes to also get those people who see an extreme value in freedom ... but non free people are easier to be used as cash cows.
That's the world we life in. A slave has no privacy - a master has.

One could think we are debating political systems. But no, we are talking about computer games. And yes, I don't give a shit whether my games are proprietary or not. They are just not important enough. Not by a long shot. And if they were that important - I'd be most likely on Windows.

[zxy_thf]

The instruction set extensions are still not being measured/reported in a non-contradictory way, such as:

• AVX512VNNI has a Linux share of 0.11% while AVX512F (AVX-512 foundation) just 0.01%
• AVX512VNNI Linux share increased from 0.06% to 0.11%: an increase by (0.11/0.06-1) = 83%
• AVX512F Linux share dropped from 0.02% to 0.01%: a decrease by 50%

Because Steam for Linux is buggy. For my case it never detects AVX2 on my haswell CPU.

[zzarko]

Steam client requires an internet connection, it contacts Steam servers all the time, it knows what games I can natively install on Linux, so why do they need a survey for the data that is already on their servers? Privacy maybe?

[StarterX4]

A big loss of Win7 and -0,67% of Chinese. Keep in mind that they mostly play with Win7.

[Guest]

Linux is still more common for professionals. So they will play games, but a higher percentage of those than under Windows is to be expected to consider DRM a very bad thing and that personal information (when, how long, which game, with which achievements are played) should stay a secret.

Why secret? What are you afraid of?

If you go out drinking, should it stay secret? If you go out jogging, playing ball games, or to gym, should it stay secret?

Common man plays games (less or more, or very little), and is not afraid, if others know about it,... Or, do you play games in unhealthy way? Are you afraid, that boss will know, that you're too tired in work to be capable to do actual work, because of addiction? If that's the case, then better get treated,... And, if it is not the case, then what are you afraid of? There's nothing to be afraid of,...

[OliVDB5590]

Well, it may be a wild guess, but I'd say that the lockdown is giving many people more free time, and some of them who wanted to experiment with Linux but couldn't find the time to do it and learn how to use a brand new OS finally found that time and gave it a go.