Steam On Linux Still Tap Dancing Around 0.9% Marketshare

[ryao]

Phoronix: Steam On Linux Still Tap Dancing Around 0.9% Marketshare

Even with Steam Play continuing to get into quite good shape for running recent Windows game releases on Linux with ease thanks to the work Valve has been investing into Proton, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, and lower-level Linux graphics infrastructure, for now at least the overall marketshare is holding steady at around 0.8~0.9% for the past number of months...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-Tap-Dance-0.9

Linux actually reached 2.2% marketshare of English users on Steam, which is the first time Linux marketshare has exceeded 2% of English Steam users:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/

As per Bayes Theorem, 0.89% * 87.03%/ 35.72% = ~2.2%:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem

[RomuloP]

It is a mandatory business strategy to pursue... As is for Windows running Linux and Android software... It really is not about current domestic market share configuration and for sure is not about GNU/Linux and probably not even Linux directly, virtualization/containerization use can only grow and platform barriers can only disappear. Unless proactive actions are taken to stop this, from software to service strategies, to weird virtualization and hardware juridic clauses... It will be just a question of time to the death of domestic plataformed computing era.

[Big_Mama]

Maybe Windows 11 will drive a few more people to Linux.

Pahahah, good joke. People are saying this at every new Windows release since VISTA!

The fact is, only a very minority of computer users care about free software, open standards, privacy and so on. The rest simply wants it to work. And currently Windows does a better job at that, even though it is not even the better OS.

In my opinion the biggest problem of Linux is a missing standardized way to install end user software. Currently you can't just download a program, click next next next, and have it installed, but that is exactly what Linux needs! Flatpak could be the answer, but I'm not sure.

Tbh, if nothing changes in the Linux world, my guess is that the trend will reverse, unless Microsoft fucks up big time. Linux has been stagnating for too long now. Unfortunately!

[LeJimster]

If we had SteamOS brought out with the current game support we have now I think Linux adoption would have been more significant. The main thing missing right now is anti-cheat support. With that we will probably be able to support a 99% of titles.

I'm more than happy with the state of gaming on Linux. Yes, I would prefer more games support Vulkan. But I remember the time before proton, dxvk and good open source AMD GPU drivers. Things are pretty damn awesome these days and getting better every year.

[mppix]

Microsoft is constantly introducing interesting flagship techs like AutoHDR and that harddrive boost thingo in win11, while with win10 they offered dx12. The cost is they put it behind a paywall of buying a new OS and upgrading, its pretty cheeky and annoying. I hope Linux can get similar features down the line, without the paywall and telemetry!

Sony playstation is doing the same with BSD..

[theriddick]

Microsoft is constantly introducing interesting flagship techs like AutoHDR and that harddrive boost thingo in win11, while with win10 they offered dx12. The cost is they put it behind a paywall of buying a new OS and upgrading, its pretty cheeky and annoying. I hope Linux can get similar features down the line, without the paywall and telemetry!

[creoflux]

Imagine liking rocky road ice cream and being concern more people are not get the same thing.

[swoorup]

Sure, people say one thing and do completely different. But the fact is that numbers don't lie. I do personally want to see linux succeed on the desktop, which means more people/businesses develop on the linux platform, but its going to take quite a while to get there. The good thing going for linux is that code that is put out for linux development is usually top notch and a lot more thought out and rigorously discussed. Whatever good experiment happens in other OSes would likely end up in linux over time.

Until we reach the point that there is not much benefit to keep developing OSes internals, linux would always lag behind in desktop. What we need is features to stabilise and thus api's to stabilise, giving confidence for other people to develop for the linux platform.

[mppix]

In my circle of gaming pals, everybody uses Windows but they are all on the fence ready to switch with enough reassurance that everything will keep working. They will get it once Proton matures, even though right now there's no rush.

In my circle, people use Win because of (i) MS office, (ii) gaming, and (iii) specialized proprietary software, where (iii) is getting better quickly.
Nobody particularly likes the platform and folks generally agree that it is a money and privacy grab.

Not sure if we will ever get there for everything. However, things like running in a VMs is only getting easier and this is also the default way how Mac users run esoteric Win apps. If only flatpak could run MS Word

[mppix]

Oh the amount of linux fanboyism and it just works mentality here is annoying. Linux requires lot of work for the end users. Just cause your system worked at an instant, doesn't mean every one has the same experience. Windows has the resources allocated for testers to test on wide variety of permutations of hardware, whereas for linux most of the desktop experience testing is up to the end user.

The luck whether linux depends a lot on whether you buy supported hardware or not. There are still some manufacturers where Linux drivers are second or third priority but they are getting fewer quickly.
Still, buying systems with linux preinstalled usually gets you a great experience independent of distribution that you install later.

Regarding testing, it is up to you if you want to participate. You can either opt out and install stable distributions like Debian stable, RedHat, CentOS, or Ubuntu LTS. You now even get the latest software using flatpak.
On the other hand, you are volunteering for some testing if you install development/testing distros like Fedora, Debian testing, Ubuntu short term releases, Arch etc.
MS also has the developers program. You can now opt in to Win 11. I don't see the difference?

Side-note on stability/testing: I broke way more Win10 boxes with updates than linux boxes...

Development for open source drivers for a major vendor is done by few people who don't have resources to test every single permutation, at least to a lesser extent than windows does. If linux just worked, everyone would already have moved over to wayland years ago. But still we haven't fully transitioned yet and its more than decade already. Get over it.

I'm fairly sure that "Linux" has is at least competitive in the amount of testing and development hours logged compared to Win. There are many areas where Linux far outperforms Win. Sure, Linux desktop is a bit the ugly duckling.
Regarding wayland, this is a long-term effort to transform the ecosystem. Wayland protocol has been stable for a long time. Compositors and applications are now catching up.
Win took also a long time to get form Win95/98 ecosystem to XP, or from XP to 10, regularly having an entire 'bad' generation (in part due to graphics) because the ecosystem took a while to catch up.
Similarly, we can only guess how long Apple's metal API took to develop