Valve's Steam July 2020 Numbers Point To A Small Dip For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve's Steam July 2020 Numbers Point To A Small Dip For Linux

While some platforms like Netmarketshare have reported increases month-over-month for Linux desktop usage, that doesn't appear to be translating similarly to the Linux gaming market-share, or at least not at the rate Steam is growing on Windows and macOS. Valve has just published their July 2020 numbers that are part of the Steam Survey...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...y-2020-Numbers

[herman]

Linux is not there yet for gaming. It still requires fiddling and third party apps to get it to run just right. Most gamers just want to turn on the game and play, which is why consoles are so popular even though PCs can do so much more, but I digress.

I used to want Linux to become dominant and take over. Now I'm happy it hasn't. Marketshare brings a lot of headaches: more viruses, more hacking attempts, and more shady companies with sketchy licensing. It's nice to have an OS that just works and most people don't seem to notice. I worry that won't last much longer.

[torsionbar28]

These Linux Steam survey numbers track like Al Gore's global warming. One month its up. The next month it's down. And all the predictions on where it will go, end up being way wrong. Not sure why Valve even bothers publishing these.

[vb_linux]

These Linux Steam survey numbers track like Al Gore's global warming. One month its up. The next month it's down. And all the predictions on where it will go, end up being way wrong. Not sure why Valve even bothers publishing these.

How is your Trumpist cultist advice about Global warming and how are valve Linux numbers related?

I can never tell if the next coin toss will be head or tails but I can still tell you a trend. If you do it 10000 times I can still tell you to expect 5000 heads.

Valve tells you of trends in gaming. How many people prefer one OS over others? Which cards are preferred? Which processor is preferred? Game Developers can take advantage of this data, so can you, if you believe in Buffet type value investing. AMD's move from $2.5 to $76 now though has a lot of profits and market share increase baked but I still see it going up to $100 at least.

And if only we want to look at Linux, averaging this over past time series shows you that the Linux market share hasn't moved much despite the improvements from the proton, etc.

So, think before you tweet and maybe pick up a maths book and read probability.

[PackRat]

Linux is not there yet for gaming. It still requires fiddling and third party apps to get it to run just right. Most gamers just want to turn on the game and play, which is why consoles are so popular even though PCs can do so much more, but I digress.

I used to want Linux to become dominant and take over. Now I'm happy it hasn't. Marketshare brings a lot of headaches: more viruses, more hacking attempts, and more shady companies with sketchy licensing. It's nice to have an OS that just works and most people don't seem to notice. I worry that won't last much longer.

You must be fun at lan parties... Just found a new software for physics‑based character animation named Cascadeur and it's free while in beta with a licence. https://cascadeur.com/

[herman]

You must be fun at lan parties... Just found a new software for physics‑based character animation named Cascadeur and it's free while in beta with a licence. https://cascadeur.com/

Ha. My gaming days are behind me, so I speak as an outsider rather than a gamer, but am I wrong? I can't think of any other reason one would theoretically want a console with less computing power and control except for the tradeoff of immediate access, stability and perhaps price. If Linux was plug & play for gaming -- MORE so than Windows, I imagine it would take off immediately.

But with regard to licenses, I had proprietary software in mind. Most free software on Windows is scammy and I would classify it as borderline spyware. It's a breath of fresh air to not need to scour the license agreements with open source software. Most people may not read license agreements, but they're absolutely horrible. Some even claim they have the legal right to show up at your physical premises to ensure you're using the software correctly. I'm sure they thought of businesses with that one, but I can just imagine some bigshot in a suit coming to a home address to see if little Susie has been using their programs correctly.

[Sonadow]

Linux is not there yet for gaming. It still requires fiddling and third party apps to get it to run just right. Most gamers just want to turn on the game and play, which is why consoles are so popular even though PCs can do so much more, but I digress.

Going off on a tangent here, consoles used to offer guaranteed performance: if the game promises to run at 30fps or 60fps, it will always do so regardless of how detailed the backgrounds, textures and models are by adjusting the quality on the spot.

Nowadays developers and game studios have gotten lazy enough that framedrops on consoles are getting more common. Japanese and Chinese games (which are what i exclusively play) are the biggest offenders here. The latest Sword Art Online game that was published just two weeks ago has framerates drops so bad I have written off the money spent on it as an outright loss. For comparison purposes, all the older SAO titles never had framerate drops with the exception of GGO Fatal Bullet, and even then it was extremely minor.

[MadByte]

I wonder how these surveys work.. Since switching from Windows 10 to Linux about 2 years ago I didn't get a chance to participate in a new survey. On Windows I can remember to participated in the survey quite a few times.

[Sonadow]

If Linux was plug & play for gaming -- MORE so than Windows, I imagine it would take off immediately.

Sony's version of FreeBSD proved that it can be done. It is used on the PS3, PS4 and VITA and is a runaway success in the console space.

The problem has always been the GPL and its corresponding demand for access to buildable source code. No organization is going to give away their proprietary APIs and technologies by shipping them together with a Linux-based system because of this.

[atomsymbol]

I wonder how these surveys work.. Since switching from Windows 10 to Linux about 2 years ago I didn't get a chance to participate in a new survey. On Windows I can remember to participated in the survey quite a few times.

In my experience, the survey popup appears at about the same frequency in Linux as in Windows. Today, I noticed the survey in Windows when starting Steam, I then started Steam in Linux and there was a survey to participate in.